Philosophy of education
The philosophy of education is the branch of applied philosophy that investigates the nature of education as well as its aims and problems. It also examines the concepts and presuppositions of education theories. It is an interdisciplinary field that draws inspiration from various disciplines both within and outside philosophy, like ethics, political philosophy, psychology, and sociology. Many of its theories focus specifically on education in schools but it also encompasses other forms of education. Its theories are often divided into descriptive theories, which provide a value-neutral description of what education is, and normative theories, which investigate how education should be practiced.
Not to be confused with Teaching philosophy.
A great variety of topics is discussed in the philosophy of education. Some studies provide a conceptual analysis of the fundamental concepts of education. Others center around the aims or purpose of education, like passing on knowledge and the development of the abilities of good reasoning, judging, and acting. An influential discussion concerning the epistemic aims of education is whether education should focus mainly on the transmission of true beliefs or rather on the abilities to reason and arrive at new knowledge. In this context, many theorists emphasize the importance of critical thinking in contrast to indoctrination. Another debate about the aims of education is whether the primary beneficiary is the student or the society to which the student belongs.
Many of the more specific discussions in the philosophy of education concern the contents of the curriculum. This involves the questions of whether, when, and in what detail a certain topic, like sex education or religion, should be taught. Other debates focus on the specific contents and methods used in moral, art, and science education. Some philosophers investigate the relation between education and power, often specifically regarding the power used by modern states to compel children to attend school. A different issue is the problem of the equality of education and factors threatening it, like discrimination and unequal distribution of wealth. Some philosophers of education promote a quantitative approach to educational research, which follows the example of the natural sciences by using wide experimental studies. Others prefer a qualitative approach, which is closer to the methodology of the social sciences and tends to give more prominence to individual case studies.
Various schools of philosophy have developed their own perspective on the main issues of education. Existentialists emphasize the role of authenticity while pragmatists give particular prominence to active learning and discovery. Feminists and postmodernists often try to uncover and challenge biases and forms of discrimination present in current educational practices. Other philosophical movements include perennialism, classical education, essentialism, critical pedagogy, and progressivism. The history of the philosophy of education started in ancient philosophy but only emerged as a systematic branch of philosophy in the latter half of the 20th century.[1][2][3][4]
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Definition[edit]
The philosophy of education is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, aims, and problems of education.[5][6][7][4] As the philosophical study of education, it investigates its topic similar to how other discipline-specific branches of philosophy, like the philosophy of science or the philosophy of law, study their topics.[8][9] A central task for the philosophy of education is to make explicit the various fundamental assumptions and disagreements at work in its field and to evaluate the arguments raised for and against the different positions.[8][5] The issue of education has a great many manifestations in various fields. Because of this, both the breadth and the influence of the philosophy of education are significant and wide-ranging, touching many other branches of philosophy, such as ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind.[8][5][9] Its theories are often formulated from the perspective of these other philosophical disciplines.[6] But due to its interdisciplinary nature, it also attracts contributions from scholars belonging to fields outside the domain of philosophy.[5][9]
While there is wide agreement on the general topics discussed in the philosophy of education, it has proven difficult to give a precise definition of it. The philosophy of education belongs mainly to applied philosophy.[5][8] According to some definitions, it can be characterized as an offshoot of ethics.[6] But not everyone agrees with this characterization since the philosophy of education has a more theoretical side as well, which includes the examination of the fundamental concepts and theories of education as well as their philosophical implications. These two sides are sometimes referred to as the outward and the inward looking nature of the philosophy of education.[5] Its topics can range from very general questions, like the nature of the knowledge worth teaching, to more specific issues, like how to teach art or whether public schools should implement standardized curricula and testing.[5][8][6]
The problem of education was already an important topic in ancient philosophy and has remained so to the present day.[5][7] But it only emerged as a distinct branch of philosophy in the latter half of the 20th century, when it became the subject of a systematic study and analysis.[6] The term "education" can refer either to the process of educating or to the field of study investigating education as this process. This ambiguity is also reflected on the level of the philosophy of education, which encompasses the study of the philosophical presuppositions and issues both of education as a process and as a discipline.[10] Many works in the philosophy of education focus explicitly or implicitly on the education happening in schools. But in its widest sense, education takes place in various other fields as well, such as at home, in libraries, in museums, or in the public media.[5] Different types of education can be distinguished, such as formal and informal education or private and public education.[10]
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Main topics[edit]
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Subdivisions[edit]
Different subdivisions of the philosophy of education have been suggested. One categorization distinguishes between descriptive and normative issues.[10][8] Descriptive theories aim to describe what education is and how to understand its related concepts. This includes also epistemological questions, which ask not whether a theory about education is true or false, but how one can arrive at the knowledge to answer such questions.[8] Normative theories, on the other hand, try to give an account of how education should be practiced or what is the right form of education.[10][9] Some normative theories are built on a wider ethical framework of what is right or good and then arrive at their educational normative theories by applying this framework to the practice of education. But the descriptive and the normative approaches are intertwined and cannot always be clearly separated since descriptive findings often directly imply various normative attitudes.[10]
Another categorization divides topics in the philosophy of education into the nature and aims of education on the one hand, and the methods and circumstances of education on the other hand. The latter section may again be divided into concrete normative theories and the study of the conceptual and methodological presuppositions of these theories.[6] Other classifications additionally include areas for topics such as the role of reasoning and morality as well as issues pertaining to social and political topics and the curriculum.[7]
The theories within the philosophy of education can also be subdivided based on the school of philosophy they belong to. Various schools of philosophy, such as existentialism, pragmatism, Marxism, postmodernism, and feminism, have developed their own perspective on the main issues of education.[6][11][5] They often include normative theories about how education should or should not be practiced and are in most cases controversial.[6]
Another approach is to simply list all topics discussed in the philosophy of education. Among them are the issues and presuppositions concerning sex education, science education, aesthetic education, religious education, moral education, multicultural education, professional education, theories of teaching and learning, the measurement of learning, knowledge and its value, cultivating reason, epistemic and moral aims of education, authority, fallibilism, and fallibility.[5][8]
Finally, yet another way that philosophy of education is often tacitly divided is in terms of western versus non-western and “global south” perspectives. For many generations, philosophy of education has maintained a relatively ethnocentric orientation, with little attention paid to ideas from outside Europe and North America, but this is starting to change in the 21st century due to decolonization and related movements.[12]
Philosophical movements[edit]
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Fundamental concepts of education[edit]
The starting point of many philosophical inquiries into a field is the examination and clarification of the fundamental concepts used in this field, often in the form of conceptual analysis. This approach is particularly prominent in the analytic tradition. It aims to make ambiguities explicit and to uncover various implicit and potentially false assumptions associated with these terms.[8][5]
Theorists in this field often emphasize the importance of this form of investigation since all subsequent work on more specific issues already has to assume at least implicitly what their central terms mean to demarcate their field. For example, in order to study what constitutes good education, one has to have a notion of what the term "education" means and how to achieve, measure, and evaluate it.[13] Definitions of education can be divided into thin and thick definitions. Thin definitions are neutral and descriptive. They usually emphasize the role of the transmission of knowledge and understanding in education. Thick definitions include additional normative components, for example, by stating that the process in question has to have certain positive results to be called education.[13] According to one thick definition, education means that the person educated has acquired knowledge and intellectual skills, values these factors, and has thus changed for the better. These characteristics can then be used to distinguish education from other closely related terms, such as "indoctrination".[5][7][6] Other fundamental notions in the philosophy of education include the concepts of teaching, learning, student, schooling, and rearing.[8][5][13]
Aims of education[edit]
A central question in the philosophy of education concerns the aims of education, i.e. the question of why people should be educated and what goals should be pursued in the process of education.[8][5][7][14] This issue is highly relevant for evaluating educational practices and products by assessing how well they manage to realize these goals. There is a lot of disagreement and various theories have been proposed concerning the aims of education. Prominent suggestions include that education should foster knowledge, curiosity, creativity, rationality, and critical thinking while also promoting the tendency to think, feel, and act morally.[8][5][7] The individual should thereby develop as a person, and achieve self-actualization by realizing their potential. Some theorists emphasize the cultivation of liberal ideals, such as freedom, autonomy, and open-mindedness, while others stress the importance of docility, obedience to authority, and ideological purity, sometimes also with a focus on piety and religious faith.[8][5][7] Many suggestions concern the social domain, such as fostering a sense of community and solidarity and thus turning the individual into a productive member of society while protecting them from the potentially negative influences of society. The discussion of these positions and the arguments cited for and against them often include references to various disciplines in their justifications, such as ethics, psychology, anthropology, and sociology.[8][5][7][15]
There is wide consensus concerning certain general aims of education, like that it should foster all students, help them in the development of their ability to reason, and guide them in how to judge and act. But these general characteristics are usually too vague to be of much help and there are many disagreements about the more specific suggestions of what education should aim for.[5][14] Some attempts have been made to provide an overarching framework of these different aims. According to one approach, education should at its core help the individual lead a good life. All the different more specific goals are aims of education to the extent that they serve this ultimate purpose.[16][5] On this view, it may be argued that fostering rationality and autonomy in the students are aims of education to the extent that increased rationality and autonomy will result in the student leading a better life.[5]
The different theories of the aims of education are sometimes divided into goods-based, skills-based, and character-based accounts. Goods-based accounts hold that the ultimate aim of education is to produce some form of epistemic good, such as truth, knowledge, and understanding. Skills-based accounts, on the other hand, see the development of certain skills, like rationality as well as critical and independent thinking as the goal of education. For character-based accounts, the character traits or virtues of the learner play the central role, often with an emphasis on moral and civic traits like kindness, justice, and honesty.[13]
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Existentialist[edit]
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.[61]
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