Foundations of

Education
 Purposes for Education

 Transmit the cultural heritage

 Transform the culture
 Maximize human potential
 The Seven Cardinal
Principles

1. Health
2. Command of fundamental processes
3. Worthy home membership
4. Vocational competence
5. Citizenship
6. Worthy use of leisure time
7. Ethical character
 Philosophical
Foundations of
Education
 Philosophical Tools

 Axiology is the study of values;

it asks the question of “What is
good?” From axiology, we
arrive at an understanding of
“What is good?”
 We get ethics from the study of
axiology
 Philosophical Tools

 Epistemology—”How do we
know what is true?”
 This is a live question today—Do
we listen to standardized test
results to determine how much
students know, or read their
portfolios?
 Philosophical Tools

 Metaphysics is somewhat
related to epistemology and
asks the question “What is
real?”
 Are the things that are real only
the things that can be touched
and measured?
 Behaviorists vs. existentialists
 Essentialism

 Emphasis on a traditional
education
 Development of the mind
 Core curriculum
 Reality is based in the physical
world
 Teacher-directed learning
 Essentialism

 believe that human culture has a core of

common knowledge that schools are
obliged to transmit to students in a
systematic, disciplined way
 believe that there is a body of essential
knowledge and skills that all humans need
to know
 schools should provide sound instruction
that is aimed at preparing students to live
life and comply with society’s accepted
standards and need for order.
 Essentialism

 Essentialism avoids some of the

waste inherent with
experimentalism
 But it can become so conservative
that it fails to truly educate
 What essentialists
would teach

 Reading, spelling,
language arts
 Mathematics, World
History
 No vocational
education!
 How essentialists
evaluate learning

 Standardized tests
 Criterion referenced
tests
 Notas likely to require
portfolios
Classroom Management

 Using only text books

 Seated row by row

 Teacher lecture, students

listen
 Punishment--attempted
behaviorism but without
expertise
 Orientation of
Essentialism

 Teach the basic civilized

skills of reading, spelling
and measuring.
 Limit education’s
responsibility--let industry
teach vocational subjects
 Reality Testing

 Writing test
 Multiple choices
 True/False
 Binary-Choice
 Matching
 Future Orientation

 All students will

remember the basic
information.
 All students will learn
how to pass the test.
 Perennealism

 views truth as a constant

 education is to ensure that students acquire
knowledge of unchanging principles or great
ideas
 great ideas have the best potential of solving
the problems of any era
 curriculum should stress students’ growth in
arts and sciences
 students should become “culturally literate” by
studying the best , most significant works that
humans have created
 aim to teach students to become critical
thinkers
 Perennialism

 Perennialism was prevalent in

the early seventies
 Perennialism reveres the
experience of teachers who
have been there.
 Heavy orientation to the past 20
years--almost no attention to
the future
 Perennialism

 Perennialists like to teach time-

honored curricula, including the
classics such as Plato and Aristotle
 They don’t like change.
 Perennialism

 They would include subjects such

as: • Algebra
• Geometry • Trigonometry
• English literature • Ancient
• World Geography Geography
• World history
• Bookkeeping
 Perennialist Evaluation
Methodology

 Teacher-made tests
 Standardized test
 Memory work (“mind is a
muscle”)
 Spelling bees
Classroom Management

 Assign seats in rows.

 Be strict, but not

necessarily expert, with
punishment and reward.

 Set up classroom rules.

 Orientation Expected

 Self-contained knowledge--
teacher is supposed to know
all the answers
 Teacher is the “fountain of
all knowledge.”
 Students are passive
listeners
Reality Testing

 Paper-pencil
test
 Recitation
 Standardized
test
 Future Orientation

 Expect future to continue in the

same vein as the present
 Belief that knowing the classics
of the past will equip students
for the future
 Where Perennialism
Shines

 Perennialism does help to

dampen the uncertain effects of
the fads that come to education
 Not every new idea is a good
one, or one that will even be
effective.
 Perennialism plays well to
traditional communities
 Reconstructionism

