RESEARCHED PARAPHRAS REFERENCE

ED
Normative Theories of Education Source: https://www.k12academics.com/education-
Normative theories of education provide the norms, theory/normative-theories-education
goals, and standards of education.

Educational philosophies
"Normative philosophies or theories of education may
make use of the results of philosophical thought and of
factual inquiries about human beings and the
psychology of learning, but in any case they propound
views about what education should be, what
dispositions it should cultivate, why it ought to cultivate
them, how and in whom it should do so, and what forms
it should take. In a full-fledged philosophical normative
theory of education, besides analysis of the sorts
described, there will normally be propositions of the
following kinds: 1. Basic normative premises about
what is good or right; 2. Basic factual premises about
humanity and the world; 3. Conclusions, based on these
two kinds of premises, about the dispositions education
should foster; 4. Further factual premises about such
things as the psychology of learning and methods of
teaching; and 5. Further conclusions about such things
as the methods that education should use."

Examples of the purpose of schools include: develop

reasoning about perennial questions, master the
methods of scientific inquiry, cultivate the intellect,
create change agents, develop spirituality, and model a
democratic society

Common educational philosophies include: educational

perennialism, educational progressivism, educational
essentialism, critical pedagogy, Montessori education,
Waldorf education, and democratic education.

Curriculum theory
Normative theories of curriculum aim to "describe, or
set norms, for conditions surrounding many of the
concepts and constructs" that define curriculum. These
normative propositions are different than the ones
above in that normative curriculum theory is not
necessarily untestable. A central question asked by
normative curriculum theory is: given a particular
educational philosophy, what is worth knowing and
why? Some examples are: a deep understanding of the
Great Books, direct experiences driven by student
interest, a superficial understanding of a wide range
knowledge (e.g., Core knowledge), social and
community problems and issues, knowledge and
understanding specific to cultures and their
achievements (e.g., African-Centered Education)

Normative philosophy is the study of what “ought” to be. https://medium.com/vertical-learning/normative-

And that’s where we encounter our first problem. The theories-of-education-82187321bf6
vast majority of ancient Greek philosophers — like the
vast majority of human beings throughout history —
strongly believed that there is “what is” and “what ought
to be,” and that these two things are different. Until
relatively recently, it has been hard to argue the opposite
— that there is only “what is” and not “what ought” — and
be taken seriously. Even today, most people who argue
that we cannot discover an objective “ought” are
dismissed (at least popularly) as ‘radical’ or as ‘crazy.’
Normative philosophies or theories of education may Read more: Philosophy of Education - HISTORICAL
make use of the results of such analytical work and of OVERVIEW, CURRENT TRENDS - Philosophical,
factual inquiries about human beings and the Philosophers, Field, and Educational -
psychology of learning, but in any case they propound StateUniversity.com
views about what education should be, what dispositions https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2321/Phil
it should cultivate, why it ought to cultivate them, how osophy-Education.html#ixzz7dlxa4Z5h
and in whom it should do so, and what forms it should
take. Some such normative theory of education is
implied in every instance of educational endeavor, for
whatever education is purposely engaged in, it explicitly
or implicitly assumed that certain dispositions are
desirable and that certain methods are to be used in
acquiring or fostering them, and any view on such
matters is a normative theory of philosophy of
education. But not all such theories may be regarded as
properly philosophical. They may, in fact, be of several
sorts. Some simply seek to foster the dispositions
regarded as desirable by a society using methods laid
down by its culture. Here both the ends and the means
of education are defined by the cultural tradition. Others
also look to the prevailing culture for the dispositions to
be fostered but appeal as well to experience, possibly
even to science, for the methods to be used. In a more
pluralistic society, an educational theory of a sort may
arise as a compromise between conflicting views about
the aids, if not the methods, of education, especially in
the case of public schools. Then, individuals or groups
within the society may have conflicting full-fledged
philosophies of education, but the public philosophy of
education is a working accommodation between them.
More comprehensive theories of education rest their
views about the aims and methods of education neither
on the prevailing culture nor on compromise but on
basic factual premises about humans and their world
and on basic normative premises about what is good or
right for individuals to seek or do. Proponents of such
theories may reach their premises either by reason
(including science) and philosophy or by faith and divine
authority. Both types of theories are called philosophies
of education, but only those based on reason and
philosophy are properly philosophical in character; the
others might better be called theologies of education.
Even those that are purely philosophical may vary in
complexity and sophistication.

In such a full-fledged philosophical normative theory of

education, besides analysis of the sorts described, there
will normally be propositions of the following kinds:

Basic normative premises about what is good or right;

Basic factual premises about humanity and the world;
Conclusions, based on these two kinds of premises,
about the dispositions education should foster;
Further factual premises about such things as the
psychology of learning and methods of teaching; and
Further conclusions about such things as the methods
that education should use.
For example, Aristotle argued that the Good equals
happiness equals excellent activity; that for a individual
there are two kinds of excellent activity, one intellectual
(e.g., doing geometry) and one moral (e.g., doing just
actions); that therefore everyone who is capable of these
types of excellent activity should acquire a knowledge of
geometry and a disposition to be just; that a knowledge
of geometry can be acquired by instruction and a
disposition to be just by practice, by doing just actions;
and that the young should be given instruction in
geometry and practice in doing just actions. In general,
the more properly philosophical part of such a full
normative theory of education will be the proposition it
asserts in (1),(2), and (3); for the propositions in (4) and
hence (5) it will, given those in (3), most appropriately
appeal to experience and science. Different philosophers
will hold different views about the propositions they use
in (1) and (2) and the ways in which these propositions
may be established.

