4 minute read
Overview and Special Terminology
Teachers musT meeT such immediate daily demands as preparing lessons, assessing student performance, and creating and managing a fair and equitable classroom environment. Because of their urgency, these challenges often preoccupy teachers in their early professional careers from constructing what the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) standards call a “conceptual framework,” an intellectual philosophy of education that gives meaning to teaching by connecting its daily demands with long-term professional commitment and direction.1 A conceptual framework contributes to a sense of professional coherence that helps teachers place immediate short-term objectives into relationship with long-term goals.
We can define a philosophy as the most general way of thinking about the meaning of our lives in the world and reflecting deeply on what is true or false, good or evil, right or wrong, and beautiful or ugly.2 This chapter provides you with a conceptual framework, a theoretical map, upon which you can locate your ideas about education and construct your own philosophy of education.
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In Chapter 5, Historical Development of American Education, you were encouraged to write your own history of education and educational autobiography. You can now revisit and extend your historical and autobiographical reflections about the people and events that shaped your ideas about education, schooling, teaching, and learning as the background for constructing your own philosophy of education. Begin by asking yourself what you believe is true and valuable and how your educational experiences have shaped these beliefs. You can think about the relationship between knowledge and knowing and between teaching and learning. You can determine whether the philosophies and theories in this chapter are similar to or different from your own educational experiences. You can determine whether your encounters with these philosophies and theories confirm or cause you to revise your beliefs about what is true and valuable. Finally, you can make some judgments about how they influence what, why, and how you teach.
6-1 Overview and SpeCial terminOlOgy
This chapter examines five philosophies and four theories of education. Comprehensive philosophies, such as idealism and realism, present a general worldview that includes education. Educational theories, often derived from philosophies or arising from practice, focus more specifically on schools, curriculum, and teaching and learning (see Figure 6.1). The general philosophies examined in this chapter link to the more specific theories of education. For example, the philosophy of realism closely relates to the theories of perennialism and essentialism. Similarly, aspects of progressivism derive from pragmatism. To construct your own philosophy of education, you need to think like a philosopher and use philosophy’s terminology.
Philosophies of education use the terms metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic. 3 Figure 6.2 summarizes the relationship between these terms and education.
philosophies Systematic developed bodies of thought, each representing a generalized worldview about reality, logic, and values. theories Sets of related ideas or beliefs, often based on research findings or generalizations from practice, that guide educational policies or procedures.
1www.ncate.org/Standards/NCATEUnitStandards/UnitStandardsinEffect2008 /tabid/476/Default.aspx. 2For introductions to philosophy of education, see Nell Noddings, Philosophy of Education (Denver, CO: Westview, 2011); Steven M. Cahn, Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Harvey Siegal, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012); Gert J. J. Biesta, The Beautiful Risk of Education (Paradigm Publishers, 2014); Richard Bailey, Philosophy of Education: An Introduction (New York: Continuum, 2010); and David T. Hansen, Ethical Visions of Education: Philosophy in Practice (New York: Teachers College Press, 2007). 3For a discussion of philosophical terminology, see Gerald L. Gutek, New Perspectives on Philosophy and Education (Columbus, OH: Pearson, 2009), pp. 3–7.
figuRE 6.1
GENERAL
SPECIFIC
Philosophies
Wide-ranging, systematic, complete, global
Components related to metaphysics, epistemology, axiology, and logic
Insights derived from the general philosophical system
Theories
Focused on education; no complete philosophical system offered
Components related to specifics of education, such as curriculum, teaching, and learning
Insights derived from more general philosophies or from school contexts
metaphysics The area of philosophy that examines issues of a speculative nature dealing with ultimate reality.
epistemology The area of philosophy that examines knowing and theories of knowledge. Metaphysics considers questions about ultimate reality. What is ultimately real or not real? Is there a spiritual realm of existence separate from the material world? Idealists, for example, see reality primarily in nonmaterial intellectual, conceptual, or spiritual terms. Realists see it as an objective order that exists independently of humankind. The subjects taught in schools represent how curriculum designers, teachers, and textbook authors describe their beliefs about “reality” to students.
Epistemology, which deals with knowledge and knowing, influences methods of teaching and learning. It asks, “On what do we base our knowledge of the world and our understanding of truth? Does our knowledge derive from divine revelation, from ideas latent in our own minds, from empirical evidence, or from something else?” Teachers who believe that the universe exists as an orderly structure will emphasize the systematic and
figuRE 6.2
Philosophy’s Relationships to Education
SUBDIVISION OF PHILOSOPHY RELATED EDUCATIONAL CONCERNS
Metaphysics:
What is real? Knowledge of most worth: The curriculum
Epistemology:
What is knowledge based on?
Axiology:
What is moral and right? (ethics) What is beautiful and good? (aesthetics)
Logic:
How can we reason? How we teach and learn: Methods of instruction
Behavior, character, civility, and appreciation and expression
How we organize and structure courses, lessons, and units
