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Educational
Philosophy for
21st Century
Teachers
z
THOMAS STEHLIK
Educational Philosophy for 21st Century Teachers
Thomas Stehlik
Educational
Philosophy for 21st
Century Teachers
Thomas Stehlik
School of Education
University of South Australia
Magill, SA, Australia
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing
AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
v
A Note to the Reader
This book refers to many sources and references that provide a historical
perspective to the narrative, and even though the content is still relevant
to a discussion of educational philosophy, in some cases the language is
outdated. Some quotes therefore include gender exclusive language which
I would normally avoid using. However, I have chosen to present such
quotes verbatim, and in those cases I ask the reader to suspend judgement
of the medium and focus on the message.
vii
Contents
ix
x Contents
References 285
Index 301
List of Figures
xiii
1
Introduction: What Is Education for?
This book is about education in the twenty-first century, how it has devel-
oped, and what it means for teachers, parents, schoolchildren, and edu-
cational policy makers in post-modern western societies through an
educational philosophy lens. It is intended as a manual for twenty-first-
century educators, and by the term teacher, I am being inclusive of all
adults who are involved in bringing up children in our societies. In this
regard I am firmly influenced by the notion that as a parent, you are your
child’s first teacher (Baldwin 1989), and by the well-worn but resonant
saying: It takes a village to raise a child.
Like Mark Twain I also make a clear distinction between schooling and
education. It will be important as you read this book to arrive at a shared
understanding of these terms—as well as terms like training, teaching,
learning, curriculum, assessment, and so on—to unpack their meaning,
their etymology, their use, and abuse in different contexts such as every-
day parlance, academic language, policy jargon, and bureaucracy-speak.
The intention of the book is to stand back and take a big picture view of
education and its attendant terminology, assumptions, myths, and influ-
ences. It is offered as a long meditation on a discipline that has been an
occupation and interest for my entire life and career—as a student,
teacher, parent, teacher educator, and educational researcher. The more I
have pursued this interest, the more I realise that education is everywhere,
affecting and influencing us in many forms, from the overt experience of
formal institutions like schools, to the subtle effects of lived experience of
the world and the influences of people and things that we interact with
on a daily basis.
In a crowded and busy modern world, we often do not have the time
to stand back and contemplate big questions of meaning as we become
bogged down in the minutiae of detail and the demands of daily life. My
experience of working in university teacher education in Australia for
over 25 years has also reinforced the view that, as emerging professionals,
beginning teachers have less opportunity to discuss and consider funda-
mental questions such as What is education for? and What is my role and
purpose as a teacher? Teacher education courses have become crowded
with regulatory requirements and mandatory subjects in behaviour man-
agement, assessment policy, and curriculum content, leaving little room
for reflection and discourse.
In 1978 I completed a one-year Graduate Diploma in Education at the
University of Adelaide to qualify as a secondary English and humanities
teacher. In addition to the subject area courses, there were four core
courses in this program that covered the history, sociology, psychology,
and philosophy of education. Since then, theory has gradually given way
to practice. At the University of South Australia where I became a lecturer
in education, subjects related to the philosophy of education gradually
disappeared from the Bachelor of Education (BEd) around 2010. Despite
the BEd being a four-year program—the minimum required length for a
teaching qualification in Australia—such subjects became the casualty of
a policy shift towards pragmatism and regulation, which saw them side-
lined and eventually crowded out. It is intended therefore that this book
will be seen as a resource for those beginning teachers—as well as anyone
else with an interest in education past, present, and future—to engage
with and reflect on those philosophies (and philosophers) which have
Introduction: What Is Education for? 3
get into trouble, experience bullying and social exclusion, have low
literacy and numeracy and reduced career opportunities, and no interest
in further education. I often think that we do our children a dis-service
by sending them to an institution for the best years of their lives, sitting
in classrooms of rows of desks, in a large group of kids of the same age,
who are all expected to achieve in all subjects at the same pace and level.
