which philosophy of education encourages problem solving approach to education

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6 Chapter 6: Progressivism

Dr. Della Perez

This chapter will provide a comprehensive overview of Progressivism. This philosophy of education is rooted in the 
 philosophy of pragmatism. Unlike Perennialism, which emphasizes a universal truth, progressivism favors “human experience as the basis for knowledge rather than authority” (Johnson et. al., 2011, p. 114). By focusing on human experience as the basis for knowledge, this philosophy of education shifts the focus of educational theory from school to student.

In order to understand the implications of this shift, an overview of the key characteristics of Progressivism will be provided in section one of this chapter. Information related to the curriculum, instructional methods, the role of the teacher, and the role of the learner will be presented in section two and three. Finally, key educators within progressivism and their contributions are presented in section four.

Characteristics of Progressivim

6.1 Essential Questions

By the end of this section, the following Essential Questions will be answered:

• In which 
 school 
of thought is Perennialism rooted?
• What is the educational 
 focus of Perennialism?
• What do Perrenialists 
 believe are 
 the primary 
 goals of schooling?

Progressivism is a very student-centered philosophy of education. Rooted in pragmatism, the educational focus of progressivism is on engaging students in real-world problem- solving activities in a democratic and cooperative learning environment (Webb et. al., 2010). In order to solve these problems, students apply the scientific method. This ensures that they are actively engaged in the learning process as well as taking a practical approach to finding answers to real-world problems.

Progressivism was established in the 
 mid-1920s and continued to be one of the most 
influential philosophies of education through the mid-1950s. One of the primary reasons for this is that a main tenet of progressivism is for the school to improve society. This was sup posed to be achieved by engaging students in tasks related to real-world problem-solving. As a result, progressivism was deemed to be a working model of democracy (Webb et. al., 2010).

6.2 A Closer Look

Please read the following article for more information on progressivism: Progressive education: Why it’s hard to beat, but also hard to find. As you read the article, think about the following Questions to Consider:

• How does the author define progressive 
 education?
• What does the author say progressive 
 education is not?
• What elements of progressivism make sense, 
 according to the author?

Progressive education: Why it’s hard to beat, but also hard to find

6.3 Essential Questions

• How is a progressivist curriculum best described?
• What subjects 
 are included in 
 a progressivist curriculum?
• Do you think 
 the focus of this curriculum is beneficial for students? Why 
 or why not?

As previously stated, progressivism focuses on real-world problem-solving activities. Consequently, the progressivist curriculum is focused on providing students with real-world experiences that are meaningful and relevant to them rather than rigid subject-matter content.

Dewey (1963), who is often referred to as the “father of progressive education,” believed that all aspects of study (i.e., arithmetic, history, geography, etc.) need to be linked to materials based on students every- day life-experiences.

However, Dewey (1938) cautioned that not all experiences are equal:

The belief that all genuine education comes
 about through experience does not mean that
 all experiences are genuinely or equally 
 educative. Experience and education cannot
 be directly equated to each other. For some
 experiences are mis-educative. Any experience
 is mis-education that has the effect of arresting
 or distorting the growth or further experience 
 (p. 25).

An example of miseducation would be that of a bank robber. He or she many learn from the experience of robbing a bank, but this experience can not be equated with that of a student learning to apply a history concept to his or her real-world 
 experiences.

Features of a Progressive Curriculum

There are several key features that distinguish a progressive curriculum. According to Lerner (1962), some of the key features of a progressive curriculum include:

• A focus on the student
• A focus on peers
• An emphasis on growth
• Action centered
• Process and change centered
• Equality centered
• Community centered

To successfully apply these features, a progressive 
 curriculum would feature an open classroom environment. In this type of environment, students would “spend considerable time in direct contact with the community or cultural surroundings beyond the confines of the classroom or school” (Webb et. al., 2010, p. 74). For example, if students in Kansas were studying Brown v. Board of Education in their history class, they might visit the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Site in Topeka. By visiting the National Historic Site, students are no longer just studying something from the past, they are learning about history in a way that is meaningful and relevant to them today, which is essential in a progressive curriculum.

• In what ways have you experienced elements 
 of a progressivist curriculum as a student?
• How might you implement a progressivist 
 curriculum as a future teacher?
• What challenges do you see in implementing 
 a progressivist curriculum and how might 
 you overcome them?

Instruction in the Classroom

6.4 Essential Questions

• What are the 
 main methods of instruction in a progressivist classroom?
• What is the teachers 
 role in the classroom?
• What is the students 
 role in the classroom?
• What strategies do students use in a progressivist classrooms?

Within a progressivist classroom, key instructional methods include: group work and the project method. Group work promotes the experienced-centered focus of the progressive philosophy. By giving students opportunities to work together, they not only learn critical skills related to cooperation, they are also able to engage in and develop projects that are meaningful and have relevance to their everyday lives.

Promoting the use of project work, centered around the scientific method, also helps students engage in critical thinking, problem solving, and deci- sion making (Webb et. al., 2010). More importantly, the application of the scientific method allows progressivists to verify experi ence through investigation. Unlike Perennialists and essentialists, who view the scientific method as a means of verifying the truth (Webb et. al., 2010).

Teachers Role

Progressivists view teachers as a facilitator in the classroom. As the facilitator, the teacher directs the students learning, but the students voice is just as important as that of the teacher. For this reason, progressive education is often equated with student-centered instruction.

To support students in finding their own voice, the teacher takes on the role of a guide. Since the student has such an important role in the learning, the teacher needs to guide the students in “learning how to learn” (Labaree, 2005, p. 277). In other words, they need to help students construct the skills they need to understand and process the content.

In order to do this successfully, the teacher needs to act as a collaborative partner. As a collaborative partner, the teachers works with the student to make group decisions about what will be learned, keeping in mind the ultimate out- comes that need to be obtained. The primary aim as a collaborative partner, according to progressivists, is to help students “acquire the values of the democratic system” (Webb et. al., 2010, p. 75).

Some of the key instructional methods used by progressivist teachers include:

• Promoting discovery and self-directly learning.

• Integrating socially relevant themes.
• Promoting values of community, cooperation, 
 tolerance, justice, and democratic equality.
• Encouraging the use of group activities.
• Promoting the application of projects to enhance 
 learning.
• Engaging students in critical thinking.
• Challenging students to work on their problem 
 solving skills.
• Developing decision making techniques.
• Utilizing cooperative learning strategies. (Webb et. al., 2010).

6.5 An Example in Practice

Watch the following video and see how many of the bulleted instructional methods you can identify! In addition, while watching the video, think about the following questions:

• Do you think you have the skills to be a 
 constructivist teacher? Why or why not?
• What qualities do you have that would make you 
 good at applying a progressivist approach in the 
 classroom? What would you need to improve 
upon?

Based on the instructional methods demonstrated in the video, it is clear to see that progressivist teachers, as facilitators of students learning, are encouraged to help their stu dents construct their own understanding by taking an active role in the learning process. Therefore, one of the most com- mon labels used to define this entire approach to education to- day is: constructivism .

Students Role

Students in a progressivist classroom are empowered to take a more active role in the learning process. In fact, they are encourage to actively construct their knowledge and understanding by:

• Interacting with their environment.
• Setting objectives for their own learning.
• Working together to solve problems.
• Learning by doing.
• Engaging in cooperative problem solving.
• Establishing classroom rules.
• Evaluating ideas.
• Testing ideas.

The examples provided above clearly demonstrate that in the progressive classroom, the students role is that of an 
 active learner.

6.6 An Example in Practice

Mrs. Espenoza is an 6th grade teacher at Franklin Elementary. She has 24 students in her class. Half of her students are from diverse cultural- backgrounds and are receiving free and reduced lunch. In order to actively engage her students in the learning process, Mrs. Espenoza does 
not use traditional textbooks in her classroom. Instead, she uses more real-world resources 
 and technology that goes beyond the four walls of the classroom. In order to actively engage 
 her students in the learning process, she seeks out members of the community to be guest 
 presenters in her classroom as she believes 
 this provides her students with an way to 
 interact with/learn about their community. 
 Mrs. Espenoza also believes it is important for 
 students to construct their own learning, so she emphasizes: cooperative problem solving, project-based learning, and critical thinking.

6.7 A Closer Look

For more information about progressivism, please watch the following videos. As you watch the videos, please use the “Questions to Consider” as a way to reflect on and monitor your own learnings.

• What additional insights did you gain about the 
 progressivist philosophy?

• Can you relate elements of this philosophy to 
 your own educational experiences? If so, how? 
 If not, can you think of an example?

Key Educators

6.8 Essential Questions

• Who were 
 the key educators 
 of Progressivism?
• What 
impact did 
 each of the 
 key educators 
 of Progressivism have 
 on this philosophy of education?

The father of progressive education is considered to be Francis W. Parker. Parker was the superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts, and later became the head of the Cook County Normal School in Chicago (Webb et. al., 2010). 
 John Dewey is the American educator most commonly associated with progressivism. William H. Kilpatrick also played an important role in advancing progressivism. Each of these key educators, and their contributions, will be further explored in this section.

Francis W. Parker (1837 – 1902)

Francis W. Parker was the superintendent of schools in Quincy, Massachusetts (Webb, 2010). Between 1875 – 1879, Parker developed the Quincy plan and implemented an experimental program based on “meaningful learning and active understanding of concepts” (Schugurensky, 2002, p. 1). When test results showed that students in Quincy schools outperformed the rest of the school children in Massachusetts, the progressive movement began.

Based on the popularity of his approach, Parker founded the Parker School in 1901. The Parker School

“promoted a more holistic and social 
 approach, following Francis W. Parker’s 
 beliefs that education should include the 
 complete development of an individual 
 (mental, physical, and moral) and that 
 education could develop students into 
 active, democratic citizens and lifelong learners” (Schugurensky, 2002, p. 2).

Parker’s student-centered approach was a dramatic change from the prescribed curricula that focused on rote memorization and rigid student disciple. However, the success of the Parker School could not be disregarded. Alumni of the school were applying what they learned to improve their community and promote a more democratic society.

John Dewey (1859 – 1952)

John Dewey’s approach to progressivism is best articulated in his book: The School and Society

(1915). In this book, he argued that America needed new educational systems based on “the larger whole of social life” (Dewey, 1915, p. 66). In order to achieve this, Dewey proposed actively 
 engaging students in inquiry-based learning and experimentation to promote active learning and growth among 
 students.

As a result of his work, Dewey set the foundation for 
 approaching teaching and learning from a student-driven 
 perspective. Meaningful activities and projects that actively engaging the students’ interests and backgrounds as the 
 “means” to learning were key (Tremmel, 2010, p. 126). In this way, the students could more fully develop as learning would be more meaningful to them.

6.9 A Closer Look

For more information about Dewey and his views on education, please read the following article titled: My 
 Pedagogic Creed. This article is considered Dewey’s 
 famous declaration concerning education as presented in five key articles that summarize his beliefs.

My Pedagogic Creed

William H. Kilpatrick (1871-1965)

Kilpatrick is best known for advancing progressive 
 education as a result of his focus on experience-centered 
 curriculum. Kilpatrick summarized his approach in a 1918 
 essay titled “The Project Method.” In this essay, Kilpatrick (1918) advocated for an educational approach that involves

“whole-hearted, purposeful activity proceeding in a social 
 environment” (p. 320).

As identified within The Project Method, Kilpatrick (1918) emphasized the importance of looking at students’ 
 interests as the basis for identifying curriculum and developing pedagogy. This student-centered approach was very 
 significant at the time, as it moved away from the traditional approach of a more mandated curriculum and prescribed 
 pedagogy.

Although many aspects of his student-centered approach were highly regarded, Kilpatrick was also criticized given the diminished importance of teachers in his approach in favor of the students interests and his “extreme ideas about student- centered action” (Tremmel, 2010, p. 131). Even Dewey felt that Kilpatrick did not place enough emphasis on the importance of the teacher and his or her collaborative role within the classroom.

Reflect on your learnings about Progressivism! Create a T-chart and bullet the pros and cons of 
 Progressivism. Based on your T-chart, do you 
 think you could successfully apply this 
 philosophy in your future classroom? Why 
or why not?

Chapter 6: Progressivism Copyright © 2023 by Dr. Della Perez. All Rights Reserved.

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5 What is an Educational Philosophy?

Jennifer Beasley and Myra Haulmark

What makes a teacher? Teaching is like a salad. Think about it. If you were to attend a party for any given holiday, the number of and variations to each salad recipe that might be present for consumption could outnumber those present at the party. There are so many different ways to teach, varying circumstances to take into account, and philosophies to apply to each classroom. And what better way to have a positive impact on the world than to offer knowledge for consumption? The term ‘teacher’ can be applied to anyone who imparts knowledge of any topic, but it is generally more focused on those who are hired to do so (teach, n.d., n.p.). In imparting knowledge to our students, it is inevitable that we must take into account our own personal philosophies or pedagogies, and determine not only how we decide what our philosophies are, but also how those impact our consumers.

Objectives and Key Terms

In this chapter, readers will…

• Define, describe, and identify the four branches of educational philosophy
• Outline at least two educational philosophies that influence our schools
• Explain how educational philosophies influence the choice of curriculum and classroom instructional practices
• Develop a personal philosophy concerning teaching and learning

Key terms in the chapter are…

Constructivism

Perennialism, essentialism, progressivism.

• Romanticism
• Behaviorism

Lessons in Pedagogy

What, exactly, are education philosophies? According to Thelma Roberson (2000), most prospective teachers confuse their beliefs with the ideas of teaching (p. 6). Education philosophies, then, are not what you want to do in class to aid learning, but why you do them and how they work. For example, Roberson’s students state they “want to use cooperative learning techniques” in their classroom. The question posed is, why? “[I]s cooperative learning a true philosophy or is it something you do in the classroom because of your belief about the way children learn?” (Roberson, 2000, p. 6). Philosophies need to translate ideas into action – if you want to use certain techniques, then you need to understand how they are effective in the classroom to create that portion of your education philosophy. It helps to have an overview of the various schools out there.

• Perennialism – focuses on human concerns that have caused concern for centuries, revealed through ‘great works’ (Ornstein, 2003, p. 110)  It focuses on great works of art, literature and enduring ideas.
• Essentialism – Emphasizes skills and subjects that are needed by all in a productive society. This is the belief in “Back to Basics”.  Rote learning is emphasized and
• Progressivism – Instruction features problem-solving and group activities – The instructor acts as a facilitator as opposed to a leader (Ornstein, 2003, p. 110)
• Social Reconstructionism – Instruction that focuses on significant social and economic problems in an effort to solve them (Ornstein, 2003, pg.110)
• Existentialism – Classroom dialogue stimulates awareness – each person creates an awareness gleaned from discussion and encourages deep personal reflection on his or her convictions (Ornstein, 2003, p. 108).
• The knowledge that has been passed through the ages should be continued as the basis of the curriculum, like the classic works of Plato and Einstein.
• Reason, logic, and analytical thought are valued and encouraged
• Only information that stood the test of time is relevant.  It is believed these prepare students for life and help to develop rational thinking.
• The classes most likely to be considered under this approach would be history, science, math, and religion classes (Educational Philosophies in the Classroom, pg.1).
• Essentialists believe that there is a universal pool of knowledge needed by all students.
• The fundamentals of teaching are the basis of the curriculum: math, science, history, foreign language, and English. Vocational classes are not seen as a necessary part of educational training.
• Classrooms are formal, teacher-centered, and students are passive learners.
• Evaluations are predominately through testing, and there are few, if any, projects or portfolios.

Watch the following video for a little more about this philosophy:

• This is a student-centered form of instruction where students follow the scientific method of questioning and searching for the answer.
• Evaluations include projects and portfolios.
• Current events are used to keep students interested in the required subject matter.
• Students are active learners as opposed to passive learners.
• The teacher is a facilitator rather than the center of the educational process.
• Student input is encouraged, and students are asked to find their interpretation of the answer, have a choice in projects and assignments. (Educational Philosophies in the classroom, pg.1).
• Real-world problem solving emphasized.
• Subjects are integrated.
• Interaction among students.
• Students have a voice in the classroom.

Social Reconstructivism

• This student-centered philosophy strives to instill a desire to make the world a better place.
• It places a focus on controversial world issues and uses current events as a springboard for the thinking process.
• These students are taught the importance of working together to bring about change.
• These teachers incorporate what is happening in the world with what they are learning in the classroom (Educational Philosophies in the Classroom, pg.1).

