Handbook of Educational Ideas and Practices (Routledge Revivals)

Noel Entwistle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138857551
• eBook ISBN: 9781317510062
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1990, the Handbook of Educational Ideas and Practices was written for practitioners and students in the field of education and its related services and was designed to appeal to educationists no matter what their nationality. Focusing mainly on compulsory schooling, it provides summaries of the thinking, research findings, and innovatory practices current at the time. However, the book is also careful to present a complete picture of education and therefore includes a separate section for education beyond school which covers pre-school level, post-secondary level, and adult and continuing education. There are also other chapters dealing with aspects of organization, curriculum, and teaching in various forms of tertiary education. Indeed, each topic has been discussed by an acknowledged expert writing in sufficient detail in order to resist trivialization.

A. THE NATURE AND FUNCTION
OF EDUCATION

1. RECURRENT ISSUES

1.0

INTRODUCTION: A
PERSPECTIVE ON
RECURRING
CONTROVERSIES

RUTH JONATHAN

This first section of the Handbook of Educational Ideas and Practices addresses a range of issues which are the subject of contemporary debate in education. The agenda of the debate surrounding education in any complex society is influenced by economic and socio-political circumstance, and by the findings and fashions of educational theory. Some questions, however, cannot, by their nature, be definitively settled, and recur with changing emphasis as society continues to reappraise the fundamental questions of what constitutes the good life for individuals, and what social arrangements and institutions may most justly promote the well-being of the community now and in the future. Since these questions are necessarily matters of dispute, and since all educational policy and practice embodies implicit commitments in respect of them, it is inevitable that in any open society the formal influences on the development of the young which are offered through the provision of education will remain the focus of controversy. This series of articles sets out to map the nature and interrelationships of those issues which are and which remain at the centre of educational debate.

Accordingly, Hartnett and Naish open the discussion with an exploration of the complex relationship which exists between a system of formal education and the society it serves both to reproduce and to modify. They emphasize the reciprocity of this relation, with social change modifying the demands made on education, and consequent provision opening up some possibilities for society in the future whilst foreclosing others. They draw attention, therefore, to the moral and political nature of our decisions in this area, since these are basic to formation of the social future. There will thus be struggle for control of the system, and conflicts concerning its content, process, and management, which will reflect the dominant values of society and divergences of interests within it. After mapping the manner in which current values and interests are reflected in the educational preoccupations of the Western capitalist democracies, and arguing that they are neither adequate nor inevitable, these writers propose an alternative view. The conception of education they propose implies a wider notion of social identity than that of worker and consumer, and requires a schooling system which should not be thought of as principally a service industry to the economy. Certain conditions are required, however, they argue, for a general education to provide an effective preparation for adult life as a fully autonomous citizen, and these conditions require changes in social ethos and arrangements which lie beyond the school.

In the contribution which follows, White approaches the primary question of what should be the aims of education by declaring this to be a fundamentally evaluative matter, though not thereby arbitrary. On the grounds that in such matters we can only seek to persuade properly by the offering of good reasons, he deploys arguments to justify the claim that in a complex industrialized society we must aim to promote personal autonomy of a certain sort. This would involve the assimilation and understanding of the beliefs, values, and practices of society, together with the ability to evaluate and possibly modify them. As an overarching aim for the education of all the young, this, he argues, is compatible both with personal well-being and with the flourishing of the social group. A later entry in this section addresses the question of moral education as one proposed task for schooling: White argues here that the fundamental aim of education is to promote the capacity for a certain style and quality of life.

In today’s climate of opinion such a perspective is eclipsed by the perceived need for schooling to attend to the urgent task of fitting the young for existing society and its likely employment conditions, since it is undeniable that a certain level of group prosperity is required to fund the universal provision of a general education. Chitty thus focuses on that recurrent strand of controversy concerning the proper purpose of schooling, which has dominated debate over the past decade, by examining the tension between the demands of education and the need for training. He reviews the recent resurgence of the vocational impetus, locating this in an economic and social context, and seeks to sift reality from rhetoric in assessing its impact on practice. Chitty highlights the dilemma implicit in overtly vocationalist policies which, if pursued for all, would be incompatible with an open future for society as a whole, or, if pursued only for some, would militate against the presumption of equality embodied in the comprehensive ideal.