 Reconstructionists point to a
time in the past when they
believe that things were better
 They would re-create education
to be like things were back
during that time
 They cite research, particularly
historical, to show that things
are not going well now.
 Social
Reconstructionism
 schools should take the lead in changing or
reconstructing society
 reaction to the cold war climate and threat
after WWII
 schools should both transmit knowledge about
the existing social order but also seek to
reconstruct it as well
 belief in bringing the community into the
classroom
 actively seek to create a world wide
democracy
What reconstructionists
would teach
 Reconstructionists would teach
the subjects that were taught
during that “golden age.”
 The subjects would be those
that were taught during that
time.
 If the 1960s, for instance, they
would teach usage of the slide
rule.
 Reconstructionists and
technology
 Their orientation is very much to the
past
 They and perennialists do not react
immediately and positively to new
technology
 Progressivism

 education should be child centered

 curriculum should be derived from students’
interests
 effective teaching takes into account the
whole child
 learning is active, not passive
 knowledge that is true in the present may not
be true in the future so students need to be
taught problem solving strategies
 the teacher is a guide or resource to help
students learn about what
 Existentialism

 Existentialists celebrate the

human existence
 Very subjective
 Emphasis on meaning within
each individual
 May doubt external reality
 Emphasis on present
 Existentialism

 focuses on the experiences of the individual

 helps learners focus on the meaning of their
learning, their life, their truth
 emphasizes creative choice, the subjectivity of
human experience, and concrete acts of human
existence
 schools must allow students freedom of
choice
 freedom has rules and respect for the freedom
of others is essential
 schools should allow students to ask their own
questions, conduct their own inquiries, and
draw their own conclusions
 What existentialists
believe
 Existentialists believe in the
consciousness of the self
 They are very concerned with
whether students find school to be a
satisfying experience
 What existentialists
would teach
 Not the same  They would
subjects to include topics
everyone, since not such as
everyone would
enjoy the same
values
things clarification
 They would
emphasize self-
esteem and a
feeling of self-worth
Psychological
Foundations of
Education
 Humanistic Psychology

 emphasizes freedom, choice, awareness,

personal responsibility
 *goal of education is individual self-
actualization
 individuals control their own destinies through
the application of their intelligence and
reasoning
 teachers should not force students to learn but
should create a climate of trust and respect
that allows students to decide what and how
they will learn
 teachers become learning facilitators
 Behaviorism

 Behaviorism believes in a
science of behavior that would
shape the world into a better
place to live
 Behaviorists to some degree
rightfully claim that behaviorism
naturally occurs in the world
whether people acknowledge it
or not
 Behaviorism

 based on the belief that desirable human behaviour can

be the product of design, not accident
 our behavior is determined by forces in our environment
that shape our behavior
 learning conforms to a basic stimulus-response model
( operant conditioning)
 teachers can create learners who respond by:
1. identifying the desired behaviors in concrete terms
2. establishing a procedure for recording specific
behaviors and counting their frequencies
3. for each behavior, identify an appropriate reinforcer
4. ensure that students receive the appropriate reinforcer
as soon as possible after displaying the desired behavior
 Behaviorism

Share common belief that a student’s

misbehavior can be changed and
reshaped in a socially acceptable
manner by directly changing the
student’s environment.
All people will attempt to avoid
experiences and stimuli that are not
pleasing and will seek experiences
that are pleasing and rewarding.
 What behaviorists
believe
 Behaviorists believe in a science of
behavior\
 They rely heavily on scientific
studies of behavior and how
behavior is influenced by its
consequences
What behaviorists would
teach

 Behaviorists are at least as

concerned about how people
behave as what they know
 They do not tend to be big
innovators in curriculum
 They will however give a fair
trial to any new curricula that
someone else might write
 Where Behaviorism
shines
 Special ed situations, where
students do not pick up on subtle
cues about learning or behavior
 Alternative and problem schools
 Where behaviorism will
come short

 Situations where behavior is not

so much the need as the
learning of academic content
 Situations where students have
internalized appropriate
behavior and behavior does not
need to be emphasized at the
expense of scholarship.
 Constructivism

 when we encounter
a new experience or  Therefore, we as
idea we try to humans create,
reconcile that new
experience or idea or construct, our
with previous own knowledge
experiences and
ideas. by asking
 This act of questions,
reconciliation will exploring and
result in either a
change of the assessing what
original belief or a we know.
discarding of the
new information.
 Constructivism

 focus on processes of learning rather than on

learning behavior
 believe that students construct understanding
of the material to be learned
 support student centered curriculum
 focus on mental processes and strategies that
students use to learn
 see learning as an active, meaning-making
process
 students are continuously involved in making
sense of the things that happen around them
 teachers must realize that students’ learning
is influenced by prior knowledge, experience,
attitudes, and social; interactions
 Experimentalism

 Experimentalism is associated
with a very broad but shallow
curriculum. Many electives, few
required subjects.
 Experimentalism is friendly to
educational research, and many
new ideas come from it.
Experimentalism

