In this essay, Gert Biesta provides a critical analysis of the idea of evidence‐based practice and the ways in which it has been promoted and implemented in the field of education, focusing on the ...tension between scientific and democratic control over educational practice and research. Biesta examines three key assumptions of evidence‐based education: first, the extent to which educational practice can be compared to the practice of medicine, the field in which evidence‐based practice was first developed; second, the role of knowledge in professional actions, with special attention to what kind of epistemology is appropriate for professional practices that wish to be informed by the outcomes of research; and third, the expectations about the practical role of research implicit in the idea of evidence‐based education. Biesta concludes that evidence‐based practice provides a framework for understanding the role of research in educational practice that not only restricts the scope of decision making to questions about effectivity and effectiveness, but that also restricts the opportunities for participation in educational decision making. He argues that we must expand our views about the interrelations among research, policy, and practice to keep in view education as a thoroughly moral and political practice that requires continuous democratic contestation and deliberation.
The idea that professional practices such as education should be based upon or at least be informed by evidence continues to capture the imagination of many politicians, policy makers, practitioners ...and researchers. There is growing evidence of the influence of this line of thought. At the same time there is a growing body of work that has raised fundamental questions about the feasibility of the idea of evidence-based or evidence-informed practice. In this paper I make a further contribution to this discussion through an analysis of a number of assumptions that inform the discussion. I focus on the epistemological, ontological and praxeological dimensions of the discussion and in each domain identify a deficit. In the epistemological domain there is a knowledge deficit, in the ontological domain an effectiveness or efficacy deficit and in the practice domain an application deficit. Taken together these deficits not only raise some important questions about the very idea of evidence-based practice but also highlight the role of normativity, power and values. Against this background I outline the case for the idea of value-based education as an alternative for evidence-based education. As I am generally concerned about the expectations policy makers hold about what evidence can and should achieve in professional practices such as education, my contribution is primarily meant to provide educators and other professionals with arguments that can help them to resist unwarranted expectations about the role of evidence in their practices and even more so of unwarranted interventions in their practices.
In this paper I focus on a split within the field of educational research between those who approach education as an activity or practice governed by cause–effect relationships and those who see ...education as a human event of communication, meaning making and interpretation. Rather than just arguing against the former and in favour of the latter view, I outline a way forward in which the question of how education works and how it can be made to work better is considered a legitimate question, but where the answer to this question takes into consideration the specific nature of educational processes and practices. In order to do so I explore the ontology, the axiology and the praxeology of education through a discussion of the question of how education actually works (ontology), the question of what education might work for (axiology), and the question of what this means for making education work and making it work better in the everyday practice of teaching (praxeology). I preface this discussion with observations about the differing ways in which education as a field of academic scholarship has developed in Europe, in order to highlight that ‘educational research’ exists in at least two distinctively different configurations, and to show how the way in which the field has established itself in the German-speaking world might provide helpful resources for conceiving of educational research in a more educational manner.
Much work in the field of education for democratic citizenship is based on the idea that it is possible to know what a good citizen is, so that the task of citizenship education becomes that of the ...production of the good citizen. In this paper I ask whether and to what extent we can and should understand democratic citizenship as a positive identity. I approach this question by means of an exploration of four dimensions of democratic politics—the political community, the borders of the political order, the dynamics of democratic processes and practices, and the status of the democratic subject—in order to explore whether and to what extent the ‘essence’ of democratic politics can and should be understood as a particular order. For this I engage with ideas from Chantal Mouffe and Jacques Rancière who both have raised fundamental questions about the extent to which the ‘essence’ of democratic politics can be captured as a particular order. In the paper I introduce the figure of the ignorant citizen in order to hint at a conception of citizenship that is not based on particular knowledge about what the good citizen is. I introduce a distinction between a socialisation conception of citizenship education and civic learning and a subjectification conception of citizenship education and civic learning in order to articulate what the educational implications of such an ‘anarchic’ understanding of democratic politics are. While the socialisation conception focuses on the question how ‘newcomers’ can be inserted into an existing political order, the subjectification conception focuses on the question how democratic subjectivity is engendered through engagement in always undetermined political processes. This is no longer a process driven by knowledge about what the citizen is or should become but one that depends on a desire for a particular mode of human togetherness or, in short, a desire for democracy.
Issue: In medical education, teaching is currently viewed as an intervention that causes learning. The task of medical education research is seen as establishing which educational interventions ...produce the desired learning outcomes. This 'medical model' of education does not do justice to the dynamics of education as an open, semiotic, recursive system rather than a closed, causal system. Evidence: Empirical 'evidence' of 'what works' - that is, what is supposed to affect 'learning' - has become the norm for medical educational improvements, where generalized summary outcomes of research are often presented as must-follow guidelines for myriad future educational situations. Such investigations of educational processes tend to lack an explicit engagement with the purposes of medical education, which we suggest to understand in terms of qualification (the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and understanding), socialization (becoming a member of the professional group) and subjectification (becoming a thoughtful, independent, responsible professional). In addition, investigations of educational processes tend to rely on causal assumptions that are inadequate for capturing the dynamics of educational communication and interaction. Although we see an increasing acknowledgement of the context-dependency of teaching practices toward educational aims, the currently prevailing view in medical education and educational research limits understanding of what is actually going on when educators teach and students participate in medical education - a situation which seriously hinders advancements in the field. Implications: In this paper, we hope to inform discussion about the practice of medical education by proposing to view medical education in terms of three domains of purpose (professional qualification, professional socialization, and professional subjectification) and with full acknowledgement of the dynamics of educational interaction and communication. Such a view implies that curriculum design, pedagogy, assessment, and evaluation should be reoriented to include and integrate all three purposes in educational practice. It also means that medical education research findings cannot be applied in just any teaching context without carefully considering the value of the suggested courses of actions toward the particular educational aims and teaching setting. In addition, medical educational research would need to investigate all three purposes and recognize the openness, semiotic nature, and recursivity of education in offering implications for teaching practice.
Philosophy of education that wants to be philosophy for education needs to engage with educational matters and things that matter educationally, rather than just philosophically. There is, therefore ...a distinctive responsibility for philosophy of education to contribute to the public good that education is. This article outlines five educational issues to which philosophy of education has a contribution to make. These issues are: education not learning; weakness not strength; existence not essence; soul not the brain; and truth not perspectives. It argues that there is a need to focus on education, not learning, in order to be able to account for the teleological character of education. It argues there is a need to focus on weakness, not strength, in order to capture the open nature of educational processes. It argues there is a need to focus on existence, not essence, in order to give place to the singularity of the human subject. It suggests to engage with the idea of soul, not the brain, in order to account for interiority and intersubjectivity; and it argues for a focus on truth, not perspectives, in order not to totalise communication and interaction.
In previous publications, Gert Biesta has suggested that education should be oriented toward three domains of purpose that he calls qualification, socialization, and subjectification. Many educators, ...policymakers, and scholars have found this suggestion helpful. Nonetheless, the discussion about the exact nature of each domain and about their relationships to each other has been ongoing, particularly with regard to the domain of subjectification. In this article, Biesta revisits the three domains and tries to provide further clarification with regard to the idea of subjectification. He highlights that subjectification has to do with the existence of the child or student as subject of her or his own life, not as object of educational interventions. Subjectification thus has to do with the question of freedom. Biesta explains that this is not the freedom to do what one wants to do, but the freedom to act in and with the world in a “grown‐up”
way.
What is Education For? Biesta, Gert
European journal of education,
March 2015, Letnik:
50, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Teaching and teachers have recently become the centre of attention of policy makers and researchers. The general idea here is that teaching matters. Yet the question that is either not asked or is ...only answered implicitly is why teaching matters. In this article I engage with this question in the context of a wider discussion about the role, status and significance of the question of purpose in education. I suggest that this is the most fundamental question in all educational endeavours. It is a normative question which poses itself as a multi-dimensional question, since education always functions in relation to three domains of purpose: qualification, socialisation and subjectification. Against this background I analyse the specific nature of teacher judgement in education and show how the space for teacher judgement is being threatened by recent developments in educational policy and practice that concern the status of the student, the impact of accountability and the role of evidence. I indicate how, where and why these are problematic and what this implies for regaining a space for teachers' professional judgement. (HoF/text adopted).
This study examined antisocial and prosocial behavior of N = 439 adolescent athletes between 14 and 17 years of age (67 teams). Multi‐level analyses showed that team membership explained 20 and 13 ...percent of the variance in antisocial and prosocial behavior in the sports context, respectively. The team effects suggest that aggregating antisocial or prosocial adolescents within teams may partially explain differences in antisocial and prosocial behavior among athletes in the sports context. A trend was found toward a relation between higher levels of moral reasoning within teams, and less antisocial behavior in the sports context. Favorable moral atmosphere was positively associated with more prosocial behavior in the sports context. Finally, supportive coach–athlete relationships were associated with both less antisocial and more prosocial behavior in the sports context.
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