Epistemology Of Education

Carter, J. Adam; Kotzee, Ben

doi:10.1093/obo/9780195396577-0292

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…This entry seeks only to say why epistemology matters in education. Broader and more systematic discussions of the epistemology of education can be found, along with other relevant entries in this volume, in Carter and Kotzee (2015), Watson (2016), and Siegel (2018).…”

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Why Does Epistemology Matter in Education?

Siegel¹

2020

Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory

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The question posed in the title above presupposes that epistemology does in fact matter in education. Does it? One reason that it does matter, at least at first glance, is that a traditional and rarely questioned aim of education is that students acquire knowledge. If educational efforts are rightly thought to aim at transmitting knowledge to students and providing them with the abilities and inclinations needed to acquire more (Goldman 1999, p. 349), then epistemology does seem to matter, insofar as epistemology is that branch of philosophy that takes knowledgeincluding the knowledge education aims to pass on to students and the knowledge it strives to enable students to acquire on their ownas its subject of study. But this may seem too quick. For example, a "practical" member of the local school board might well agree with the aim, but disagree that it warrants student study of epistemology. After all, epistemology pursues rather abstract questions and problems-What is knowledge?; Do we actually know anything?; If so, how can we distinguish the genuine item from ersatz imposters?; etc.and knowledge concerning these epistemological questions concerning the nature, scope, and limits of knowledge, although they may fascinate professional epistemologists and the occasional student, is the sort of "impractical" esoterica that does not deserve a place in the curriculum, for it won't help students in the practical business of life. Worse still, an objector to the inclusion of epistemology in the curriculum might object on the grounds that philosophical speculation of the sort that epistemologists traffic in, concerning, for example, the conditions of knowledge, the nature of truth, or the character and possibility of justification, does not itself constitute knowledge. Rather, the objection goes, it is idle speculation: like much of philosophy, it is the locus of interminable argument and counterargument, unprovable claims and counterclaims, and so is not entitled to a place in educational institutions, if the aims of those institutions include that of transmitting knowledge to students and enabling them to acquire more. These possible objections to the inclusion of epistemology in the curriculum are important, but they can be answered. The first objection depends upon the alleged fact that philosophical wonderand at least for some, subsequent inquiryis irrelevant to students' actual, "practical" lives. But this is false: many, perhaps most students, are naturally led, in the ordinary course of their lives, to wonder about all sorts of things that are at

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Why Does Epistemology Matter in Education?

Siegel¹

2020

Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory

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“…A different form of dispositionalism is the critical thinking approach, defended notably by Scheffler (2014) and Siegel (1988). For an overview, see Carter and Kotzee, 2015.…”

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Cognitive Goods, Open Futures and the Epistemology of Education

Carter¹

2020

Journal of Philosophy of Education

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What cognitive goods do children plausibly have a right to in an education? In attempting to answer this question, I begin with a puzzle centred around Joel Feinberg's observation that a denial of certain cognitive goods can violate a child's right to an open future. I show that propositionalist, dispositionalist and objectualist characterisations of the kinds of cognitive goods children have a right to, run in to problems. A promising alternative is then proposed and defended, one that is inspired in the main by Wittgenstein's ‘hinge’ epistemology as developed in his posthumous On Certainty.

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“…Organisation claim: Educational activities should be organised to achieve A; 10 Value maximisation claim: A is the primary educational value, in comparison with 7 See, in particular, the essays in Baehr (2016). For an overview of recent work on the epistemic aims of education, see Kotzee (2013), Carter and Kotzee (2015) and Siegel (2018). 'Aims' has (at least) three notably different senses: constitutive, teleological and intentional.…”

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“…14 (Baehr 2013b: 249). For a critique of Baehr's more detailed account of open-mindedness, as defended in Baehr (2011), see Carter and Kotzee (2015). For a more general critique of Baehr's case for the superiority of the intellectual virtue aim to the critical thinking aim, see Siegel (2016).…”

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Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance

2019

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Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists (most notably Baehr) have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr's picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking. In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach (borrowed largely from exemplarist thinking) is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education.

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Epistemology Of Education

Cited by 9 publications

References 3 publications

Why Does Epistemology Matter in Education?

Why Does Epistemology Matter in Education?

Cognitive Goods, Open Futures and the Epistemology of Education

Educating for Intellectual Virtue: A Critique from Action Guidance

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