EDUCATIONAL THEORY最新文献

This article aims to serve as an introductory discussion of the European Continental tradition of pedagogics, specifically from a North American perspective. It begins with an overview of the Continental tradition and its main figures. Here, we find a philosophical and, thus, language-sensitive attitude toward the human, the child; and a specific pedagogical terminology, i.e., descriptions and interpretations about the reality of education, such as educational practices, goals, norms, and organizational forms of educational institutions. John Dewey's educational theories exemplify the North American perspective on Continental pedagogics and its study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence. Dewey's writings diverge notably from this tradition, as he integrated into his work American pragmatism and an interest in the scientific method, an interest that plays a role in today's policy trends in the United States and elsewhere. Then again, Dewey took a critical stand toward instrumentalizing pedagogics for political aims. On this point, the German-born political philosopher Hannah Arendt agreed with him. As Arendt can be seen as an example of a Continental perspective on philosophy that includes a strong warning to separate politics and education, she relates to Dewey's argument against instrumentalization. Thus, this article also features some of her work. The overall intention is to contribute to a renewal of a language for pedagogics by delineating a historical-philosophical perspective on this specific field of professional practice.

In this article Cristoph Wulf examines the basic concepts of pedagogy and educational science in the German-speaking world, looking at education and socialization from the perspective of educational anthropology. He makes evident that the complex German concept of Bildung, in particular, can only be fully understood by means of a historical and philosophical analysis.

This paper is a combination of a grandfather's musings over his grandson's drawings, combined with a reconsideration of hermeneutics as an early childhood educational theory.

This article critically assesses contemporary empirical educational research, directing attention toward overlooked facets of pedagogical practice. Here, Agnes Pfrang and Daniel Castner raise questions about predominant psychological approaches to empirical educational research, instead advocating for a holistic viewpoint that encompasses the subtleties of educational situations and experiences. They highlight the learning atmosphere and pedagogical relationships as crucial dimensions often neglected by researchers. By delving into the historical evolution of the relationship between educational research and empirical pedagogy, the article underscores the ramifications of an increasing emphasis on evidence-based approaches. It contends that conventional control measures, focused on performance metrics and rankings, inadequately encapsulate the essence of pedagogy. Pfrang and Castner call for a paradigm shift, urging a more comprehensive and context-sensitive framework in both educational research and practice. This article serves as a rallying cry for a nuanced understanding that embraces the multifaceted nature of educational interactions, advocating for a move away from traditional metrics and toward more inclusive perspectives.

In this paper Johan Dahlbeck sets out to propose a pedagogy of “as if,” seeking to address the educational paradox of how students can be influenced to approximate a life guided by reason without assuming that they are already sufficiently rational to adhere to dictates of practical reason. He does so by outlining a fictionalist account, drawing primarily on Hans Vaihinger's systematic treatment of heuristic fictions and on Spinoza's ideas about how passive affects can be made to strengthen reason. Dahlbeck suggests that such an account can help us overcome the problem of assuming that reason needs to be enlisted as an instrument in the educational endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason. The reason this is so is that fictions can use passive affects that are prosocial and that thereby strengthen the sense of community necessary for laying a cooperative foundation for successful joint striving. Dahlbeck suggests further that exemplary teachers are crucial to this endeavor insofar as they can offer educational fictions as imaginative and temporary placeholders for the truth, allowing students to act “as if” they were already guided by reason.

Can epistemic paternalistic practices make us better epistemic agents? While a satisfying answer to this question will ultimately rest at least partly on empirical findings, considering the epistemological discussion on evidence, knowledge, and epistemic virtues can be insightful. In this paper, Giada Fratantonio argues that we have theoretical reasons to believe that strong epistemic paternalistic practices may be effective at mitigating some evidential mistakes, in fostering true belief, and even for allowing the subject of the intervention to gain knowledge. However, we have reasons to expect that these practices will not be able to make the subject of the intervention an overall better epistemic agent at the dispositional level. She then considers weak epistemic paternalistic practices, e.g., epistemic nudging, and provides some reasons for optimism. Finally, Fratantonio considers the implications that these theoretical considerations have for education.

