A PHILOSOPHICAL Enquiry INTO SOME ASPECTS of the TEACHER's ROLE Helen Stephanie Freeman

1 A PHILOSOPHICAL ENqUIRY INTO SOME ASPECTS OF THE TEACHER'S ROLE Helen Stephanie Freeman - 2 - J36TRACT In this thesis an investigation is conducted into the justification for various aspects of the teacher's role in schools, being concerned in particular to find out whether certain aspects are in some way necessary for the role as a justifiable one in a justifiable institution. That thesis is, itself, an instantiation of a further thesis concerned with the prescriptive implications of philosophy of education, which is discussed in the first section. The second section discusses what it is to be teaching someone something, raising objections to the current orthodox analysis of the concept of teaching, which is argued to be inadequate to account for our current understanding of it. Various terms of art are considered and found unsatisfactory, and a new schema for analysing teaching is introduced. An alternative analysis which does not embody certain important assumptions of the orthodox analysis is presented. Objections to it are considered. The third section examines the concept of role, using as its basis an analysis presented by R.S. Downie. This analysis is considered to be too crude for the investigation of this thesis, and an alternative analysis is again developed for application here. Some of the problems of role concepts are discussed in relation to the social sciences. The fourth section applies the above analyses to a consideration of the teacher's role in respect of the following aspects: (a) the teaching of understanding, beliefs and skills (including the specifying of low-level objectives) (b) the teaching of values (c) assessment and evaluation (d) authority in the sphere of knowledge and, briefly, the personal/impersonal dimension of the teacher-pupil relationship. Particular attention is given to the psychological concept of interest. - 5 - The final section collects together the prescriptive implications of the work of sections II - IV, for teachers themselves and for those who are concerned to provide the con- ditions under which teachers are expected to fulfil their roles. References are numbered consecutively for each section and bound in at the end of each. ACKNOWLIDGMENTS In presenting this thesis, I would like to thank all those people who have helped me reach this point. In particular, I thank my supervisors, Professor R.S. Peters without whose criticisms the work on teaching would have been far less closely argued, and Mrs. P.A. White, who supervised the remainder of the thesis, and whose advice and encouragement have been invaluable. I am indebted to more fellow students than I can name for discussions on philosophy of education, in particular Catherine Beattie, Suzanne Castell, Peter Jackson and Peter Scrimshaw. All the flaws in the arguments presented here, however, are all my own work. I also thank the J.S.R.C. for a three-year studentship during which most of this thesis was written, and my long-suffering husband and children for the times they have left me alone to get on with it. Helen Freeman June 1975. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page No. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 4 GENERAL INTRODUCTION 6 SECTION I: Philosophy of Education and the Status of this Thesis 8 Chapter 1: On the Nature of Philosophy of Education and its Practice in Colleges and Departments of Education 9 SECTION II: Teaching 23 Introduction to Section II 24 Chapter 2: A Critical Review of some of the Previous Analyses of Teaching 27 Chapter 3: Terms of Art for Discussing Teaching and Learning 66 Chapter 4: An Alternative Analysis of Teaching 99 SECTION III: Role 138 Chapter 5: The Concept of Role 139 SECTION IV: The Role (4) of the Teacher in School 175 Introduction to Section IV 176 Chapter 6: Bringing about Capacity Enlarging Learning 184 Chapter 7: (a) The Teaching of Values 214 (b) Assessment 232 Chapter 8: (a) Authority and the Teacher's Role 258 (b) Teacher-Pupil Relationships 274 SECTION V: Conclusions and Further Questions for Research 295 Chapter 9: Conclusions, Prescriptions and Further Questions 296 BIBLIOGRAPHY 310 GENERAL INTRODUCTION This thesis is in major part a consideration from a philosophical point of view of some aspects of the role of the teacher in a school. The aspects chosen are ones which have, at different tines and by different people, been suggested as ones which should be eliminated from the role - or, to use the currently fashionable jargon, are "negotiable". These include the teaching of propositional knowledge (e.g. by those who claim that since knowledge is now so quickly obsolescent, children should simply 'learn how to learn'), the planning of low-level objectives (e.g. by those who propose widespread use of enquiry, as opposed to discovery, methods), the teaching of values (e.g. by those who