 But
experimentalism
can be wasteful
of resources
 It can also fail
to follow
through
 Accommodates
fads too easily
 Experimentalism

 Experimentalist
teachers like to
tinker or
experiment
 They don’t like
to leave things
the same all the
time.
Classroom Management
for Experimentalists
 Don’t like
assertive
discipline
 Prefer more
constructivistic
approaches
such as
Discipline with
Dignity
What experimentalists
would teach
 Everything--
anything that
had any relation
to students’
possible futures
 Has been
accused of
trying to do the
home’s job
Where experimentalism
shines
 When essentialism or perennialism
have been in power for so long,
school programs have become
stagnant
 When school has become all work
and no play
 When traditional methods have
become ineffective
Cognitive Development Stage Theory
Formal operations begins
@ 11-15
abstract thinker

Concrete operations
(ages 7 to 11) begins to think
abstractly,
needs physical, concrete examples

Preoperational stage (ages 2 to

4) Needs concrete interactions (no
abstract)
use of symbols (pictures, words) to
communicate

Sensorimotor stage (Birth to 2

years old) learning by movement
and sensory exploration

41
 Sociological
Foundations of
Education
 Sociology

 A method of bringing social

aspirations and fears into focus
 Forcing sharp and analytic questions
about societies and cultures in
which people live
 Trying to uncover underlying
patterns that give facts their larger
meaning is the purpose of making
social theories
 Educational Sociology

 Must know how major elements

of society fit together
 Understand the relation
between school and society
 Understand why students
behave the way they do in and
out of school
 Main Elements of the
Sociology of Education
 Theories about the relation between
school and society
 Whether schooling makes a major
difference in individuals’ lives
 How schools influence social
inequalities
 How school processes affect the
lives of children, teachers, and
other adults
Four Interrelated Levels
of Sociological Analysis
 The Societal level and its system of
social stratification
 The Institutional level, including
families, schools, churches etc.
 The Interpersonal level, including
processes, symbols and interactions
 The Intrapsychic level, including
individual’s thoughts, beliefs, values
 Theoretical
Perspectives
 Functional Theories…stresses the
interdependence of the social
system, how well the parts are
integrated with each other
 Emile Durkheim…education in all
societies of critical importance in
creating moral unity, social
cohesion, and harmony…moral
values are the foundation of society
 Functional Theories

 Assume that consensus is the

normal state in society and conflict
represents a breakdown of shared
values
 Educational reform is to create
structures, programs and curricula
that are technically advanced,
rational, and encourage social unity
 Conflict Theories

 Social order is based on the ability of

dominant groups imposing their will
on subordinate groups through force,
and manipulation
 The glue of society is economic,
political, cultural, and military power
 Ideologies legitimate inequality and
unequal distribution of goods as
inevitable outcome of biology or
history
 Conflict Theories

 Whereas functionalists emphasize

cohesion, conflict theorists
emphasize struggle in explaining
social order
 The “achievement ideology” of
schools disguise the real power
struggles which correspond to the
power struggles of the larger society
 Karl Marx is the intellectual founder
of conflict theories
 Weberian Conflict
Theory
 Weber examined status cultures as well as
class position…people identify their group
by what they consume and with whom they
socialize
 Bureaucracy the dominant authority in the
modern state
 Made distinction between the “specialist”
and the “cultivated” person…what should
be the goal of education?
 Weberian Conflict
Theory
 Analyze schools from the points of
view of status competition and
organizational constraints
 Schools as autocracies in “perilous
equilibrium” near anarchy because
students are forced to go to them
 Schools seen as oppressive and
demeaning, student noncompliance
becomes a form of resistance
 Conflict Theories

 Educational expansion best explained by

status group struggle…educational
credentials such as college diplomas
primarily status symbols rather than
indicators of actual achievement to secure
more advantageous places in employment
and social structure
 “Cultural capital” passed on by families
and schools…schools pass on social
identities that either help or hinder life
chances
 Interactional Theories

 Primarily critiques and extensions of

functional and conflict perspectives
 It is exactly what one does not question
that is most problematic at a deep level
e.g. how students are labeled “gifted” or
“learning disabled”
 Speech patterns reflect social class
backgrounds and schools are middle-class
organizations, disadvantaging working-
class children
 Effects of Schooling on
Individuals
 Knowledge and Attitudes
 Employment
 Education and mobility, the
“civil religion”… education
amount vs. route…for the
middle class, education may be
linked to mobility but for the
rich and the poor, it may have
very little to do with it
 Inside the Schools