What do you think?

Additional Beliefs in Regards to Teaching/Learning

Active participation is the key to this teaching style. Students are free to explore their own ideas and share concepts with one another in nontraditional ways. “Hands-on activity […] is the most effective way of learning and is considered true learning” (Educational Philosophies in the Classroom, pg.1).

What is Constructivism?

The root word of Constructivism is “construct.” Basically, Constructivism is the theory that knowledge must be constructed by a person, not just transmitted to the person. People construct knowledge by taking new information and integrating it with their own pre-existing knowledge (Cooper, 2007; Woolfolk, 2007). It means they are actively involved in seeking out information, creating projects, and working with material being presented versus just sitting and listening to someone “talk at them”.

Jean Piaget’s Theory of Constructivism

Jean Piaget was one of the major constructivists in past history. His theory looks at how people construct knowledge cognitively. In Piaget’s theory, everybody has schemata.  These are the categories of information we create to organize the information we take in.  For example, “food” is one schema we may have.  We have a variety of information on food. It can be organized into different food groups such as the following: bread/pasta, fruits, vegetables, meats, dairy, and sweets (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2007).  We use these schemas to help us “make sense” of what we see, hear and experience, and integrate this information into our knowledge bank.

According to Piaget’s theory, one way people construct knowledge is through assimilation. People assimilate when they incorporate new knowledge and information into pre-existing schemes. Here is an example: A child sees a car and learns that it can be called a vehicle. Then the child sees a motorcycle and learns that it can be called a vehicle as well. Then the child sees a truck and calls it a vehicle. Basically, the child developed a schema for “vehicles” and incorporated trucks into that schema (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2007).

Another way people construct knowledge, according to Piaget’s theory, is through accommodation. People accommodate when they modify or change their pre-existing schemes. Here is an example.: A child sees a dog (a furry four-legged animal) and learns that it can be called a pet. Then the child sees a cat (a furry four-legged animal) and learns that it can be called a pet as well. Then the child sees a raccoon (also a furry four-legged animal) and calls it a pet. Afterward, the child learns from his or her parents that a raccoon is not a pet. At first, the child develops a schema for “pet” which includes all furry four-legged animals. Then the child learns that not all furry four-legged animals are pets. Because of this, the child needs to accommodate his or her schema for “pet.” According to Piaget, people learn through a balance of assimilation and accommodation (Kail & Cavanaugh, 2007).

Lev Vygotsky’s Theory of Constructivism

Lev Vygotsky was another major constructivist in past history. While Jean Piaget’s theory is a cognitive perspective, Vygotsky’s theory is a sociocultural perspective. His theory looks at how people construct knowledge by collaborating with others. In Vygotsky’s theory, people learn and construct knowledge within the Zone of Proximal Development. People have an independent level of performance where they can do things independently. Likewise, people have a frustration level where tasks are too difficult to be able to perform on their own.  In between, there is an instructional level where they can do things above the independent level with the help and guidance of others. The range, or zone, between the independent and frustration levels is the Zone of Proximal Development (Cooper, 2007; Kail & Cavanaugh, 2007; Woolfolk, 2007).

In the Zone of Proximal Development, assistance needs to be given by another person. This assistance, help, or guidance is known as scaffolding. Because the zone has a range, assistance needs to be given, but not too much. If not enough assistance is given, a person may not be able to learn the task. On the other hand, if too much assistance is given, the person may not be able to fully construct the newly acquired information into knowledge. For example, a child needs help doing math homework. With no help, the child may not be able to do it. With too much help, the homework is done for the child, so the child may not fully understand the math homework anyway (Cooper, 2007; Kail & Cavanaugh, 2007; Woolfolk, 2007).

Constructivism in the Classroom

In the classroom, the teacher can u se Constructivism to help teach the students. The teacher can base the instruction on the cognitive strategies, experiences, and culture of the students. The teacher can make the instruction interesting by correlating it with real-life applications, especially applications within the students’ own communities. Students can work and collaborate together during particular activities. The teacher can provide feedback for the students so they know what they can do independently and know what they need help with. New concepts can be related to the students’ prior knowledge. The teacher can also explain how new concepts can be used in different contexts and subjects. All these ideas are based on Constructivism (Sherman & Kurshan, 2005).

Research shows that constructivist teaching can be effective. According to research conducted by Jong Suk Kim at Chungnum National University in Korea, constructivist teaching is more effective than traditional teaching when looking at the students’ academic achievement. The research also shows that students have some preference for constructivist teaching (Kim, 2005). Again, whe n the theory of Constructivism is actually applied in the classroom, it can be effective for teaching students.

It is not the sole responsibility of the teachers to educate the students. According to Constructivism, students have some responsibilities when learning. A student may be quick to blame the teacher for not understanding the material, but it could be the case that the student is not doing everything he or she could be doing. Because knowledge is constructed, not transmitted, students need to make an effort to assimilate, accommodate, and make sense of information. They also need to make an effort to collaborate with others, especially if they are having a hard time understanding the information.

Four Philosophies in Assessment

In addition, the ‘constructivist’ school of philosophy, rooted in the Pragmatic pedagogy and branched off from the ‘Social Reconstructivist’ school, has gained much popularity. Around the turn of the century (the early 1990s), many teachers felt the rote memorization and mindless routine that was common was ineffective and began to look for alternate ways to reach their students (Ornstein, 2003, p. 111). Through the constructivist approach, “students “construct” knowledge through an interaction between what they already think and know and with new ideas and experiences” (Roberson, 2000, p. 8). This is an active learning process that leads to a deeper understanding of the concepts presented in class and is based on the abilities and readiness of the children rather than set curriculum guidelines (Ornstein, 2003, p. 112). Constructivism “emphasizes socially interactive and process-oriented ‘hands-on’ learning in which students work collaboratively to expand and revise their knowledge base” (Ornstein, 2003, p. 112). Essentially, the knowledge that is shaped by experience is reconstructed or altered, to assist the student in understanding new concepts (Ornstein, 2003, p. 112). You, as the teacher, help the students build the scaffolding they need to maintain the information even after the test is taken and graded.

Creating Your Philosophy

Educators continue to build upon their philosophy over their careers. They often choose elements from various philosophies and integrate them into their own.  When identifying a philosophy, here are things to consider:

• What is the purpose of education?
• What do you believe should be taught?
• How do you think the curriculum should be taught?
• What is your role as the teacher?
• What is the role of the student?
• What is the value of teacher-centered instruction and student-centered instruction; where and when do you incorporate each?

What philosophy are you leaning towards?  Take the following quiz to find out!

Make a copy and take the quiz on your own:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1riF81PX9IDZLlQ4K0rBpkZMPlIA5cQ-twb-Soz6ygnA/copy

The following resources are provided when “digging deeper” into the chapter.

• What is your Educational Philosophy? https://www.edutopia.org/blog/what-your-educational-philosophy-ben-johnson
• Four Philosophies and Their Applications to Education https://docs.google.com/document/d/149dx9pNRqIYp-EAYVHgXkxUV_u2cnmbGmvMgS863P4o/edit

Modified from “Foundations of Education and Instructional Assessment” by Dionne Nichols licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

Introduction to Education Copyright © 2021 by Jennifer Beasley and Myra Haulmark is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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PHILO-notes

Free Online Learning Materials

John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education: Key Concepts

John Dewey (1859-1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer who believed that education should be an active, social process that fosters creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Dewey’s philosophy of education is based on the idea that learning should be relevant to students’ lives and experiences, and that students should be actively engaged in the learning process. In this essay, I will explore Dewey’s philosophy of education in depth.

Dewey believed that education is a process of growth and development that starts with the child’s interests and experiences. He argued that education should be designed to promote individual growth and social progress. Dewey saw education as a tool for social reform and believed that it could be used to promote democracy and social justice.

One of Dewey’s key contributions to educational philosophy was his idea of “progressive education.” This approach to education emphasizes student-centered learning, where students are actively engaged in the learning process and teachers act as facilitators rather than instructors. Progressive education is based on the belief that students learn best when they are actively involved in the learning process, and when they are able to connect what they are learning to their own lives and experiences.

According to Dewey, the purpose of education is to prepare students for life in a democratic society. He believed that education should promote social responsibility and that students should be taught to work collaboratively to solve problems and make decisions. Dewey saw education as a way of promoting social equality and believed that all students should have access to high-quality education, regardless of their socio-economic background.

Dewey also believed that education should be holistic and that it should address the intellectual, emotional, and social development of the student. He argued that education should help students to develop a sense of self-awareness, to understand their own emotions and motivations, and to develop empathy and understanding for others.

Another important aspect of Dewey’s philosophy of education is his emphasis on experiential learning. Dewey believed that students learn best when they are actively engaged in the learning process, and when they are able to connect what they are learning to real-life experiences. He believed that education should be hands-on and that students should be encouraged to experiment and explore.

In addition to the above, it is important to note that Dewey’s philosophy of education is closely tied to his broader philosophical framework of pragmatism, which emphasizes the practical application of ideas and the importance of experience and experimentation in the pursuit of knowledge. Dewey believed that education should be geared towards helping students develop practical skills and knowledge that they can apply in their daily lives, rather than simply memorizing facts or abstract theories.

One of the key features of Dewey’s pragmatic approach to education is the idea of “learning by doing.” Dewey believed that students learn best when they are actively engaged in the learning process and when they have opportunities to apply what they have learned in real-world contexts. He argued that traditional approaches to education, which rely heavily on lectures and rote memorization, are often ineffective because they do not provide students with opportunities to engage with the material in meaningful ways.

Instead, Dewey believed that education should be focused on helping students develop problem-solving skills and the ability to think critically about the world around them. He argued that by engaging in hands-on activities and experiments, students can learn to analyze and solve real-world problems, which will be more useful to them in the long run than simply memorizing information.

Dewey also believed that education should be tied closely to the needs and interests of individual students. He argued that teachers should work with their students to develop curriculum and learning activities that are tailored to their specific needs and interests, rather than relying on a one-size-fits-all approach. This approach, he believed, would help students stay engaged and motivated in the learning process, and would also help them develop a sense of ownership and investment in their education.

Another key feature of Dewey’s pragmatic approach to education is the idea of social learning. Dewey believed that students learn best when they are part of a community of learners who are working together to solve problems and explore new ideas. He argued that schools should be structured in a way that encourages collaboration and social interaction among students, and that teachers should foster a sense of community and shared purpose in their classrooms.

Overall, Dewey’s philosophy of education emphasizes the importance of practical skills, critical thinking, and social learning in the pursuit of knowledge. He believed that education should be geared towards helping students develop the tools and knowledge they need to be active and engaged participants in the world around them, rather than simply passive recipients of information. By emphasizing hands-on learning, individualized curriculum, and social interaction, Dewey believed that education could be transformed into a more effective and meaningful experience for both students and teachers.

Philosophy of Education

All human societies, past and present, have had a vested interest in education; and some wits have claimed that teaching (at its best an educational activity) is the second oldest profession. While not all societies channel sufficient resources into support for educational activities and institutions, all at the very least acknowledge their centrality—and for good reasons. For one thing, it is obvious that children are born illiterate and innumerate, and ignorant of the norms and cultural achievements of the community or society into which they have been thrust; but with the help of professional teachers and the dedicated amateurs in their families and immediate environs (and with the aid, too, of educational resources made available through the media and nowadays the internet), within a few years they can read, write, calculate, and act (at least often) in culturally-appropriate ways. Some learn these skills with more facility than others, and so education also serves as a social-sorting mechanism and undoubtedly has enormous impact on the economic fate of the individual. Put more abstractly, at its best education equips individuals with the skills and substantive knowledge that allows them to define and to pursue their own goals, and also allows them to participate in the life of their community as full-fledged, autonomous citizens.

But this is to cast matters in very individualistic terms, and it is fruitful also to take a societal perspective, where the picture changes somewhat. It emerges that in pluralistic societies such as the Western democracies there are some groups that do not wholeheartedly support the development of autonomous individuals, for such folk can weaken a group from within by thinking for themselves and challenging communal norms and beliefs; from the point of view of groups whose survival is thus threatened, formal, state-provided education is not necessarily a good thing. But in other ways even these groups depend for their continuing survival on educational processes, as do the larger societies and nation-states of which they are part; for as John Dewey put it in the opening chapter of his classic work Democracy and Education (1916), in its broadest sense education is the means of the “social continuity of life” (Dewey, 1916, 3). Dewey pointed out that the “primary ineluctable facts of the birth and death of each one of the constituent members in a social group” make education a necessity, for despite this biological inevitability “the life of the group goes on” (Dewey, 3). The great social importance of education is underscored, too, by the fact that when a society is shaken by a crisis, this often is taken as a sign of educational breakdown; education, and educators, become scapegoats.

It is not surprising that such an important social domain has attracted the attention of philosophers for thousands of years, especially as there are complex issues aplenty that have great philosophical interest. Even a cursory reading of these opening paragraphs reveals that they touch on, in nascent form, some but by no means all of the issues that have spawned vigorous debate down the ages; restated more explicitly in terms familiar to philosophers of education, the issues the discussion above flitted over were: education as transmission of knowledge versus education as the fostering of inquiry and reasoning skills that are conducive to the development of autonomy (which, roughly, is the tension between education as conservative and education as progressive, and also is closely related to differing views about human “perfectibility”—issues that historically have been raised in the debate over the aims of education); the question of what this knowledge, and what these skills, ought to be—part of the domain of philosophy of the curriculum; the questions of how learning is possible, and what is it to have learned something—two sets of issues that relate to the question of the capacities and potentialities that are present at birth, and also to the process (and stages) of human development and to what degree this process is flexible and hence can be influenced or manipulated; the tension between liberal education and vocational education, and the overlapping issue of which should be given priority—education for personal development or education for citizenship (and the issue of whether or not this is a false dichotomy); the differences (if any) between education and enculturation; the distinction between educating versus teaching versus training versus indoctrination; the relation between education and maintenance of the class structure of society, and the issue of whether different classes or cultural groups can—justly—be given educational programs that differ in content or in aims; the issue of whether the rights of children, parents, and socio-cultural or ethnic groups, conflict—and if they do, the question of whose rights should be dominant; the question as to whether or not all children have a right to state-provided education, and if so, should this education respect the beliefs and customs of all groups and how on earth would this be accomplished; and a set of complex issues about the relation between education and social reform, centering upon whether education is essentially conservative, or whether it can be an (or, the ) agent of social change.

It is impressive that most of the philosophically-interesting issues touched upon above, plus additional ones not alluded to here, were addressed in one of the early masterpieces of the Western intellectual tradition—Plato's Republic . A.N. Whitehead somewhere remarked that the history of Western philosophy is nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato, and if the Meno and the Laws are added to the Republic , the same is true of the history of educational thought and of philosophy of education in particular. At various points throughout this essay the discussion shall return to Plato, and at the end there shall be a brief discussion of the two other great figures in the field—Rousseau and Dewey. But the account of the field needs to start with some features of it that are apt to cause puzzlement, or that make describing its topography difficult. These include, but are not limited to, the interactions between philosophy of education and its parent discipline.

1.1 The open nature of philosophy and philosophy of education

1.2 the different bodies of work traditionally included in the field, 1.3 paradigm wars the diversity of, and clashes between, philosophical approaches, 2.1 the early work: c.d. hardie, 2.2 the dominant years: language, and clarification of key concepts, 2.3 countervailing forces, 2.4 a new guise contemporary social, political and moral philosophy, 3.1 philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research, 3.2 the content of the curriculum, and the aims and functions of schooling, 3.3 rousseau, dewey, and the progressive movement, 4. concluding remarks, bibliography, other internet resources, related entries, 1. problems in delineating the field.

There is a large—and ever expanding—number of works designed to give guidance to the novice setting out to explore the domain of philosophy of education; most if not all of the academic publishing houses have at least one representative of this genre on their list, and the titles are mostly variants of the following archetypes: The History and Philosophy of Education , The Philosophical Foundations of Education , Philosophers on Education , Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom , A Guide to the Philosophy of Education , and Readings in Philosophy of Education . The overall picture that emerges from even a sampling of this collective is not pretty; the field lacks intellectual cohesion, and (from the perspective taken in this essay) there is a widespread problem concerning the rigor of the work and the depth of scholarship—although undoubtedly there are islands, but not continents, of competent philosophical discussion of difficult and socially-important issues of the kind listed earlier. On the positive side—the obverse of the lack of cohesion—there is, in the field as a whole, a degree of adventurousness in the form of openness to ideas and radical approaches, a trait that is sometimes lacking in other academic fields. This is not to claim, of course, that taken individually philosophers of education are more open-minded than their philosophical cousins!

