observation can very easily slide to an emphasis on what the teacher is doing (‘Try
to speak more clearly’,‘Don’t hand out the worksheets until you’vefinished giving
instructions’,‘Make sure you control students’entry to the classroom’), rather than
what the students are doing and learning. Though the connection between teacher
action and student learning may be inferred, it is through the examination of
products of learning that student growth can be directly assessed.
At the level of the individual teacher, then, a clinical approach is characterised
by a number of qualities. First, ensuring that actions within and outside the
classroom are done with the primary and central focus of improving student
learning requires an unremittingly inquiring and reflective stance on the part of the
teacher, and an awareness of the complexity of the teaching situation. If a teacher is
to place students’learning needs as the central driving force for their decisions and
actions, they need a self-awareness of motives and needs, and a thorough and
nuanced understanding of all the competing pressures on them to act and teach in
given ways in response to various situations. So a clinical teacher, then, will need to
be aware of these influences on their teaching, and their own reactions to them.
They will need to be able to recognise the degree to which the demands of various
stakeholders are related to improved student learning, and will prioritise their time
and efforts accordingly.
Second, while the lens of clinical practice focuses sharply on student learning
and development, this does not imply an approach driven by test scores and other
student performance measures. A clinical model in medicine is based on the
understanding that physical, mental and social aspects all underpin and together
interact to influence patient health, so that it is not possible to diagnose and treat
patients effectively without a broad vision of what constitutes patient wellbeing.
Similarly, a clinical approach to education conceptualises student learning and
development in terms not just of the individual knowledge or skills that can be
assessed in a written test, but also in terms of the broader aptitudes, attitudes and
understandings that will enable students to flourish in a diverse and rapidly
changing world. So a clinical practitioner in education, in focusing on student
learning and development, is not simply considering student achievement in iso-
lation. Broad-based questions such as,‘Does this student drive their own learning?’
‘Why doesn’t this student persist in the face of a setback?’and‘How well does this
student work in a team?’are integral to a clinical teaching perspective. Clinical
teaching practitioners work to understand the answers to these questions so as to
support the development of the whole student. As well, classroom teachers are alert
to physical, cognitive and social factors that affect student learning and liaise with a
system of services to support student development. Student learning and devel-
opment is at the centre of clinical teaching with full recognition of the influence of
physical, cognitive and social factors at play, just as medical models place patient
wellbeing at the centre.
156 J. Kriewaldt et al.