Although some normative premises are required in (1)

as a basis for any line of reasoning leading to
conclusions in (3) or (5) about what education should
foster or how it should do this, the premises appearing
in (2) may be of various sorts–empirical, scientific,
historical, metaphysical, theological, or epistemological.
No one kind of premise is always necessary in (2) in
every educational context. Different philosophers of
education will, in any case, have different views about
what sorts of premises it is permissible to appeal to in
(2). All must agree, however, that normative premises of
the kind indicated in (1) must be appealed to. Thus,
what is central and crucial in any normative philosophy
of education is not epistemology, metaphysics, or
theology, as is sometimes thought, but ethics, value
theory, and social philosophy.

Role
Let us assume, as we have been doing, that philosophy
may be analytical, speculative, or narrative and
remember that it is normally going on in a society in
which there already is an educational system. Then, in
the first place, philosophy may turn its attention to
education, thus generating philosophy of education
proper and becoming part of the discipline of education.

Second, general philosophy may be one of the subjects

in the curriculum of higher education and philosophy of
education may be, and presumably should be, part of
the curriculum of teacher education, if teachers are to
think clearly and carefully about what they are doing.

Third, in a society in which there is a single system of

education governed by a single prevailing theory of
education, a philosopher may do any of four things with
respect to education: he may analyze the concepts and
reasoning used in connection with education in order to
make people's thinking about it as clear, explicit, and
logical as possible; he may seek to support the
prevailing system by providing more philosophical
arguments for the dispositions aimed at and the
methods used; he may criticize the system and seek to
reform it in the light of some more philosophical theory
of education he has arrived at; or he may simply teach
logic and philosophy to future educators and parents in
the hope that they will apply them to educational
matters.

Fourth, in a pluralistic society like the United States, in

which the existing educational enterprise or a large
segment of it is based on a working compromise
between conflicting views, a philosopher may again do
several sorts of things. He may do any of the things just
mentioned. In the United States in the first half of the
twentieth century professional philosophers tended to
do only the last, but at the end of the twentieth century
they began to try to do more. Indeed, there will be more
occasions for all of these activities in a pluralistic
society, for debate about education will always be going
on or threatening to be resumed. A philosopher may
even take the lead in formulating and improving a
compromise theory of education. He might then be a
mere eclectic, but he need not be, since he might
defend his compromise plan on the basis of a whole
social philosophy. In particular, he might propound a
whole public philosophy for public school education,
making clear which dispositions it can and should seek
to promote, how it should promote them, and which
ones should be left for the home, the church, and other
private means of education to cultivate. In any case, he
might advocate appealing to scientific inquiry and
experiment whenever possible. A philosopher may also
work out a fully developed educational philosophy of his
own and start an experimental school in which to put it
into practice, as John Dewey did; like Dewey, too, he
may even try to persuade his entire society to adopt it.
Then he would argue for the desirability of fostering
certain dispositions by certain methods, partly on the
basis of experience and science and partly on the basis
of premises taken from other parts of his philosophy–
from his ethics and value theory, from his political and
social philosophy, or from his epistemology,
metaphysics, or philosophy of mind.

It seems plausible to maintain that in a pluralistic

society philosophers should do all of these things, some
one and some another. In such a society a philosopher
may at least seek to help educators concerned about
moral, scientific, historical, aesthetic, or religious
education by presenting them, respectively, with a
philosophy of morality, science, history, art, or religion
from which they may draw conclusions about their aims
and methods. He may also philosophize about the
discipline of education, asking whether it is a discipline,
what its subject matter is, and what its methods,
including the methods of the philosophy of education,
should be. Insofar as the discipline of education is a
science (and one question here would be whether it is a
science) this would be a job for the philosopher of
science in addition to one just mentioned. Logicians,
linguistic philosophers, and philosophers of science may
also be able to contribute to the technology of
education, as it has come to be called, for example, to
the theory of testing or of language instruction.

Finally, in a society that has been broken down by some

kind of revolution or has newly emerged from
colonialism, a philosopher may even supply a new full-
fledged normative philosophy for its educational system,
as Karl Marx did for Russia and China. In fact, as in the
case of Marx, he may provide the ideology that guided
the revolution in the first place. Plato tried to do this for
Syracuse, and the philosophes did it for France in the
eighteenth century. Something like this may be done
wherever the schools "dare to build a new society," as
many ask schools to do.

Dewey once said that since education is the process of

forming fundamental dispositions toward nature and our
fellow human beings, philosophy may even be defined
as the most general theory of education. Here Dewey
was thinking that philosophy is the most general
normative theory of education, and what he said is true
if it means that philosophy, understood in its widest
sense as including theology and poetry as well as
philosophy proper, is what tells us what to believe and
how to feel about humanity and the universe. It is,
however, not necessarily true if it refers to philosophy in
the narrower sense or means that all philosophy is
philosophy of education in the sense of having the
guidance of education as its end. This is not the whole
end of classical philosophy or even of philosophy as
reconstructed by Dewey; the former aimed at the truth
rather than at the guidance of practice, and the latter
has other practical ends besides that of guiding the
educational enterprise. Certainly, analytical philosophy
has other ends. However, although Dewey did not have
analytical philosophy in mind, there is nevertheless a
sense in which analytical philosophy can also be said to
be the most general theory of education. Although it
does not seek to tell us what dispositions we should
form, it does analyze and criticize the concepts,
arguments, and methods employed in any study of or
reflection upon education. Again it does not follow that
this is all analytical philosophy is concerned with doing.
Even if the other things it does–for example, the
philosophy of mind or of science–are useful to educators
and normative theorists of education, as, it is hoped, is
the case, they are not all developed with this use in
mind.
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