The philosophy of education examines the goals, forms, methods, and meaning of education. The term is used to describe both fundamental philosophical analysis
of these themes and the description or analysis of particular
pedagogical approaches. Considerations of how the profession relates to
broader philosophical or sociocultural contexts may be included. The philosophy of education thus overlaps with the field of education and applied philosophy.
For example, philosophers of education study what constitutes
upbringing and education, the values and norms revealed through
upbringing and educational practices, the limits and legitimization of
education as an academic discipline, and the relation between educational theory and practice.
In universities, the philosophy of education usually forms part of departments or colleges of education.
Philosophy of education
Idealism
Plato
Inscribed herma of Plato. (Berlin, Altes Museum).
Plato's educational philosophy was grounded in a vision of an ideal Republic wherein the individual
was best served by being subordinated to a just society due to a shift
in emphasis that departed from his predecessors. The mind and body were
to be considered separate entities. In the dialogues of Phaedo,
written in his "middle period" (360 B.C.E.) Plato expressed his
distinctive views about the nature of knowledge, reality, and the soul:
When the soul and body are united, then nature orders the soul to rule and govern, and the body to obey and serve. Now which of these two functions is akin to the divine? and which to the mortal? Does not the divine appear…to be that which naturally orders and rules, and the mortal to be that which is subject and servant?
On this premise, Plato advocated removing children from their mothers' care and raising them as wards of the state,
with great care being taken to differentiate children suitable to the
various castes, the highest receiving the most education, so that they
could act as guardians of the city and care for the less able. Education
would be holistic, including facts, skills, physical discipline, and music and art, which he considered the highest form of endeavor.
Plato believed that talent was distributed non-genetically and thus must be found in children born in any social class. He built on this by insisting that those suitably gifted were to be trained by the state so that they might be qualified to assume the role of a ruling class. What this established was essentially a system of selective public education
premised on the assumption that an educated minority of the population
were, by virtue of their education (and inborn educability), sufficient
for healthy governance.
Plato's writings contain some of the following ideas:
Elementary education would be confined to the guardian class till the age of 18, followed by two years of compulsory military training and then by higher education
for those who qualified. While elementary education made the soul
responsive to the environment, higher education helped the soul to
search for truth which illuminated it. Both boys and girls receive the
same kind of education. Elementary education consisted of music and
gymnastics, designed to train and blend gentle and fierce qualities in
the individual and create a harmonious person.
At the age of 20, a selection was made. The best students would
take an advanced course in mathematics, geometry, astronomy and
harmonics. The first course in the scheme of higher education would last
for ten years. It would be for those who had a flair for science. At
the age of 30 there would be another selection; those who qualified
would study dialectics and metaphysics, logic and philosophy
for the next five years. After accepting junior positions in the army
for 15 years, a man would have completed his theoretical and practical
education by the age of 50.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant believed that education differs from training in
that the former involves thinking whereas the latter does not. In
addition to educating reason, of central importance to him was the
development of character and teaching of moral maxims. Kant was a
proponent of public education and of learning by doing.
Realism
Aristotle
Bust of Aristotle. Roman copy after a Greek bronze original by Lysippos from 330 B.C.
Only fragments of Aristotle's treatise On Education are
still in existence. We thus know of his philosophy of education
primarily through brief passages in other works. Aristotle considered
human nature, habit and reason to be equally important forces to be cultivated in education.
Thus, for example, he considered repetition to be a key tool to develop
good habits. The teacher was to lead the student systematically; this
differs, for example, from Socrates' emphasis on questioning his
listeners to bring out their own ideas (though the comparison is perhaps
incongruous since Socrates was dealing with adults).
Aristotle placed great emphasis on balancing the theoretical and
practical aspects of subjects taught. Subjects he explicitly mentions as
being important included reading, writing and mathematics; music;
physical education; literature and history; and a wide range of
sciences. He also mentioned the importance of play.
