What is ‘normal’ classroom learning and behaviour? Are medical categories such as ‘ADHD’ reflective of real biological problems for which medical intervention is an effective solution? Or are they ‘socially constructed’ in the sense that they are merely labels that oppress children who engage in behaviour that teachers, parents and policy-makers deem undesirable? Is it possible for schools to take up concepts in ways helpful for children with different educational needs? Or can such concepts only lead to misunderstanding, confusion and frustration?

Various disciplinary lenses in this debate include, but are not limited to, neurobiology, social science, and sociology. What should be clear at this point is educational discourse, more generally, is interdisciplinary in nature. Psychology, sociology, economics, philosophy, history and the natural sciences (neuroscience) all play a role in informing one’s perspectives on these questions and one can observe elements of each among the various paper’s we’ve looked at this term.

Clearly, Travel and Visser are concerned, rightly or wrongly, that the use of labels may act as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. One might see some relevant links to Ecclestone’s idea of the ‘diminished self’ to be made, here. Cooper, on the other hand, thinks that such labels are defensible to the extent that people actually take the time to understand the actual science behind such categories (and not simply our assumptions or worries about that science) really mean.

Further reading:

Abidin, R. R., & Robinson, L. L. (2002). Stress, Biases, or Professionalism What Drives Teachers’ Referral Judgments of Students with Challenging Behaviors?. Journal of Emotional and Behavioral disorders, 10(4), 204-212.

Cigman, R. (2007). A question of universality: Inclusive education and the principle of respect. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 41(4), 775-793.

Schrag, F. (2011). Does neuroscience matter for education?. Educational Theory, 61(2), 221-237.

(Note 1: I have changed the discourse question, slightly, for clarity. Empirically, higher education IS treated like a free market. That’s how educational policy is currently set up. The proper question is if we SHOULD regulate higher education that way.)

(Note 2: be sure to note that this debate isn’t about universities in particular, but post-secondary education in general. Universities have a clear public role: the pursuit of truth, knowledge and understanding free from external (political, economic) pressure. Universities are part of the larger debate, but controversy in higher education reform is about all post-school institutions including colleges and trades.)

(Note 3: Yes, I am one of the authors in this pairing. For those new to graduate courses, note that it is a common (and often expected) practice in research-focused institutions at UBC for professors to share research in development. I’m currently working on the following project. I have no personal ego-investment in the paper. Feel free to agree or disagree with White or Martin as you like, on the basis of good reasons of course! Thinking through objections/critiques of arguments is beneficial for the professoriate and students alike.)

Now that that’s all done…

Pinpointing the value of higher education in a democracy is no easy task. After all, while universities and similar institutions have been around for a long time they have only recently been viewed as part of the fabric of a free and equal society. It was not until the post-WW2 boom that higher education seriously expanded beyond traditional elites, welcoming citizens from different social and economic backgrounds.

However, the moral and political significance of this expansion remains unclear. For example, if I say that higher education should be accessible to all do I mean that higher education is a really smart economic investment, an important opportunity that everyone should have an equal chance at competing for? Or do I mean that higher education is so important that everyone should receive it regardless of a person’s competitiveness or potential for economic gain?

The former seems to be what the current model represents. It goes something like this: a higher education is a very efficient way to improve your economic lot in life. It’s not essential for living well, but you’ll certainly be more employable and you’re likely to earn more over a lifetime. And we know that employability and earning power will help you live well in other branches of life. Yet we shouldn’t restrict such opportunities to the elites of a society. Equality is an important value in a democracy. And elites already have lots of money and opportunities. So we must expand higher education. Higher education should work to make sure that more of the less well off have a better chance at improving their economic fortunes, should they wish to do so. Those that don’t have the means to pay up front, for example, should be able to pay once they experience the economic gains that come with access. Borrow now; pay later. By making higher education an easier choice to make, student loans work in the interest of a just society.

But one can take issue with this line of thinking and claim that higher education provision should to be aiming for something like the latter: everyone should get a higher education because it is crucial for living a good life. For example, one might claim that higher education has become so desired and widespread in society that it is now in the same class of welfare goods commonly recognized as “public” such as health care and basic schooling. Citizens have a social right to a higher education. However, many advocates asserting that higher education is a social right lack a justification – a clear set of reasons why we should see higher education this way (McCowan, 2012). After all, many goods and services that were once restricted to elites have now expanded across the population due to market demand. Coffee, golf and air travel all come to mind, here. We wouldn’t seriously entertain these as welfare goods. Is there anything about higher education that requires us to recognize it as valuable in the same way that we value goods such as health care and basic schooling?

The readings in this discourse are just a sample of a much larger debate about the public financing, sociology, philosophy and policies of higher education.

