What is the art and science of teaching?

What is the art and science of teaching?

Teaching is certainly both an art and a science, but which parts of it are to be labelled as which? When people talk of the art and science of teaching, it seems they define the art as the creative part and the science as the structured and systematic part. This seems to type science as something that is facts and figures and set ideas. Yet the model associated with the Nature of Science shows science as something different to that.

The model in the above link shows that science includes such aspects as:

• ·      curiosity,
• ·      serendipity,
• ·      surprising observation,
• ·      inspiration,
• ·      creativity,
• ·      new questions and ideas,
• ·      interpretations.

There is then what we traditionally define as ‘art’ to science, and I imagine also there is what we traditionally define as ‘science’ to art.

This isn’t so much a vital argument for which bits of teaching are science and which bits are art, but perhaps it is important for science and for art. To see those disciplines as broader than their traditional conceptualization as certain types of subjects seems useful if not vital for the understanding of both.

Just thinking.