One of education's primary missions for Aristotle, perhaps its most important, was to produce good and virtuous citizens for the polis. All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.
Avicenna
In the medieval Islamic world, an elementary school was known as a maktab, which dates back to at least the 10th century. Like madrasahs (which referred to higher education), a maktab was often attached to a mosque. In the 11th century, Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in the West), wrote a chapter dealing with the maktab entitled "The Role of the Teacher in the Training and Upbringing of Children", as a guide to teachers working at maktab schools. He wrote that children can learn better if taught in classes instead of individual tuition from private tutors, and he gave a number of reasons for why this is the case, citing the value of competition and emulation among pupils as well as the usefulness of group discussions and debates. Ibn Sina described the curriculum of a maktab school in some detail, describing the curricula for two stages of education in a maktab school.
Ibn Sina wrote that children should be sent to a maktab school from the age of 6 and be taught primary education until they reach the age of 14. During which time, he wrote that they should be taught the Qur'an, Islamic metaphysics, language, literature, Islamic ethics, and manual skills (which could refer to a variety of practical skills).
Ibn Sina refers to the secondary education stage of maktab
schooling as the period of specialization, when pupils should begin to
acquire manual skills, regardless of their social status. He writes that
children after the age of 14 should be given a choice to choose and
specialize in subjects they have an interest in, whether it was reading,
manual skills, literature, preaching, medicine, geometry, trade and commerce, craftsmanship, or any other subject or profession they would be interested in pursuing for a future career.
He wrote that this was a transitional stage and that there needs to be
flexibility regarding the age in which pupils graduate, as the student's
emotional development and chosen subjects need to be taken into
account.
The empiricist theory of 'tabula rasa' was also developed by Ibn Sina. He argued that the "human intellect at birth is rather like a tabula rasa, a pure potentiality that is actualized through education and comes to know" and that knowledge is attained through "empirical familiarity with objects in this world from which one abstracts universal concepts" which is developed through a "syllogistic method of reasoning;
observations lead to prepositional statements, which when compounded
lead to further abstract concepts." He further argued that the intellect
itself "possesses levels of development from the material intellect (al-‘aql al-hayulani), that potentiality that can acquire knowledge to the active intellect (al-‘aql al-fa‘il), the state of the human intellect in conjunction with the perfect source of knowledge."
Ibn Tufail
In the 12th century, the Andalusian-Arabian philosopher and novelist Ibn Tufail (known as "Abubacer" or "Ebn Tophail" in the West) demonstrated the empiricist theory of 'tabula rasa' as a thought experiment through his Arabic philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, in which he depicted the development of the mind of a feral child "from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from society" on a desert island, through experience alone. Some scholars have argued that the Latin translation of his philosophical novel, Philosophus Autodidactus, published by Edward Pococke the Younger in 1671, had an influence on John Locke's formulation of tabula rasa in "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding".
John Locke
In Some Thoughts Concerning Education and Of the Conduct of the Understanding Locke composed an outline on how to educate this mind in order to increase its powers and activity:
The business of education is not, as I think, to make them perfect in any one of the sciences, but so to open and dispose their minds as may best make them capable of any, when they shall apply themselves to it.
If men are for a long time accustomed only to one sort or method of thoughts, their minds grow stiff in it, and do not readily turn to another. It is therefore to give them this freedom, that I think they should be made to look into all sorts of knowledge, and exercise their understandings in so wide a variety and stock of knowledge. But I do not propose it as a variety and stock of knowledge, but a variety and freedom of thinking, as an increase of the powers and activity of the mind, not as an enlargement of its possessions.
Locke expressed the belief that education maketh the man, or, more
fundamentally, that the mind is an "empty cabinet", with the statement,
"I think I may say that of all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten
are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education."