Part of the explanation for this diffuse state-of-affairs is that, quite reasonably, most philosophers of education have the goal (reinforced by their institutional affiliation with Schools of Education and their involvement in the initial training of teachers) of contributing not to philosophy but to educational policy and practice. This shapes not only their selection of topics, but also the manner in which the discussion is pursued; and this orientation also explains why philosophers of education—to a far greater degree, it is to be suspected, than their “pure” cousins—publish not in philosophy journals but in a wide range of professionally-oriented journals (such as Educational Researcher , Harvard Educational Review , Teachers College Record , Cambridge Journal of Education, Journal of Curriculum Studies , and the like). Some individuals work directly on issues of classroom practice, others identify as much with fields such as educational policy analysis, curriculum theory, teacher education, or some particular subject-matter domain such as math or science education, as they do with philosophy of education. It is still fashionable in some quarters to decry having one's intellectual agenda shaped so strongly as this by concerns emanating from a field of practice; but as Stokes (1997) has made clear, many of the great, theoretically-fruitful research programs in natural science had their beginnings in such practical concerns—as Pasteur's grounbreaking work illustrates. It is dangerous to take the theory versus practice dichotomy too seriously.

However, there is another consequence of this institutional housing of the vast majority of philosphers of education that is worth noting—one that is not found in a comparable way in philosophers of science, for example, who almost always are located in departments of philosophy—namely, that experience as a teacher, or in some other education-related role, is a qualification to become a philosopher of education that in many cases is valued at least as much as depth of philosophical training. (The issue is not that educational experience is irrelevant—clearly it can be highly pertinent—but it is that in the tradeoff with philosophical training, philosophy often loses.) But there are still other factors at work that contribute to the field's diffuseness, that all relate in some way to the nature of the discipline of philosophy itself.

In describing the field of philosophy, and in particular the sub-field that has come to be identified as philosophy of education, one quickly runs into a difficulty not found to anything like the same degree in other disciplines. For example, although there are some internal differences in opinion, nevertheless there seems to be quite a high degree of consensus within the domain of quantum physics about which researchers are competent members of the field and which ones are not, and what work is a strong contribution (or potential contribution). The very nature of philosophy, on the other hand, is “essentially contested”; what counts as a sound philosophical work within one school of thought, or socio-cultural or academic setting, may not be so-regarded (and may even be the focus of derision) in a different one. Coupled with this is the fact that the borders of the field are not policed, so that the philosophically-untrained can cross into it freely—indeed, over the past century or more a great many individuals from across the spectrum of real and pseudo disciplines have for whatever reason exercised their right to self-identify as members of this broad and loosely defined category of “philosophers” (as a few minutes spent browsing in the relevant section of a bookstore will verify).

In essence, then, there are two senses of the term “philosopher” and its cognates: a loose but common sense in which any individual who cogitates in any manner about such issues as the meaning of life, the nature of social justice, the essence of sportsmanship, the aims of education, the foundations of the school curriculum, or relationship with the Divine, is thereby a philosopher; and there is a more technical sense referring to those who have been formally trained or have acquired competence in one or more areas such as epistemology, metaphysics, moral philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, and the like. If this bifurcation presents a problem for adequately delineating the field of philosophy, the difficulties grow tenfold or more with respect to philosophy of education.

This essay offers a description and assessment of the field as seen by a scholar rooted firmly in the formal branch of “philosophy of education”, and moreover this branch as it has developed in the English-speaking world (some of which, of course, has been inspired by Continental philosophy); but first it is necessary to say a little more about the difficulties that confront the individual who sets out, without presuppositions, to understand the topography of “philosophy of education”.

It will not take long for a person who consults several of the introductory texts alluded to earlier to encounter a number of different bodies of work (loosely bounded to be sure) that have by one source or another been regarded as part of the domain of philosophy of education; the inclusion of some of these as part of the field is largely responsible for the diffuse topography described earlier. What follows is an informal and incomplete accounting.

First, there are works of advocacy produced by those non-technical, self-identified “philosophers” described above, who often have an axe to grind; they may wish to destroy (or to save) common schooling, support or attack some innovation or reform, shore-up or destroy the capitalist mode of production, see their own religion (or none at all) gain a foothold in the public schools, strengthen the place of “the basics” in the school curriculum, and so forth. While these topics certainly can be, and have been, discussed with due care, often they have been pursued in loose but impressive language where exhortation substitutes for argumentation—and hence sometimes they are mistaken for works of philosophy of education! In the following discussion this genre shall be passed over in silence.

Second, there is a corpus of work somewhat resembling the first, but where the arguments are tighter, and where the authors usually are individuals of some distinction whose insights are thought-provoking—possibly because they have a degree of familiarity with some branch of educational activity, having been teachers (or former teachers), school principals, religious leaders, politicians, journalists, and the like. While these works frequently touch on philosophical issues, they are not pursued to any philosophical depth and can hardly be considered as contributions to the scholarship of the discipline. However, some works in this genre are among the classics of “educational thought”—a more felicitous label than “philosophy of education”; cases in point would be the essays, pamphlets and letters of Thomas Arnold (headmaster of Rugby school), John Wesley (the founder of Methodism), J.H. (Cardinal) Newman, T.H. Huxley, and the writings on progressive schooling by A.S. Neill (of Summerhill school). Some textbooks even include extracts from the writings or recorded sayings of such figures as Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and Jesus of Nazareth (for the latter three, in works spanning more than half a century, see Ulich, 1950, and Murphy, 2006). Books and extracts in this genre—which elsewhere I have called “cultured reflection on education”—are often used in teacher-training courses that march under the banner of “educational foundations”, “introduction to educational thought”, or “introduction to philosophy of education”.

Third, there are a number of educational theorists and researchers, whose field of activity is not philosophy but—for example—might be human development or learning theory, who in their technical work and sometimes in their non-technical books and reflective essays explicitly raise philosophical issues or adopt philosophical modes of argumentation—and do so in ways worthy of careful study. If philosophy (including philosophy of education) is defined so as to include analysis and reflection at an abstract or “meta-level”, which undoubtedly is a domain where many philosophers labor, then these individuals should have a place in the annals of philosophy or philosophy of education; but too often, although not always, accounts of the field ignore them. Their work might be subjected to scrutiny for being educationally important, but their conceptual or philosophical contributions are rarely focused upon. (Philosophers of the physical and biological sciences are far less prone to make this mistake about the meta-level work of reflective scientists in these domains.)

The educational theorists and researchers I have in mind as exemplars here are the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner (who among other things wrote about the fate of the notions of human freedom and dignity in the light of the development of a “science of behavior”, and who developed a model of human action and also of learning that eschewed the influence of mental entities such as motives, interests, and ideas and placed the emphasis instead upon “schedules of reinforcement”); the foundational figure in modern developmental psychology with its near-fixation on stage theories, Jean Piaget (who developed in an abstract and detailed manner a “genetic epistemology” that was related to his developmental research); and the social psychologist Lev Vygotsky (who argued that the development of the human youngster was indelibly shaped by social forces, so much so that approaches which focused on the lone individual and that were biologically-oriented—he had Piaget in mind here—were quite inadequate).

Fourth, and in contrast to the group above, there is a type of work that is traditionally but undeservedly given a prominent place in the annals of philosophy of education, and which thereby generates a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding about the field. These are the books and reflective essays on educational topics that were written by mainstream philosophers, a number of whom are counted among the greatest in the history of the discipline. The catch is this: Even great philosophers do not always write philosophy! The reflections being referred-to contain little if any philosophical argumentation, and usually they were not intended to be contributions to the literature on any of the great philosophical questions. Rather, they expressed the author's views (or even prejudices) on educational rather than philosophical problems, and sometimes—as in the case of Bertrand Russell's rollicking pieces defending progressive educational practices—they explicitly were “potboilers” written to make money. (In Russell's case the royalties were used to support a progressive school he was running with his current wife.) Locke, Kant, and Hegel also are among those who produced work of this genre.

John Locke is an interesting case in point. He had been requested by a cousin and her husband—possibly in part because of his medical training—to give advice on the upbringing of their son and heir; the youngster seems to have troubled his parents, most likely because he had learning difficulties. Locke, then in exile in Europe, wrote the parents a series of letters in which alongside sensible advice about such matters as the priorities in the education of a landed gentleman, and about making learning fun for the boy, there were a few strange items such as the advice that the boy should wear leaky shoes in winter so that he would be toughened-up! The letters eventually were printed in book form under the title Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), and seem to have had enormous influence down the ages upon educational practice; after two centuries the book had run through some 35 English editions and well over thirty foreign editions, and it is still in print and is frequently excerpted in books of readings in philosophy of education. In stark contrast, several of Locke's major philosophical writings—the Essay Concerning Human Understanding , and the Letter on Toleration —have been overlooked by most educational theorists over the centuries, even though they have enormous relevance for educational philosophy, theory, policy, and practice. It is especially noteworthy that the former of these books was the foundation for an approach to psychology—associationism—that thrived during the nineteenth century. In addition it stimulated interest in the processes of child development and human learning; Locke's model of the way in which the “blank tablet” of the human mind became “furnished” with simple ideas that were eventually combined or abstracted in various ways to form complex ideas, suggested to some that it might be fruitful to study this process in the course of development of a young child (Cleverley and Phillips, 1986).

Fifth, and finally, there is a large body of work that clearly falls within the more technically-defined domain of philosophy of education. Three historical giants of the field are Plato, Rousseau, and Dewey, and there are a dozen or more who would be in competition for inclusion along with them; the short-list of leading authors from the second-half of the 20 th century would include Richard Peters, Paul Hirst, and Israel Scheffler, with many jostling for the next places—but the choices become cloudy as we approach the present-day, for schisms between philosophical schools have to be negotiated.

It is important to note, too, that there is a sub-category within this domain of literature that is made-up of work by philosophers who are not primarily identified as philosophers of education, and who might or might not have had much to say directly about education, but whose philosophical work has been drawn upon by others and applied very fruitfully to educational issues. (A volume edited by Amelie Rorty contains essays on the education-related thought, or relevance, of many historically-important philosophers; significantly the essays are almost entirely written by philosophers rather than by members of the philosophy of education community. This is both their strength and weakness. See Rorty, 1998.)

The discussion will turn briefly to the difficulty in picturing the topography of the field that is presented by the influence of these philosophers.

As sketched earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, criteria for selecting evidence that has relevance for the problems that they consider central, and the like. No wonder educational discourse has occasionally been likened to Babel, for the differences in backgrounds and assumptions means that there is much mutual incomprehension. In the midst of the melee sit the philosophers of education.

It is no surprise, then, to find that the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content and methods of argument in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg. It is revealing to note some of the names that were heavily-cited in a pair of recent authoritative handbooks in the field (according to the indices of the two volumes, and in alphabetical order): Adorno, Aristotle, Derrida, Descartes, Dewey, Habermas, Hegel, Horkheimer, Kant, Locke, Lyotard, Marx, Mill, Nietzsche, Plato, Rawls, Richard Rorty, Rousseau, and Wittgenstein (Curren 2003; Blake, Smeyers, Smith, and Standish 2003). Although this list conveys something of the diversity of the field, it fails to do it complete justice, for the influence of feminist philosophers is not adequately represented.

No one individual can have mastered work done by such a range of figures, representing as they do a number of quite different frameworks or approaches; and relatedly no one person stands as emblematic of the entire field of philosophy of education, and no one type of philosophical writing serves as the norm, either. At professional meetings, peace often reigns because the adherents of the different schools go their separate ways; but occasionally there are (intellectually) violent clashes, rivaling the tumult that greeted Derrida's nomination for an honorary degree at Cambridge in 1992. It is sobering to reflect that only a few decades have passed since practitioners of analytic philosophy of education had to meet in individual hotel rooms, late at night, at annual meetings of the Philosophy of Education Society in the USA, because phenomenologists and others barred their access to the conference programs; their path to liberation was marked by discord until, eventually, the compromise of “live and let live” was worked out (Kaminsky, 1996). Of course, the situation has hardly been better in the home discipline; an essay in Time magazine in 1966 on the state of the discipline of philosophy reported that adherents of the major philosophical schools “don't even understand one another”, and added that as a result “philosophy today is bitterly segregated. Most of the major philosophy departments and scholarly journals are the exclusive property of one sect or another” ( Time , reprinted in Lucas, 1969, 32). Traditionally there has been a time-lag for developments in philosophy to migrate over into philosophy of education, but in this respect at least the two fields have been on a par.

Inevitably, however, traces of discord remain, and some groups still feel disenfranchised, but they are not quite the same groups as a few decades ago—for new intellectual paradigms have come into existence, and their adherents are struggling to have their voices heard; and clearly it is the case that—reflecting the situation in 1966—many analytically-trained philosophers of education find postmodern writings incomprehensible while scholars in the latter tradition are frequently dismissive if not contemptuous of work done by the former group. In effect, then, the passage of time has made the field more—and not less—diffuse. All this is evident in a volume published in 1995 in which the editor attempted to break-down borders by initiating dialogue between scholars with different approaches to philosophy of education; her introductory remarks are revealing:

Philosophers of education reflecting on the parameters of our field are faced not only with such perplexing and disruptive questions as: What counts as Philosophy of Education and why?; but also Who counts as a philosopher of education and why?; and What need is there for Philosophy of Education in a postmodern context? Embedded in these queries we find no less provocative ones: What knowledge, if any, can or should be privileged and why?; and Who is in a position to privilege particular discursive practices over others and why? Although such questions are disruptive, they offer the opportunity to take a fresh look at the nature and purposes of our work and, as we do, to expand the number and kinds of voices participating in the conversation. (Kohli, 1995, xiv).

There is an inward-looking tone to the questions posed here: Philosophy of education should focus upon itself, upon its own contents, methods, and practitioners. And of course there is nothing new about this; for one thing, almost forty years ago a collection of readings—with several score of entries—was published under the title What is Philosophy of Education? (Lucas, 1969). It is worth noting, too, that the same attitude is not unknown in philosophy; Simmel is reputed to have said a century or so ago that philosophy is its own first problem.

Having described the general topography of the field of philosophy of education, the focus can change to pockets of activity where from the perspective of this author interesting philosophical work is being, or has been, done—and sometimes this work has been influential in the worlds of educational policy or practice. It is appropriate to start with a discussion of the rise and partial decline—but lasting influence of—analytic philosophy of education This approach (often called “APE” by both admirers and detractors) dominated the field in the English-speaking world for several decades after the second world war, and its eventual fate throws light on the current intellectual climate.

2. Analytic philosophy of education, and its influence

Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—which make up part at least of the philosophical analysis package—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. But traditionally they stood alongside other philosophical activities; in the Republic , for example, Plato was sometimes analytic, at other times normative, and on occasion speculative/metaphysical. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity (or set of activities), or even as being the only viable or reputable activity (for metaphysics was judged to be literally vacuous, and normative philosophy was viewed as being unable to provide compelling warrants for whatever moral and ethical positions were being advocated).

So, although analytic elements in philosophy of education can be located throughout intellectual history back to the ancient world, the pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction, Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:

The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. (Hardie, 1962, xix)

The first object of his analytic scrutiny in the book was the view that “a child should be educated according to Nature”; he teased apart and critiqued various things that writers through the ages could possibly have meant by this, and very little remained standing by the end of the chapter. Then some basic ideas of Herbart and Dewey were subjected to similar treatment. Hardie's hard-nosed approach can be illustrated by the following: One thing that educationists mean by “education according to Nature” (later he turns to other things they might mean) is that “the teacher should thus act like a gardener” who fosters natural growth of his plants and avoids doing anything “unnatural”(Hardie, 1962, 3). He continues:

The crucial question for such a view of education is how far does this analogy hold? There is no doubt that there is some analogy between the laws governing the physical development of the child and the laws governing the development of a plant, and hence there is some justification for the view if applied to physical education. But the educationists who hold this view are not generally very much concerned with physical education, and the view is certainly false if applied to mental education. For some of the laws that govern the mental changes which take place in a child are the laws of learning …. [which] have no analogy at all with the laws which govern the interaction between a seed and its environment. (Hardie, 1962, 4)

About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. D.J. O'Connor published An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (1957) in which, among other things, he argued that the word “theory” as it is used in educational contexts is merely a courtesy title, for educational theories are nothing like what bear this title in the natural sciences; Israel Scheffler, who became the paramount philosopher of education in North America, produced a number of important works including The Language of Education (1960), that contained clarifying and influential analyses of definitions (he distinguished reportive, stipulative, and programmatic types) and the logic of slogans (often these are literally meaningless, and should be seen as truncated arguments); Smith and Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education (1961); and R.D. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Education (1965), consisting of essays by a number of British writers who were becoming prominent—most notably R.S. Peters (whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the USA), Paul Hirst, and John Wilson. Topics covered in the Archambault volume were typical of those that became the “bread and butter” of analytic philosophy of education throughout the English-speaking world—education as a process of initiation, liberal education, the nature of knowledge, types of teaching, and instruction versus indoctrination.

Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters (1970), and Peters (1973), of the concept of education itself. Using as a touchstone “normal English usage”, it was concluded that a person who has been educated (rather than instructed or indoctrinated) has been (i) changed for the better; (ii) this change has involved the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills, and the development of understanding; and (iii) the person has come to care for, or be committed to, the domains of knowledge and skill into which he or she has been initiated. The method used by Hirst and Peters comes across clearly in their handling of the analogy with the concept of “reform”, one they sometimes drew upon for expository purposes. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life (if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed). Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. Elsewhere Peters developed the fruitful notion of “education as initiation”.

The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for—it was argued—getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes. Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward (Snook, 1972). Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by: the content that had been taught; or by the intention of the instructor; or by the methods of instruction that had been used; or by the outcomes of the instruction; or, of course, by some combination of these. Adherents of the different analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal to normal and aberrant usage. Two examples will be sufficient to make the point: (i) The first criterion mentioned above—the nature of the content being imparted—was supported by an argument that ran roughly as follows: “If some students have learned, as factual, some material that is patently incorrect (like ‘The capital city of Canada is Washington D.C.’), then they must have been indoctrinated. This conclusion is reinforced by the consideration that we would never say students must have been indoctrinated if they believe an item that is correct!” However, both portions of this argument have been challenged. (ii) The method criterion—how the knowledge was imparted to the students—usually was supported by an argument that, while different, clearly paralleled the previous one in its logic. It ran roughly like this: “We never would say that students had been indoctrinated by their teacher if he or she had fostered open inquiry and discussion, encouraged exploration in the library and on the net, allowed students to work in collaborative groups, and so on. However, if the teacher did not allow independent inquiry, quashed classroom questions, suppressed dissenting opinions, relied heavily on rewards and punishments, used repetition and fostered rote memorization, and so on, then it is likely we would say the students were being indoctrinated”. (The deeper issue in this second example is that the first method of teaching allows room for the operation of the learners' rationality, while the second method does not. Siegel, 1988, stresses this in his discussion of indoctrination.)

After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import; I can offer as illustration a presidential address at a US Philosophy of Education Society annual meeting that was an hour-long discourse on the various meanings of the expression “I have a toothache”. (It is worth noting that the 1966 article in Time , cited earlier, had put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.) Second, in the early 1970's radical students in Britain accused the brand of linguistic analysis practiced by R.S. Peters of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to “traditional values”—they raised the issue of whose English usage was being analyzed?

Third, criticisms of language analysis in mainstream philosophy had been mounting for some time, and finally after a lag of many years were reaching the attention of philosophers of education. There even had been a surprising degree of interest in this arcane topic on the part of the general reading public in the UK as early as 1959, when Gilbert Ryle, editor of the journal Mind , refused to commission a review of Ernest Gellner's Words and Things (1959)—a detailed and quite acerbic critique of Wittgenstein's philosophy and its espousal of ordinary language analysis. (Ryle argued that Gellner's book was too insulting, a view that drew Bertrand Russell into the fray on Gellner's side—in the daily press, no less; Russell produced examples of insulting remarks drawn from the work of great philosophers of the past. See Mehta, 1963)

Richard Peters had been given warning that all was not well with APE at a conference in Canada in 1966; after delivering a paper on “The aims of education: A conceptual inquiry” that was based on ordinary language analysis, a philosopher in the audience (William Dray) asked Peters “ whose concepts do we analyze?” Dray went on to suggest that different people, and different groups within society, have different concepts of education. Five years before the radical students raised the same issue, Dray pointed to the possibility that what Peters had presented under the guise of a “logical analysis” was nothing but the favored usage of a certain class of persons—a class that Peters happened to identify with. (See Peters, 1973, where to the editor's credit the interaction with Dray is reprinted.)

Fourth, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the process of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation. Key works by Gadamer, Foucault, and Derrida appeared in English, and these were followed in 1984 by Lyotard's foundational work on The Postmodern Condition . The classic works of Heidegger and Husserl also found new admirers; and feminist philosophers of education were finding their voices—Maxine Greene published a number of pieces in the 1970s; the influential book by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , appeared the same year as the work by Lyotard, followed a year later by Jane Roland Martin's Reclaiming a Conversation . APE was no longer the center of interest.

By the 1980s, the rather simple if not simplistic ordinary language analysis practiced in philosophy of education, was reeling under the attack from the combination of forces sketched above, but the analytic spirit lived on in the form of rigorous work done in other specialist areas of philosophy—work that trickled out and took philosophy of education in rich new directions. Technically-oriented epistemology, philosophy of science, and even metaphysics, flourished; as did the interrelated fields of social, political and moral philosophy. John Rawls published A Theory of Justice in 1971; a decade later MacIntyre's After Virtue appeared; and in another decade or so there was a flood of work on individualism, communitarianism, democratic citizenship, inclusion, exclusion, rights of children versus rights of parents, rights of groups (such as the Amish) versus rights of the larger polity. From the early 1990s philosophers of education have contributed significantly to the debates on these and related topics—indeed, this corpus of work illustrates that good philosophy of education flows seamlessly into work being done in mainstream areas of philosophy. Illustrative examples are Creating Citizens: Political Education and Liberal Democracy , Callan (1997); The Demands of Liberal Education , Levinson (1999); Social Justice and School Choice , Brighouse (2000); and Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education , Reich (2002). These works stand shoulder-to-shoulder with semi-classics on the same range of topics by Gutmann, Kymlicka, Macedo, and others. An excerpt from the book by Callan nicely illustrates that the analytic spirit lives on in this body of work; the broader topic being pursued is the status of the aims of education in a pluralistic society where there can be deep fundamental disagreements:

… the distinction must be underlined between the ends that properly inform political education and the extent to which we should tolerate deviations from those ends in a world where reasonable and unreasonable pluralism are entangled and the moral costs of coercion against the unreasonable variety are often prohibitive. Our theoretical as well as our commonsense discourse do not always respect the distinction…. If some of the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church conflict with our best theory of the ends of civic education, it does not follow that we have any reason to revise our theory; but neither does it mean we have any reason to impose these ends on Catholic schools and the families that they serve. (Callan, 1997, 44)

Callan and White (2003) have given an analysis of why the topics described above have become such a focus of attention. “What has been happening in philosophy of education in recent years”, they argue, mirrors “a wider self-examination in liberal societies themselves”. World events, from the fall of communism to the spread of ethnic conflicts “have all heightened consciousness of the contingency of liberal politics”. A body of work in philosophy, from the early Rawls on, has systematically examined (and critiqued) the foundations of liberalism, and philosophy of education has been drawn into the debates. Callan and White mention communitarianism as offering perhaps “the most influential challenge” to liberalism, and they write:

The debate between liberals and communitarians is far more than a theoretical diversion for philosophers and political scientists. At stake are rival understandings of what makes human lives and the societies in which they unfold both good and just, and derivatively, competing conceptions of the education needed for individual and social betterment. (Callan and White, 2003, 95-96)

It should be appended here that it is not only “external” world events that have stimulated this body of work; events internal to a number of democratic societies also have been significant. To cite one example that is prominent in the literature in North America at least, the US Supreme Court issued a ruling ( Wisconsin v. Yoder ) in which members of the Amish sect were allowed to withdraw their children from public schools before they had reached the age of sixteen—for, it had been argued, any deeper education would endanger the existence of the group and its culture. In assessing this decision—as of course philosophers have frequently done (see, for example, Kymlicka, 1995)—a balance has to be achieved between (i) the interest of civic society in having an informed, well-educated, participatory citizenry; (ii) the interest of the Amish as a group in preserving their own culture; and (iii) the interests of the Amish children, who have a right to develop into autonomous individuals who can make reflective decisions for themselves about the nature of the life they wish to lead. These are issues that fall squarely in the domain covered by the works mentioned above.

So much work is being produced on the complex and interrelated issues just outlined, that in a different context it seemed fair for me to remark (descriptively, and not judgmentally) that a veritable cottage industry had sprung up in post-Rawlsian philosophy of education. There are, of course, other areas of activity, where interesting contributions are being made, and the discusion will next turn to a sampling of these.

3. Other areas of contemporary activity

As was stressed at the outset, and illustrated with a cursory listing of examples, the field of education is huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume, and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in the recent A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Curren, 2003), which contained more than six-hundred pages divided into fourty-five chapters each of which surveyed a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge and truth in learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, purposes of universities in a fluid age, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education.

There is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below has been made with an eye to filling out—and deepening—the topographical account of the field that was presented in the preceding sections. The discussion will open with a topic that was not included in the Companion , despite it being one that is of great concern across the academic educational community, and despite it being one where adherents of some of the rival schools of philosophy (and philosophy of education) have had lively exchanges.

The educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers, philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves—but the criticisms have been contradictory. Charges of being “too ivory tower and theory-oriented” are found alongside “too focused on practice and too atheoretical”; but particularly since publication of the book by Stokes mentioned earlier, and also in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem-solving, it is becoming more fashionable to hold that the “theory v. practice” dichotomy is a false one.

A similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two rival groups of research methods—on one hand quantitative/statistical approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative/ethnographic family. (The choice of labels here is its not entirely risk-free, for they have been contested; furthermore the first approach is quite often associated with “experimental” studies, and the latter with “case studies”, but this is an over-simplification.) For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn's ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred-to as “the paradigm wars”. In essence the issue at stake was epistemolgical: members of the quantitative/experimental camp believed that only their methods could lead to well-warranted knowledge claims, especially about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor; on the other hand the adherents of qualitative/ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was too “positivistic” and was operating with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs—one that ignored the role of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the “paradigm wars” suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program—provided that if both were used, they only were used sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement, towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense(s) of the term; the melding of the two approaches is often called “mixed methods research”, and it is growing in popularity. (For more detailed discussion of these “wars” see Howe, 2003, and Phillips, 2008.)

The most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in motion around the turn of the millenium when the US Federal Government moved in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research—the kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development of practically effective policies. (It was held that such a causal knowledge base was available for medical decisionmaking.) The definition of “rigorously scientific”, however, was decided by politicans and not by the research community, and it was given in terms of the use of a specific research method—the net effect being that the only research projects to receive Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments or field trials (RFTs). It has beome common over the last decade to refer to the RFT as the “gold standard” methodology.

The National Research Council (NRC)—an arm of the U.S. National Academies of Science—issued a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science (NRC, 2002), that argued this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently that point out how the “gold standard” account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex nature of the relation between evidence and policy-making has been distorted and made to appear overly simple (for instance the role of value-judgments in linking empirical findings to policy directives is often overlooked), and qualitative researchers have insisted upon the scientific nature of their work.

Nevertheless, and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of philosophical fronts: Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed that educational inquiry could be value-neutral and that it could ignore the ways in which exercise of power constrains the research process, they misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, they were guilty of advocating “your father's paradigm”(clearly this was not intended as a compliment). One critic with postmodernist leanings asserted that educational research should move “toward a Nietzschean sort of ‘unnatural science’ that leads to greater health by fostering ways of knowing that escape normativity”—a suggestion that evokes the reaction discussed in Section 1.3 above, namely, one of incomprehension on the part of most researchers and those philosophers of education who work within a different tradition where a “way of knowing”, in order to be a “way”, must inevitably be normative.

The final complexity in the debates over the nature of educational research is that there are some respected members of the philosophy of education community who claim, along with Carr, that “the forms of human association characteristic of educational engagement are not really apt for scientific or empirical study at all” (Carr, 2003, 54-5). His reasoning is that educational processes cannot be studied empirically because they are processes of “normative initiation”—a position that as it stands begs the question by not making clear why such processes cannot be studied empirically.

The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple. In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education (as Dewey pointed out), and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches, or the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum (whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or in a system), a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like. But there are deeper issues, ones concerning the validity of the justifications that have been given for including particular subjects or topics in the offerings of formal educational institutions. (Why is evolution included, or excluded, as a topic within the standard high school subject Biology? Why is Driver Education part of the high school curriculum, and methods of birth control usually not—even though sex has an impact on the life of teenagers that at least is comparable to the impact of car-driving? Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? Does the justification for not including the Holocaust or the phenomenon of wartime atrocities in the curriculum in some countries stand up to critical scrutiny?)

The different justifications for particular items of curriculum content that have been put forward by philosophers and others since Plato's brilliant pioneering efforts all draw upon, explicitly or implicitly, the positions that the respective theorists hold about at least three sets of issues. First, what are the aims and/or functions of education (aims and functions are not necessarily the same), or alternatively, what constitutes the good life and human flourishing. These two formulations are related, for presumably our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life. Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to act rationally and/or autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. How this is to be done, of course, is not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the matter. One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing a conception of the good life, and then for pursuing it; and because logical analysis shows—he argued—that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms. Luckily for Hirst, the typical British high school day was made up of seven instructional periods. (Hirst, 1965; for a critique see Phillips, 1987, ch.11.)

Second, is it justifiable to treat the curriculum of an educational institution as vehicle for furthering the socio-political interests and goals of a ruler or ruling class; and relatedly, is it justifiable to design the curriculum so that it serves as a medium of control or of social engineering? In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect, and serve, the interests of the ruling class. Michael Apple is typical:

… the knowledge that now gets into schools is already a choice from a much larger universe of possible social knowledge and principles. It is a form of cultural capital that comes from somewhere, that often reflects the perspectives and beliefs of powerful segments of our social collectivity. In its very production and dissemination as a public and economic commodity—as books, films, materials, and so forth—it is repeatedly filtered through ideological and economic commitments. Social and economic values, hence, are already embedded in the design of the institutions we work in, in the ‘formal corpus of school knowledge’ we preserve in our curricula….(Apple, 1990, 8-9)

Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable? Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able—a curriculum, it should be noted, that in past cases nearly always was based on the needs or interests of those students who were academically inclined or were destined for elite social roles. Mortimer Adler and others in the late twentieth century (who arguably were following Plato's lead in the Republic ), sometimes used the aphorism “the best education for the best is the best education for all”.

The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all! Medically, this probably is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit. (For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings, 2007.) It is interesting to compare the modern “one curriculum track for all” position with Plato's system outlined in the Republic , according to which all students—and importantly this included girls—set out on the same course of study. Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually be able to contemplate the metaphysical realm of the “forms”, thanks to their advanced training in mathematics and philosophy. Having seen the form of the Good, they would be eligible after a period of practical experience to become members of the ruling class of Guardians.

Plato's educational scheme was guided, presumably, by the understanding he thought he had achieved of the transcendental realm of fixed “forms”. John Dewey, ever a strong critic of positions that were not naturalistic, or that incorporated a priori premises, commented as follows:

Plato's starting point is that the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not know its end, we shall be at the mercy of accident and caprice…. And only those who have rightly trained minds will be able to recognize the end, and ordering principle of things. (Dewey, 1916, 102-3)

Furthermore, as Dewey again put it, Plato “had no perception of the uniqueness of individuals…. they fall by nature into classes”, which masks the “infinite diversity of active tendencies” which individuals harbor (104). In addition, Plato tended to talk of learning using the passive language of seeing, which has shaped our discourse down to the present (witness “Now I see it!” when a difficult point has become clear).

