Professional Education (1983)

Peter Jarvis

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351003209
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Published in 1983. The concept of education has generally been assumed to relate to childhood and it is only with more recent developments in the field of adult learning that it has been recognised that education can take place at any stage in life.

One of the main intentions of this book is to examine the concept of education from the perspective of the education of people in a wide variety of professions. It is suggested that education be defined as any planned series of incidents, having a humanistic basis directed towards the participants' learning and understanding. The aims, curricula and methods of appraisal of professional education in the light of this definition are then considered. Although dealing with professional forms of learning for the most part, this book should be of interest to all educators, trainers and administrators responsible for the implementation of educational policies and programmes in higher, further and continuing education.

1 THE CHANGING CONCEPT OF EDUCATION: THEORY AND PRACTICE

Education is usually associated with childhood. Stop anyone in the street and ask them about it and invariably they will reply in terms of schools and schooling for children. Read books on educational theory and the majority of them will refer to the education of children. True, much education is about bringing up and teaching young people and even the word ‘education’ may be derived from the Latin ‘educare’ which means ‘to train or bring up a child’; hence, the term may be being employed correctly according to its derivation. But there is a possibility that the word stems from another Latin word (‘educere’ denoting ‘to draw out’ and if this were the case then the traditional usage of the word is not in accord with its derivation. It is unfortunate, but quite understandable, that the taken-for-granted meaning of the word refers to the first of these two derivations although it will be argued in this book that this is a very limiting use of the word, since logically education can occur at any stage in life. However, it is only with more recent developments in the education of adults that the illogical use of the concept has begun to be recognised. One of the main intentions of this book is to begin to formulate some ideas about education, but which examine it from the totally different perspective of the education of people in a variety of professions. Even so, many of the ideas discussed here might prove useful to other educators, especially those who teach adults.

Since the concept of education has generally been assumed to relate to childhood, it is necessary from the outset to reconsider its meaning and this is the purpose of this opening chapter. Having formulated a concept of education, it is intended to explore what is actually occurring in the world of education at the present time in order to demonstrate the realism of the definition provided here. At the same time, it is necessary to refer to other discussions on the subject but it would be most tedious to employ a multitude of studies, so that most of the references here will be to one of the most influential writers in this sphere, R.S. Peters, whose work will be examined in some detail.

THE CHANGING CONCEPT OF EDUCATION

Many of the earlier definitions of the term ‘education’ reflect the meaning of ‘educare’ and include within them an intragenerational perspective. John Stuart Mill, for instance, claimed that the content of education was to be found in ‘the culture which each generation purposely gives to those who are to be their successors’ (cited in Lester-Smith 1966: 9). Similarly, the early French sociologist and educationalist, Emile Durkheim (1956: 71) regarded education as ‘the influence exercised by adult generations on those who are not yet ready for social life’. Yet by the beginning of this century it was becoming apparent that an inter-generational perspective is not intrinsic to the concept of education. For example, John Dewey (1916: 8) had to add a prefix to the term education in order to express the same type of idea as that specified by Mill and Durkheim, noting that formal education was necessary if society was to transmit all its achievements from one generation to the next. While ‘formal’ would not now necessarily be the prefix employed, ‘initial’ might be more meaningful, it does denote Dewey’s recognition that education is a broader concept than that of the education of children. Indeed, he argued that education could occur at any stage in life, so that while education and the education of children are related they are self-evidently not synonymous.

More recently, Peters (1966: 23ff), following Wittgenstein’s argument, has claimed that education, like many complex phenomena, is too complex to be defined. He goes on to suggest that these complex concepts form a family ‘united by a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing; sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities in detail’. However, the question then must be posed as to whether the whole family needs to be defined, or may not the similarities that unite the family then constitute the basis of the definition? Peters has sought to isolate these similarities but instead of doing so from an empirical perspective he has attempted to specify criteria that define what is, and what is not, an educational process. But before these can be discussed in detail it is necessary to clarify any problems that surround the concept of definition itself.

Traditionally, a definition is an endeavour to construct conceptual boundaries around a phenomenon, so that everything encompassed within the boundary line may be classified as being of that particular phenomenon and everything that lies beyond it is excluded. Yet as phenomena have become so complex and as one phenomenon has merged into another in the complicated growth of industrial, urban society, it has often become extremely difficult to isolate and delimit specific phenomena: it is more common nowadays to question the validity of employing definitions. Yet to employ a word without overt definition is not to mean that the user of the word does not have a covert and implicit definition. As this is the case, it is considered wiser for the purposes of this discussion to attempt to provide a meaning to the term. Nevertheless, no attempt will be made here to demarcate the external boundaries of the phenomenon, rather this approach fastens on to the similarities that constitutes the family and endeavours to define education by them. This is precisely what Peters has done in specifying three criteria of education and he argues that these criteria constitute the basis ‘to which activities or processes must conform’ (1966: 25) if they are to be regarded as educational. He is, therefore, claiming that anything that lies beyond his criteria is not educational and all that falls within them is educational. His criteria, therefore, perform precisely the same function as a definition, although now the extreme limits are no longer specified. While Peters has constructed his criteria by logical argument, it would have been possible to have analysed the social reality and to have extracted the highest common factors from all the observations. However, the problem with the empirical approach is that a covert definition/set of criteria of the phenomenon (a working definition) must already exist in the mind of the investigator before the inquiry is undertaken. It is, therefore, more logical to commence with a conceptual analysis, leading to a rational definition and then using it to examine the social reality. If the criterion/criteria are sound, then the definition should be realistic but if they are not then the logical process by which they are construed requires further examination.

It would perhaps be useful at this juncture to examine Peters’ argument a little more closely. He suggests that:

‘Education’ is not a term like ‘gardening’ which picks out a particular type of activity. Something, of course, must be going on if education is taking place and something must have gone through for a person to emerge as an educated man. For education is associated with learning, not with a mysterious maturation. But no specific activity is required … (1966: 24ff)

He then goes on to discuss his three criteria of education, but before these are examined, it is necessary to question this analogy. Education is associated with one particular activity, that of learning and, while it may occur in numerous contexts, it is most certainly an activity. But it is a mental activity rather than a physical one so that it is not always observable. Yet because it is not seen it does not always mean that it does not exist! It is, therefore, argued here that education is always associated with a specific activity – that of learning. But is it not also always associated with teaching? Is not education about a process of teaching and learning? Once more the traditional picture of children’s education emerges – the teacher, the children and the school. What of the mature adult who reads widely, compares analyses from one study with another, reflects upon what he reads, learns and demonstrates what he has learned by passing examinations or writing an original piece of work? It would be hard to deny that he had not undergone an educational process and yet it is difficult to locate either a teacher or a school. Hence learning, but not teaching, is the similarity that binds the education family together. Even so, education is not synonymous with learning, so that it would be false to define the former in terms of the latter alone. Education is about a process of learning, but before it can be defined, the criteria of the educational process need to be constructed.

Education is about a learning process, so that at the outset the word ‘process’ needs discussion. As a noun, process may mean: a course of action; a series of incidents; a method; an action at law; an outgrowth. The last of these five meanings is specific to anatomy, zoology and botany and the penultimate one is confined to legal actions, so that neither of these relate to the discussion about education. The methodology of process is itself problematic but since a chapter of this book is devoted to methodology no further reference will be made to it here. However, the first two meanings of the word – ‘a course of action’ and ‘a series of incidents’ – are much more significant to this present discussion. Education is certainly not a ‘one-off’ occurrence but it is about a series of events in which learning is intended. The idea of ‘series’ suggests that the incidents may be continuous or recurrent, neither being mutually exclusive. However, the first meaning suggests that something is actually planned or intended. Learning is obviously intended when the learner embarks upon the process but, it may be asked, does the fact that some learning may occur without planning exclude it from being classified as education? When a learner, reflecting upon incidents which have occurred in his life which were not intended but from which he has learned, classifies them as educational experiences, is he actually employing the term correctly? It might appear dangerous to exclude the possibility of learning from ordinary, everyday experience as educational, but not to do so may create even more problems because there would then be no reason for excluding the whole of the socialisation process from the ambit of education. Once this option exists education may appear synonymous with learning or it is so broad a concept as to be virtually meaningless. It is, therefore, considered here that an element of planning is essential to the educational process so that education may be viewed tentatively in terms of a planned series of learning incidents.

Nevertheless, the word ‘plan’ does initially prove difficult. As Hare (1964: 47ff) has suggested, indoctrination may be viewed as an intention as well as either the content or the methods of the process. It is, therefore, important to qualify the idea that education is a premeditated process by excluding such possibilities as ‘indoctrination’. This may be possible by recognising the essentially humanistic quality of education, as Dewey (1916: 23) has emphasised:

Knowledge is humanistic in quality not because it is about human products in the past, but because of what it does in liberating human intelligence and human sympathy.

Consequently, Dewey regards education as the antithesis of indoctrination: the one frees the mind whereas the other binds it. It is, therefore, argued here that the planned process of education must have incorporated into its definition some reference to the humanistic quality of the enterprise. By so doing, such processes as indoctrination may not be legitimately included within the conceptual framework of education.

Yet the word ‘learning’ still requires discussion before an operational definition of education can be formulated. Learning may be regarded as the acquisition of knowledge, skill or attitude by study, experience or teaching. Yet even here no reference is made to the level of knowledge attained nor to the degree of understanding. It would be, and is, possible to learn a mathematical formula by rote but be neither able to understand it nor apply it. It would be illogical to consider an individual who learned without understanding as having been educated. Hence education is more than merely a process of learning: it is a process of learning and understanding knowledge, skill or attitude.

Implicit within the term ‘understanding’ is the recognition that the learner can both evaluate the knowledge, skill and attitude learned and also reject that which is false, irrelevant or of no value to him. Discrimination lies at the heart of understanding.

It is now, therefore, possible to propose a definition of education – one that will form the basis of the discussion in the following pages.

Education is any planned series of incidents, having a humanistic basis, directed towards the participant(s)’ learning and understanding.

Clearly this definition requires discussion, so that its implications are now examined and then related to Peters’ three criteria.

It might be objected that it is impossible to plan for understanding to occur, but this is not so! It is not possible to guarantee the outcome of a series of events and, consequently, this definition makes no attempt to specify what the results will actually be. Yet it is maintained here that education must have aims, or else the process will not really be education. Even so, it is quite understandable for someone, reflecting upon the learning and understanding gained from an unplanned series of occurrences, to classify those experiences as educational, although they may not actually have constituted an educational process. Education should always be a planned process directed towards learning and understanding, but the individual branches of education must specify their own aims. The third chapter of this book, for instance, is devoted to a discussion of the aims of professional education.

Similarly this definition does not specify what is to be learned, or taught; the content of the curriculum is not a matter for the definition of the process. Further reference will be made to this below in discussing Peters’ first characteristic of education. Nevertheless, it is to be noted here that this definition is wide enough to embrace knowledge, skills and attitudes essential to the concept of professionalism as well as the cognitive emphasis of higher education. Yet it is narrow enough to rule out as non-educational those processes that do not enhance the humanity of the participants during the process of acquiring knowledge and understanding.

The definition does not specify, however, that education is a process of teaching and learning since it is claimed here that while learners are essential participants in the process, teachers are not! Gross (1977) indicates how some lifelong learners have planned their own learning programmes and have embarked upon the educational process without necessarily including, or utilising, a teacher, but it would be impossible not to consider some of these persons as being highly educated persons. Neither does the definition actually specify that there need be two distinct processes: the teacher externalising and the learner internalising. Paulo Freire (1972: 60ff) rightly recognised that the teaching and learning process is a dialogue in which the teachers are also learners and the learners teachers and this conception may also be understood within this definition.

Teaching and learning have frequently been taken to imply the inter-generational process, as included in the definitions given in the introduction to this chapter. Clearly in professional education there must be some idea, at least in its initial stages, of new recruits learning about that which is already established within the profession. However, in the other forms of post-basic and in-service education this need not be the situation. The elite of hierarchical professions, for instance, can go on a continuing education course and be taught by their subordinates within the hierarchy. In adult education, the elderly may be taught by those younger than themselves. Education per se is not concerned with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that one generation wishes to transmit to the next: it is concerned with knowledge, skills and attitudes that may be learned by people of any age.

It will be seen from this discussion that already different branches of the process are appearing, but before an elaboration of the more complex phenomenon of education is embarked upon it will be useful to re-examine Peters’ (1966) three characteristics of education.

Education Implies the Transmission of What Is Worthwhile to Those Who Become Committed to It

Education has been claimed to be normative by many philosophers and they claim that this is a better perspective than the more value-free one that seeks merely to define the process. Frankena (1973: 23) holds that it should be adopted because ‘only then will we have a concept of education that can guide us as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, rather than the other way around’. However, there appears to be considerable confusion surrounding his discussion: he argues that it is very necessary to foster in children ‘this sense of what is desirable or relevant’ (1973: 27ff) and goes on to write that he is unable to suggest who should determin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The Changing Concept of Education: Theory and Practice
• 2 The Professions
• 3 The Aims of Professional Education
• 4 Criteria for the Selection of Curriculum Content in Professional Education
• 5 Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes
• 6 Educational Processes
• 7 Appraisal in Professional Education
• 8 Teachers and Teaching in the Education of Professionals
• 9 Confronting Some Ethical Issues
• Bibliography
• Index