Locke also wrote that "the little and almost insensible
impressions on our tender infancies have very important and lasting
consequences." He argued that the "associations of ideas"
that one makes when young are more important than those made later
because they are the foundation of the self: they are, put differently,
what first mark the tabula rasa. In his Essay, in which
is introduced both of these concepts, Locke warns against, for example,
letting "a foolish maid" convince a child that "goblins and sprites" are
associated with the night for "darkness shall ever afterwards bring
with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can
no more bear the one than the other."
"Associationism", as this theory would come to be called, exerted
a powerful influence over eighteenth-century thought, particularly educational theory,
as nearly every educational writer warned parents not to allow their
children to develop negative associations. It also led to the
development of psychology and other new disciplines with David Hartley's attempt to discover a biological mechanism for associationism in his Observations on Man (1749).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau by Maurice Quentin de La Tour
Rousseau, though he paid his respects to Plato's philosophy, rejected it as impractical due to the decayed state of society.
Rousseau also had a different theory of human development; where Plato
held that people are born with skills appropriate to different castes
(though he did not regard these skills as being inherited), Rousseau
held that there was one developmental process common to all humans. This
was an intrinsic, natural process, of which the primary behavioral
manifestation was curiosity. This differed from Locke's 'tabula rasa'
in that it was an active process deriving from the child's nature,
which drove the child to learn and adapt to its surroundings.
Rousseau wrote in his book Emile
that all children are perfectly designed organisms, ready to learn from
their surroundings so as to grow into virtuous adults, but due to the
malign influence of corrupt society, they often fail to do so.
Rousseau advocated an educational method which consisted of removing
the child from society—for example, to a country home—and alternately
conditioning him through changes to his environment and setting traps
and puzzles for him to solve or overcome.
Rousseau was unusual in that he recognized and addressed the potential of a problem of legitimation for teaching.
He advocated that adults always be truthful with children, and in
particular that they never hide the fact that the basis for their
authority in teaching was purely one of physical coercion: "I'm bigger
than you." Once children reached the age of reason, at about 12, they
would be engaged as free individuals in the ongoing process of their
own.
He once said that a child should grow up without adult
interference and that the child must be guided to suffer from the
experience of the natural consequences of his own acts or behaviour.
When he experiences the consequences of his own acts, he advises
himself.
"Rousseau divides development into five stages (a book is devoted
to each). Education in the first two stages seeks to the senses: only
when Émile is about 12 does the tutor begin to work to develop his mind.
Later, in Book 5, Rousseau examines the education of Sophie (whom Émile
is to marry).
Here he sets out what he sees as the essential differences that flow
from sex. 'The man should be strong and active; the woman should be weak
and passive' (Everyman edn: 322). From this difference comes a
contrasting education. They are not to be brought up in ignorance and
kept to housework: Nature means them to think, to will, to love to
cultivate their minds as well as their persons; she puts these weapons
in their hands to make up for their lack of strength and to enable them
to direct the strength of men. They should learn many things, but only
such things as suitable' (Everyman edn.: 327)."
Mortimer Jerome Adler
Mortimer Jerome Adler was an American philosopher, educator, and popular author. As a philosopher he worked within the Aristotelian and Thomistic traditions. He lived for the longest stretches in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Mateo, California. He worked for Columbia University, the University of Chicago, Encyclopædia Britannica, and Adler's own Institute for Philosophical Research. Adler was married twice and had four children. Adler was a proponent of educational perennialism.
Harry S. Broudy
Broudy's philosophical views were based on the tradition of
classical realism, dealing with truth, goodness, and beauty. However he
was also influenced by the modern philosophy existentialism and
instrumentalism. In his textbook Building a Philosophy of Education he
has two major ideas that are the main points to his philosophical
outlook: The first is truth and the second is universal structures to be
found in humanity's struggle for education and the good life. Broudy
also studied issues on society's demands on school. He thought education
would be a link to unify the diverse society and urged the society to
put more trust and a commitment to the schools and a good education.
