Educational Judgment: Linking the Actor and the Spectator

Abstract

The difficulty of connecting the knowledge generated by educational researchers and the practice of classroom teachers is familiar. Academics write about the importance of research for understanding and improving classroom practices; classroom teachers dismiss the academics’ research knowledge as a poor substitute for actual experience. We argue for moving from debates between spectators and actors about knowledge and practice to discussions about how all educators can foster good judgment. We outline two major accounts of judgment in Western thought, Aristotle’s and Kant’s, which ultimately privilege the spectator over the actor. We then introduce the work of Hannah Arendt, who linked thinking and acting without privileging either in her conception of judgment. Focusing on how teachers and researchers might become better educational judges is a crucial, yet neglected, agenda that promises to link these communities.

Australian Teacher Education : Although Reviewed to the Eyeball is there Evidence of Significant Change and Where to now?

“…According to Coulter (2002) The public world is the arena required for action, where plurality and natality are possible. Equal, but distinct individuals meet in the public to determine who they are and who they want to be individually and collectively.…”

“…It is my understanding, along with many other educators, (Britzman, 2003, D. Coulter & Wiens, 2002, Gore, 2001, Groundwater-Smith, Cusworth, & Dobbins, 1998, Hargreaves & Fullan, 2000, Korthagen & Kessels, 1999, Leach, 2000, Zeichner, 1999 that there are other, and perhaps different ways than we have used in the past, to prepare quality teachers for this now digital, bordering on the genetic, age. I have also formed the opinion that there are special requirements, or unique characteristics vital to be present in a quality teacher for this age -such as the following: a quality teacher is self-efficacious and capable in their own right, is willing and able to take responsibility for the various tasks at hand, is able to manage their own life but is also able to recognise that they are not alone, is a moral person recognising the rights of others, is willing to put the needs of others, especially their students, before their own, when it is necessary to do so, and recognises that through collaboration and resource sharing the power of one becomes the power of many.…”

“…A graduate leaving a teacher education program, rooted in tertiary learning, should be able to view their life, their chosen career, their spheres of influence and their personal contribution to planet earth in a totally different way to that which they perceived it when they entered their teacher preparation course. If this were the case then the graduates from teaching degrees, or education degrees, would emerge with a keen sense of "educational judgement" (D. Coulter & Wiens, 2002) that is founded on a unity between thought and action. Australia in joining the rest of the world in the first decade of the 2 nd millennium has moved once again into a re-occurring cycle of examining what is effective in pre-service teacher education.…”

Leading Inquiry-based Learning

“…As Coulter and Wiens (2002) note, phronesis does not easily translate into English, but a common translation is practical wisdom. Phronesis is a particular kind of knowledge-one oriented to action, and specifically ethical action, action oriented to the good (Lund, Panayotidis, Smits, & Towers, 2006;Coulter & Wiens, 2002;Ricoeur, 1992;Wall, 2003). Phronetic knowledge is knowledge with an irreducible core of judgment.…”

What counts as action in educational action research?

“…For a long time in education, only Maxine Greene consistently referred to Arendt's work (Greene, 1978), but more recently a few educationalists have joined the Arendt revival (e.g. Levinson, 1997;Schutz, 1999;Gordon, 2001;Coulter & Wiens, 2002).…”