The next two entries make further contributions to discussion of the legitimate requirement on education that it simultaneously serve the interests of society as a whole whilst disadvantaging none of its members, but rather promoting their optimum development. Darling explores the nature of the progressive movement, which stressed individual development, and which characterized much educational change in the post-war period of economic expansion and social optimism. He describes the social and intellectual background to this shift in goals and pedagogy, and the view both of the nature of the child and of the role of the teacher which it implies. Darling indicates that progressivism’s relaxed view of each child as a unique individual with a potentially open future, with the teacher’s role being that of guide and resource, was facilitated by the expectation of growing prosperity and of concomitant increases in social equality. The concurrent weakening of traditional authority structures within society and the popular acceptance of the part played by upbringing and environment on personal development combined to produce an ethos in which child-centred notions were welcomed in theory, if less than comprehensively pursued in practice. Though a salutory reaction to much preceding practice, progressivism, Darling notes, embodies countervailing weaknesses of its own which should be carefully distinguished from the insights it offers.

Bailey then reconsiders the notion of liberal education which, he argues, has acquired connotations of academicism and irrelevance that place it currently at a discount. He suggests that both the popular political complaint, that liberal education is a luxury we cannot afford, and the standard Marxist critique, that it is an instrument for preserving the power and values of the dominant class, must be seriously addressed in any attempt to reassert the value and redefine the content of an education aimed at personal emancipation and rational autonomy. He argues, however, that in reasserting these aims we are committed neither to static content nor to stultifying pedagogy, for if the social context both of the learner and of what is to be learned is taken seriously, then what constitutes a liberal education cannot be historically static, although some conceptions of education are clearly illiberal in assumptions and effects. Bailey sketches accordingly some substantive proposals for the type of educational content and process which would be required to liberate the young from the constraints of the here and now, of the perceived concerns of today, and which would thereby permit them to flourish as individuals whilst contributing to the continuous evolution of society in general.

The debates explored to this point in the section are general, and underlie our broad conceptions of the nature and function of education. Others are more specific and more obviously matters of immediate controversy. The next four entries in this section of the Handbook therefore address topics which are of current and enduring overt concern. Phillips examines the complex area of personal, social, and moral education, differentiating the three areas, but showing their interrelationships and their shared grounding in moral values. He looks at the basis of arguments for and against the school’s involvement in principle in the ethical development of the young, and at the form that that involvement might take, concluding that much empirical and conceptual work needs to be done if confusion is to be minimized in an area which gives rise to more muddled thinking than most. Phillips emphasizes here that our doubts and uncertainties over the content and propriety of personal, social, and moral education are an inescapable concomitant both of the nature of ethical theory and of our collective commitment to a form of life in which the expectations of individuals are not fixed, nor their social roles predetermined.

Crick then turns to the sensitive issue of what part the school should play in the political education of the young. He reviews the extent and type of teaching which takes places in schools in order to prepare the young for the political and economic life of their society, setting the developments of recent decades in their historical context. This includes debate concerning the relative priority and propriety of differing facets of political education: transmitting knowledge, developing attitudes, and fostering action skills, against a background of certain procedural values – tolerance, fairness, respect for truth and reason – without which political teaching would scarcely be termed educative. He notes wide variation in both styles of political education and in commitment to it, with serious study most evident, as ever, in preparation for relevant public examinations. Given the widespread agreement on the necessity for schools to prepare for political literacy – shared by teachers’ professional bodies, the TUC, the CBI and parent organizations – he notes the remarkable absence of such provision from the proposed national curriculum, presumably on grounds of politically expressed fears of indoctrination and bias. On this issue, Crick points out the naivety, both of supposing that established subjects such as history or geography are free of political content or implications, and further, of expecting that the effects of political education on knowledge and attitudes would be either pervasive or dramatic, whether for good or ill. For political learning, like other learning, seems to be far more strongly influenced by the home, the media, by the ethos of society at large, and by the institutional practices of schooling, than it is by the efforts of teachers or by any formal curricular offerings.