Again, I think we have enough of handle on things that you can jump straight into commenting on both readings. White’s paper, while complex, makes a very basic but important point: adults attend higher education institutions, not children. And so he thinks that a number of implications follow from this fact about how we should think about higher education policy and practice. Namely, adults students should be free to choose for themselves what they learn and why (as well as taking responsibility for those choices). Martin concedes the point, but argues that this does not mean that higher education does not have a basic educational goal or responsibility and applies this argument to the student loan debate. To the question above, Martin attempts to argue that we SHOULD see higher education as having the same basic value as health care or schooling.

Further reading:

Brighouse, Harry, and Paula McAvoy. “Privilege, Well-being, and Participation in Higher Education.” Philosophy of Education in the Era of Globalization (2009): 165.

Collini, Stefan. What are universities for?. Penguin UK, 2012.

McCowan, Tristan. “Should universities promote employability?.” Theory and Research in Education 13, no. 3 (2015): 267-285.

Should teachers be educated, or should they be trained?

The question, on the surface, may not seem very controversial. However, the question of the ‘training’ versus ‘education’ of teachers impacts on many areas of educational policy, practice and research. It defines the nature and scope of the knowledge-base of the profession, for example. In fact, it partly determines if teaching IS a profession. If teachers are best ‘trained’ it follows that their professional knowledge-base reflects a narrow and limited (though important) set of skills. If teachers are best ‘educated’ it suggests that their professional knowledge-base is made up of a wider engagement in various forms of knowledge and understanding, reflecting a particular and distinctive body of expertise. Interestingly, this bumps up, yet again, with the debate over knowledge vs. competencies, but this time in the domain of professional and higher education (as opposed to schooling).

(By the way, if you agreed with Sarup that all knowledge is hierarchical/oppressive and that knowledge and understanding is socially constructed without any truth-value, as a matter of consistency Sarup’s argument must also apply to the notion that teachers are professionals by virtue of their particular expertise/knowledge and understanding. If Sarup IS right, what might this mean for the view that teaching is a profession?)

The question also impacts on what counts as educational research. Education is a field of inquiry that is situated in universities. Educational researchers can engage in very basic research questions without that engagement ever having anything direct to say about schooling. (Consider that in medical schools researchers study anatomy or cell biology but their findings may have no direct impact on the medical school resident). However, the question of training versus teaching will impact on the extent to which, and ways in which, teachers should be put into contact with educational research and related expertise. Historically, the preparation of teachers was restricted to training colleges. But one of the reasons for moving teaching into the university was to provide teacher candidates opportunities to receive an education in education. If such an education is not required for teaching, much of this rationale evaporates.

The question also has stakes for professional education more generally. When we prepare doctors, lawyers, nurses and social workers to carry out the work of their profession what exactly is it that we are aiming to do?

In any case, the Lawlor and Orchard readings represent clear positions on some important features of this issue. Lawlor argues that teacher candidates should be “protected from the educationalists” and that teacher recruitment should focus on those with rigorous subject expertise. Orchard and Winch rebut this argument in some respects, claiming that to the extent that teaching is a profession, and not a craft, a university-based education is essential.

For this pair of readings I suggest that we can have a go at jumping into both readings at the same time. Lawlor’s paper is fairly policy-heavy but keeps coming back to the same (important) central points. We can quickly get a sense of the debate, then. So, comment on what you see fit. I may suggest some questions if the conversation lulls.

Further readings:

Chinnery, Ann, et al. “Teaching philosophy of education: The value of questions.” Interchange 38.2 (2007): 99-118.

Winch, Christopher, Alis Oancea, and Janet Orchard. “The contribution of educational research to teachers’ professional learning: philosophical understandings.” Oxford Review of Education 41.2 (2015): 202-216.

Carr, Wilfred. “Education without theory.” British Journal of Educational Studies 54.2 (2006): 136-159.

Hirst’s 1965 paper on liberal education is, with no exaggeration, one of the most important and influential arguments about education made in the post-WWII era. Even if we don’t talk about Hirst today his argument underlies much of our recent thinking on the nature and scope of education, especially at the post-secondary level. And even those who don’t agree with Hirst acknowledge his contribution to educational discourse (you can survey some of the influence by looking at the papers that cite his in Google Scholar.) I was required to read Hirst in my first teacher education class as an undergraduate back in 2001. I point this out for two reasons: one, his paper is still seen as a worthwhile classic in our 21st century but also because if you think Hirst is hard reading for well-educated graduate students, imagine trying to read it when you’re a naive 22 year-old undergrad 🙂

Hirst’s main point was to try and show that a broad education was valuable, not because it promoted general critical thinking skills or communication skills or other competencies, but because it initiated the learner into forms of knowledge. (Note here how debates about education resurface in different ways at different times – everyone seems to be talking about competencies these days – are they worthwhile or do they involve the de-skilling of the learner, for example?).

