1. 1
Professor Robin Alexander
Alexander´s earlier research and writing included the books The Self-
Evaluating Institution (1982), Primary Teaching (1984), Change in Teacher
Education (1984), Changing Primary Practice (1989), Versions of Primary
Education (1995), Policy and Practice in Primary Education: local initiative, national
agenda (1997), and Learning from Comparing: new directions in comparative
education research Vol I (1999) and Vol 2 (2000).
This corpus includes work on policy, pedagogy, curriculum, evaluation,
international comparative and cultural studies, teacher education and, especially,
primary education. Subsequently, his Culture and Pedagogy: international
comparisons in primary education (Blackwell 2001) won top education book prizes
on both sides of the Atlantic and led to Essays on Pedagogy (2008), Education for All,
the Quality Imperative and the Problem of Pedagogy (2008) and to his extensive and
continuing work on classroom talk reform and the advancement of dialogic teaching
(Education as Dialogue, 2006 and Towards Dialogic Teaching: rethinking classroom
talk, 4th edition 2008).
Information taken from: http://www.educ.cam.ac.uk/people/staff/alexander/

2. 2
Author´s goals
Re-conceptualizingpedagogy and curriculum through criticizing how the teaching act has been
atomized in factors to study the phenomenon from a causality approach (method X allow
student to learn Y) and highlighting the failure of integrating once again such factors to as a
coherent and recognizable events located in time and space.
Problematizing the reductionism with which teaching has been conceived. Especially the
proliferation of certain models as, for instance, script teaching and bipolar models of pedagogy.
Scripted teaching or scripted instruction refers to commercial reading
programs that have highly structured lessons, often with specific time
allotments for teaching specific skills, and often word-for-word scripts of
what the teacher is to say. Scripted instruction has often been advocated for
schools where teachers have had inadequate teacher training and is also seen
as way to standardize the quality of instruction. Critics say that such
programs stifle teachers' creativity, undermine teachers' expertise, and fail to
provide for the diverse needs of many classrooms. Advocates see it as the
easiest way to provide teachers with the essential elements of effective
reading instruction. Scripted instruction has also been applied to preparation
of lessons in many other subject matter areas.
Retrieved from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripted_teaching
Bipolar models of pedagogy… Examples of bipolar models: Student center vs.
teacher center, or process vs. product
Author’s claim
Developing a science for teaching acts based on a comparative inquiry to incorporate political and
conceptual spaces in re-conceptualizing curriculum and pedagogy.
Methodological approach
Conceptualizing teaching based on a comparative model (5 countries –England, France, Russia, USA,
and India-, and working hard against ethnocentrism (bias in favoring one culture/country)because
terms are culturally and linguistically situated.

3. 3
Theoretical model
Pedagogy encompasses that act together with purposes, values, ideas, assumptions, theories
and beliefs, which inform, shape, and seek to justify it.
Teaching is cultural act, which means such act is a group of coherent and recognizable events
that ensue in time and space, and also involves discourses (systems of values and ideas).
Three levels of data analysis: state/school/classroom:
Conclusion
In integrating teaching acts (frame/form/act) and discourses of pedagogy (systems of values) emerges
the complex relationship between theories and practices. Such relationship is not linear, because
teaching practices embrace contradictory thinking and mixed messages: teaching can be traditional and
progressive at the same time (bipolar pedagogy models are not useful).
Research implications
The focus of research on teaching is not the effectiveness; instead, teaching acts should be conceived as
complex relationships between mixed values and observable practices (Frame/ Form/ Act).