Abstract

Historically, research on teaching has examined teaching in order to determine the amount of teacher effectiveness in terms of the effects of teachers' specific behaviors on student achievement. This research on teacher effectiveness has been conspicuously lacking in a consideration of the intentional nature of teaching. The teachers' own thoughts, beliefs, desires, purposes, emotions, and intentions have been virtually ignored. The past decade in educational research, in contrast, has brought changes in this conception of teachers. Through shifts in the social science conceptions of research throughout this century, researchers have begun to recognize that teachers are rational agents who have beliefs, desires and emotions that help make-up their aims in teaching. Teachers in this intentional view act purposefully toward selected ends. ;In this dissertation, a new idea of research on teaching--practical reasoning--has been proposed as a framework for understanding teachers' actions and as a unifying tool for assessing research on teaching. Practical reasoning is a conceptual framework in which a person's beliefs, desires, emotions, experiences with particulars, knowledge of universals, and intentions interact in a reasoning process that leads to the conclusion to act. The account of practical reasoning developed here has an Aristotelian base, but both expands on and departs from the initial Aristotelian-based account. ;The second main theme of the dissertation is the analysis of recent research programs that have taken into account the intentional nature of teaching. Three such specific programs are the psychology-driven study of teacher thinking; the examination of the nature and use of "practical arguments" in order to understand teaching, a philosophical program; and the practitioner-oriented program of reflective teaching. An assessment of these three recent research programs on teaching is undertaken in light of the account of practical reasoning offered here. There appear to be three main differences found between practical reasoning as a base for research on teaching and these other research programs in teaching. One, the conception of intentionality underlying practical reasoning differs from that of the cognitive processing research program. Two, there is a lack of discussion of the active deliberation process in reasoning within the practical argument and reflective teaching programs. And third, the reflective teaching program is highly idiosyncratic as it does not accept an underlying theory of human action that would underlie the teaching act in all situations. ;In summary, practical reasoning, as the concept has been developed and analyzed by philosophers, forms a strong basis and an appropriate standard for assessing the research programs on teaching