Scholasticism
John Milton
The objective of medieval education was an overtly religious one,
primarily concerned with uncovering transcendental truths that would
lead a person back to God through a life of moral and religious choice
(Kreeft 15). The vehicle by which these truths were uncovered was
dialectic:
To the medieval mind, debate was a fine art, a serious science, and a fascinating entertainment, much more than it is to the modern mind, because the medievals believed, like Socrates, that dialectic could uncover truth. Thus a 'scholastic disputation' was not a personal contest in cleverness, nor was it 'sharing opinions'; it was a shared journey of discovery (Kreeft 14–15).
Pragmatism
John Dewey
John Dewey in 1902.
In Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education,
Dewey stated that education, in its broadest sense, is the means of the
"social continuity of life" given the "primary ineluctable facts of the
birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social
group". Education is therefore a necessity, for "the life of the group
goes on." Dewey was a proponent of Educational Progressivism and was a relentless campaigner for reform of education, pointing out that the authoritarian,
strict, pre-ordained knowledge approach of modern traditional education
was too concerned with delivering knowledge, and not enough with
understanding students' actual experiences.
William Heard Kilpatrick
William Heard Kilpatrick was a US American philosopher of education and a colleague and a successor of John Dewey. He was a major figure in the progressive education movement of the early 20th century. Kilpatrick developed the Project Method for early childhood education, which was a form of Progressive Education
organized curriculum and classroom activities around a subject's
central theme. He believed that the role of a teacher should be that of a
"guide" as opposed to an authoritarian figure. Kilpatrick believed that
children should direct their own learning according to their interests
and should be allowed to explore their environment, experiencing their
learning through the natural senses.
Proponents of Progressive Education and the Project Method reject
traditional schooling that focuses on memorization, rote learning,
strictly organized classrooms (desks in rows; students always seated),
and typical forms of assessment.
Nel Noddings
Noddings' first sole-authored book Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education (1984) followed close on the 1982 publication of Carol Gilligan’s ground-breaking work in the ethics of care In a Different Voice. While her work on ethics continued, with the publication of Women and Evil (1989) and later works on moral education, most of her later publications have been on the philosophy of education and educational theory. Her most significant works in these areas have been Educating for Intelligent Belief or Unbelief (1993) and Philosophy of Education (1995).
Noddings' contribution to education philosophy centers around the ethic of care.
Her belief was that a caring teacher-student relationship will result
in the teacher designing a differentiated curriculum for each student,
and that this curriculum would be based around the students' particular
interests and needs. The teacher's claim to care must not be based on a
one time virtuous decision but an ongoing interest in the students'
welfare.
Existentialist
The
existentialist sees the world as one's personal subjectivity, where
goodness, truth, and reality are individually defined. Reality is a
world of existing, truth subjectively chosen, and goodness a matter of
freedom. The subject matter of existentialist classrooms should be a
matter of personal choice. Teachers view the individual as an entity
within a social context in which the learner must confront others' views
to clarify his or her own. Character development emphasizes individual
responsibility for decisions. Real answers come from within the
individual, not from outside authority. Examining life through authentic
thinking involves students in genuine learning experiences.
Existentialists are opposed to thinking about students as objects to be
measured, tracked, or standardized. Such educators want the educational
experience to focus on creating opportunities for self-direction and
self-actualization. They start with the student, rather than on
curriculum content.
Critical theory
Paulo Freire
A Brazilian philosopher and educator committed to the cause of educating the impoverished peasants of his nation and collaborating
with them in the pursuit of their liberation from what he regarded as
"oppression," Freire is best known for his attack on what he called the
"banking concept of education," in which the student was viewed as an
empty account to be filled by the teacher. Freire also suggests that a
deep reciprocity be inserted into our notions of teacher and student; he
comes close to suggesting that the teacher-student dichotomy be
completely abolished, instead promoting the roles of the participants in
the classroom as the teacher-student (a teacher who learns) and the
student-teacher (a learner who teaches). In its early, strong form this
kind of classroom has sometimes been criticized on the grounds that it can mask rather than overcome the teacher's authority.
Aspects of the Freirian philosophy have been highly influential
in academic debates over "participatory development" and development
more generally. Freire's emphasis on what he describes as "emancipation"
through interactive participation has been used as a rationale for the
participatory focus of development, as it is held that 'participation'
in any form can lead to empowerment of poor or marginalised groups.
Freire was a proponent of critical pedagogy.
"He participated in the import of European doctrines and ideas into Brazil,
assimilated them to the needs of a specific socio-economic situation, and thus expanded and
refocused them in a thought-provoking way"
Other Continental thinkers
Martin Heidegger
Heidegger's philosophizing about education was primarily related
to higher education. He believed that teaching and research in the
university should be unified and aim towards testing and interrogating
the "ontological assumptions presuppositions which implicitly guide
research in each domain of knowledge."
Normative educational philosophies
Normative
philosophies or theories of education may make use of the results of
philosophical thought and of factual inquiries about human beings and
the psychology of learning, but in any case they propound views about
what education should be, what dispositions it should cultivate, why it
ought to cultivate them, how and in whom it should do so, and what forms
it should take. In a full-fledged philosophical normative theory of
education, besides analysis of the sorts described, there will normally
be propositions of the following kinds:
- Basic normative premises about what is good or right;
- Basic factual premises about humanity and the world;
- Conclusions, based on these two kinds of premises, about the dispositions education should foster;
- Further factual premises about such things as the psychology of learning and methods of teaching; and
- Further conclusions about such things as the methods that education should use."
Perennialism
Perennialists believe that one should teach the things that one deems
to be of everlasting importance to all people everywhere. They believe
that the most important topics develop a person. Since details of fact
change constantly, these cannot be the most important. Therefore, one
should teach principles, not facts. Since people are human, one should
teach first about humans, not machines or techniques. Since people are
people first, and workers second if at all, one should teach liberal
topics first, not vocational topics. The focus is primarily on teaching
reasoning and wisdom rather than facts, the liberal arts rather than
vocational training.
Classical education
The Classical education movement advocates a form of education based
in the traditions of Western culture, with a particular focus on
education as understood and taught in the Middle Ages. The term
"classical education" has been used in English for several centuries,
with each era modifying the definition and adding its own selection of
topics. By the end of the 18th century, in addition to the trivium and
quadrivium of the Middle Ages, the definition of a classical education
embraced study of literature, poetry, drama, philosophy, history, art,
and languages. In the 20th and 21st centuries it is used to refer to a
broad-based study of the liberal arts and sciences, as opposed to a
practical or pre-professional program. Classical Education can be
described as rigorous and systematic, separating children and their
learning into three rigid categories, Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric.
Charlotte Mason
Mason was a British educator who invested her life in improving
the quality of children's education. Her ideas led to a method used by
some homeschoolers. Mason's philosophy of education is probably best
summarized by the principles given at the beginning of each of her
books. Two key mottos taken from those principles are "Education is an
atmosphere, a discipline, a life" and "Education is the science of
relations." She believed that children were born persons and should be
respected as such; they should also be taught the Way of the Will and
the Way of Reason. Her motto for students was "I am, I can, I ought, I
will." Charlotte Mason believed that children should be introduced to
subjects through living books, not through the use of "compendiums,
abstracts, or selections." She used abridged books only when the content
was deemed inappropriate for children. She preferred that parents or
teachers read aloud those texts (such as Plutarch and the Old
Testament), making omissions only where necessary.
Essentialism
Educational essentialism is an educational philosophy whose adherents
believe that children should learn the traditional basic subjects and
that these should be learned thoroughly and rigorously. An essentialist
program normally teaches children progressively, from less complex
skills to more complex.
William Chandler Bagley
William Chandler Bagley taught in elementary schools before
becoming a professor of education at the University of Illinois, where
he served as the Director of the School of Education from 1908 until
1917. He was a professor of education at Teachers College, Columbia,
from 1917 to 1940. An opponent of pragmatism and progressive education,
Bagley insisted on the value of knowledge for its own sake, not merely
as an instrument, and he criticized his colleagues for their failure to
emphasize systematic study of academic subjects. Bagley was a proponent
of educational essentialism.