In contrast, for Dewey each individual was an organism situated in a biological and social environment in which problems were constantly emerging, forcing the individual to reflect and act, and learn. Dewey, following William James, held that knowledge arises from reflection upon our actions; and the worth of a putative item of knowledge is directly correlated with the problem-solving success of the actions performed under its guidance. Thus Dewey, sharply disagreeing with Plato, regarded knowing as an active rather than a passive affair—a strong theme in his writings is his opposition to what is sometimes called “the spectator theory of knowledge”. All this is made clear enough in a passage containing only a thinly-veiled allusion to Plato's famous analogy of the prisoners in the cave whose eyes are turned to the light by education:

In schools, those under instruction are too customarily looked upon as acquiring knowledge as theoretical spectators, minds which appropriate knowledge by direct energy of intellect. The very word pupil has almost come to mean one who is engaged not in having fruitful experiences but in absorbing knowledge directly. Something which is called mind or consciousness is severed from the physical organs of activity. (164)

This passage also illuminates a passage that many have found puzzling: “philosophy is the theory of education” (387). For in the sentences above it is easy to see the tight link between Dewey's epistemology and his views on education—his anti-spectator epistemology morphs directly into advocacy for anti-spectator learning by students in school—students learn by being active inquirers. Over the past few decades this view of learning has inspired a major tradition of research by educational psychologists, and related theory-development (the “situated cognition” framework); and these bodies of work have in turn led to innovative efforts in curriculum development. (For a discussion of these, see Phillips, 2003.)

The final important difference with Plato is that, for Dewey, each student is an individual who blazes his or her unique trail of growth; the teacher has the task of guiding and facilitating this growth, without imposing a fixed end upon the process. Dewey sometimes uses the term “curriculum” to mean “the funded wisdom of the human race”, the point being that over the course of human history an enormous stock of knowledge and skills has accumulated and the teacher has the task of helping the student to make contact with this repertoire—but helping by facilitating rather than by imposing. (All this, of course, has been the subject of intense discussion among philosophers of education: Does growth imply a direction? Is growth always good—can't a plant end up misshapen, and can't a child develop to become bad? Is Dewey some type of perfectionist? Is his philosophy too vague to offer worthwhile educational guidance? Isn't it possible for a “Deweyan” student to end up without enough relevant knowledge and skills to be able to make a living in the modern world?)

Dewey's work was of central importance for the American progressive education movement in its formative years, although there was a fair degree of misunderstanding of his ideas as progressives interpreted his often extremely dense prose to be saying what they personally happened to believe. Nevertheless, Dewey became the “poster child” or the “house philosopher” of progressive education, and if he didn't make it onto many actual posters he certainly made it onto a postage stamp.

His popularity, however, sharply declined after the Soviets launched Sputnik, for Dewey and progressive education were blamed for the USA losing the race into space (illustrating the point about scapegoating made at the start of this essay). But he did not remain in disgrace for long; and for some time has been the focus of renewed interest—although it is still noticeable that commentators interpret Dewey to be holding views that mirror their own positions or interests. And interestingly, there now is slightly more interest in Dewey on the part of philosophers of education in the UK than there was in earlier years, and there is growing interest by philosophers from the Continent (see, for example, Biesta and Burbules, 2003).

To be a poster child for progressivism, however, is not to be the parent. Rather than to Dewey, that honor must go to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and to his educational novel written in soaring prose, Emile (1762). Starting with the premise that “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil” (Rousseau, 1955, 5), Rousseau held that contemporary man has been misshapen by his education; the “crushing force” of social conventions has stifled the “Nature within him”. The remedy adopted in the novel is for the young Emile to be taken to his family estate in the country where, away from the corrupting influence of society, and under the watchful eye of his tutor, “everything should … be brought into harmony with these natural tendencies”. (This idea of education according to nature, it will be recalled, was the object of Hardie's analytic attention almost two centuries later.)

Out in the countryside, rather than having a set curriculum that he is forced to follow, Emile learns when some natural stimulus or innate interest motivates him—and under these conditions learning comes easily. He is allowed to suffer the natural consequences of his actions (if he breaks a window, he gets cold; if he takes the gardener's property, the gardener will no longer do him favors), and experiences such as these lead to the development of his moral system. Although Rousseau never intended these educational details to be taken literally as a blueprint (he saw himself as developing and illustrating the basic principles), over the ages there have been attempts to implement them, one being the famous British “free school”, A.S. Neill's Summerhill. (It is worth noting that Neill claimed not to have read Rousseau; but he was working in a milieu in which Rousseau's ideas were well-known—intellectual influence can follow a less than direct path.) Furthermore, over the ages these principles also have proven to be fertile soil for philosophers of education to till.

Even more fertile ground for comment, in recent years, has been Rousseau's proposal for the education of girls, developed in a section of the novel (Book V) that bears the name of the young woman who is destined to be Emile's soul-mate, Sophy. The puzzle has been why Rousseau—who had been so far-sighted in his discussion of Emile's education—was so hide-bound if not retrograde in his thinking about her education. One short quotation is sufficient to illustrate the problem: “If woman is made to please and to be in subjection to man, she ought to make herself pleasing in his eyes and not provoke him …her strength is in her charms” (324).

The educational principles developed by Rousseau and Dewey, and numerous educational theorists and philosophers in the interregnum, are alive and well in the twenty-first century. Of particular contemporary interest is the evolution that has occurred of the progressive idea that each student is an active learner who is pursuing his or her own individual educational path. By incorporating elements of the classical empiricist epistemology of John Locke, this progressive principle has become transformed into the extremely popular position known as constructivism, according to which each student in a classroom constructs his or her own individual body of understandings even when all in the group are given what appears to be the same stimulus or educational experience. (A consequence of this is that a classroom of thirty students will have thirty individually-constructed, and possibly different, bodies of “knowledge”, in addition to that of the teacher!) There is also a solipsistic element here, for constructivists also believe that none of us—teachers included—can directly access the bodies of understandings of anyone else; each of us is imprisoned in a world of our own making. It is an understatement to say that this poses great difficulties for the teacher. The education journals of the past two decades contain many thousands of references to discussions of this position, which elsewhere I claimed has become a type of educational “secular religion”; for reasons that are hard to discern it is particularly influential in mathematics and science education. (For a discussion of the underlying philosophical ideas in constructivism, and for an account of some of its varieties, see the essays in Phillips, ed., 2000.)

As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice the whole field of philosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Different countries around the world—France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, to mention only a few—have their own intellectual traditions, and their own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education into the academic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in the present essay. But even in the Anglo-American world, there is such a diversity of approaches to the discipline that any author attempting to produce a synoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or her areas of competence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.

Fortunately, in the last twenty years or so resources have become available that significantly alleviate these problems. There has been a flood of encyclopedia entries, commenting on the field as a whole or on many specific topics not well-covered in the present essay (see, as a sample, Burbules, 1994; Chambliss, 1996; Phillips, 1985; Siegel, 2007; Smeyers, 1994); two large volumes—a “Guide” (Blake, Smeyers, Smith and Standish, 2003) and a “Companion” (Curren, 2003)—have been produced by Blackwell in their well-known philosophy series; and the same publisher recently released an anthology, with 60 papers considered to be important in the field, and which also are representative of the range of work that is being done (Curren, 2007). Several encyclopedias of philosophy of education have been published or are in the works (for example, Chambliss, 1996; Siegel, 2008); there is a dictionary of key concepts in the field (Winch and Gingell, 1999), and a good textbook or two (see Noddings, 2007); in addition there are numerous volumes both of reprinted selections and of specially commissioned essays on specific topics, some of which were given short shrift in the present work (for another sampling see A. Rorty, 1998; Smeyers and Marshall, 1995; Stone, 1994); and several international journals appear to be flourishing— Educational Philosophy and Theory , Educational Theory , Journal of Philosophy of Education , Studies in Philosophy and Education , Theory and Research in Education . Thus there is enough material available to keep the interested reader busy, and to provide alternative assessments to the ones presented in this present essay.

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• Archambault, R., (ed.), 1965, Philosophical Analysis and Education , London: Routledge.
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• Blake, N., Smeyers, P., Smith, R., and Standish, P., (eds.), 2003, The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Blackwell.
• Brighouse, H., 2000, Social Justice and School Choice , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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• Carr, D., 2003, Making Sense of Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Theory of Education and Teaching , London: RoutledgeFalmer.
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• Hardie, C., 1962, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory , New York: Teachers College Bureau of Publications.
• Hirst, P., 1965, “Liberal Education and the Nature of Knowledge”, in Philosophical Analysis and Education , R. Archambault, (ed.), London: Routledge, pp. 113-138.
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• Phillips, D.C., 1985, “Philosophy of Education”, in International Encyclopedia of Education, T. Husen and N. Postletwaite, (eds.), pp.3859-3877.
• –––, 1987, Philosophy, Science, and Social Inquiry , Oxford: Pergamon.
• –––, (ed.), 2000, Constructivism in Education: Opinions and Second Opinions on Controversial Issues , (Series: 99 th . Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• –––, 2003, “Theories of Teaching and Learning”, in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education , R. Curren, (ed.), Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 232-245.
• –––, 2008, “Empirical Educational Research: Charting Philosophical Disagreements in an Undisciplined Field”, in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education , H. Siegel (ed.), Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press.
• Reich, R., 2002, Bridging Liberalism and Multiculturalism in American Education , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Rorty, A., (ed.), 1998, Philosophers on Education: New Historical Perspectives , New York: Routledge.
• Rousseau, J-J., 1955, Emile , B. Foxley, (tr.), London: Dent/Everyman.
• Scheffler, I., 1960, The Language of Education , Illinois: Thomas.
• Siegel, H., 1988, Educating Reason: rationality, Critical Thinking, and Education , New York: Routledge.
• –––, 2007, “Philosophy of Education”, in Britannica Online Encyclopedia , [ Available online ].
• –––, (ed.), 2008, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Oxford University Press, in press.
• Smeyers, P., 1994, “Philosophy of Education: Western European Perspectives”, in The International Encyclopedia of Education , (Volume 8), T. Husen and N. Postlethwaite, (eds.), Oxford: Pergamon, 2 nd . Edition, pp. 4456-61.
• Smeyers, P., and Marshall, J., (eds.), 1995, Philosophy and Education: Accepting Wittgenstein's Challenge , Dordrecht: Kluwer.
• Smith, B., and Ennis, R., (eds.), 1961, Language and Concepts in Education , Chicago: Rand McNally.
• Snook, I., 1972, Indoctrination and Education , London: Routledge.
• Stokes, D., 1997, Pasteur's Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation , Washington, DC: Brookings.
• Stone, L., (ed.), 1994, The Education Feminism Reader , New York: Routledge.
• Ulich, R., 1954, Three Thousand Years of Educational Wisdom , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Revised Ed.
• Winch, C., and Gingell, J., 1999, Key Concepts in the Philosophy of Education , London: Routledge.
• PES (Philosophy of Education Society, North America)
• PESA (Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia)
• PESGB (Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain)
• INPE (International Network of Philosophers of Education)
• UNESCO/International Bureau of Education: Thinkers on Education

autonomy: personal | -->Dewey, John --> | feminist (interventions): ethics | feminist (interventions): liberal feminism | feminist (interventions): political philosophy | -->feminist (topics): perspectives on autonomy --> | feminist (topics): perspectives on disability | Foucault, Michel | Gadamer, Hans-Georg | liberalism | Locke, John | -->Lyotard, Jean François --> | -->ordinary language --> | Plato | postmodernism | Rawls, John | rights: of children | -->Rousseau, Jean Jacques -->

Philosophy Of Education

Definition of philosophy of education.

The Philosophy of Education is a big thought bubble about how and why we learn. It’s filled with questions and deep thinking about the essence of education. To make it simpler, imagine two things:

Firstly, it’s about looking at education with a magnifying glass and asking, ‘What’s the point of school?’. Secondly, think of it as a toolbox, where the tools are different ways to understand and improve how people teach and learn.

Philosophy of Education isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to these questions. It’s more like a conversation that helps us explore different angles of education, so we can all come up with our own ways to make it better.

So, this field is really about thinking super smart and being critical about what we want from education. If you’re curious about what makes a good teacher or why certain subjects are taught, you’re already dipping your toes into the world of Philosophy of Education!

Types of Philosophy of Education

There are many viewpoints on what Education should be like. Here are some key ones:

• Perennialism: This is the belief that some ideas are timeless. These educators often focus on teaching concepts and books that have stood the test of time, much like a classic song that never gets old.
• Essentialism: Essentialists are those who think that there are certain basic skills and knowledge everyone must learn. They prioritize particular subjects that they think are vital for students, like a “must-have” tools in a toolbox.
• Progressivism : This philosophy is all about learning by doing. Think of it as learning to swim by actually jumping in the water. These educators focus on hands-on experiences and making lessons relevant to real-life situations.
• Reconstructionism: This type of philosophy looks at education as a way to improve society. It’s about teaching students not just to learn for themselves, but to make the world a better place.
• Existentialism : Existentialist teachers help students explore themselves and their place in the universe. It’s a bit like self-reflection, pondering life’s big questions, and understanding one’s own identity.

Examples of Philosophy of Education

• A teacher who follows Perennialism may assign books by ancient thinkers like Plato because these works contain wisdom that remains relevant across the ages. They are examples of the topic because they emphasize learning from ideas that endure over time.
• An Essentialist classroom will focus on core subjects like reading, writing, and arithmetic, as these are viewed as essential building blocks of a person’s education. They serve as examples because they underscore the belief in imparting fundamental skills.
• Schools that value Progressivism might have students working on science experiments or group projects to apply what they’ve learned. This is an example because it demonstrates the importance placed on active learning and real-world application.
• Reconstructionist educators might encourage their students to participate in local cleanups to understand environmental issues, showcasing the philosophy’s focus on using education to drive social change.
• If a teacher believes in Existentialism , they may have deep discussions about life’s purposes, helping students to discover their own beliefs and identity, reflecting the existentialist idea of personal exploration.

Why is Philosophy of Education Important?

Understanding Philosophy of Education is like having a treasure map for learning. It guides us through the jungle of choices in teaching methods, subject matter, and educational goals. It also gives educators a mirror to see their teaching philosophies more clearly, helping them to improve their approach and connect better with their students.

Origin of Philosophy of Education

People have been sharing ideas about teaching and learning since ancient times. Famous thinkers from Greece like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle posed big questions about knowledge and learning that still influence us today. Over centuries, people have continued to add their own thoughts, making the field of Philosophy of Education really rich and varied.

Controversies in Philosophy of Education

Big questions often lead to big debates. In the Philosophy of Education, people argue about whether schools should focus more on practical skills or personal growth. There’s also disagreement about whether tests are the best way to check if students are learning, and how much technology should be used in classrooms.

The Worldwide View of Philosophy of Education

Around the world, education looks very different. Some countries emphasize things like respect for teachers or learning by heart, while others might encourage you to think outside the box. Looking at how various cultures approach schooling can teach us a lot about their values and ideas.

Personal Philosophy of Education

Just like fingerprints, everyone’s Philosophy of Education is unique. It’s based on your personal beliefs and experiences with learning. Teachers and students alike can have their own philosophy that might change over time as they learn and grow.

Putting it All Together

By digging into the Philosophy of Education, we can make smarter choices in how we teach and learn. This field isn’t just about stuffing facts into our heads; it’s about finding the ‘why’ and ‘how’ behind education, which helps us see the big picture and mold better futures for ourselves and others.

Related Topics

• Critical Thinking : This is about learning to think clearly and rationally, understanding the connection between ideas. It relates to Philosophy of Education because it’s a skill that’s valued across many educational philosophies.
• Educational Psychology: This field looks at how people learn and retain new information. It’s related because it helps identify effective teaching methods that different educational philosophies might use.
• Sociology of Education: This is the study of how public institutions and individual experiences affect education and its outcomes. It’s relevant because it looks at education within society, which is a major concern of some educational philosophies.
• Curriculum Development: This involves planning what students will be taught and how. It ties into Philosophy of Education because the curriculum is often based on a school or teacher’s educational philosophy.

The Philosophy of Education is a deep and fascinating area that gives us the tools to question and make sense of the world of learning. From the different types of philosophies like Perennialism and Existentialism to the personal beliefs of teachers and students, it’s a field that affects everyone in education. Understanding how these ideas fit together helps us all to become more thoughtful learners and educators. By exploring related topics like critical thinking and educational psychology, we can further enrich our understanding and approach to education, making sure it’s not just about knowing stuff, but about understanding it deeply and finding ways to apply it.