claim that schools ought not to 'impose middle-class values' on children), the assessment aspect (e.g. by those who hold that the criteria must ultimately be arbitrary) and the authority aspect (e.g. by those who fear indoctrination). The investigation will seek to establish whether these aspects are necessarily or merely contingently associated with the role. Particular attention is paid to the psychological concept of interest, both because of its relationship with the value of what it learned and because it can be clearly demonstrated that the teaching of interest is an instance of the teaching of values which cannot involve imposition. This detailed working out is an instantiation of a wider thesis regarding the prescriptive implications of much philosophical work, which is set out and discussed in Section I. The other main centre of interest of this thesis is the development of an analytic scheme of what I have called "perficience" verbs and an explanation of their logic. This constitutes Section II of this thesis, which concludes by offering a new analysis of teaching which not only serves as a foundation for the work described above but is also offered in its own right as a valid analysis, to be preferred to the current orthodox one as a way of understanding teaching. section III is devoted to an analysis and discussion of concepts of role, as a further basis to Section IV, which contains the work 7 discussed in the first paragraph above, and Section V spells out the prescriptive implications of the justificatory work of sections II - IV. SECTION I Philosophy of Education and the Status of this Thesis - 9 CHAPTER 1: On the Nature of Philosophy of Education and its Practice in Colleges and Departments of Education Philosophy used to be thought of as providing a comprehensive understanding of the universe, and philosophers as constructing metaphysical and ethical systems and thus prescribing the Good Life for Man. Now philosophy is more modest, and is generally no longer understood in this way. The view of philosophy as a second-order activity (the 'under-labourer' view) has been applied to Philosophy 1 of Education by O'Connor , who suggests that Philosophy of Education has no problems of its own but consists simply of those aspects of philosophy which are of particular concern to students of education. Hirst and Peters stress the importance of the use of these 'under-labourer' methods to solve important practical or theoretical 2 questions. Theywrite , "To do conceptual analysis, unless something depends on getting clearer about the structure underlying how we speak, may be a fascinating pastime, but it is not philosophy." However, Wittgenstein3 wrote of philosophy as he conceived of it that it left everything as it was (though the changes in his own thinking and of people's conception of philosophy which resulted from his philosophizing might be adduced as evidence for rejecting the claim). But if what he said is true of philosophy now, and if Philosophy of Education is being properly philosophical, then it, too, must leave everything as it is. This is not regarded as being an objection to philosophy by some of those who believe it to be true of philosophy as it is conceived of now. For example, A.J. Ayer, when asked about this by Brian Magee in a radio interview said that he did not regard it as an objection to philosophy because, as he put it in his incisive way, 4 "that's where things are". But many would clearly regard it as an objection to philosophy, for this way of understanding philosophy, including the Philosophy of Education, makes it essentially and - 10 - necessarily conservative. This is important to those who teach the Philosophy of Education to intending teachers, for it may mean that some of them are unwilling to give this activity their serious attention. To those who feel that philosophy of education, Oeen, as Ayer put its, as having as its point clarification, elucidation and justification, is important there are grounds for concern if students are unwilling to consider it seriously. I believe, however, that Ayer is wrong in agreeing with Wittgenstein that philosophy, conceived of in this way, necessarily leaves everything as it is. This does not seem to be merely an empirical point, but rather a point based on beliefs about the nature of philosophy (and, a fortiori, philosophy of education). In this Chapter I shall argue that it is not the case that philosophy of education necessarily leaves everything as it is (and thus to claim that it is not necessarily conservative), that much work in philosophy of education has direct prescriptive implications for practice (though not all of the same kind) and that, rather than constituting an objection to philosophy of education, this constitutes the main justification for including philosophizing about education and school practices as part of the professional training of teachers.

Load more