Social reconstructionism and critical pedagogy
Critical pedagogy is an "educational movement, guided by passion and principle, to help students develop consciousness
of freedom, recognize authoritarian tendencies, and connect knowledge
to power and the ability to take constructive action." Based in Marxist theory, critical pedagogy draws on radical democracy, anarchism, feminism, and other movements for social justice.
Maria Montessori
The Montessori method arose from Dr. Maria Montessori's discovery
of what she referred to as "the child's true normal nature" in 1907,
which happened in the process of her experimental observation of young
children given freedom in an environment prepared with materials
designed for their self-directed learning activity.
The method itself aims to duplicate this experimental observation of
children to bring about, sustain and support their true natural way of
being.
Waldorf
Waldorf education (also known as Steiner or Steiner-Waldorf
education) is a humanistic approach to pedagogy based upon the
educational philosophy of the Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner, the
founder of anthroposophy.
Learning is interdisciplinary, integrating practical, artistic, and
conceptual elements. The approach emphasizes the role of the imagination
in learning, developing thinking that includes a creative as well as an
analytic component. The educational philosophy's overarching goals are
to provide young people the basis on which to develop into free, morally
responsible and integrated individuals, and to help every child fulfill
his or her unique destiny, the existence of which anthroposophy posits.
Schools and teachers are given considerable freedom to define curricula
within collegial structures.
Rudolf Steiner
Steiner founded a holistic educational impulse on the basis of his spiritual philosophy (anthroposophy). Now known as Steiner or Waldorf education, his pedagogy emphasizes a balanced development of cognitive, affective/artistic,
and practical skills (head, heart, and hands). Schools are normally
self-administered by faculty; emphasis is placed upon giving individual
teachers the freedom to develop creative methods.
Steiner's theory of child development divides education into
three discrete developmental stages predating but with close
similarities to the stages of development described by Piaget.
Early childhood education occurs through imitation; teachers provide
practical activities and a healthy environment. Steiner believed that
young children should meet only goodness. Elementary education is
strongly arts-based, centered on the teacher's creative authority; the
elementary school-age child should meet beauty. Secondary education
seeks to develop the judgment, intellect, and practical idealism; the
adolescent should meet truth.
Democratic education
Democratic education is a theory of learning and school governance in
which students and staff participate freely and equally in a school
democracy. In a democratic school, there is typically shared
decision-making among students and staff on matters concerning living,
working, and learning together.
A. S. Neill
Neill founded Summerhill School, the oldest existing democratic school
in Suffolk, England in 1921. He wrote a number of books that now define
much of contemporary democratic education philosophy. Neill believed
that the happiness of the child should be the paramount consideration in
decisions about the child's upbringing, and that this happiness grew
from a sense of personal freedom. He felt that deprivation of this sense
of freedom during childhood, and the consequent unhappiness experienced
by the repressed child, was responsible for many of the psychological
disorders of adulthood.
Progressivism
Educational progressivism is the belief that education must be based on the principle that humans are social animals who learn best in real-life activities with other people. Progressivists,
like proponents of most educational theories, claim to rely on the best
available scientific theories of learning. Most progressive educators
believe that children learn as if they were scientists, following a
process similar to John Dewey's model of learning known as "the pattern
of inquiry":
1) Become aware of the problem. 2) Define the problem. 3) Propose
hypotheses to solve it. 4) Evaluate the consequences of the hypotheses
from one's past experience. 5) Test the likeliest solution.
John Dewey
In 1896, Dewey opened the Laboratory School at the University of
Chicago in an institutional effort to pursue together rather than apart
"utility and culture, absorption and expression, theory and practice,
[which] are [indispensable] elements in any educational scheme.
