ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we focus on the concept of student growth and argue that policy-makers have deliberately sidelined the more authentic and holistic counter narratives and conceptions of learning growth characterized by the progressivist and critical fields of pedagogy. This deliberate sidelining has occurred through the epistemology of education taking on a more “scientific” character as outlined in the previous chapter. In this chapter, we revisit the Deweyan conception and meaning of growth asserting the intrinsic worth and value in intelligence, especially social intelligence, with an eye to that which is demonstrably democratic in nature and form. The argument we make in this chapter explores the notion of “authentic pedagogic practice” to suggest that there is a depth and scope to contemporary teaching and learning which is primarily existential and aesthetic but often missed by the constructed performativity mechanism of high-stakes testing. The chapter points towards what is worth learning and why it connects ultimately to student growth. It reinforces the centrality of cognitive, social, emotional, spiritual and developmental supports as core to the concept of student growth something perhaps under-played in current education policy-making.