 Schools from an organization

point of view…effects of school
size
 Curriculum expresses
culture…whose culture?
 Tracking in public schools,
rarely in private schools
 Teacher Behavior

 1000 interpersonal contacts each

day
 Instructor, disciplinarian,
bureaucrat, employer, friend,
confidant, educator…can lead to
“role strain”
 Difference of teacher expectations
for different students…based on
what?
 Student Peer Groups
and Alienation
 Students in vocational programs and
headed toward low-status jobs most likely
to join a rebellious subculture
 Average 12 year old has seen 18,000
television murders
 Four major types of college students:
careerists, intellectuals, strivers,
unconnected
 Schools are far more than collections of
individuals; they develop cultures,
traditions, and restraints that profoundly
influence those in them
 Education and
Inequality
 Income gap between the rich
and the poor and shrinking
middle class
 Inadequate schools
 Tracking
 De facto segregation
 Gender
Basil Bernstein’s Theory
of Pedagogic Practice
 Provides for the possibility of a
synthesis of theoretical orientations,
Marx, Weber, and Durkheim
 The theoretical always precedes the
empirical and then research modifies
theory
 Develop code theory that examined
interrelationships between social
class, family, and school
 Bernstein’s Theory

 Code refers to a “regulative principle

which underlies various message
systems, especially curriculum and
pedagogy
 Curriculum defines what counts as
valid knowledge…pedagogy defines
what counts as valid transmission of
knowledge and evaluation defines
what counts as valid realization of
knowledge
 Bernstein’s Theory

 Bernstein’s work on pedagogic

discourse is concerned with the
production, distribution, and
reproduction of official knowledge
and how this knowledge is related to
structurally determined power
relations.
 The schools reproduce what they are
ideologically committed to
eradicating
 Bernstein’s Theory

 Changes in the division of labor

create different meaning
systems and
codes…incorporates a conflict
model of unequal power
relations
 Such functioning doesn’t lead to
consensus but forms the basis
of privilege and domination
 On Understanding the
Processes of Schooling
 Origins of teacher expectations have
been attributed to such diverse
variables as social class, physical
appearance, contrived test scores,
sex, race language patterns, and
school records
 Labeling theory as an explanatory
framework for the study of social
deviance appears to be applicable to
the study of education as well
 Labeling Theory

 The labeling approach allows for an

explanation of what, in fact, is happening
within schools
 Over time, the consequences of having a
certain evaluative tag influence the
options available to a student within a
school
 Labeling theory is interested in why people
are labeled and who it is that does the
labeling
 Deviance is a social judgment imposed by
a social audience
 Labeling Theory

 How does a community decide what forms

of conduct should be singled out for this
kind of attention?
 Deviance is functional to clarifying group
boundaries, providing scapegoats, creating
out-groups who can be the source of
furthering in-group solidarity
 Social control can have the paradoxical
effect of generating more of the very
behavior it is designed to eradicate
 Labeling Theory

 “The first dramatization of the ‘evil’

which separates the child out of his
group…plays a greater role in
making the criminal than perhaps
any other experience….He now lives
in a different world. He has been
tagged. The person becomes the
thing he is described as being.”
 Labeling Theory

 “The secondary deviant…is a person

whose life and identity are organized
around the facts of deviance.”
 It is teachers who use labels such as
“bright” or “slow”
 School achievement is not simply a
matter of a child’s native ability, but
involves directly and inextricably the
teacher as well.
 Labeling Theory

 Race and ethnicity are powerful factors in

generating teacher expectations
 High expectations in elementary grades
are stronger for girls than boys
 Expectations teachers hold for students
can be generated as early as the first few
days of school and then remain stable from
then on
 “If men define situations as real, they are
real in their consequences.” Self-fulfilling
Prophecy
 Labeling Theory

 The higher one’s social status, the

less the willingness to diagnose the
same behavioral traits as indicative
of serious illness in comparison to
the diagnosis given to low status
persons.
 Teacher expectations are not
automatically self-fulfilling
Historical Foundations
of Education
 Historical Lenses

 Celebrationist historians…see the brighter

side of historical events
 Liberal historians…focus on conflict,
stress, inconsistencies
 Revisionist historians…learn more by
studying what has been wrong than what
has been right
 Postmodernist historians…see history
through the unique lenses of social class,
race, ethnicity, gender, age
 The beginnings of
Education
 Informal education…all peoples have cared
for their children and prepared them for life
 Hindu and Hebrew education…how to live
a good life
 Chinese education…Lao-tszu and
Confucius
 Egyptian education…education provided
for privileged males
 Eastern civilizations developed education
prior to Western civilizations, for the most
part
 Western Education

