The Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education

Mapping the Decline and its Consequences

Andrew Colgan, Bruce Maxwell, Andrew D. Colgan, Bruce Maxwell

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429762130
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education maps the gradual decline of philosophy as a central, integrated part of educational studies. Chapters consider how this decline has impacted teacher education and practice, offering new directions for the reintegration of philosophical thinking in teacher preparation and development.

Touching on key points in history, this valuable collection of chapters accurately appraises the global decline of philosophy of education in teacher education programs and seeks to understand the external and endemic causes of changed attitudes towards a discipline which was once assigned such a central place in teacher education. Chapters illustrate how a grounding in the theoretical and ethical dimensions of teaching, learning, and education systems contribute in meaningful ways to being a good teacher, and trace the consequences of a decline in philosophy on individuals' professional development and on the evolution of the teaching profession more broadly. With this in mind, the text focusses on the future of teacher education and considers how we can ensure that philosophy of education feeds into the excellence of teaching today.

This book will be of great interest to graduate, postgraduate students as well as research scholars in the field of educational philosophy and history of education. In addition, it will be useful for those involved in teacher education, and in particular, course, module and program development.

Part I

Diagnosis and Prognosis

1 The Decline of Philosophy in Educational Study and Why It Matters

Robin Barrow

Flourish or Decline?

One might claim that compared to 50 years ago, membership of societies such as the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain has increased considerably, there are more journals purporting to publish philosophical articles related to education than there used to be, and major publishing houses such as Routledge are republishing works 40 and more years old as well as many new works. In addition, there are a great many more students studying for a doctorate that they would classify as “philosophical,” and there are more lecturers or professors of education who see themselves as doing philosophically inclined work.

However, I would suggest that though probably correct, these facts are misleading, and that in an important sense, philosophical inquiry is in decline in the study of education. Technological change has led to the emergence of many new online journals, but many of these, perhaps most, are of questionable quality. The reprinting of earlier works is predominantly aimed at new markets in Asia. The increase in the number of doctoral students doing philosophy is mainly due to an increase in the overall number of people doing doctoral work and a loosening of the meaning of the word “philosophical”; the latter point also to some extent explains the seeming increase in professionals who see themselves as doing philosophical work. The increase in membership of learned societies is largely accounted for by the increase in the number of graduate students in the field of education generally, and by the drive towards internationalism, which leads many students and professors to belong to societies in many other countries besides their own, which was not the case to the same extent in the past.

If we therefore ignore such data and ask instead whether student teachers study philosophy to the extent that they used to, whether there is as much bona fide philosophizing about education as there once was, and whether its impact is as great as in the past, I would unhesitatingly answer “no” to all three questions. Such claims, of course, are not precisely quantified or easily backed by objective and systematic evidence, but it seems clear to me from long-time and widespread familiarity with the field that in these important senses, study of philosophy in education today is in decline.

Decline

In quantitative terms, philosophy has never been a major part of educational research compared to the reach of subjects such as psychology and sociology, or even curriculum studies or inquiry into teaching methods. But in its heyday, which I would place in the 1960s and 1970s and associate with figures such as Richard Peters, Paul Hirst, and Israel Scheffler, there is no denying either the widespread reach of the subject or its impact. In Britain, for example, all would-be teachers, whether in university education departments or colleges of education, were exposed to and involved in debating such things as Peters’ analysis of the concept of education and Hirst’s “forms of knowledge” thesis. And in Canada, Australia, and the U.S., many notable figures such as John McPeck, Jim Gribble, John Kleinig, James Doyle, Ivan Snook, Vernon Howard, Denis Phillips, and Harvey Siegel either studied with or were indirectly influenced by one or more of those three philosophers or their colleagues. At that time, education departments, in whatever institutions and whatever their precise designations, all put emphasis on what were regarded as the four foundational disciplines of the subject: sociology (particularly to the fore in the UK), psychology (by contrast, particularly influential in the U.S.), history, and philosophy. And, commonly, all trainee teachers were expected to study all four subjects. On the face of it, this was for a good reason: psychology seeks to provide data pertaining to individual and group traits particularly in relation to learning theory, in principle invaluable to the teacher; sociology provides data on societal phenomena, pressures, and tendencies; history informs and enlarges our understanding of origins and possibilities, while reminding us of the law of unintended consequences; and philosophy aims to clarify our reasoning around these data.

But even a cursory inquiry reveals that today the situation has changed significantly. Few teacher-education programmes today demand the study of all four disciplines; some do not mandate study of any of the disciplines; and, generalizing, it is history and philosophy that are least often required or in fact studied. In the institution where I now work, for instance, where there used to be an assumption, if not a formal requirement, that all students would take an introductory course in each of the four disciplines, there is now merely the option of taking either psychology or philosophy. (Incidentally, psychology is by far the most popular option, while some 50% of those who do opt for a philosophy course turn out to be students from other departments or faculties, usually science students who are required to take a certain number of arts courses.) Similarly, for many years, there has been no professor of history of education, no sociologist of education, and, though there are a number of colleagues who see themselves as being philosophically inclined, for some time, nobody has been appointed specifically as a philosopher of education.

However, as admitted, regardless of the formal situation, rather a lot of professors today claim an interest in and see themselves as engaged in philosophical research. A few of them may have academic qualifications in philosophy, but the vast majority have had little or no undergraduate study of the subject, and the case for them being regarded as philosophers rests not on a doctorate in philosophy, but on a Doctorate in Education. Of course, there is no a priori reason why a Doctorate in Education (EdD) should not be philosophical, but it is at least questionable how much of this work should be regarded as truly philosophical (see below), especially as, with the passing of time, the supervisors of these doctoral students, unlike somebody such as Peters who had impeccable credentials in philosophy itself, have themselves been education students and have not had a thorough grounding in the discipline of philosophy. Furthermore, a great many educational theses are not actually concerned with philosophical issues, but the treatment is described as philosophical essentially to denote the fact that it is not empirical. My concern, however, is not with the extent to which the word “philosophy” is often misleadingly bandied about, nor with the number of theses that may or may not legitimately be labelled as philosophical. My concern is with whether genuine philosophical inquiry is a force in our educational thinking. The appearance of widespread philosophical activity, when scrutinized carefully, seems deceptive to me. There is not a lot of serious philosophizing going on in educational theory, and what activity there is does not make much of a genuine impact on theory, let alone practice.

As already noted, most of the work nominally in the field of philosophy takes place these days at the graduate level. But if philosophical thought and findings are truly to impact the schools, then the many doctoral theses that disappear into the mist are scarcely relevant. We need all those who go into the profession, in particular all trainee teachers, but also ideally administrators and even parents, to engage with, to come to understand the procedures and nature of, and to examine the findings of philosophy. The most important way in which philosophy needs to make an impact is in developing in every educator “a nose for” and an ability to pursue specifically philosophical questions, rather than simply to give them a set of answers generated by other philosophers.

I have referred earlier to “true” philosophy, “genuine” philosophy, “bona fide” philosophy, “serious” philosophy, and “legitimate” philosophy, which obviously invites the question: what counts as bona fide philosophy? What precisely is it that I am arguing is in decline and yet is of extreme importance? It is certainly not simply non-empirical theorizing about, say, good ways to maintain discipline, a programme of sex education, or arguments in favour of sporting activities, for there is no shortage of that kind of work.

But, assuming for the moment that we can distinguish work that would be recognized as truly philosophical by professional academic philosophers from work that is simply ruminative and non-empirical and would not be so recognized, and hence acknowledge a considerable diminution in the apparent interest in philosophy, we run into the further problem that philosophers of education by no means always agree on what they should be doing. Thus, we have those who think we should study the educational theories of notable philosophers (though this is only really possible in rare cases such as the work of Plato or Rousseau. Most philosophers’ specifically educational views, such as those of Locke and Russell, bear little or no relation to their general philosophy). Others believe that we should be studying the great philosophers of the past, such as Kant, Aristotle, or Hegel, and applying their philosophical insights into education. Yet, others think that we should focus on the theories of certain philosophers of education such as John Dewey. Some regard studying the written work of educators such as A.S. Neill or Paulo Freire as doing philosophy. There are rationalists, pragmatists, idealists, and others who think our job is to initiate students into one or other of these “isms,” ideologies, or schools of thought. And so on, and so forth. But all such approaches seem to me beside the point. One cannot seriously maintain that educational practice or policy would necessarily usefully be enhanced if everybody studied Plato, or any other “great philosophers,” or by the study of rationalism and idealism, or by reading Locke on education. So while some, if not all, of these approaches might reasonably be seen as involving genuine philosophy, I see no particular reason to lament any decline in their practice or popularity.

By contrast, what is certainly less in evidence today than in the past, both at conferences and in journals devoted to the philosophy of education, and presumably in classes in teacher-education establishments too, and the decline of which I shall argue does matter is, specifically, analytic philosophy.

I should immediately make it clear that I do not maintain that analytic philosophy is the only “true” or “genuine” philosophy. As we shall see below, a prescriptive definition would run counter to the way in which analysis is conducted. Rather, I am putting forward the suggestion that the business of analysing key concepts in any field is always of paramount importance, and, conducted in a certain manner, is indubitably a philosophical activity. Furthermore, it is philosophy in this sense that is in decline in the study of education, and it is this kind of philosophy that is of importance in education. Therefore, at this point, I need to spell out what analytic philosophy, as I understand it, does and does not involve, since there is widespread confusion on this matter even amongst philosophers.

Analytic Philosophy Explained

When the philosopher sets about analysing a concept such as, let us say, giftedness, he or she is not ultimately or primarily asking for a dictionary definition such as “having natural talent or aptitude,” although that might well be a starting point. We may start there to mark the territory, so to speak, that we wish to explore. But despite the label “ordinary language philosophy,” which is sometimes equated with analytic philosophy, the philosopher’s interest is not simply in language use, but in analysing the idea or concept that the language signifies, whether referred to as “giftedness” or “having a natural talent or aptitude,” or by any other dictionary definition. And this is done by asking questions about the concept as thus defined, such as: what is meant by “natural” here? Does it mean that a person can only count as gifted if they are born with a certain talent, for example? Surely not. Surely, a gifted scientist is the one who has ability, however derived or developed. So “natural” here must either be jettisoned, despite the dictionary, or else interpreted as something like an ability that, though it may have been acquired or learned, has become ingrained or internalized. Then again, take the phrase “talent or aptitude”: are these synonyms, alternatives, or what? And shouldn’t we add something about quality, for surely a gifted musician is first and foremost a very good one. And, granted that quality comes into it, how do we assess quality? Whatever our answer to that, it is clear that the manner of assessing quality in one field (say, music) may differ from the appropriate manner in another (say, science). That gives rise to the question of whether a concept such as giftedness is generic. That is to say is a gifted person gifted without qualification and able to display this talent in any sphere (generic), or is it rather the case than an individual may be gifted in certain respects but not others? The answer is fairly obviously that it is not generic, yet many empirical studies of giftedness ignore this point entirely and proceed as if gifted people can be identified by general traits without reference to specific achievements in particular areas.

There is no need to go further with the particular example of giftedness here. Enough has been said to make it clear that philosophical analysis goes way beyond defining terms. It is a matter rather of unpacking definitions, explicating them fully in an attempt to provide a coherent and extensive understanding of the idea in question. It follows that analytic philosophers are not what critics sometimes call “essentialists,” meaning people who believe that a given word refers to an essential, eternal, unchanging idea, lurking somewhere in a Platonic heaven. Something like that might conceivably be appropriately said of key concepts in the physical world: stone is stone, after all, and, whatever we call it and whatever we think about it, stone is not going to change its properties. But the concepts that philosophers are interested in are not those of concrete realities given in nature. They are interested in concepts that are abstract ideas relating to human constructs.

So we are not seeking for the meaning of “well-educated,” or a definitive correct answer; we are looking rather for a convincing and satisfactory analysis of the idea. But a view on the nature of education, for example, is not to be evaluated by reference to such things as how people tend to use the word, what the dominant view of education may be in society, or what actually currently goes on in schools. Rather, the appropriate criteria for judging the quality of an analysis may be summarized as the “Four Cs.” A good analysis is the one that is (i) Clear, (ii) Complete, (iii) Coherent, and (iv) Compatible.

The value of clarity, one hopes, goes without saying. Yet, the fact is that many central terms thrown about in educational debate, as we have seen in the case of “giftedness,” are far from clearly articulated. In order to explicate a concept, one almost invariably brings in other concepts that require explication in their turn, as again we have seen in the case of giftedness, which introduces the notion of a “natural talent,” which then has itself to be explicated. The completeness criterion refers to ensuring that all the terms introduced to explicate a given concept are themselves fully explicated. The reference to coherence is to internal coherence, and is the requirement that by now, very likely lengthy and complex analysis does not involve any internal contradictions. Finally, if the concept is now clear, complete, and coherent, it needs to be checked against one’s other knowledge including one’s wider conceptual repertoire, but also including non-conceptual matters such as matters of fact or value—and, of course, against relevant publicly warranted knowledge. There is something wrong with your understanding of “educated” if, for example, it does not allow us to discriminate between people as being better or worse educated, if it proves impossible to educate in this sense, or if it involves values that we find abhorrent, since it is generally assumed that education is both possible and desirable, and that some people are better educated than others.

In undertaking analysis, we do not look into the opinions of others save as a potential source of ideas; likewise, the value of a historical awareness of the evolutio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Editors’ Introduction
• Part I Diagnosis and Prognosis
• Part II Philosophy and Teacher Development
• Part III Historical Perspectives
• Index