Beyond individualised teaching: A Relational Construction of Pedagogical Attitude

Abstract

Teaching is today often described as a matter of adjusting to the individual lives of students. Building on the premises of three educational theories, mainly Martin Buber's concept of ‘inclusion’, the article aims to confront this idea and show how pedagogical attitude can be perceived from a relational perspective. A model is constructed in which pedagogical attitude is understood as three different types of teacher-student relationships: a) an asymmetric inter-subjective relationship; b) an asymmetric subject-object relationship; and c) an asymmetric object-subject relationship. The article argues that a genuine pedagogical attitude is included in the first type. It is interpreted as a matter of experiencing from the student's side of the relationship and, at the same time, taking a stand as a pedagogical subject. This interpretation differs from the widespread notion of pedagogical attitude according to which the teacher's position tends to be diluted.