Compare this, say, with growing up in a tribal or village society where
children of various age groups can interact and learn by looking out for,
and being looked after by, each other. As a parent I know that children
need boundaries but they also need the freedom to be a child and be able
to experience what Rudolf Steiner called the ‘Kingdom of Childhood’
(see Chaps. 6 and 7).
But I am concerned at the cumulative effect of these negative experi-
ences of school, especially as it is apparent that many parents who have a
low regard for the education system are projecting this onto their chil-
dren—whether intentionally or subliminally—and it becomes an inter-
generational issue, leading to the type of ‘teacher bashing’ mentioned
already. Like my colleague, it seems that many adults are under the mis-
taken apprehension that not much has changed since their own school
days, and the teachers and classrooms that they experienced are the same
ones they are sending their children to today. I therefore advocate for a
more positive discourse around education in our society today, and in the
hope that being more informed will lead to being more enlightened, I
offer this book.
Finally, it is not surprising that the effect of spending so many of our
formative years at school results in aspects of school life entering our
dream life. I still clearly remember a dream that I had as boy of about ten
or 11 years old, in which I was at school but only dressed in a pyjama
top… I was in the asphalt quadrangle surrounded by other boys and girls,
doing some sort of PE while desperately trying to cross my legs and cover
up my lower nakedness. I think this is probably a very common sort of
Freudian dream, being naked or not properly dressed in public, but the
fact that I can visualise the dream 50 years later suggests to me how very
exposed I felt at school—not only different with a funny European sur-
name, odd sandwiches made with rye bread instead of square white bread,
and white legs instead of a bronzed Aussie tan, but somehow removed
6 T. Stehlik
from what was actually going on. Even as a school student I think that
subconsciously I was already asking the question: What is education for?
The incursion into the dream world escalates when one becomes a
teacher, reflecting the deep emotional investment involved in the profes-
sion. I spent ten years in various high schools teaching English and other
humanities subjects, eventually escaping to the world of adult education
and university teaching, where behaviour management and classroom
control are not such pressing issues. But those years of standing in front
of out-of-control classes and rebellious or bored adolescents resulted in
recurring dreams which I can still have to this day, 25 years later. The
dream (or nightmare really) usually takes the form of me not being pre-
pared for the class, or having misplaced important paperwork, often
standing in front of the class with no trousers on, and helplessly watching
things deteriorate around me. Other colleagues have told me very similar
stories of such experiences invading their sub-conscious dream life, even
long after retiring from teaching. The feeling of not being in control is a
fundamental and deep human fear, and it is also not surprising that pub-
lic speaking has long been identified as the number one fear, even ahead
of fear of flying or fear of heights.
policy wonks responsible for the ‘system’ we have. But how did we get to
this situation? Who decided all of this in the first place? On what do we
base our educational decision-making? What is the rationale for ‘school-
ing’ as opposed to education? This is what I aim to tease out in the fol-
lowing chapters of the book, set out in six sections.
331. 274
Zonation
332. Concept 274
Causes of Zonation
333. Growth 275
334. Reactions 276
335. Physical factors 276
336. Physiographic symmetry 278
Kinds of Zonation
337. 279
338. Radial zonation 280
339. Bilateral zonation 280
340. Vertical zonation 280
341. Vegetation zones 281
Alternation
342. Concept 283
343. Causes 284
344. Competition 285
345. Kinds of alternation 289
The Formation in Detail
346. The rank of the formation 292
347. The parts of a formation 295
348. Nomenclature of the divisions 299
349. The investigation of a particular formation 299
Classification and Relationship
350. Basis 300
351. Habitat classification 301
352. Nomenclature 302
353. Developmental classification 304
354. Regional classification 304
355. Mixed formations 304
EXPERIMENTAL VEGETATION
Glossary 314
Bibliography 324
RESEARCH METHODS IN
ECOLOGY
CHAPTER I. THE FOUNDATION OF
ECOLOGY
The Need of a System