Peers on Socrates and Plato

There is more to be said about two of the topics Chris Peers addresses in his article Freud, Plato and Irigaray: A morpho-logic of teaching and learning (2012, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 44, 760–774), namely the Socratic method of teaching and Plato’s stance with regard to women and feminism. My purpose in this article is to continue Peers’s discussion of these two topics.     

What can we learn from Plato about intellectual character education?

Abstract

In the Republic, Plato developed an educational program through which he trained young Athenians in desiring truth, without offering them any knowledge-education. This is not because he refused to pass on knowledge but because he considered knowledge of the Good as an ongoing research program. I show this by tracing the steps of the education of the Philosopher-Kings in Plato’s ideal state, to establish that the decades-long educational regime aims at training them in three types of virtue: (i) Moral Virtue; (ii) the Cognitive Virtue of Abstraction; (iii) the Cognitive Virtue of Debate.

Plato’s theory of education has much to teach us about intellectual character education today. The Platonic educational program does not advocate the direct transmission of knowledge from teacher to learner but rather focuses on building the learners’ epistemic dispositions. Building upon the Socratic Method, Plato’s educational program does not ‘spoon-feed’ knowledge to the learners but rather fosters the growth of intellectual virtues through problem-solving.

I explain ways in which fostering intellectual virtues through problem-solving could be applied in classrooms today. I conclude that Plato’s rigorous educational program is of definite merit for contemporary virtue education, especially since Aristotle offers us surprisingly little on how to educate for intellectual virtues.     

From Ancient Greece to Modern Education: Universality and Lack of Generalization of the Socratic Dialogue

Two thousand four hundred years ago Socrates gave a remarkable lesson of geometry, perhaps the first detailed record of a pedagogical method in vivo in history [ Plato. (2008) . Apología de Sócrates. Menón. Crátilo. Madrid: Alianza Editorial]. Socrates asked Meno's slave 50 questions requiring simple additions or multiplications. At the end of the lesson the student discovered by himself how to duplicate a square using the diagonal of the given one as the side of the new square. We studied empirically the reproducibility of this dialogue in educated adults and adolescents of the 21st century. Our results show a remarkable agreement between Socratic and empiric dialogues. Even in questions in which Meno's slave made a mistake, within an unbounded number of possible erred responses, the vast majority of participants produced the same error as Meno's slave. Our results show that the Socratic dialogue is built on a strong intuition of human knowledge and reasoning which persists more than 24 centuries after its conception, providing one of the most striking demonstrations of universality across time and cultures. At the same time, they also emphasize its educational failure. After following every single question including Socrates' “diagonal argument,” almost 50% of the participants failed to learn the simplest generalization when asked to double the area of a square of different size.     

低段数学教学中有效阅读对策

现在的数学教学,读的环节常常被忽视。学生没有读的习惯,以致出现很多答不对题、漏题等不该出现的错误。语文教学强调读的重要性,读既能增强语感、积累词语,又能陶冶情感。在数学教学上,读,也有同等价值。新课标指出"数学是人类的一种文化,它为其他科学提供了语言、思想和方法。"读能帮助学生增强数感、积累"数"语、发散思维。而我们在平时的教学中确实缺少读的能力培养。     

Die Arbeitsgemeinschaft als partizipative Regulationsform

This contribution focuses on Alfred Mann’s program of qualitative teaching and learning research within the context of debates on adult education in the 1920s looking for the “right” form of adult learning. Following some brief notes on Mann himself, we will present his programmatic considerations on researching lessons in the Volkshochschule and investigate the interpretive potential of his verbatim lesson documentation on the basis of an extract from a lesson journal. Central to Mann’s planned and partially realized program was the—at the time avant garde and little discussed—link between practiced lessons, empirical foundations and further education based on self-reflection.     