 The Age of Pericles (455-431bce),

city states in Greece
 Sparta, from 8 to 18, boys were
wards of the State…education to
develop courage, patriotism,
obedience, cunning, and physical
strength (little intellectual content)
 Athens, heavily stressed intellectual
and aesthetic objectives
 Western world’s first great
philosophers

 Socrates…the Socratic method: a

way of teaching that centers on the
use of questions by the teacher to
lead students to certain
conclusions…Socrates’ fundamental
principle, “Knowledge is virtue.”
 Plato…Republic recommendations
for the ideal society…three classes
of people: artisans, soldiers,
philosophers
 Greek philosophers
 Plato… “A good education is that which
gives to the body and to the soul all the
beauty and all the perfection of which they
are capable.”
 Aristotle…a person’s most important
purpose in life is to serve and improve
humankind…Aristotle was scientific,
practical, and objective…had the greatest
influence on thinking through the Middle
Ages
 Females and slaves did not possess the
intelligence to be educated. (Plato and
Aristotle)
 All paid employment absorbs and degrades
the mind. (Aristotle)
Western Education—The
Romans
 In 146 BCE the Romans conquered
Greece, many of the advances of the
Roman Empire inspired by the
enslaved Greeks
 Between 50 BCE and 200 CE, an
entire system of schools developed
 Quintilian (35-95 CE) described
current practice and recommended
the type of system needed in
Rome…very humanistic
 Education in the Middle Ages
(476-1300)

 Roman Catholic Church the greatest

power in government and education
(by 476, the fall of the Roman
Empire)
 The Dark Ages…earthly life as
nothing more than a way to a better
life hereafter
 Charlemagne (742-814) valued
education, and found Alcuin (735-
804) and focused on the seven
liberal arts (trivium and quadrivium)
 The Revival of Learning

 Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) “more than

any other person helped to change the
church’s views on learning”…rooted in the
ideas of Aristotle, led to the medieval
universities, formalized scholasticism (the
logical and philosophical study of the
beliefs of the church)
 The East had no dark ages. Mohammed
(569-632) led a group of Arabs from
northern Africa into southern
Spain…spread slowly throughout Europe,
significant advances in science and
mathematics
 Education in Transition (1300-
1700)

 Renaissance and Reformation

 Renaissance represented the protest
against the dogmatic authority of the
church over social and intellectual
life…revival of classical learning
called humanism
 Reformation represented a reaction
against corruption in the church
which kept most people in ignorance
 The Reformation

 Formal beginning in 1517…ninety-five theses of

Martin Luther…his disagreements with the Church
 The Church believed its duty was to pass on the
correct interpretation of the Bible to the
laity…Luther thought each should interpret for self,
and thus individual education was important…to
attain salvation
 Luther’s coworker in education, Philipp
Melanchthon, stressed universal elementary
education…education should be provided for all
regardless of class, compulsory for both
sexes…state controlled and state supported
 Education in Transition

 Ignatius Loyola(1491-1556), to
combat the Reformation, began the
Jesuits in 1540…established schools
to further the goals of the Catholic
Church, were involved with teacher
training from early on
 Comenius (1592-1670),wrote many
texts, first to use illustrations,
writings based on science
 John Locke(1632-1704) tabula rasa
 Modern Period

 Descartes(1596-1650), laid the

foundations for the modern period
and rationalism
 Reason is supreme, the laws of
nature are invariable, truth can be
verified empirically
 Frederick the Great (1712-1786),
leader of Prussia, friend of Voltaire,
interested in better training for
teachers
 Emergence of the
Common Man
 A period during which developed the idea
that common people should receive at
least a basic education as a means to a
better life
 Rousseau…most important educational
work, Emile (1762) about the liberal
education of youth…naturalism, education
must be natural not artificial “…we
ascribe too much importance to words.
With our babbling education we make only
babblers.” Children are born good but
corrupted by society
 The Emergence of
Common Man
 Pestalozzi (1746-1827) Swiss educator who
put Rousseau’s theories into practice…
educators from all over the world came to
view his schools…unlike most teachers of
his time, he felt students should be treated
with love and kindness
 Herbart (1776-1841) studied under
Pestalozzi, organized the educational
psychology…preparation, presentation,
association, generalization, application
 Froebel (1782-1852), kindergarten, social
development, cultivation of creativity,
learning by doing…women best suited to
teach young children