As the unified head of the departments of Philosophy, Psychology and
Pedagogy, John Dewey articulated a desire to organize an educational
experience where children could be more creative than the best of
progressive models of his day. Transactionalism
as a pragmatic philosophy grew out of the work he did in the Laboratory
School. The two most influential works that stemmed from his research
and study were The Child and the Curriculum (1902) and Democracy and Education (1916).
Dewey wrote of the dualisms that plagued educational philosophy in the
latter book: "Instead of seeing the educative process steadily and as a
whole, we see conflicting terms. We get the case of the child vs. the
curriculum; of the individual nature vs. social culture."
Dewey found that the preoccupation with facts as knowledge in the
educative process led students to memorize "ill-understood rules and
principles" and while second-hand knowledge learned in mere words is a
beginning in study, mere words can never replace the ability to organize
knowledge into both useful and valuable experience.
Jean Piaget
Jean Piaget was a Swiss developmental psychologist known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology".
Piaget placed great importance on the education of children. As the
Director of the International Bureau of Education, he declared in 1934
that "only education is capable of saving our societies from possible
collapse, whether violent, or gradual." Piaget created the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva in 1955 and directed it until 1980. According to Ernst von Glasersfeld, Jean Piaget is "the great pioneer of the constructivist theory of knowing."
Jean Piaget described himself as an epistemologist,
interested in the process of the qualitative development of knowledge.
As he says in the introduction of his book "Genetic Epistemology" (ISBN 978-0-393-00596-7): "What
the genetic epistemology proposes is discovering the roots of the
different varieties of knowledge, since its elementary forms, following
to the next levels, including also the scientific knowledge."
Jerome Bruner
Another important contributor to the inquiry method in education is Bruner. His books The Process of Education and Toward a Theory of Instruction
are landmarks in conceptualizing learning and curriculum development.
He argued that any subject can be taught in some intellectually honest
form to any child at any stage of development. This notion was an
underpinning for his concept of the "spiral" (helical)
curriculum which posited the idea that a curriculum should revisit
basic ideas, building on them until the student had grasped the full
formal concept. He emphasized intuition as a neglected but essential
feature of productive thinking. He felt that interest in the material
being learned was the best stimulus for learning rather than external
motivation such as grades. Bruner developed the concept of discovery learning
which promoted learning as a process of constructing new ideas based on
current or past knowledge. Students are encouraged to discover facts
and relationships and continually build on what they already know.
Unschooling
Unschooling is a range of educational philosophies and practices centered on allowing children to learn through their natural life experiences, including child directed play, game play, household responsibilities, work experience, and social interaction,
rather than through a more traditional school curriculum. Unschooling
encourages exploration of activities led by the children themselves,
facilitated by the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional
schooling principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional grading
methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling, are
counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each child.
John Holt
In 1964 Holt published his first book, How Children Fail, asserting that the academic failure of schoolchildren was not despite the efforts of the schools, but actually because of the schools. Not surprisingly, How Children Fail
ignited a firestorm of controversy. Holt was catapulted into the
American national consciousness to the extent that he made appearances
on major TV talk shows, wrote book reviews for Life magazine, and was a guest on the To Tell The Truth TV game show. In his follow-up work, How Children Learn,
published in 1967, Holt tried to elucidate the learning process of
children and why he believed school short circuits that process.
Contemplative education
Contemplative education
focuses on bringing introspective practices such as mindfulness and
yoga into curricular and pedagogical processes for diverse aims grounded
in secular, spiritual, religious and post-secular perspectives.
Contemplative approaches may be used in the classroom, especially in
tertiary or (often in modified form) in secondary education. Parker Palmer is a recent pioneer in contemplative methods. The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society founded a branch focusing on education, The Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education.
Contemplative methods may also be used by teachers in their preparation; Waldorf education
was one of the pioneers of the latter approach. In this case,
inspiration for enriching the content, format, or teaching methods may
be sought through various practices, such as consciously reviewing the
previous day's activities; actively holding the students in
consciousness; and contemplating inspiring pedagogical texts. Zigler
suggested that only through focusing on their own spiritual development
could teachers positively impact the spiritual development of students.