In the entry on multicultural education, Walkling charts education’s response to the cultural diversity produced by post-war immigration to Britain, from earlier remedial and assimilationist goals to later practices which celebrate pluralism. He suggests that though commitment to multiculturalism varies widely, it is now seen to imply a perspective which treats knowledge as the common property of diverse cultures, and which promotes sensitivity to the valued ways of life of other people. In rejecting both radical relativist and ethnocentric notions of what is educationally worthwhile, Walkling builds up a case for the feasibility, as well as the desirability, of a multicultural approach to schooling process and content. This is seen as part of a broader reforming tendency which aims at an increase in social equality through educational change.

That, too, is the perspective from which Acker reviews the growing awareness that schooling practices reflect and reproduce the gender stereotypes and sex-linked divisions of labour of society, such that if these outcomes are considered neither inevitable nor desirable, schooling change will be indicated. She reports sex-linked differences in access to education, in experiences within the system, and in consequent educational, economic and social outcomes. In each of these areas, Acker documents the extent and pervasiveness of sex-linked differences, exploring their sources and cumulative effects. These latter in turn act as powerful obstacles to subsequent reform, since each age cohort provides, through its choices and destinations, its successes and failures, potent role models for those who follow. Though outcomes are attributed to a complex of social and school-based factors, it is argued that education has a primary role to play in counteracting gender-related inequalities.

The final group of recurrent issues addressed in this section return to more general matters which are less obviously controversial than questions of explicit moral and political education, or of schooling’s influence on relations between the sexes and differing races. Carr examines the relation of theory to practice in education, revealing that these apparently separate spheres of activity are in fact mutually interdependent. A brief historical survey illustrates how theory and practice mirror and institutionalize the dominant priorities and perspectives of a given era. Differing approaches to educational theorizing reflect, Carr shows, changes in our way of thinking about educational practice, and thus are no more free from value commitments and from the effects of evolving social circumstance than is practice itself. Once theory is itself considered from a historical perspective, it becomes evident that a popular natural science analogy of cumulative progress is inappropriate, for each succeeding style of theorizing is a response to changing social conditions and to a changing agenda of practical concerns. Carr thus goes on to explicate the new ‘critical’ paradigm of educational theory, which, by taking account of the social, political and economic context of education, aims to rescue both theory and practice from ideological constraints by making explicit those values they embody and reflect.

The value-laden nature of apparently aseptic theory is then explored by Barrow, who looks particularly at curriculum theory. He shows that in this expanding area of research and writing there is controversy first about how inquiry into the curriculum should be pursued, and also about what range of educational concerns it should cover. Barrow suggests a range of questions which curriculum theory might properly seek to answer, concerned with the selection, development, presentation and evaluation of intended learning content. Given these parameters, this area gives rise to different types of questions – philosophical, sociological, psychological – none of which are free from value commitments. Barrow argues that although such commitments are more pervasive than is immediately obvious, they need be neither arbitrary nor subjective, but must be consistent with a clearly and coherently argued conception of education. Only when such a conception is made explicit can theory which echoes and sustains it be rationally evaluated.

Inglis’s consideration of culture and curriculum change extends this perspective, showing how our educational practices and preoccupations are far from immune to the backwash of national economic and geopolitical events. At a time when old political and epistemological certainties are crumbling, the curriculum becomes disputed ground, with competing interest groups attempting to influence the directions of change. Inglis sees current policy making in education – as elsewhere – as dominated by managerialism, which implies not just a particular approach to org...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Contributos
• Preface by the General Editor
• Abbreviations
• A the Nature and Function of Education
• B The Management and Content of Education
• C The Learning Environment
• D Individual Development
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects