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After H iggins and D unne: Imagining School Teaching as a Multi‐Practice Activity
Author(s) -
Davies Richard
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9752.12030
Subject(s) - conversation , philosophy of education , sociology , focus (optics) , pedagogy , set (abstract data type) , teaching method , epistemology , higher education , law , philosophy , political science , physics , communication , optics , computer science , programming language
There remains a concern in philosophy of education circles to assert that teaching is a social practice. Its initiation occurs in a conversation between Alasdair MacIntyre and Joe D unne which inspired a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education . This has been recently utilised in a further Special Issue by Chris H iggins. In this article I consider two points of conflict between MacIntyre and D unne and seek to resolve both with a more nuanced understanding of the implications of applying the concept ‘social practice’ to teaching. I critique both D unne's and H iggins' focus on schools and school teaching. It is their focus on school teaching, rather than a broader account of teaching, that leads them astray. The result is that D unne and H iggins have not shown that teaching is a social practice. School teaching is not a complex activity, but a complex set of different activities co‐located in one place and engaged in by the same agents. In a final section I offer an account of ‘school teaching’ as a multi‐practice activity which is consistent with MacIntyre's approach, and argue that schoolteachers have both an institutional and an educative role.