EDUCATIONAL PROGRESSIVISM AND THE 21ST CENTURY EXPLORING DEWEY'S RELEVANCE

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Brian Holmes was instrumental in the development of a number of national and international comparative education societies and had wide interests in international and comparative education and alternative philosophies of education. Holmes’s main contribution to the theory of comparative education was his problem-solving approach, set out in two books, Problems in Education published in 1965 and Comparative Education: Some Considerations of Method published in 1981. The foundation of Holmes’s work was critical dualism. Holmes regarded the best method for comparative education to be the problem-solving method. By confounding individual norms with national norms, Holmes created a difficulty in his method, a difficulty that repeated reference to mental states was needed to overcome. Holmes emphasised the separation of individual norms and societal institutions, which is an important first step towards understanding the links between those two spheres. With a selective reading of his work, Holmes provides a framework that facilitates the study of policy issues in a comparative context.

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Critical thinking

Indoctrination, the individual and society, moral education.

• Teaching, learning, and curriculum
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• Table Of Contents

Many educators and educational scholars have championed the educational aim of critical thinking. It is not obvious what critical thinking is, and philosophers of education accordingly have developed accounts of critical thinking that attempt to state what it is and why it is valuable—i.e., why educational systems should aim to cultivate it in students. These accounts generally (though not universally) agree that critical thinkers share at least the following two characteristics: (1) they are able to reason well—i.e., to construct and evaluate various reasons that have been or can be offered for or against candidate beliefs, judgments, and actions; and (2) they are disposed or inclined to be guided by reasons so evaluated—i.e., actually to believe, judge, and act in accordance with the results of such reasoned evaluations. Beyond this level of agreement lie a range of contentious issues.

One cluster of issues is epistemological in nature. What is it to reason well? What makes a reason, in this sense, good or bad? More generally, what epistemological assumptions underlie (or should underlie) the notion of critical thinking? Does critical thinking presuppose conceptions of truth , knowledge, or justification that are objective and “absolute,” or is it compatible with more “relativistic” accounts emphasizing culture , race, class , gender, or conceptual scheme?

These questions have given rise to other, more specific and hotly contested issues. Is critical thinking relevantly “neutral” with respect to the groups who use it, or is it in fact politically biased , unduly favouring a type of thinking once valued by white European males—the philosophers of the Enlightenment and later eras—while undervaluing or demeaning types of thinking sometimes associated with other groups, such as women, nonwhites, and non-Westerners—i.e., thinking that is collaborative rather than individual, cooperative rather than confrontational, intuitive or emotional rather than linear and impersonal? Do standard accounts of critical thinking in these ways favour and help to perpetuate the beliefs, values, and practices of dominant groups in society and devalue those of marginalized or oppressed groups? Is reason itself, as some feminist and postmodern philosophers have claimed, a form of hegemony ?

Other issues concern whether the skills, abilities, and dispositions that are constitutive of critical thinking are general or subject-specific. In addition, the dispositions of the critical thinker noted above suggest that the ideal of critical thinking can be extended beyond the bounds of the epistemic to the area of moral character, leading to questions regarding the nature of such character and the best means of instilling it.

A much-debated question is whether and how education differs from indoctrination. Many theorists have assumed that the two are distinct and that indoctrination is undesirable, but others have argued that there is no difference in principle and that indoctrination is not intrinsically bad. Theories of indoctrination generally define it in terms of aim, method, or doctrine. Thus, indoctrination is either: (1) any form of teaching aimed at getting students to adopt beliefs independent of the evidential support those beliefs may have (or lack); (2) any form of teaching based on methods that instill beliefs in students in such a way that they are unwilling or unable to question or evaluate those beliefs independently; or (3) any form of teaching that causes students to embrace a specific set of beliefs—e.g., a certain political ideology or a religious doctrine—without regard for its evidential status. These ways of characterizing indoctrination emphasize its alleged contrast with critical thinking: the critical thinker (according to standard accounts) strives to base his beliefs, judgments, and actions on the competent assessment of relevant reasons and evidence, which is something the victim of indoctrination tends not to do. But this apparent contrast depends upon the alleged avoidability of indoctrination, which itself is a philosophically contested issue.

A number of interrelated problems and issues fall under this heading. What is the place of schools in a just or democratic society? Should they serve the needs of society by preparing students to fill specific social needs or roles, or should they rather strive to maximize the potential—or serve the interests—of each student? When these goals conflict, as they appear inevitably to do, which set of interests—those of society or those of individuals—should take precedence ? Should educational institutions strive to treat all students equally? If so, should they seek equality of opportunity or equality of outcome? Should individual autonomy be valued more highly than the character of society? More generally, should educational practice favour a more-liberal view of the relation between the individual and society, according to which the independence of the individual is of fundamental importance, or a more-communitarian view that emphasizes the individual’s far-reaching dependence on the society in which she lives? These questions are basically moral and political in nature, though they have epistemological analogues , as noted above with respect to critical thinking.

Another set of problems and issues has to do with the proper educational approach to morality . Should education strive to instill particular moral beliefs and values in students? Or should it aim rather to enhance students’ ability to think through moral issues for themselves? If the latter, how should educators distinguish between good and bad ways to think about moral issues? Should moral education focus on students’ character—rather than on either the inculcation of particular beliefs and values or the development of the ability to think well about moral matters—and endeavour to produce particular traits, such as honesty and sensitivity? Or are all these approaches problematic in that they inevitably involve indoctrination (of an undesirable kind)? A related objection to the approaches mentioned is that moral beliefs and values are in some sense relative to culture or community; therefore, attempts to teach morality at least presuppose an indefensible moral absolutism and may even constitute a kind of moral “imperialism.” These large and complex questions are intimately connected with metaethics and moral epistemology—i.e., the part of moral philosophy concerned with the epistemic status of moral claims and judgments. Moral psychology and developmental psychology are also highly relevant to the resolution of these questions.

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Unraveling the essence: exploring the philosophy of education.

Philosophy of education delves into the fundamental principles and beliefs that underpin the educational process. It serves as a guiding light, shaping education’s goals, methods, and content. As an interdisciplinary field, it draws from philosophy, psychology, sociology, and pedagogy to ponder questions about the nature of knowledge, the purpose of education, and the role of educators. In this discourse, we embark on a journey to unravel the essence of the philosophy of education, exploring its various dimensions and implications.

Understanding the Essence:

At its core, the philosophy of education seeks to address profound inquiries concerning the nature of learning and teaching. It grapples with questions such as: What is the purpose of education? What constitutes knowledge? How do individuals learn? These inquiries serve as the cornerstone for developing educational theories and practices.

Purpose of Education:

One of the central themes in the philosophy of education is the purpose or aims of education. Different philosophical perspectives offer diverse answers to this question. For instance, proponents of essentialism argue for a traditional, content-focused approach aimed at transmitting cultural heritage and essential knowledge to successive generations. In contrast, progressivism advocates for a student-centered approach that emphasizes experiential learning and the development of critical thinking skills.

Epistemology and Learning:

Epistemology, the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of knowledge, holds significant relevance in the philosophy of education. Various theories of learning, such as behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism, are grounded in different epistemological assumptions. Behaviorists view learning as a process of stimulus-response associations, while cognitivists focus on mental processes like memory and problem-solving. Constructivists posit that learners actively construct knowledge through interactions with their environment.

Role of Educators:

The philosophy of education also contemplates the role of educators in facilitating learning. Are they mere disseminators of information, or should they adopt a more facilitative and transformative approach? Philosophers like John Dewey advocate for educators as facilitators who guide students in actively constructing their understanding of the world. Paulo Freire extends this notion, emphasizing the educator’s role in fostering critical consciousness and empowering learners to challenge oppressive structures.

Ethical Dimensions:

Ethical considerations permeate the philosophy of education, influencing decisions about curriculum content, pedagogical methods, and educational policies. Questions about what knowledge is worth teaching, how to address diversity and inclusivity, and the distribution of educational resources all have ethical implications. For instance, the debate over multicultural education raises questions about whose perspectives are privileged in the curriculum and how to promote respect for diverse cultural identities.

Cultural and Societal Context:

The philosophy of education cannot be divorced from its cultural and societal context. Educational philosophies vary across cultures and historical periods, reflecting different values, beliefs, and priorities. For instance, Confucian education emphasizes moral cultivation and filial piety, while Western education tends to prioritize individualism and critical inquiry. Moreover, societal changes, such as advances in technology and globalization, continually shape educational practices and goals.

Critical Reflection and Continuous Improvement:

Philosophy of education encourages critical reflection on existing educational practices and systems. Educators and policymakers are urged to interrogate the underlying assumptions and values that inform their decisions. By engaging in reflective practice, stakeholders can identify areas for improvement and innovation, fostering a culture of continuous learning and development.

Challenges and Controversies:

Despite its profound insights, the philosophy of education grapples with various challenges and controversies. Debates rage over issues such as standardized testing, privatization of education, and the commercialization of knowledge. Moreover, competing philosophical perspectives often lead to tensions between different educational stakeholders, complicating efforts to enact meaningful reforms.

Standardized testing, for instance, is a contentious topic that pits proponents of accountability and measurement against those who advocate for more holistic and authentic forms of assessment. Critics argue that standardized tests prioritize rote memorization over critical thinking and fail to capture the complexities of student learning. Furthermore, they argue that such tests perpetuate inequities by disadvantaging marginalized students who may not have access to the resources needed to excel on these exams.

Privatization of education is another area of concern within the philosophy of education. The rise of charter schools, voucher programs, and for-profit educational institutions has sparked debates about the role of the state in providing equitable and high-quality education. Proponents argue that privatization fosters competition and innovation, leading to improved outcomes for students. However, critics caution that it can exacerbate existing inequalities by diverting resources away from public schools and catering to the interests of affluent families.

The commercialization of knowledge is also a growing concern in the philosophy of education. With the proliferation of educational technology platforms, publishing companies, and online learning courses, education has become increasingly commodified. This trend raises questions about the ethics of selling educational products and services, as well as the implications for academic freedom and intellectual property rights.

Navigating these challenges requires a nuanced understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of education and a commitment to ethical decision-making. Educators, policymakers, and stakeholders must engage in critical dialogue and reflection to address these issues responsibly.

Future Directions:

As we look to the future, the philosophy of education will continue to evolve in response to emerging societal trends and educational innovations. One promising direction is the integration of interdisciplinary perspectives into educational practice and research. By drawing on insights from fields such as neuroscience, sociology, and environmental studies, educators can develop more holistic and responsive approaches to teaching and learning.

Furthermore, there is a growing recognition of the importance of global citizenship education in an increasingly interconnected world. Educators are exploring ways to foster students’ understanding of global issues, promote intercultural competence, and cultivate a sense of responsibility towards the planet and its inhabitants.

Additionally, there is a renewed emphasis on education for social justice and equity. In light of persistent inequalities based on race, gender, socioeconomic status, and other factors, there is a pressing need to address systemic injustices within educational systems. This requires a commitment to dismantling barriers to access and opportunity, fostering inclusive learning environments, and empowering marginalized voices.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the philosophy of education remains a vibrant and dynamic field that continues to shape educational theory, policy, and practice. By grappling with questions about the purpose of education, the nature of learning, and the role of educators, it offers valuable insights into how to create more equitable, meaningful, and transformative educational experiences for all learners. As we confront the challenges of the 21st century, a deep understanding of the philosophical foundations of education will be essential for navigating uncertain terrain and realizing the full potential of education to enrich lives and empower communities.

Also Read: Crafting Creativity: The Power and Promise of Maker Education

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Article contents

Problem solving.

• Richard E. Mayer Richard E. Mayer University of California, Santa Barbara
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.860
• Published online: 30 October 2019

Problem solving refers to cognitive processing directed at achieving a goal when the problem solver does not initially know a solution method. A problem exists when someone has a goal but does not know how to achieve it. Problems can be classified as routine or non-routine, and as well-defined or ill-defined. The major cognitive processes in problem solving are representing, planning, executing, and monitoring. The major kinds of knowledge required for problem solving are facts, concepts, procedures, strategies, and beliefs. The theoretical approaches that have developed over the history of research on problem are associationism, Gestalt, and information processing. Each of these approaches involves fundamental issues in problem solving such as the nature of transfer, insight, and goal-directed heuristics, respectively. Some current research topics in problem solving include decision making, intelligence and creativity, teaching of thinking skills, expert problem solving, analogical reasoning, mathematical and scientific thinking, everyday thinking, and the cognitive neuroscience of problem solving. Common theme concerns the domain specificity of problem solving and a focus on problem solving in authentic contexts.

• problem solving
• decision making
• intelligence
• expert problem solving
• analogical reasoning
• mathematical thinking
• scientific thinking
• everyday thinking

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date: 28 June 2024

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2nd Edition

Philosophy of Education in Action An Inquiry-Based Approach

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Philosophy of Education in Action: An Inquiry-Based Approach (Second Edition) is an innovative introductory text that invites readers to explore philosophy of education through the lens of their own observations and experiences. Using the Wonder Model of Inquiry , readers investigate the purposes of education, how schools are designed to fulfill those purposes, and the influence of philosophy on educational practices. Grounded in authentic classroom vignettes and supported by examples from actual schools and educational programs, readers think critically and creatively about philosophical issues. Probing questions analyze the curriculum, examine pedagogy, conceptualize the role of the teacher and student in the learning process, and explore the role of school organization and design. Readers are guided to reflect upon their own practices and articulate their own philosophical beliefs. Readers also imagine and design a hypothetical school using project-based methods to interpret, synthesize, and evaluate different educational philosophies. The Continuum of Educational Philosophy locates practices in relation to philosophical perspectives. The Second Edition includes updated sources and examples of schools and programs that represent different philosophical perspectives. In addition to applying the "3Cs" criteria of evaluation, two new chapters highlight voices that respond to and challenge different educational philosophies. The final chapter adds guidance on how to construct and compose a personal philosophy of education statement.

Table of Contents

David W. Nicholson is Professor of Education at Stevenson University in Maryland, USA, where he teaches courses in philosophy of education and methods of teaching English/Language Arts and Social Studies.

Critics' Reviews

Philosophy of Education in Action: An Inquiry-Based Approach is a practical and holistic introductory guide to creating, articulating, and implementing your educational philosophy. A philosophy of education statement represents the teacher candidate’s first attempt to put their fundamental thoughts and attitudes into words that will form the foundation for future classroom decisions. Dr. Nicholson's text allows the reader to explore their philosophical leanings through observation and experience. Authentic, real-world examples encourage readers to reflect on practice and articulate their philosophical beliefs. My students have benefited from Dr. Nicholson's practical yet skilled approach to crafting their first educational philosophy. Thomas Brewster, Ed.D. Dean of the School of Education Bluefield College, Virginia This innovative book introduces philosophy of education by inviting readers to wonder "what if…" about the purpose of education, to explore related historical, philosophical, and pedagogical ideas, and evaluate multiple educational scenarios from the lens of one’s own perspective and experience. Nicholson’s approach fosters reflection that guides readers to examine and refine their views about teaching and learning and align those with classroom practices and the design of schools. The second edition contributes "other voices" for further critical engagement. This is a much-needed text in the field of teacher education. Justine M. Kane, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Education Aquinas College 　 Philosophy of Education in Action: An Inquiry-Based Approach (2nd edition) truly personalizes philosophy of education as readers analyze the influence and impact of philosophy on educational practices – at any level. This book engages teacher candidates, experienced teachers, school and district-based leaders, community members, and others in exploring philosophy of education through their educational experiences. Considering, understanding, and acting upon the connections between an educator’s philosophy of education and the philosophic basis of what occurs in schooling is most important. This book makes philosophy of education genuinely accessible and connected to all aspects of the teaching and learning process. Francis (Skip) Fennell, Ph.D.; D.H.L. L. Stanley Bowlsbey Professor of Education and Graduate and Professional Studies Emeritus McDaniel College, Westminster, MD Past-President, National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Past-President, Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators (AMTE) Past-President, Research Council on Mathematics Learning (RCML) Past-Chair, U.S. National Commission on Mathematics Instruction 　 Thank you for Philosophy of Education in Action , 2 nd edition. I just finished reading your absolutely wonderful text and I KNOW that this book will brilliantly fit the needs of my students in a graduate philosophy course that I teach, Educational Practices. I have been teaching such a course for many years. Through the years, the needs of my students have evolved. Currently, my students are in need of what this book delivers: a philosophical-based text grounded in solid scholarship with practical experience and thought-provoking questions. Thanks again for this wonderful read and sparking such creative thought. Steven W. Mackie, PhD Professor of Education John K. Martin Endowed Chair Northwestern Oklahoma State University 　

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Challenges Facing the Philosophy of Education in the Twenty-First Century

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• First Online: 31 May 2022

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• Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast 5  

Part of the book series: Maarif Global Education Series ((MGES))

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New trends in the philosophy of education in the twenty-first century have sprung from their background in the twentieth century. This essay introduces the twentieth-century philosophies within Dewey’s early pragmatism and other “ism” movements as well as the educational revolution of analytic philosophy. The twenty-first century has introduced reactions (i.e., new pragmatism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, and constructivism), and each of these trends is shown to have provided a new horizon in philosophical thought on education. However, the new trends are also expected to have their own weaknesses. For instance, Rorty is too quick to reject scientific objectivity, Derrida undermines the roles of agents in favor of taking deconstruction as an event, post-modernists are too quick to reject generality in modern thought, and constructivists ignore the power of reality. Thus, educational thought could learn: from new pragmatism to resist naïve scientism but it should be alert not to ignore the real power of scientific thought; from post-structuralism to put educational structures under scrutiny in terms of educational justice but it should take the role of agents more seriously into account in moderating the power of structures; from post-modernism to be alert to local requirements for education but give similar weight to generality too; and finally from constructivism to embrace creativity in the classroom without replacing the discovery dimension of truth with it altogether.

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Analytical Philosophy of Education: A Critique from Marxist Lens

Introduction: Section 2 – Philosophy of Education: Schools of Thought

Against the spell of modern knowledge: education as multiplicity or the need for focused arbitrariness.

• Philosophy of education
• New pragmatism
• Post-structuralism
• Post-modernism

Constructivism

• Analytic philosophy

The philosophy of education faced challenges in the twentieth century that had derived from the challenges general philosophical thought had faced. The following sections introduce the first three main trends in the philosophy of education in the twentieth century (i.e., early pragmatism, “ism” movements, and analytic philosophy of education) along with the challenges these trends faced. Next, the new horizons for the twenty-first century are explained under the titles of new pragmatism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, and constructivism. In the meantime, new conceptions of knowledge and education along with the weaknesses associated with them are introduced and discussed.

Main Trends in the Twentieth Century

This section introduces the three main trends in the philosophy of education: early pragmatism, “ism” movements, and the analytic philosophy of education revolution.

Early Pragmatism

The philosophical view on education has occurred under different names such as philosophy of faith and philosophy of duty in different places around the world (Burbules, 2000 ). However, the philosophy of education arose as a particular discipline in 1935 with the formation of the John Dewey Society (Kaminsky, 1985 ). Thus, John Dewey can be claimed to be the father of the philosophy of education. This is why Dewey’s early pragmatism was the first source of this discipline.

According to Dewey’s pragmatism, which was inspired by Hegel and Darwin, dichotomies such as individual vs. society, mind vs. body, and theory vs. practice should be removed and ideas should be evaluated in terms of their practical consequences during the process of adjustment. Dewey held that the aim of education should be connected to the problematic situation in which students exist. As the aim of education, growth indicates that pupils need to have their end results in view in terms of the problems that should be solved. In this endeavor, methods of problem solving are much more important than absorbing cultural content for the sake of subject matters. This endeavor also needs to be conducted democratically, namely by providing all students with the opportunity to participate in the process of problem solving.

Even though Dewey attempted to eliminate the dichotomies in philosophical as well as educational thought, his emphasis on method of thinking in contrast to the cultural content of thoughts became the Achilles’ heel of his philosophy of education. Inspired by the scientific method, Dewey’s ( 1933 ) book How We Think suggested the best way to think in education to be the experimental method; Dewey formulated this as the method of problem solving being applicable to all realms of education. As the next section will show, post-modern thinkers have undermined the supremacy of the scientific method in thought as well as education. In particular, Richard Rorty ( 1991 ), a new pragmatist who once temporarily described himself as post-modern, attacked Dewey’s view on the supremacy of the scientific method.

Another challenge to Dewey’s reliance on science came from the new pragmatist Willard Quine ( 1981 ). He held an even stronger holistic view on knowledge than Dewey’s. As explained below, Quine’s holistic view undermined the supremacy of evidence on theory; instead holding a two-way road in which evidence has as much power to restrain or reject theory as theory does to restrain or reject evidence.

The “Ism” Movements

New movements appeared during the 1950s and 1960s. These movements are usually referred to as “isms” based on various philosophical schools being taken as a foundation in order to provide educational implications for dealing with educational problems. Thus, educational philosophies were introduced under titles such as idealism, realism, existentialism, and more. Based on these schools’ philosophical assumptions, certain aims, subject matters, and methods were suggested for education. For example, Harry Broudy is one important figure who used realism as the basis for inferring educational implications. He referred to the derivative method as the main method for drawing such implications (Broudy, 1969 , p. 118). William Frankena ( 1966 ) also suggested that Aristotle’s practical syllogism could be used for analyzing educational affairs in terms of their philosophical underpinnings. According to him, one can start the analysis regressively from educational methods, subject matters, and aims toward their underlying philosophical assumptions. In this way, how educational questions are answered is made clear by drawing philosophical implications (Bagheri Noaparast, 2016 ).

Taking philosophical schools as the basis for inferring implications also resulted in some difficulties being encountered in dealing with educational issues. The strong version of this inferential view providing a merely speculative attempt at dealing with educational problems undermined education’s empirical aspect. This weakness was the main problem for the “ism” movements. For instance, Sidney Hook ( 1969 ) attacked this view, accusing it of saying irrelevant things about education. He claimed that nobody would be able to infer new knowledge about learning from the epistemologies of the philosophical schools.

As mentioned above, the analytic philosophy of education was another source of the attack on the “ism” movements. According to the analytic view, the general task of philosophy, in particular the philosophy of education, was not to take the position of science, especially not the science of education.

The Revolution of the Analytic Philosophy of Education

The 1970s witnessed the climax of a so-called revolution in the philosophy of education brought about by the analytic philosophers of education. The analytic philosophy of education relied upon a general revolution in philosophy that, according to Gilbert Ryle ( 1956 ), had been in process since the beginning of the twentieth century. The transformation of analytic philosophy was called the second revolution in philosophy, the first being the one that had advanced with the rise of modern philosophy, particularly by Descartes.

Analytic philosophers of education take the philosophical inquiry as a second-order inquiry dealing with the language of education rather than educational activities per se. Thus, this trend in the philosophy of education looked to clarify educational concepts in order to help educationists understand and use educational terms properly and thereby avoid pitfalls in educational endeavors. Given the misuse of concepts such as teaching, punishment, and evaluation in educational settings, the analytic philosophy of education provided educationists with a therapeutic attempt by appealing to the educational damage they can prevent.

As Burbules ( 2000 ) pointed out, the analytic philosophy of education has had three important contributions. Firstly, it provided education with credibility and legitimacy. Credibility was due to the significant position that the analytic method had generally taken in philosophy and been transmitted to the educational sphere. Legitimacy was due to showing the analytic method’s usefulness in education for analyzing educational concepts. As an example, Richard Peters ( 1967 ) analyzed the concept of authority to show the times when a teacher can have a justified/unjustified authority. By differentiating between having authority and being an authority, he showed justified authority to be internal in teachers in terms of their knowledge and character whereas unjustified authority is external to teachers in terms of their title and position.

According to Burbules ( 2000 ), the analytic philosophy of education secondly broke the dominance Dewey and progressivism had in the philosophy of education by introducing a new view to education in terms of concept analysis.

Thirdly, the analytic philosophy of education was successful in defeating the deductive view associated with the “ism” movements. While teachers had been urged to choose their own philosophy among the philosophical schools in these movements, the analytic view stated that what teachers need is not to choose a philosophical school for drawing implications but rather to be able to think philosophically (i.e., analytically) on educational issues.

Two sources of challenges are found in the analytic philosophy of education: one from the inside and the other from the outside of the analytic tradition. The attack from the inside came from the towering figure of analytic philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who in his later period of thought rejected analytic philosophy’s claim of having a particular method of analysis. Unlike the early analytic philosophers who took mathematical logic as the criterion for analysis, Wittgenstein ( 1953 ) gave supremacy to ordinary language and denied logic’s dominance over ordinary language.

The outer source of the challenges to analytic philosophy came from its rival: continental philosophy. This source, which is referred to as a post-analytic philosophy, involves the different trends in Continental philosophy (e.g., post-structural and post-modern philosophy). Even though an attempt was made to have a conversation between the two traditions of European philosophy in 1958 in the Royaumont Colloquium in France, this attempt is mostly considered to have been fruitless. Michael Dummett ( 1993 , p. 26) stated that analytical philosophy and phenomenology are like the two European rivers, the Rhine and the Danube, that “rise quite close to one another and for a time pursue roughly parallel courses, only to diverge in utterly different directions and flow into different seas.” This rivalry led to continental philosophy’s revenge over analytic philosophy at the end of the twentieth century due to the arrogance the latter had shown in relation to the former because of having a noble philosophical method. Thus, the end of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of rival philosophies of education in terms of the continental philosophies’ concerns.

New Horizons in the Twenty-First Century

This section explains the responses to the above-mentioned challenges under the rubrics of new pragmatism, post-structuralism, and post-modernism.

New Pragmatism

The two most important figures in new pragmatism are Ricard Rorty and Willard Quine. Both of them challenged Dewey’s pragmatism in terms of its conception of science. However, while Rorty undermined Dewey’s reliance on scientific method altogether, Quine provided early pragmatism with an elaborated conception of science.

As for Rorty, the main weakness of early pragmatism was its reliance on the scientific method. In his essay titled “Pragmatism Without Method,” Rorty ( 1991 ) held that pragmatism would be more promising if it put aside its obsession with method. Instead of a rigorous scientific method, Rorty suggested that communication and looking for some better ways for conversation is what is needed in philosophy as well as education.

Inspired by Hans Gadamer’s conception of Bildung [self-formation], Rorty looked for a desirable conception of education. Referring to his preferred conception as “edification,” he stated, “Since ‘education’ sounds a bit too flat, and Bildung a bit too foreign, I shall use ‘edification’ to stand for this project of finding new, better, more interesting, more fruitful ways of speaking” (Rorty, 1979 , p. 360). Rory clearly saw a new way to speak about the lost element in education and gave edification two dimensions. One dimension indicates the edification of others and their cultures, which he referred to as hermeneutical activity. In this activity, what is needed is the ability to make the unfamiliar familiar. In other words, an educated person should have the ability to understand unfamiliar cultures instead of being closed minded in their own cultural conceptions.

The second dimension of edification consists of edifying oneself. Rorty referred to this dimension as poetic activity, by which he means the ability to make the familiar unfamiliar. In other words, a person with a university-level education should be able to question the basics of one’s own cultural concepts and criticize them more profoundly. The desirable person at this level of education is called the “liberal ironist.”

As far as the pre-university education is concerned, Rorty ( 1989 ) criticized Dewey’s extreme emphasis on teaching and learning the problem-solving method. According to Rorty, however, learning cultural content is crucial in this period of education so that one might call the education of this period enculturation. Rorty puts himself on the side of E. D. Hirsch in his controversy with Dewey on supporting content vs. method. In a conversation with Olson in response to the question, “Do you share E. D. Hirsch’s desire for increased ‘cultural literacy,’ a sharing of a common vocabulary and a common body of knowledge?” Rorty responded, “Yes, I think he’s perfectly right about that. The effect of the present system is to keep education for kids from relatively well-educated, middle-class families who pick up the common knowledge of society as a whole” (Olson, 1989 , p. 7).

Quine’s ( 1981 ) version of the new pragmatism centers its attention on the negligence of a whole-hearted holism. According to Quine, neither Dewey nor the other founders of early pragmatism (i.e., Charles Peirce and William James) took the holistic characteristic of knowledge seriously. In line with his rejection of the foundational theory of epistemology, Quine believed a tendency of strong coherence to exist in our knowledge and so talked about the theory of coherence of evidence. According to this view, no supremacy exists for the scientific method, rather a strong interaction is found between theory and experimental evidence so that they compromise with each other in order to keep the coherence of knowledge intact.

In looking for the consequences of Quine’s view on education, Walker and Evers ( 1982 ) suggested that any form of compartmentalization of knowledge, such as Paul Hirst’s ( 1974 ) forms of knowledge, is unacceptable, accordingly rejecting the distinction among disciplines and the search for a pluralistic methodology for different disciplines. Instead, knowledge should be taken to be in Quine’s ( 1966 , p. 56) words a “single sprawling system, loosely connected in some portions but no disconnected nowhere.” This requires a very strong problem-based education in which the distinction among subjects is taken to be artificial. Instead of holding serious epistemological gaps among disciplines, any division among subjects is only acceptable when looking for practical utility. Such a practical utility can be seen in how libraries separate books for finding them more easily. Thus, curriculum design in terms of subject matter is allowed only if doing so has a practical utility.

As far as Rorty’s new pragmatism is concerned, his suggested dichotomies appear indefensible. Rorty placed solidarity against the objectivity of science, supporting the former and undermining the latter. The question is why did he consider these two poles to be incompatible? In addition, he drew a clear-cut relation between pre-university enculturation and the edification of university education. The question here is how can a university student all of a sudden become a hard critic or liberal ironist without a background on critique during their pre-university education? I have dealt with these questions elsewhere and shown that they refer to some weaknesses in Rorty’s view (Bagheri Noaparast, 2014 ).

Post-Structuralism

One of continental philosophy’s reactions to the analytic philosophy of education is post-structuralism. The two important proponents of this view are Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Foucault’s views on archeology and genealogy have led to numerous studies on knowledge and power relations in education as well as the problematization of normalization in education (e.g., Gale, 2001 ; Macfarlane & Lewis, 2004 ). In what follows, I am going to mention Derrida’s influence in more detail.

Derrida ( 1983 ) critiqued the Enlightenment on the grounds of its severe distinction between reason and tradition. He talked about a New Enlightenment that removed the hard contrast between reason and tradition. According to Derrida, if the old Enlightenment assumed reason to be faith, this was because of its hard rejection of faith alongside tradition and a compensation for the void due to this rejection. In fact, Derrida ( 1995 , p. 130) combined fidelity and infidelity within tradition, stating, “We have gotten more than we think we know from ‘tradition,’ but the scene of the gift also obligates us to a kind of filial lack of piety, at once serious and not so serious, as regards the thinking to which we have the greatest debt.”

This point refers to Derrida’s key concept of deconstruction. Even though giving a clear definition of this term is too difficult, it indicates that structures are usually built upon a rejection of one element in favor of another one. However, justice that is somehow equal to deconstruction requires the rejected element being revived in a new guise. Thus, justice cannot be deconstructed; rather justice is the criterion for deconstruction, or in Derrida’s words, “Deconstruction is justice” (Derrida, 1992 , p. 15).

The basic concept of deconstruction has inspired educational studies. Accordingly, a suppressed element is always found in educational systems and their elements such as curriculum. This suppression develops during the process of deconstructing the foundational change in the educational system, mostly as an inevitable event.

The other important point in Derrida’s view is the centrality of text, as he stated that nothing exists outside of the text ( Il n'y a pas de hors-text ; Derrida, 1976 , p. 159). Accordingly, the reference is not outside the text but inside and undecidable. Plato regarded the art as a second mimesis because the artist imitates nature, which itself is an imitation of ideas. Along this line, Derrida talked about the simulacrum, a copy of copy but one for which there is no original reference (i.e., a double invagination). Accordingly, knowledge does not refer to the bare facts beyond it. Thus, Derrida ( 1981 , pp. 193–194) in a play with words stated knowledge to be not an “insight” but an “ in cit ation.” This conception of knowledge provides teachers as well as pupils with a cautious treatment of texts instead of a certainty with regard to knowledge that is considered written.

