_The Good Life of Teaching_ extends the recent revival of virtue ethics to professional ethics and the philosophy of teaching. It connects long-standing philosophical questions about work and human growth to questions about teacher motivation, identity, and development. Makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of teaching and also offers new insights into virtue theory and professional ethics Offers fresh and detailed readings of major figures in ethics, including Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams and the practical philosophies of (...) Hannah Arendt, John Dewey and Hans-Georg Gadamer Provides illustrations to assist the reader in visualizing major points, and integrates sources such as film, literature, and teaching memoirs to exemplify arguments in an engaging and accessible way Presents a compelling vision of teaching as a reflective practice showing how this requires us to prepare teachers differently. (shrink)

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

In this paper, I reconstruct Alasdair MacIntyre's aretaic, practical philosophy, drawing out its implications for professional ethics in general and the practice of teaching in particular. After reviewing the moral theory as a whole, I examine MacIntyre's notion of internal goods. Defined within the context of practices, such goods give us reason to reject the very idea of applied ethics. Being goods for the practitioner, they suggest that the eudaimonia of the practitioner is central to professional ethics. In this way, (...) MacIntyre's moral theory helps us recover the untimely question, how does teaching contribute to the flourishing of the teacher? (shrink)

In our increasingly instrumentalist culture, debates over the privatization of schooling may be beside the point. Whether we hatch some new plan for chartering or funding schools, or retain the traditional model of government-run schools, the ongoing instrumentalization of education threatens the very possibility of public education. Indeed, in the culture of performativity, not only the public school but public life itself is hollowed out and debased. Qualities are recast as quantities, judgments replaced by rubrics, teaching and learning turned into (...) exchange values. Schools should be central to public life: key locations for the regeneration of values, the cultivation of judgment, and the creation of the conditions for positive freedom. In this article Chris Higgins, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, goes beyond typical treatments of the schools as equalizer of individual opportunity to explore three aspects of educational publicity: the school as an object of communal concern, schooling as preparation for public life, and the classroom as public space. (shrink)

Action research began as an ambitious epistemological and social intervention. As the concept has become reified, packaged for methodology textbooks and professional development workshops, it has degenerated into a cure that may be worse than the disease. The point is not the trivial one that action research, like any practice, sometimes shows up in cheap or corrupt forms. The very idea that action research already exists as a live option is mystifying, distracting us from the deep challenge that action research (...) ultimately represents. Though Joseph Schwab is sometimes credited as a forerunner of action research, it is likely that he would see the new talk of ‘the teacher as researcher’ as indicative of the very epitomization of which he warned. Dewey’s new conception of knowledge, action, and communication – and the vision of the teacher as learner it entails – requires nothing short of a radical rethinking of teaching and inquiry, schooling and teacher education. This essay recalls the promise of... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The architecture of MacIntyre's moral theory A closer look at internal goods The practicality of ethical reflection What counts as a practice: The proof, the pudding, and the recipe Boundary conditions: Practitioners, managers, interpreters, and fans.

When we defend aesthetic education in instrumental terms or rely on clichés of creativity and imagination, we win at best a pyrrhic victory. To make a lasting place for the arts in education, we must critique the transmission model of education and the instrumentalist view of life that undergirds it. To help us perceive anew the nature and value of the aesthetic, I explore John Dewey's distinction between recognition and perception. Through a series of examples drawn from painting and poetry, (...) I embody Dewey's theory and describe a number of artistic strategies for interrupting recognition and cultivating perception. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A prima facie case for teaching as a practice MacIntyre's objection Schools as surroundings.

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

This chapter contains sections titled: The constant gardener The existential and aesthetic dimensions of vocation Our dominant vocation Practical wisdom and the circle of experience The open question.

This chapter contains sections titled: Saints and scoundrels A brief for teacherly self‐cultivation From the terrain of teaching to the definition of professional ethics Outline of the argument.

This chapter contains sections titled: Arendt's singular project Defining the deed Hierarchy and interdependence in the vita activa Praxis in the professions.

This chapter contains sections titled: A blind spot in the educational imagination The hunger artist The very idea of a helping profession This ripeness of self.

This chapter contains sections titled: Teaching as vocational environment Batch processing, kitsch culture, and other obstacles to teacher vocation The syntax of educational claims The shape of humanistic conversation Horizons of educational inquiry Teacher education for practical wisdom.

This chapter contains sections titled: Education as the drama of cultural renewal A false lead Teaching as labour, work, and action Education, shelter, and mediation Teaching as endless rehearsal Teaching as cultural elaboration.

This chapter contains sections titled: Retrieving Socrates' question Modern moral myopia What do moral agents want? From moral professionalism to professional ethics.

In this essay, Chris Higgins sets out to disentangle the tradition of humane learning from contemporary distinctions and debates. The first section demonstrates how a bloated and incoherent “humanism” now functions primarily as a talisman or a target, that is, as a prompt to choose sides. It closes with the image of Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth, suggesting that humanism is more like the uncertain footing of Salcedo's fissure than the footholds on either side. The second section suggests that this “alien humanism” (...) is hiding in plain sight, requiring us only to read an inch beyond the poster-ready copy fueling the polemics. Even a cursory glance at the texts from which these epitomes are drawn — from Terence's “Nothing human is foreign to me,” through Shakespeare's “What a piece of work is a man,” to Arnold's “The best of what has been thought and said” — is enough to reconnect us with a tradition stranger and more dynamic than that portrayed by boosters and knockers alike. The third section explores the tensions between the research university and the tradition of humane letters it has come to house, arguing that it will not do to escape this rancor by hiding behind the functionalist, and ultimately circular, term “humanist,” defined as one who does research in the humanities. The final section shows that if this older tradition pulls away, to some extent, from the modern humanities, it simultaneously embraces scientific and professional fields, as demonstrated by the long tradition of the physician-humanist. (shrink)