Introduction

Abstract

Abstract This chapter introduces the context of research, teaching, learning, practice, and pedagogy in archaeology, connecting this with changing trends in global higher education, and demonstrating how pedagogy and teaching have been seen as less valuable than research. A history of pedagogic research in archaeology is then presented to demonstrate how this has emerged, and which offers a series of arguments about why pedagogy should be revalued in the discipline. Specifically, we argue four key points: that our students are tomorrow’s practitioners; that pedagogy is fundamentally connected to sociopolitics; that the impact of good pedagogic practice is affective across multiple scales; and that archaeology needs its own pedagogic solutions. In the latter we argue that establishing our own disciplinary pedagogic solutions contributes to broader non-archaeological pedagogic research. In making these arguments we set the scene for the rest of the volume.