Derrida’s influence on the philosophy of education can also be investigated, particularly in the realm of values (Trifonas, 2004 ). This is because, as mentioned above, deconstruction is more tightly related to justice. As an example, a study was advanced by Biesta ( 2001 ) with regard to children’s rights that analyzed official international documents about children’s rights in terms of their natural rights. However, Biesta showed that children have no natural rights; what is taken as natural is only the situation of children with a high quality of life. In the meantime, what is suppressed and hidden is the rights of street children in third world countries. Having done this deconstruction, Biesta concluded with a new concept of children’s rights in a local meaning that would include both first world as well as third world countries’ children. This is in accordance with what is called a quasi-transcendental analysis in which street children’s rights are both the possibility and impossibility of talking about children’s world rights.

Another example of a deconstructive study was performed on religious education (Bagheri Noaparast & Khosravi, 2011 ). This study argued the dominant sphere of exclusivity in most religions and religious education to be due to other religions being suppressed. However, the proclaimed truth for any religion was made clear to be at the expense of the rejection of other religions through the deconstruction. Again in another quasi-transcendental analysis, a conception of religion and religious education is suggested that emphasizes the commonalities of religions.

In the case of Derrida’s post-structuralism, a question occurs as to what deconstruction amounts to. The dominant conception in Derrida’s writings is that deconstruction is an event. I have argued his writing to have some indications to the effect that deconstruction may be taken as an action in addition to being an event. In fact, if one wants to combine these two aspects, deconstruction can be referred to as a timely action with time indicating an aspect of the event (Bagheri Noaparast & Khosravi, 2012 ).

Post-Modernism

Post-modernism is not actually a coherent system of thought compared to pragmatism; it is instead a coalition in which having a common enemy is pivotal. In other words, this term is mainly negative in tone, which entails a negation of modernity. For this reason, post-modern thinkers can include Marxists, feminists, new pragmatists, and post-structuralists.

The most important characteristics of modernity are as follows:

Centrality of the subject, as derived from the Cogito of Descartes;

An absolute and universal conception of rationality and, in consequence, looking for grand narratives of human affairs; this is associated with the idea of progress in human history, as these ideas can be seen in the thoughts of Kant, Hegel, and Marx.

A strong reliance on science as the most important instrument of progress;

Rejecting tradition and old things and embracing new/modern things.

Thus, roughly speaking, a post-modern thought indicates the following characteristics:

Decentering the subject as it can be viewed in structuralism and post-structuralism;

Rejecting any grand narrative, which Jean-Francois Lyotard ( 1979 ) who coined the concept of post-modernism took it as the main mark of post-modernism. As a consequence of this rejection, post-modern thinkers embrace the local rationality that is associated with reasonability. While rationality indicates a universal characteristic, reasonability has contextual connotations.

An almost negative attitude toward the supremacy of science as elaborated upon by Rorty.

Embracing traditions along with edifying them as seen in Derrida’s remarks on what he called the new Enlightenment.

Post-modern thinkers have critiqued modern education on various grounds. Henry Giroux ( 1988 ), a left-wing thinker, rejected the idea of teaching in terms of techniques and instead talked about teachers as intellectuals who need to have a political position in undermining the ideology (i.e., false consciousness) derived from late capitalism and to retain its dominance in educational matters.

Along this line of critique, Robert Scholes ( 1987 ) differentiated three kinds of book reading in schools: reading within, in which the information within a book is received; reading upon, which indicates going beyond the text and looking for an inter-textual relationship that provides pupils with an interpretation of the text concerned; and lastly reading against, in which a critical position is taken about the text by looking for its presuppositions and deconstructing it.

Another important element in post-modern thinking about education concerns the “other.” The dominance of a higher culture is undermined alongside the rejection of universal rationality. Associating this culture with white men has become mainstream (male-stream) and is the means by which local cultures are marginalized. Putting emphasis on local and minor cultures, post-modern thinkers have talked about voice and border pedagogies, in which the “other” comes from the margin to the center of attention (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1991 , Ch. 5).

Aronowitz ( 2004 ) also emphasized edifying tradition instead of rejecting it altogether as the opposite of the modern. Citing Hannah Arendt, he stated, “I agree with Hannah Arendt that education ‘cannot forgo either authority or tradition.’ But authority must be earned rather than assumed, and the transmission of tradition needs to be critical rather than worshipful” (p. 32). This shows that the relation to tradition needs to be twofold, a simultaneous acceptance and critique.

Post-modernism generally seems to be too quick to reject the modern tendency toward objectivity. This has led post-modernism to a strong relativism associated with constructivism. I have argued elsewhere (Bagheri Noaparast, 2018 ) that post-modernism is self-defeating in its rejection of objectivity and realism related to modern thought. This is because one should accept humans as a constructive being. In other words, the very statement of human being as a constructive being is not itself a construct or subjective. To put it in Tarskian phrasing, one can say “‘The human is a constructive being' is true if and only if the humans is a constructive being.”

Immanuel Kant laid down the basis of constructivism when he stated that sense data should be organized by the categories of human understanding; otherwise, sense without understanding would be blind. In the more recent times, a milestone in constructivism was Nelson Goodman’s Ways of Worldmaking in 1978. Goodman formulated his argument in this regard as the inevitability of frame of reference: “If I ask about the world, you can offer to tell me how it is under one or more frames of reference; but if I insist that you tell me how it is apart from all frames, what can you say?” (Goodman, 1978 , pp. 2–3).

Goodman held that we are making our world in terms of our frames of reference, which always intervene between us and the world as it is. The world as it is (i.e., World 1) is not “our” world; the latter is what we make by means of our frames of reference, which can be referred to as World 2.

According to constructivism, knowledge is composed of the constructs that have shown themselves to be “viable” (von Glasersfeld, 1993 , p. 26). Viability is the constructivist’s alternative to the truth of knowledge. In other words, constructs cannot be evaluated in terms of correspondence to reality; they can only be judged as viable or working in relation to answering one’s needs. In addition, Desautels and Larochelle ( 1990 , p. 236) held that scientific knowledge is made to give meaning to our theory-laden observations, and no such thing as the Great Book of Nature exists that our theories can consult in order to provide correspondence to reality.

Based on the account that constructivism gives regarding human knowledge, education should be concerned about pupils constructing knowledge rather than transmitting the already discovered knowledge. This is because knowledge is invented rather than discovered. Thus, constructivism requires pupils to be active in suggesting new constructs or evaluating the viability of what is called knowledge. Jean Piaget ( 1972 ) was a pioneer in showing mathematics to be rooted first in children’s coordinated actions and to appear as concrete operations and then abstract operations. Accordingly, teaching and learning mathematics should not be conducted verbally; rather, the activity and manipulation of children is the right way in this regard.

As for constructivism, particularly its radical version, the most important weakness goes back to its subjectivism and affinity with idealism. By concentrating on Goodman’s position as the milestone of constructivism, one might say that Goodman did not escape the reality understood as World 1. However, he treated this world ambiguously and sometimes paradoxically; as such, he might be misunderstood. This can be seen in his argument “no perception without conception.” In giving this argument, Goodman was appealing to idealists. Even though his unrealism does not indicate him as an idealist, he did take idealism as an important background and support for his argument against realists:

The overwhelming case against perception without conception, the pure given, absolute immediacy, the innocent eye, substance as substratum, has been so fully and frequently set forth—by Berkeley, Kant, Cassirer, Gombrich, Bruner, and many others—as to need no restatement here. Talk of unstructured content or an unconceptualized given or a substratum without properties is self-defeating for the talk imposes structure, conceptualizes, ascribes properties. (Goodman, 1996 , p. 65)

I have two comments on this passage. First, if any kind of talk about unstructured content is self-defeating, then Goodman himself gives the same self-defeating talk when he refers to World 1 as “the world well-lost.” (Goodman, 1978 , p. 4). Anyway, this talk turns the lost world into a found world due to describing it with the label of the lost world. But if Goodman considers the use of such a phrase to be legitimate or takes it to be a non-descriptive description, then the same should be admitted for the talk about unstructured content.

Second, from among the idealists whom Goodman takes as his supports, Kant has shown that idealism itself needs to be supported by a kind of realism. As Philips pointed out, Kant ( 1929 , pp. 345–348) differentiated between transcendental idealism and transcendental realism on one hand and empirical idealism and empirical realism on the other in his Critique of Pure Reason . Empirical realism indicates that an external world exists with material objects in space and time, while the empirical idealist denies the existence of such a world. The transcendental idealist denies that external objects have an existence independent of the senses. Kant holds that transcendental idealism is compatible with empirical realism but that transcendental realism leads to empirical idealism. This is because the transcendental realist holds that objects of the senses have an existence independent of the senses, whereas he cannot deny objects of the senses being dependent on us (Philips, 1978 , p. 58).

The question to be asked from Goodman is whether he can admit the combination of his constructivism with an empirical realism like that of Kant. If not, then he should embrace skepticism or solipsism.

Goodman, along with idealists and constructivists, has shown that the mind matters when taking human knowledge into account as he puts emphasis on the frame of reference in talking about reality. Accordingly, we cannot escape our frames of reference. In other words, we are bound up in the world (or worlds) of our frames of reference. However, admitting that we are in the prison of the Kantian world does not indicate that we are living in illusive worlds. What this indicates is only that World 1 cannot be experienced as it is without being modified by our frames of reference in the first place. Our World 2 (i.e., right versions of World 1) is made up not in a vacuum but in relation to World 1. Thus, the viability of our constructs or workability of our maps is dependent on the reality of World 1, as this viability is dependent on the construct or the map itself because, after all, the construct is what is viable and the map is what works.

Given that our right versions (i.e., World 2) are related to World 1, this relation is the one in which they are considered to be right, and we have different right versions, logic follows that the compatibility of our right versions implies that they are supported one way or another by World 1. This support might be what Rescher ( 1987 ) referred to as the error tolerance of nature, as is seen in the case of the flat Earth theory. To follow Rescher’s phrasing, the support may occur through what I term as the “difference tolerance” of nature, as is seen in how different ways exist for defining the points and lines mentioned above. Still, a third way of support is what may be termed as “impaired objectivity.” Take the example of a man with impaired vision who systematically sees one thing doubled. He truly cannot see things as they are, but given that he systematically sees one thing as two and two as four ad infinitum, then he holds an impaired objectivity in his perceptions. Living in a Kantian world, we might nevertheless be considered like this man with impaired objective perception and knowledge. On the whole, our right versions need not correspond straightforwardly to the reality of World 1 to be considered right, but they are not needless of its support in any way.

Our different right versions, having different languages and being irreducible of one another, can be in harmony with each other. This harmonious relationship can be grasped in terms of different aspects of one reality, with each being approached from a distinct perspective. Interdisciplinary research has made this kind of relationship reasonable.

As each right version in World 2 is a version of World 1 in the final analysis, the harmonious relationship among the right versions will also be a version of World 1. In other words, the mono-reality of our right versions is an indication of the mono-reality of World 1. At the same time, the mono-reality of our right versions is not a reduction as it does not force us to eradicate the language differences pertaining to the right versions; we are only forced to take a higher mono-realistic stance.

What we seem to need in our future philosophy of education is a complicated combination between the subjective and objective aspects of mind, education, and culture. Finding the optimum point of balance between these two aspects has been the target of many thinkers, but its time is still to come.

Although the new trends in philosophy of education have their own weaknesses, they have provided educational thought with new directions. Let's have a look at some examples from these new trends.

First is the new pragmatism. One important area from the pragmatist point of view that has influenced the idea of curriculum since Dewey has been the concept of democracy. Dewey ( 1916 ) in his important book, Democracy and Education , revealed the connection and proximity between democracy and education. Dewey’s basic concept in this regard, namely individuals’ shared experience in dealing with and solving problems, has paved the way for a specific approach in curricula. Accordingly, curricula should be centered on the common problems individuals have during their shared experiences; consequently, special emphasis should be placed on the common interests and problems individuals have and their contributions in solving them, not on matters such as disciplines, books, lessons, or the like.

From the point of view of new pragmatism, revisions have been made to Dewey’s concept of democracy and its implications for curricula. Jim Walker ( 1987 ) addressed these revisions, and his main point is that, from the point of view of new pragmatism, criticisms are found regarding Dewey’s classical pragmatist ideas.

Due to these criticisms, Walker assigned a different role to democracy in curriculum planning.

According to Walker, Dewey believed that democracy depends on the shared experiences between individuals. In other words, he saw democracy as requiring individuals to have an active and dynamic relationship with each other in order to solve problems. Dewey, while skeptical of the need for a state, generally acknowledged that the modern nation-state framework was itself the basis for shared experiences between individuals. However, the critique on Dewey’s view in this regard is that the relationship between individuals’ shared experiences and the realities of government power in present-day societies is so complex that it does not necessarily allow for shared experiences between individuals. From the perspective of educational curricula, this has led to a kind of centralized government-run policy. According to Walker, shared experiences between individuals are impossible in today’s large and complex societies, especially because government and power relations can be other obstacles. However, despite democracy as a community of individuals being impossible, we are able to talk about a community of organizations.

Another point in Walker’s ( 1987 ) view regards educational planning. According to Walker, trusted groups evidently include parents and students’ representatives, and when students reach legal age or possibly after the stage of compulsory education, the majority of delegates should be students who determine the curriculum. The compulsory education stage has no need for a patriarchal curriculum, but the existence of optional units in a curriculum may prevent such a relationship. In addition, the general education curriculum should address common issues that stakeholders (parents and students) face; this can lead to a common curriculum, one that should not be considered the same as the core curriculum because in the former, special attention is given to stakeholders’ common issues while the latter is determined by experts and focuses on different topics in different sciences.

As for the influence post-structuralism has had on educational thought, one good example is Michel Foucault’s view. As Roger Deacon ( 2006 ) pointed out, Foucault’s studies have provided educational thought with new concepts (e.g., discipline and problematization), analytical techniques (e.g., archaeology and genealogy), and arguments (e.g., in terms of knowledge/power relations). Let’s consider a type of knowledge/power analysis. According to Foucault ( 1977 ), knowledge is intertwined with power, even though not necessarily always in a detrimental way. This idea leads to the notion of normalization, for which educational settings are the most appropriate. During normalization, individual differences are not so much tolerated, particularly those of individuals who might be in sharp contrast or critical to the existing settings. The destruction of existing norms is not necessarily always abnormal; rather it might exceed norms and formalities. However, the process of normalization regards geniuses and critical people in line with abnormal and anti-social persons. The important point that Foucault referred to is that power in combination with knowledge can punish students in elegant ways that are apparently non-violent. However, pushing students softly toward norms and formalities by means of things such as the laws of learning discovered by psychological knowledge can be as harmful to students’ psychology as violent methods are.

Post-modern thought has also provided education with change. As Usher and Edwards ( 1994 , pp. 1–2) claimed, post-modernism provided a different way of seeing things and an ironical, self-referential state of mind. In terms of this new way of seeing things, clear-cut distinctions are blurred, and a relativistic viewpoint is advanced. Thus, the absolute supremacy of things like male over female, whites over blacks, self over “other” is rejected. Even though this relativism is a double-edged sword, the positive side of post-modern thinking in supporting the oppressed and justice is admirable. Thus, post-modern thought provides a manifesto that, as Parker ( 1997 ) identified, requires us to be reflective educationists in order to provide a space for other voices.

Constructivism has also provided educational thought with new ideas. For example, Von Glasersfeld ( 1989 ) emphasized the construction of knowledge in the human mind in the direction of his extreme constructivism. According to this view on education, the teacher should try to create unbalanced conditions to motivate students to build knowledge in order to regain balance rather than try to convey information to students. In the lessons of history, constructivists believe in replacing teacher lecturing with student inquiry. In addition, creating a sense of empathy in students with historical figures and people participating in each event appears necessary due to the importance of storytelling and the construction of new historical narratives consistent with sources. According to Orril and Shapiro ( 2005 , p. 738), the lessons of history require sympathy, imagination, and emotion on the part of the student because of their special dependence on humanity. Constructivists’ emphasis on storytelling as a historian’s task highlights the need for strong imagination to process historical narratives.

All these new trends in the philosophy of education need to be examined over the processes of time, particularly in terms of their strengths and weaknesses as addressed above.

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Bagheri Noaparast, K. (2022). Challenges Facing the Philosophy of Education in the Twenty-First Century. In: Alpaydın, Y., Demirli, C. (eds) Educational Theory in the 21st Century. Maarif Global Education Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-9640-4_1

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