The idea of forms of knowledge should be familiar to you from our introductory reading. As a reminder, forms of knowledge are the ways that humanity, over time, has tried to understand the world around them. For example, Math represents our attempt as a species to understand quantity and pattern. Philosophy is our attempt to understand what it means to live a good life. History is an attempt to understand the past, and what it means to HAVE a past. Art is an attempt to understand what beauty is…and so on. For defenders of the forms of knowledge approach, education should be about ensuring that students have an opportunity to share equally in that “human heritage” to which everyone has a stake in (see Michael Oakeshott for more on this idea).

There’s much more to Hirst’s argument. But suffice to say, his work ended up having a lot of influence on various branches of educational policy and practice, especially in the UK. (Unlike, say, in North America where John Dewey had more of an influence).

As you might have expected (and as you can see this kind of pattern repeat itself in our course) there ended up being something of a counter-argument that sought to push back on Hirst and those who shared his view. We’re taking about the late 1960’s and 70’s. Counter-culture is gaining influence. A major student movement was taking place. Educational progressivism experienced renewed popularity. In educational research this manifested itself in the so-called “new sociology of education”. These sociologists argued that schools were designed to reproduce social class and that “knowledge” is in actual fact a means by which the State could impose the dominant beliefs and assumptions of an elite on the poor and oppressed. (Those of you who are fans of Michael Apple or Henry Giroux or Peters Mclaren might be familiar with this educational tradition).

Madan Sarup’s paper was one of the harshest rebukes of Hirst’s account of liberal education. (We can decide together  if his critique is actually a solid one). For Sarup, the very idea of ‘forms of knowledge’ assumes a universe of ‘knowers’ and ‘not-knowers’, ‘experts’ and ‘non-experts’. This approach is an ideology that divides society into the powerful and the powerless.

While both readings are challenging, they are an interesting study in contrasts. They show just how different (and interestingly) different disciplines and traditions take up the topic of education is discourse.

Spend some time trying to see to what extent you can grasp Hirst’s argument. To help get the ball rolling, I’ve added some ‘content’ questions below in order to see if we can, as a class. develop a shared understanding of what his paper is actually saying. Then, eventually, we will move onto Sarup.

Is “therapy” an aim of education? In some ways that answer turns on the question of what we mean by “therapy” in education. Certainly, in recent years there has been a turn toward what some researchers call “non-cognitive virtues” such as self-esteem, grit and “pro-social behavior”. But there seems to be more to it than this. On the one hand, it seems clear that learners require some basic mental function and wellbeing in order to learn. Just as one requires food in order to be able to participate in sports, one needs a healthy mental state in order to expand one’s knowledge and understanding. But we would not say that food is the point of sports. Food is a means to engaging in sport. (I put hot-dog eating contests to the side, for now 🙂 It’s also the case that caring for the ‘self’ has long been a part of the Western tradition of education (see Mintz, 2009).

But the so-called “therapy” approach to education appears to take this a step further. On this view, the development and cultivation of positive mental functioning is not only means to education or a healthy practice, rather, it is the point and purpose of schooling. There is a sense in which this view has gone mainstream. Talk of positive psychology, social-emotional learning, wellbeing and pro-social interaction has had a greater and greater presence. Ecclestone’s paper, which serves as an introduction to our first debate, asks if this talk doesn’t eclipse a more fundamental task of education – to expand the knowledge and understanding of the learner. Is this something to be concerned about, or is the rise of therapy simply an evolution in our understanding of education? If education really is about therapy, what ought this mean for schools or universities?

Optional further reading in this debate:

MINTZ, A. (2009), Has Therapy Intruded into Education?. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 43: 633–647. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9752.2009.00720.x

House, R., & Loewenthal, D. (2012). The Rise of Therapeutic Education: Beneficent, Uncertain, or Dangerous?. Self & Society, 39(3), 6-18.

Wright, K. (2008). Theorizing therapeutic culture Past influences, future directions. Journal of Sociology, 44(4), 321-336.

If you have specific questions about the assignments, please post them here (AFTER YOU HAVE READ THE COURSE OUTLINE) and I’ll address them here so that other students will be “in the know”.

Chris

When a person claims they are educating, or addressing an educational problem, or have an interest in ‘education’, what exactly are they talking about? How (or is) ‘education’ distinctive different from, say, socialization a person or reforming them? As a domain of professional practice how (or is) education different from what social workers or physicians or police officers are concerned with? Are claims about education (what it is; what is should be; how to best go about it) different from claims about schooling?

(Reading: What are the Aims and Values of Education?, Gereluk et al, 2016).