Pedagogical validity: The key to understanding different forms of 'good' teaching.

The interrelationship of pedagogical skills, educational ends, and underlying values and assumptions constitute a teacher's 'pedagogical validity' - who they are as a teacher and why they teach the way they do. If reflection, judgment, and improvement are to be helpful, they must have regard for a more complete understanding of what frames a teacher's pedagogical validity. This article briefly describes four kinds of pedagogical validity that teachers draw upon when explaining or justifying their notion of 'good' teaching. Teachers generally have some part of each, but most of us draw upon one or two more than all four as we define ourselves as teachers and make sense of our teaching.