Good Life of Teaching

Chris Higgins is Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Policy, Organization and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is also Associate Editor and Review Editor of Educational Theory. A philosopher of education, his work draws on virtue ethics, hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis. His scholarly interests include professional ethics and teacher identity, dialogue and the teacher-student relationship, liberal learning and the humanistic imagination, professional education and the philosophy of work.

• Foreword by Richard Smith viiAcknowledgements ixIntroduction: Why We Need a Virtue Ethics of Teaching 1Saints and scoundrels 1A brief for teacherly self-cultivation 2From the terrain of teaching to the definition of professional ethics 9Outline of the argument 10Part I The Virtues of Vocation: From Moral Professionalism to Practical Ethics1 Work and Flourishing: Williams’ Critique of Morality and its Implications for Professional Ethics 21Retrieving Socrates’ question 22Modern moral myopia 25What do moral agents want? 31From moral professionalism to professional ethics 352 Worlds of Practice: MacIntyre’s Challenge to Applied Ethics 47The architecture of MacIntyre’s moral theory 48A closer look at internal goods 55The practicality of ethical reflection 61What counts as a practice: The proof, the pudding, and the recipe 63Boundary conditions: Practitioners, managers, interpreters, and fans 693 Labour, Work, and Action: Arendt’s Phenomenology of Practical Life 85Arendt’s singular project 87Defining the deed 92Hierarchy and interdependence in the vita activa 99Praxis in the professions 1014 A Question of Experience: Dewey and Gadamer on Practical Wisdom 111The constant gardener 113The existential and aesthetic dimensions of vocation 119Our dominant vocation 125Practical wisdom and the circle of experience 130The open question 134Part II a Virtue Ethics for Teachers: Problems and Prospects5 The Hunger Artist: Pedagogy and the Paradox of Self-Interest 145A blind spot in the educational imagination 145The hunger artist 154The very idea of a helping profession 161This ripeness of self 1706 Working Conditions: The Practice of Teaching and the Institution of School 177A prima facie case for teaching as a practice 178MacIntyre’s objection 190Schools as surroundings 1987 The Classroom Drama: Teaching as Endless Rehearsal and Cultural Elaboration 205Education as the drama of cultural renewal 208A false lead 214Teaching as labour, work, and action 217Education, shelter, and mediation 223Teaching as endless rehearsal 227Teaching as cultural elaboration 2338 Teaching as Experience: Toward a Hermeneutics of Teaching and Teacher Education 241Teaching as vocational environment 241Batch processing, kitsch culture, and other obstacles to teacher vocation 248The syntax of educational claims 254The shape of humanistic conversation 258Horizons of educational inquiry 266Teacher education for practical wisdom 273References 283Index 305