Environmental Essentials of Signature Pedagogy of Constructivist Teacher Education--An Analogy

Taking the premise that construction or meaning making largely depends on the existing knowledge and experience, this paper uses an analogy of learning the culinary art and learning to teach. This paper attempts to clarify the characteristics of signature pedagogy of teacher education focusing on the threshold concept of constructivism by using the analogy of culinary skills as the contextual/environmental element. It is assumed that the analogy helps the student teachers to comprehend the meaning of the abstract idea of constructivism because in the cultural context of Kerala most student teachers are clear about what it means to learn how to learn cooking. This paper fits into the theme of this conference as future teachers and teacher educators would learn how to relate something as abstract as constructivism with something intimately connected with life and cultural environment as learning to nourish oneself and the younger ones. While cooking facilitates nourishment of body, teaching facilitates learning and development of mind. Building upon the analogy between these two essential process of sustaining and developing human life and culture, this paper augments its arguments with the concepts of signature pedagogy and threshold concepts and elaborates on how these ideas would help to further clarify and improve the theory and practice of constructivism in teacher education. [This paper was published in "Environmental Psychology: Perspectives on Teacher Education" p19-28 2017 (ISBN 978-81-933464-0-2).]