This paper proposes a novel educational approach to epistemic vice rehabilitation. Its authors Gerry Dunne and Alkis Kotsonis note that, like Quassim Cassam, they remain optimistic about the possibility of improvement with regard to epistemic vice. However, unlike Cassam, who places the burden of minimizing or overcoming epistemic vices and their consequences on the individual, Dunne and Kotsonis argue that vice rehabilitation is best tackled via the exemplarist animated community of inquiry zetetic principles and defeasible-reasons-regulated deliberative processes. The vice-reduction method they propose is made up of four distinct yet complementary components: (1) positive exemplarism of epistemic virtue (saints), (2) negative exemplarism of epistemic vice (sinners), (3) direct teaching/instruction, and (4) cognitive apprenticeship. Dunne and Kotsonis argue that this pedagogical intervention appropriately considers learnings deriving from forensic scrutiny of both ideal and non-ideal interpersonally calibrated zetetic features integral to knowledge acquisition as well as wider societal influences impacting the development of agents' epistemic character. It bridges research on vice epistemology (Cassam's obstructivist theory), social epistemology (corrupted social processes mitigating against vice rehabilitation), virtue epistemology, and moral exemplarism.

Perfect epistemic agents do not exist. People are messy. We make mistakes; we are error-prone. We have limited attention spans, sluggish cognitive processing powers, pedestrian interpersonal skills, inefficient and unreliable memories. At times we struggle to get out of our own way — the vagaries of life, relationships, and responsibilities, both individually and collectively, take a toll, especially in dopamine-seeking, split-attention environments. Such pressures keep us from being the very best version of themselves. More often than not, we are less than we ought to be. Specifically, all of us have flawed intellectual characters to some extent or another, which is to be expected. We are human after all. Flaws are encoded in our DNA. It comes as no surprise then, that there are times when we are defective inquirers — suboptimal or blameworthy epistemic agents. Prejudice, irrationality, superbia, closed-mindedness, epistemic entrenchment, willful ignorance, insouciance, my-side bias, to name but a few, all have the potential to colonize and deleteriously influence our capacities to efficiently and effectively acquire, share, produce, and audit knowledge, or to engage in responsible and effective inquiry. All this leaves us with a choice. Should educationalists pursue a virtue-based account of other-worldly epistemic excellence based on knowledge gained via strictly controlled laboratory conditions, or would it be more profitable to seek richer understandings of the flawed nature, scope, identity, and significance of our intellectual character traits, attitudes, and ways of thinking, and how they systematically, though not invariably, block the path to knowledge?¹

Intellectual vices is a way of talking about those deleterious epistemic character traits, attitudes, and modes of thinking that reflect our imperfect epistemic desires and that get in the way of successful epistemic pursuits. Though various scholars understand the nature of epistemic vice in distinctive ways, there are currently two main perspectives: motivationalism and obstructivism.² The former characterizes epistemic vice in terms of imperfect epistemic motivations, while the latter understands it in consequentialist terms: more specifically, that which obstructs the acquisition, retention, and transmission of knowledge.

Virtue epistemologists pursue normative accounts regarding how prototypical thinkers under ideal conditions should think. Vice epistemologists, on the other hand, take a more true-to-life view of matters. They look to our zetetic failings and present an explanatory account of the way in which corrupted motivations and flawed intellectual character traits get in the way of knowledge. Broadly put, their interests hinge on understanding how, why, and under what circumstances specific vices of the mind (both personal and collective intellectual failings) obstruct the acquisition, retention, auditing, and transmission o

In this paper, Leonard Waks investigates connections between listening and expertise or mastery, contrasting approaches from Eastern and Western philosophy. The first section accounts for listening in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, a work addressing themes in Chinese philosophy through metaphor and story narratives. In one story a character named “Confucius” advises a student to fast the mind and listen recklessly. The affinity between reckless and what has been called “apophatic” listening is demonstrated by the shared feature of mental emptiness — listening without the imposition of conceptual categories. The second section demonstrates close affinities between the account of listening and expertise or mastery in the Zhuangzi and in the account of expert perception in contemporary Western philosophy and psychology, as exemplified by phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus.