Continuum Library of Educational Thought – serie

This title offers a coherent account of St Augustine's educational thought, including coverage of the reception and influence of his work and its relevance today. St Augustine is indisputably a major thinker in education. Ryan Topping's volume offers the most coherent account of St Augustine's educational thought. This work is divided into: intellectual biography; critical exposition of St Augustine's work; the reception and influence of St Augustine's work; and, the relevance of the work today. This title comes from a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

What role should government have in education? This question has exercised philosophers since Plato and economists since Adam Smith. It is also a question that is as relevant today, as people around the world worry about standards in public (government) schools and governments and international agencies look to fine-tune their educational policies.This book describes and analyses the work of one economist, Professor E.G. West, whose life's work was focused precisely on this question. His classic 1965 book, Education and the State, and subsequent writings inspired a new way of looking at this question. Based on historical analysis of what happened in the UK and USA before governments got involved in education, and supplemented with philosophical exploration of the justifications for government involvement, West set out a position with only minimal state involvement.James Tooley outlines West's ideas and their challenges, elaborating them in terms of public choice theory and recent empirical evidence of 'education without the state' in developing countries.

Pierre Bourdieu is indisputably a major thinker in education. Michael Grenfell's volume offers the most coherent account of Bourdieu's educational thought. This work is divided into: intellectual biography; critical exposition of Bourdieu's work; the reception and influence of Bourdieu's work; and the relevance of the work today.This volume is part of a major international reference series that provides comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers covered in the series include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

Jerome Bruner is indisputably a major thinker in education. David Olson's volume offers the most coherent account of Bruner's educational thought. This work is divided into: intellectual biography; critical exposition of Bruner's work; the reception and influence of Bruner's work; the relevance of the work today; and excerpts from an interview with Jerome Bruner.This volume is part of a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

John Holt is indisputably a major thinker in education. Roland Meighan's volume offers the most coherent account of Holt's educational thought. This work is divided into: intellectual biography; critical exposition of Holt's work; and the reception and influence of Holt's work and the relevance of the work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West, and Wollstonecraft.

Maria Montessori is indisputably a major thinker in education. Marion O'Donnell's volume offers the most coherent account of Montessori's educational thought. This work is divided into: intellectual biography, critical exposition of Montessori's work, and, the reception and influence of Montessori's work and the relevance of the work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

John Henry Newman is indisputably a major thinker in education. James Arthur and Guy Nicholls' volume offers the most coherent account of Newman's educational thought. This work is divided into: Intellectual biography; Critical exposition of Newman's work; and, The reception, influence and relevance of Newman's work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West, and Wollstonecraft.

Plato is indisputably a major thinker in education. Robin Barrow's volume offers the most coherent account of Plato's educational thought. This work is divided into: intellectual biography, critical exposition of Plato's work, and, the reception and influence of Plato's work and the relevance of the work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

A major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft. Lev Vygotsky is indisputably a major thinker in education. Ren van der Veer's volume offers the most coherent account of Vygotsky's educational thought. This work is divided into:Intellectual biography Critical exposition of Vygotsky's work The Reception, Influence and Relevance of Vygotskys Work Today.

Jean Piaget is indisputably a major thinker in education. Richard Kohler's volume offers the most coherent account of Piaget's educational thought. This work is divided into: Intellectual biography; Critical exposition of Piaget's work; The reception and influence of Piaget's work; and, The relevance of the work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is indisputably a major thinker in education. Jurgen Oelkers' volume offers the most coherent account of Rousseau's educational thought. This work is divided into: Intellectual biography; Critical exposition of Rousseau's work; The reception and influence of Rousseau's; and, The relevance of the work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

E.G. West is indisputably a major thinker in education. James Tooley's volume offers the most coherent account of West's educational thought. This work is divided into: intellectual biography; critical exposition of West's work; the reception and influence of West's work; and, the relevance of the work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West, and Wollstonecraft.

Mary Wollstonecraft is indisputably a major thinker in education. Susan Laird's volume offers the most coherent account of Wollstonecraft's educational thought. This work is divided into: Intellectual biography; Critical exposition of Wollstonecraft's work; The reception and influence of Wollstonecraft's work; and, The relevance of the work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

Rudolf Steiner is indisputably a major thinker in education. Heiner Ullrich's volume offers the most coherent account of Steiner's educational thought. This work is divided into: Intellectual biography; Critical exposition of Steiner's work; The reception and influence of Steiner's work; and, The relevance of the work today.This is a major international reference series providing comprehensive accounts of the work of seminal educational thinkers from a variety of periods, disciplines and traditions. It is the most ambitious and prestigious such project ever published - a definitive resource for at least a generation. The thinkers include: Aquinas, Aristotle, Bourdieu, Bruner, Dewey, Foucault, Freire, Holt, Kant, Locke, Montessori, Neill, Newman, Owen, Peters, Piaget, Plato, Rousseau, Steiner, Vygotsky, West and Wollstonecraft.

What does it mean to say that someone is an educated person? How do we know what's worth including in a school curriculum? Is a good moral education about developing good habits, or critical thinking? What role does the development of knowledge and understanding play in living a good life? These are all questions that were robustly taken up by the philosopher of education, R.S. Peters. In an era of immense reform (and confusion) about the values, aims and purposes of education, Peters developed a clear and nuanced account of what education is really about and how educational policy and practice can make good on its promise.This text undertakes a careful and accessible reconstruction of the major themes of Peters' thought in order to demonstrate the continuing relevance of his project, both for educational researchers and teachers and student teachers seeking to better understand the nature and scope of their work and study.

John Holt, the American educator, was passionate about the need for alternatives to traditional institutional schooling, seeing schools as often hindering children from learning rather than helping them; he became an important proponent of homeschooling or 'unschooling', was a pioneer in youth rights theory and had a profound influence on school reform in particular and educational philosophy in general.Here, Roland Meighan challenges the often held notion that Holt's work was 'romantic' and impractical within the context of compulsory schooling. He brings together the work and thinking of John Holt into applicable theory for education students, enabling readers to appreciate the view that individuals outside the education system can influence and change what is happening within it.

How do we know what we should teach? And how should we go about teaching it? These deceptively simple questions about education perplexed Tolstoy. Before writing his famous novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy opened an experimental school on his estate to try and answer them. His experiences there incited his life-long inquiry into the meaning and purpose of religion, literature, art and life itself. In this text, Daniel Moulin tells the story of the course of Tolstoy's educational thought, and how it relates to Tolstoy's fiction and other writings. It begins with his experience of being a child and adolescent, incorporates his travels in Europe, the experimental school, his literature, and his views on art, philosophy, and spirituality. Throughout, the relevance and impact of Tolstoy's thinking on education are translated into applicable theory for today's education students.

Michel Foucault's influential work spanned a wide array of intellectual disciplines, his writings having been widely taken up in philosophy, history, literary criticism and political theory. Focusing on the implications of Foucault's theories for education, whilst characterizing them as provocative, problematizing, poetic and playful, Lynn Fendler describes the historical context for understanding Foucault's ground breaking critiques. Including a discussion of his major theories of disciplinary power, genealogy, discourse and subjectivity, this text provides generative explanations of concepts, using analogies to the Internet and to food, in order to connect Foucault's theories to everyday experience.

The Municipal preschools of Reggio Emilia, in Northern Italy, are renowned world-wide for the excellence of their provision. This approach provides a unique collaboration between children, parents, teachers and the wider community.Loris Malaguzzi and the Reggio Emilia Experience brings together the history and context of the Reggio Emilia experience, and explores the principles espoused by Loris Malaguzzi and the Early Years' Educators of the Reggio Emilia Municipality. It critically evaluates the emergent curriculum and quality provision and offers new insights into the powerful and dominant discourses of the Reggio movement. It will provide students and educators with a comprehensive overview of the phenomenon that is Reggio Emilia.

What does it mean to say that someone is an educated person? How do we know what's worth including in a school curriculum? Is a good moral education about developing good habits, or critical thinking? What role does the development of knowledge and understanding play in living a good life? These are all questions that were robustly taken up by the philosopher of education, R.S. Peters. In an era of immense reform (and confusion) about the values, aims and purposes of education, Peters developed a clear and nuanced account of what education is really about and how educational policy and practice can make good on its promise.This text undertakes a careful and accessible reconstruction of the major themes of Peters' thought in order to demonstrate the continuing relevance of his project, both for educational researchers and teachers and student teachers seeking to better understand the nature and scope of their work and study.

Plato was the first and most formidable thinker to recognise that education is a fiercely contested concept, and to point out what great social and personal issues are at stake in education. He articulated a compelling argument for a liberal arts education as something peculiarly befitting free and autonomous beings. He understood the centrality of education for human well-being and flourishing. And he was the first to set forth a systematic theory of education.In this text, Robin Barrow concisely and convincingly establishes the continuing relevance of Plato's views to debates on such issues as nature vs. nurture (or genetic inheritance vs. social background), philosophy vs. sophistry (or the pursuit of true understanding vs. the pursuit of reputation, or perhaps simply truth vs. politics and the media). Questions concerning the fair distribution of education, moral education, value judgments and human nature are explored along with themes more specifically associated with Plato's philosophy such as the Theory of Ideas. The whole is embedded in a clearly presented account of the historical background to Plato's thought.

Jean Piaget was one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century. His influence on developmental psychology, education and epistemology has been enormous. This text undertakes a reconstruction of the contexts and intellectual development of Piaget's numerous texts in the wide-ranging fields of biology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, child psychology, social psychology, theology, logic, epistemology and education.Richard Kohler reconstructs the often overlooked theological basis of Piaget's theories and analyses the influence this had upon the various areas of his research and reflections, particularly in relation to education.