Professional organizations and associations
Organisation
Nationality
Comment
International Network of Philosophers of Education
Worldwide
INPE is dedicated to fostering dialogue amongst philosophers of
education around the world. It sponsors an international conference
every other year.[citation needed]Philosophy of Education Society
USA
PES is the national society for philosophy of education in the
United States of America. This site provides information about PES, its
services, history, and publications, and links to online resources
relevant to the philosophy of education.[citation needed]Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain
UK
PESGB promotes the study, teaching and application of philosophy of
education. It has an international membership. The site provides: a
guide to the Society's activities and details about the Journal of
Philosophy of Education and IMPACT.[citation needed]Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia
Australasia
PESA promotes research and teaching in philosophy of education. It
has a broad membership across not just Australia and New Zealand but
also Asia, Europe and North America. PESA adopts an inclusive approach
to philosophical work in education, and welcome contributions to the
life of the Society from a variety of different theoretical traditions
and perspectives.
Canadian Philosophy of Education Society
Canada
CPES is devoted to philosophical inquiry into educational issues and
their relevance for developing educative, caring, and just teachers,
schools, and communities. The society welcomes inquiries about
membership from professionals and graduate students who share these
interests. The Nordic Society for Philosophy of Education
The Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden
The Nordic Society for Philosophy of Education is a society
consisting of Nordic philosophers of education with the purpose of
fostering dialogue among philosophers of education within and beyond the
Nordic countries, and to coordinate, facilitate and support exchange of
ideas, information and experiences. Society for the Philosophical Study of Education
USA
This Society is a professional association of philosophers of
education which holds annual meetings in the Midwest region of the
United States of America and sponsors a discussion forum and a Graduate
Student Competition. Affiliate of the American Philosophical Association. Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society
USA, Ohio Valley
OVPES is a professional association of philosophers of education. We
host an annual conference in the Ohio Valley region of the United
States of America and sponsor a refereed journal: Philosophical Studies
in Education. John Dewey Society
USA
The John Dewey Society exists to keep alive John Dewey's commitment
to the use of critical and reflective intelligence in the search for
solutions to crucial problems in education and culture.
StudyPlace for Philosophy of Education
USA, Columbia University
This study place exists for persons who wish to engage in philosophy
and education because both have value for them, quite apart from their
professional responsibilities. We think networked digital information
resources will enable people to reverse this ever-narrowing
professionalism. This site is maintained at the Institute for Learning Technologies, Teachers College, Columbia University. Center for Dewey Studies
USA, Southern Illinois University
The Center for Dewey Studies at Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale was established in 1961 as the "Dewey Project." By virtue of
its publications and research, the Center has become the international
focal point for research on John Dewey's life and work.
International Society for Philosophy of Music Education
Unknown
the International Society for the Philosophy of Music Education
(ISPME) is founded on both educational and professional objectives:
"devoted to the specific interests of philosophy of music education in
elementary through secondary schools, colleges and universities, in
private studios, places of worship, and all the other places and ways in
which music is taught and learned." The Spencer Foundation
USA
The Spencer Foundation provides funding for investigations that
promise to yield new knowledge about education in the United States or
abroad. The Foundation funds research grants that range in size from
smaller grants that can be completed within a year, to larger,
multi-year endeavours.
Humanities Research Network
New Zealand
The Humanities Research Network is designed to encourage new ways of
thinking about the overlapping domains of knowledge which are
represented by the arts, humanities, social sciences, other related
fields like law, and matauranga Māori, and new relationships among their
practitioners. Latin American Philosophy of Education Society
The Americas
LAPES seeks to introduce to a wide United States audience knowledge
about Latin American philosophies and theories of education by providing
scholars, students and practicing teachers opportunities to study in
collaborative fashion the diverse collection of philosophical and
theoretical works on education produced in Latin America.
