Philosophical Analysis In Education
Azucena Jewels
When originally published in 1965 this book reflected some of the new thinking among philosophers regarding the role of the discipline in its investigation of central issues in educaton. The essays are grouped into four major sections: The Nature and Function of Educational Theory; The Context of Educational Discussion; Conceptions of Teaching; and The Essence of Education. The concepts dealt with are of the first importance to any practical or theoretical discussion in education and the editor provides a generous introduction to the essays to aid the reader in his analysis of the issues.
Introduction Reginald D. Archambault. Philosophy and the Theory and Practice of Education L. Arnaud Reid. Common Confusions in Educational Theory Edward Best. What is an Educational Situation? Leslie R. Perry. Education as Initiation R. S. Peters. Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge Paul H. Hirst. Teaching Philosophy now J. P. Corbett. Two types of Teaching John Wilson. Instruction and Indoctrination R. F. Atkinson. A Deduction of Universities A.Phillips Griffiths.
Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practicalphilosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and thephilosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice.Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies, itssocial and individual manifestations so varied, and its influence soprofound, the subject is wide-ranging, involving issues in ethics andsocial/political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy ofmind and language, and other areas of philosophy. Because it looksboth inward to the parent discipline and outward to educationalpractice and the social, legal, and institutional contexts in which ittakes place, philosophy of education concerns itself with both sidesof the traditional theory/practice divide. Its subject matter includesboth basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of the knowledgeworth teaching, the character of educational equality and justice,etc.) and problems concerning specific educational policies andpractices (e.g., the desirability of standardized curricula andtesting, the social, economic, legal and moral dimensions of specificfunding arrangements, the justification of curriculum decisions,etc.). In all this the philosopher of education prizes conceptualclarity, argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of theinterests of all involved in or affected by educational efforts andarrangements, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of educationalaims and interventions.
The pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic modewas the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy inEducational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction,Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made itclear that he was putting all his eggs into theordinary-language-analysis basket:
The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein,has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always beapparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is oneconcerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, oris, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, Ithink, that a similar attitude became common in the field ofeducational theory. (Hardie 1962: xix)
As was stressed at the outset, the field of education is huge andcontains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that areof philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of howphilosophers of education have been working within this thicket wouldbe a quixotic task for a large single volume and is out of thequestion for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiantattempt to give an overview was made in A Companion to thePhilosophy of Education (Curren 2003), which contains more thansix-hundred pages divided into forty-five chapters each of whichsurveys a subfield of work. The following random selection of chaptertopics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sexeducation, special education, science education, aesthetic education,theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge,truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning,multicultural education, education and the politics of identity,education and standards of living, motivation and classroommanagement, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, thepurposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, andprofessional education. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy ofEducation (Siegel 2009) contains a similarly broad range ofarticles on (among other things) the epistemic and moral aims ofeducation, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking andreasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity,the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating theimagination, caring and empathy in moral education, the limits ofmoral education, the cultivation of character, values education,curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, artand education, science education and religious toleration,constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education,prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and on pragmatist,feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.
Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select asmall number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics thatare chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below hasbeen made with an eye to highlighting contemporary work that makessolid contact with and contributes to important discussions in generalphilosophy and/or the academic educational and educational researchcommunities.
Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educationaldistribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessaryunderstanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for justas much as job-related skills. An interesting implication of doing sois that the rationale for requiring equality under any justdistribution becomes decreasingly clear. That is because job-relatedskills are positional whereas the other educational goods are not(Hollis 1982). If you and I both aspire to a career in businessmanagement for which we are equally qualified, any increase in yourjob-related skills is a corresponding disadvantage to me unless I cancatch up. Positional goods have a competitive structure by definition,though the ends of civic or aesthetic education do not fit thatstructure. If you and I aspire to be good citizens and are equal incivic understanding and virtue, an advance in your civic education isno disadvantage to me. On the contrary, it is easier to be a goodcitizen the better other citizens learn to be. At the very least, sofar as non-positional goods figure in our conception of what counts asa good education, the moral stakes of inequality are therebylowered.
Civic education does not exhaust the domain of moral education, eventhough the more robust conceptions of equal citizenship havefar-reaching implications for just relations in civil society and thefamily. The study of moral education has traditionally taken itsbearings from normative ethics rather than political philosophy, andthis is largely true of work undertaken in recent decades. The majordevelopment here has been the revival of virtue ethics as analternative to the deontological and consequentialist theories thatdominated discussion for much of the twentieth century.
Related to the issues concerning the aims and functions of educationand schooling rehearsed above are those involving the specificallyepistemic aims of education and attendant issues treated bysocial and virtue epistemologists. (The papers collected in Kotzee2013 and Baehr 2016 highlight the current and growing interactionsamong social epistemologists, virtue epistemologists, and philosophersof education.)
As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice to the whole field ofphilosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Differentcountries around the world have their own intellectual traditions andtheir own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education in theacademic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in thepresent essay. But even in the Anglo-American world there is such adiversity of approaches that any author attempting to produce asynoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or hercompetence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.
autonomy: personal Dewey, John feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics feminist philosophy, interventions: liberal feminism feminist philosophy, interventions: political philosophy feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on autonomy feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on disability Foucault, Michel Gadamer, Hans-Georg liberalism Locke, John Lyotard, Jean Franois ordinary language Plato postmodernism Rawls, John rights: of children Rousseau, Jean Jacques
The site is secure.
The ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.
The word 'empowerment' has become a popular term, widely used as an important claim, also within the health services. In this paper the concept's philosophical roots are traced from Freire and his 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' to the philosophical thoughts of Hegel, Habermas, and Sartre. An understanding of the concept, as a way to facilitate coping and well-being in patients through reflection and dialogue, emerges. Within an empowerment strategy the important claim on the nurse and the patient will be to reveal the patient's own resources and limitations in times with sickness and reduced functionality to promote the patient's choice to act and cope. From this point of view an education-programme for the frail elderly is outlined. If the nurse wants to empower the elderly patient she has to be willing to be educated through the dialogue with the patient, and to look for the patient's own meaning of being frail and elderly. The coping and self-care solutions for the patient may then even be different from the preferences of the nurse, and this does not mean that the empowerment strategy is a failure or that the patient then has to continue without the assistance from the nurse. Within an empowerment strategy, in the Freirerian sense, the important thing is that both the patient and the nurse together critically reflect on the meanings of the sickness so that the patient can be able to make his own conscious choices.
c80f0f1006