“Listen Then,or, Rather,Answer”: Contemporary Challenges to Socratic Education

The popularity of Jacques Rancière in recent work in educational philosophy has rejuvenated discussion of the merits and weaknesses of Socratic education, both in Plato's dialogues and in invocations of Socrates in contemporary educational practice. In this essay Jordan Fullam explores the implications of this trend through comparing Rancière's educational thought to an analysis of the relationship between dialectic and stultification in Plato's Republic. This task clarifies what is useful in the recent wave of scholarship that brings Rancière's work to bear upon Socratic education, and what we might redeem in the practice of teaching that Plato assigns to the character of Socrates in the Republic. Fullam also draws on the educational literature on Socratic education to provide further context to explore the usefulness of both Rancière and Socrates for contemporary teaching.     

DIE SOKRATISCHE LEHRSTRATEGIE UND IHRE RELEVANZ FÜR DIE HEUTIGE DIDAKTIK

Socrates (469–399 B.C.) formulated a unique method of teaching, of which the main characteristic is dialogue. We have no authentic record, but Plato has preserved the "Socratic conversations" in his dialogues. In the first part of this study, the Socratic strategy is examined through a comparative analysis of the early Platonic dialogues with the theories of critical rationalism and the cognitive theories based on motivation for achievement and learning. In the dialogues, Socrates invites his interlocutors to express their opinions, professing himself ignorant of the matter under discussion, but gradually challenges their certainties and moves from the particular and the egocentric to the general concept, using concrete examples. The second part of this study gives a detailed presentation of the elements of the Socratic strategy of teaching and learning: conversation, the exploitation of errors in teaching, aporia (confused doubt), critical reflection and intellectual honesty, and tolerance. These continue to be of relevance today and are timely in the context of shifting values and the need for a critical approach to knowledge.     

Four Educators in Plato's Theaetetus

Scholars who have taken interest in Theaetetus' educational theme argue that Plato contrasts an inferior, even dangerous, sophistic education to a superior, philosophical, Socratic education. I explore the contrasting exhortations, methods, ideals and epistemological foundations of Socratic and Protagorean education and suggest that Socrates' treatment of Protagoras as educator is far less dismissive than others claim. Indeed, Plato, in Theaetetus, offers a qualified defence of both Socrates and Protagoras. Socrates and Protagoras each dwell in the middle ground between the extremes presented in the dialogue's digression, which contrasts the life of the philosopher and the life of the courtroom orator. Both Socrates and Protagoras demonstrate a serious engagement with both politics and philosophy. Theodorus presents an educational option in which theory is divorced from politics while an ignoble sophistic education is presented as political but divorced from theory. Protagorean education, in Theaetetus, emerges as superior to a base sophistic education, though it remains inferior to Socratic education.     

The challenges of university teaching and learning in the era of managerialism

Abstract

The paper debates the challenges of university teaching in the era of managerialism. It teases out current institutional reconfigurations, and argues that challenges of teaching and learning are integral to the university as a complex institution in the era of supercomplexity. It argues that the university should shed its ‘ivory tower’ mentality, acknowledge that its future legitimacy depends on its willingness to negotiate processes and procedures with its community, of which it is itself a constitutive part. The paper questions the relevance of the lecture as a pedagogical practice in this era of supercomplexity; it argues that the lecture is dead and should be replaced. It advocates Socratic questioning to create epistemological and ontological disturbance in the students. Socratic questioning is characterised by a relentless self-examination and critique, an endless quest for intellectual integrity and moral consistency, manifest in fearless speech that unsettles, unnerves, and unhouses people from their uncritical sleepwalking.     