John Locke is one of the great minds in educational history. Drawing on his perceptive observations of families and children he saw the importance of adapting learning to the child's dispositions. Critical of schools, he is the fountainhead of home tutoring, child-centred learning, and the importance of enjoyable learning. But for Locke learning was not about facts: a good education produced gentlemen who could in turn adapt themselves to commerce and politics. Locke's philosophy helped provide rigour to the scientific revolution, the impetus for the expansion of schools for the poor (which should be profitable) and child psychology.Alexander Mosely sets Locke's educational writings in their context with a sensitive reading of what Locke understood by 'education' and highlights the relevance of the study of Locke's work to our understanding of education today.

Best known as author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), if not also as mother of Frankenstein's author Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft survived domestic violence and unusual independent womanhood to write engaging letters, fiction, history, critical reviews, handbooks and treatises. Her work on coeducational thought was a major early modern influence upon the development of a post-Enlightenment tradition, and continues to have vital relevance today.Celebrated as an early modern feminist, abolitionist and socialist philosopher, Wollstonecraft had little formal schooling, but still worked as a governess, school-teacher and educational writer. This succinct critical account of that prolific research begins by recounting her revolutionary self-education. Susan Laird explains how Wollstonecraft came to criticize moral flaws in both men's and women's private education based on irrational assumptions about 'sexual character' under the Divine Right of Kings. It was to remedy those moral flaws of monarchist education that Wollstonecraft theorized her influential, but incomplete, concept of publicly financed, universal, egalitarian coeducation.

The French social theorist Pierre Bourdieu was a key thinker about education and educational processes in the second half of the twentieth century. He made his name in seminal texts such as The Inheritors and Reproduction in which he analysed academic discourse and showed how differences in cultural capital led to different outcomes for those who passed through school and university. His concepts of Habitus and Field have since been used extensively in educational research. This book begins by setting his intellectual development within his own biography and then discusses each of his major works on education in turn: from the early studies of students and their learning to later analyses of the French academic space and the elite training colleges. There is also critical discussion of a range of commentators' views on this approach. The book concludes with a series of applications of Bourdieusian thinking on various educational topics: teacher education, classroom discourse, higher education and policy. No educational discussion is complete without consideration from a Bourdieusian perspective. This book shows how and why.

It may be surprising that the thought of a medieval theologian still informs many areas of intellectual debate, but there continues to be lively interest in the work of Thomas Aquinas. He considers the most radical questions for our thinking about education: what is a human being? what does it mean to learn? what does it mean to teach? what does it mean to know, to understand, and to search for the truth?In this text, Vivian Boland offers a short biography of Aquinas focused on his personal experiences as a student and teacher. The book then provides a critical exposition of the texts in which Aquinas develops his views about education and includes a short account of the reception and influence of his thinking. Finally, it considers in some detail the most significant points of contact between Aquinas's educational thought and current concerns – his conviction about the goodness of the world, his holistic understanding of human experience and his contributions to virtue theory – and highlights the continuing relevance and influence of this work and thinking within educational philosophy today.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, enlightenment philosopher and founder of 'natural education', is one of the most influential philosophers of education in the western world. In order to fully understand Rousseau's impact as a true educational thinker, Jurgen Oelkers argues that we must take into account his paradoxical style, unique intellectual biography and his turbulent and unconventional way of life. Combining historical analysis and contemporary ethical theory, this text serves as both an introduction to Rousseau's theories of education and a critique of his views, and shows how Rousseau was a pioneer in exploring educational issues within the context of his own philosophical problems in order to present innovative solutions.

After setting Augustine's thought firmly within the context of his life and times, Ryan Topping examines in turn the causes of education (the purposes, pedagogy, curriculum, and limits of learning) as Augustine understood them. Augustine's towering influence over Medieval and Renaissance theorists – from Hugh of St Victor, to Aquinas, to Erasmus – is traced. The book concludes by drawing Augustine into dialogue with contemporary philosophers, exploring the influence of his meditations on higher education and suggesting how his ideas can reinvigorate for our generation the project of liberal learning.

Rudolf Steiner is one of the most controversially judged educational reformers of the twentieth century. Although he received little recognition within his field, his educational thought has had a sustained and profound influence, not only in the development of the Waldorf Schools, but also in healing, socially therapeutic work, psychosomatic medicine, biological-dynamic agriculture, corporate organisation, fine arts, and architecture. Heiner Ullrich paints a concise and well-grounded portrait of the creator of the anthroposophic doctrine and Waldorf pedagogy. The text describes a wide arc from the intellectual biography of Rudolf Steiner, across his basic ideas on human development and education, to include discussion of the organisation, curriculum, methods and success of the Waldorf Schools.