The big wide-mouthed frog Book

This book was written for people preparing to teach and for universities seeking to improve teacher education. Philosophy of education is the discipline that attempts to prove in depth the why, how, and what of the teaching/learning encounter. Most attempts explore these questions within the context of one of the popular philosophies such as Idealism, Pragmatism, Realism, or Naturalism. Philosophical Theories of Education is different in two respects. It identifies the three basic intellectual orientations whose centuries-old dialecticizings underlie the several philosophical and educational schools of thought present in Western civilization. The dialectic has even influenced some scientific thinking, but it has produced no final answers. Nevertheless, the arguments of such philosophers as Plato, Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Comenius, Gentile, Dewey, and Broudy have clarified many issues, and they supply foundations for theorizing. The second difference is that ideas of such thinkers and the implications drawn therefrom are organized for professional theories. Each of the three intellectual orientations provides its answers to the why, how and what of education. "How", for example, is answered as the inductive, deductive, and structural processes of thinking. "Why" and "what" are answered in terms of goals and curricula logically derived from each orientation. Like other philosophies of education, this supplies teaching/learning practices with intellectual foundations. Unlike others, it demonstrates that the orientations produce principles that sometimes compete and sometimes complement each other.