Why did Socrates Deny that he was a Teacher? Locating Socrates among the new educators and the traditional education in Plato’s Apology of Socrates

Plato’s Apology of Socrates contains a spirited account of Socrates’ relationship with the city of Athens and its citizens. As Socrates stands on trial for corrupting the youth, surprisingly, he does not defend the substance and the methods of his teaching. Instead, he simply denies that he is a teacher. Many scholars have contended that, in having Socrates deny he is a teacher, Plato is primarily interested in distinguishing him from the sophists. In this article, I argue that, given the historic educational transformation in Socrates’ and Plato’s lifetimes, Socrates’ denial is far more complex and far reaching than the Socrates-versus-the-sophists distinction indicates. Socrates suggests that Athenians have failed to recognize that there were various types among the new educators of fifth century Athens: orators, sophists, natural philosophers and, perhaps, a philosopher like Socrates. Further, the traditional education, which the Athenians believed was threatened by the new educators, was itself fractured. Ultimately, rather than offering a straightforward distinction between philosophizing and teaching, Socrates and the sophists, Plato treats the question of teaching aporectically in Apology; that is, after pointing to various alternatives for understanding the nature of teaching, Plato concludes the work without offering a clear resolution to that question.     

Heidegger’s Reinscription of Paideia in the Context of Online Learning

Abstract

One of the questions that Heidegger presents in his paper, ‘Plato’s Doctrine on Truth’, is the distortion as he sees it of paideia—that is the loss of the essential elements in education. This loss is characterised according to Heidegger, by a misconception of Plato’s concept of teaching and learning. By undertaking an historical examination, Heidegger provides a means to rectify this loss. With reference to past, present and future philosophical perspectives of teaching and learning as particular spaces, an attempt is made in this paper to examine Heidegger’s reading of paideia within the context of online learning. This, for many contemporary writers on education, is an encounter with new literacies, new knowledge and the adoption of an online environment that challenges the hegemonic order of the institution as the purveyors of knowledge. Teachers within this new environment are, however still constituted as experts and their knowledge is seen as ultimately inviolate. Heidegger in his re-interpretation of Plato sees the teacher as leading the students to where they might make themselves intelligible within the space of their being. This alignment forms an acceptance and a challenge to the metaphysical concepts of uniformity of being and place that limits the potential of knowledge as something that is fixed and complete. The experience of the social web or Web 2.0 has seen a shift in learning premised upon dialogue, exchange and constantly shifting horizons. Within this context, the teacher is recast as a craftsman, creating learning opportunity within dialogic exchange. The heightened sense of involvement that is revealed in this context lays the ground for a future visioning of education where emergence is seen as essential, unlike a re-working of authorisation to learn that inhibits student and teacher alike in new attempts at revitalising education.     

Jacques Rancière’s Lesson on the Lesson

Abstract

This article examines the significance of Jacques Rancière’s work on pedagogy, and argues that to make sense of Rancière’s ‘lesson on the lesson’ one must do more but also less than merely explicate Rancière’s texts. It steadfastly refuses to draw out the lessons of Rancière’s writings in the manner of a series of morals, precepts or rules. Rather, it is committed to thinking through the ‘lessons’ of Rancière in another sense. Above all, Rancière wants to ‘teach’ his readers something absolutely crucial about teaching. In making this claim the article emphasizes the extent to which Rancière advocates an utterly radical pedagogy, one that completely reconceives all the central elements of ‘schooling’, including teacher, student, intelligence and knowledge. Rancière thinks it possible to teach without knowing; he believes that the best schoolmasters can operate not on the assumption of their expertise, but on the equality of intelligence; and this means ultimately that Rancière contends that we can ‘teach what we do not know’. The best schoolmasters are ignorant schoolmasters. Rancière’s radical pedagogy depends upon, just as it consistently advances, a thoroughgoing resistance to a certain form of epistemological and ontological mastery. The rejection of mastery—of schoolmasters who would know it all, and convey this knowing to their students—forms the very backbone of all of Rancière’s writings and critical investigations. This is the chief reason why Rancière is, in a way, always talking about pedagogy, even when his subject matter appears to be something else entirely.     

