The discourse of ‘ability’ continues to mis-shape education in England and to inspire resistance among practitioners in the name of a more optimistic view of human educability. Such a view requires the development of anti-determinist pedagogy. Under the sign of ‘learning without limits’ that pedagogy is dependent on and responsive to principles of trust, co-agency and the inclusive ‘ethic of everybody’. It keeps faith with an understanding of the pupil as a person who learns, and retains a dynamic and open conception of the future pupil, the person educated. Anti-determinist pedagogy is made harder to disseminate generally because it refuses crystallisation into a ‘method’ and must endure the hostility which contemporary policy evinces towards whatever departs from teaching-as-delivery.
Patrick Yarker (Thu,) studied this question.