Animate affects: censorship,reckless pedagogies,and beautiful feelings

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that affect bears a potent teaching capacity. To do so, it explores the intensities that built around a student-teacher's dismissal from a US school placement. In this incident, the topic of homophobia in a poetry lesson elicited a buzz among students that enacted a pedagogy that exceeded the speaking subject. It was these animating capacities of affect, the author argues, that were deemed particularly threatening by the school. Affect as pedagogy puts pressure on legacies that position the human, usually the teacher, as the sole locus of pedagogy in the classroom and that privilege telos-driven notions of curricular ‘progress’. The paper concludes by drawing connections between the animating capacities of affect and larger debates around trigger warnings on curricular materials. The author suggests that, rather than seeking to foreclose intensities in classrooms, educators might pay more attention to how affect offers richly generative, but often overlooked, sites of pedagogical force.     

Understanding how educational maths apps can enhance learning: A content analysis and qualitative comparative analysis

Educational applications (apps) are ubiquitous within children's learning environments and emerging evidence has demonstrated their efficacy. However, it remains unclear what the active ingredients (ie, mechanisms), or combination of ingredients, of successful maths apps are. The current study developed a new, open-access, three-step framework for assessing the educational value of maths apps, comprised of type of app, mathematical content and app design features. When applied to a selection of available maths apps previously evaluated with children in the first 3 years of school (the final sample included 23 apps), results showed that practice-based apps were the most common app type tested (n = 15). Basic number skills, such as number representation and relationships, were the most common area of mathematics targeted by apps (n = 21). A follow-up qualitative comparative analysis showed observed learning outcomes with maths apps were enhanced when apps combined the following: a scaffolded and personalised learning journey (programmatic levelling) and explanations of why answers were right or wrong (explanatory feedback), as well as praise, such as ‘Great job!’ (motivational feedback). This novel evidence stresses the significance of feedback and levelling design features that teaching practitioners and other stakeholders should consider when deciding which apps to use with young children. Directions for future research are discussed.

Practitioner notes

What is already known about this topic

• Educational apps have been shown to support maths attainment in the first 3 years of school.
• Several existing frameworks have attempted to assess the educational value of some of these maths apps.
• Emerging experimental evidence also demonstrates the benefits of specific app design features, including feedback and levelling.

What this paper adds

• Practice-based maths apps are the most common type of app previously evaluated with young children.
• These evaluated maths apps have mostly focused on basic number skills.
• The combination of explanatory and motivational feedback, with programmatic levelling (either dynamic or static), was a necessary condition for enhancing learning outcomes with maths apps.

Implications for practice and policy

• The inclusion of feedback and levelling in maths apps should be considered by app developers when designing apps, and by educational practitioners and parents when deciding which apps to use with their children.
• Further consideration is also needed for the development of educational apps that include a broad range of maths skills.

     

Jordanian twelfth-grade science teachers’ self-reported usage of science and engineering practices in the next generation science standards

This study investigated the degree that Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) criteria from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were included in self-reported teaching practices of twelfth-grade science teachers in Jordan. This study sampled (n?=?315) science teachers recruited from eight different public school directorates. The sample was surveyed using an instrument adapted from Kawasaki (2015). Results found that Jordanian science teachers incorporate (SEPs) in their classroom teaching at only a moderate level. SEPs applied most frequently included ‘using the diagram, table or graphic through instructions to clarify the subject of a new science,’ and to ‘discuss with the students how to interpret the quantitative data from the experiment or investigation’. The practice with the lowest frequency was ‘teach a lesson on interpreting statistics or quantitative data,’ which was moderately applied. No statistically significant differences at (α?=?0.05) were found among these Jordanian science teachers’ self-estimations of (SEP) application into their own teaching according to the study’s demographic variables (specialisation, educational qualification, teaching experience). However, a statistically significant difference at (α?=?0.05) was found among Jordanian high school science teachers’ practice means based on gender, with female teachers using SEPs at a higher rate than male teachers.     

Platonic and sophistic understanding of oral, literal and televisual sign as educational means

What follows is an attempt to isolate thespecificity of the new way of communication and education i.e., thetelevised image by comparing and contrasting it to the more traditional medial means,oral and literal sign. There will be several Ariadnian threads running through this labyrinth. One will be the phenomenon of self-deception: the central fear of Plato. Self-deception is to be interpreted in the widest possible sense: self-deception in relation to ourselves, to others, and our surrounding environment. Related to this will be the idea of a remedy ‘against’ that self-deception; does each medium have a remedial moment (what Plato reserved for philosophical speech)? Traditionally, we speak about three kinds of remedy: philosophical (radical reflection), scientific (the ‘objective’ point of view), and aesthetic (disinterested contemplation): what contributions do the newer mediums make? Sophistic self-deception or its remedial? What too will be a theme of this paper is how as we move from older, more familiar sorts of representations towardstelevised image, rational and educational categories falter and the specific attitude towards new images becomes more difficult to isolate.     

Education and philosophy in R. F. Holland’s Against Empiricism: A reassessment

In his 1980 book Against Empiricism: On Education, Epistemology and Value, British philosopher R. F. Holland (1923–2013) exposes the inadequacies of a philosophy of education originating from an empiricist worldview. By following Plato’s view that the issue of what qualifies as knowledge has to be understood with reference to whether it is teachable, Holland’s critique of empiricism highlights the social and communal dimensions of education. The primary objective of this paper is to offer a reassessment of Holland’s thoughts on education and value. To do so, I first discuss Holland’s use of Plato’s ideas in his article ‘Epistemology and Education’ to demonstrate that Holland’s position can offer us a fruitful way to diagnose common, prevalent educational practices. I then turn to look at Holland’s views on value and morality. To illustrate how his thoughts on education can be seen to be relevant to the contemporary world, I explore and criticize some implicit presuppositions on knowledge in the 2011 box-office hit Limitless. The conceptual dimension of Holland’s take on education is then examined alongside with some recent trends in epistemology and philosophy of education.     

International ‘benchmarking’ studies and the identification of ‘education best practice’: a focus on classroom teachers and their practices

The disproportionate focus on classroom teachers and their instruction—teacher effectiveness—in order to confront and address under-achievement and disadvantage appears as a contemporary education policy theme in Australia. Phrases such as ‘high performing schooling systems’, ‘the best teachers’, ‘high performing countries’, ‘quality teaching’, ‘under-performing schools’, ‘the right change’, ‘operationally feasible’, ‘targeting of reforms’, ‘degrees of under-performance’, ‘educational drivers’, ‘teacher quality and improved teaching’ and ‘external standards and governance’ are constantly mentioned and given continual attention and prominence by policy-makers. The paper questions and critiques a policy-making direction that uses teacher effectiveness research to force and steer reform in education. The distinctive and narrow concern with teacher effectiveness works to the specific exclusion of breadth and scope concerning debate about broader education related issues and questions, for example, matters of student achievement, exclusion and disadvantage. This article uses a qualitative research approach informed by critical theory to examine three influential private sector reports on education and schooling: The McKinsey Report ( 2007 )—How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top, The Nous Group ( 2011 )—Schooling Challenges and Opportunities and The Grattan Institute ( 2012 )—Catching up: Learning from the best school systems in East Asia. The article subjects the reports to close critical scrutiny and examination and finds that classroom teachers are positioned so that their specific and explicit instruction becomes the differentiating ‘variable’ in matters of student achievement and success.     

Adapting ‘lesson study’ to investigate classroom pedagogy in initial teacher education: what student-teachers think

This paper reports findings from a project that explored the use of a modified form of ‘lesson study’ in a one-year programme of secondary school initial teacher education (ITE). Twelve mentors and student-teachers worked in pairs to design and teach two ‘research lessons’ in the course of two eight-week teaching practice placements as part of a university–school partnership for the preparation of new teachers. Participating student-teachers reported that engagement in this form of lesson study with a mentor was an effective way to help them grow individual teaching skills, knowledge and confidence in teaching placements. In addition, in most cases, it enabled active and creative participation in a community of teacher learners. However, engagement in lesson study not only supported student-teachers to meet ‘qualifying to teach’ standards, but also offered opportunities for holistic study of teaching and learning, leading to growth in what we characterise as ‘pedagogic literacy’.