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Essaying and Reflective Practice in Education: The Legacy of M ichel de M ontaigne
Author(s) -
Halpin David
Publication year - 2015
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 - 10.1111/1467-9752.12098
Subject(s) - michel foucault , epistemology , philosophy of education , sociology , philosophy , pedagogy , psychology , higher education , politics , political science , law
Although the French Renaissance sceptic M ichel de M ontaigne (1533–92) is a much‐admired thinker among many literary historians and some philosophical ones, his oeuvre hardly features in critical surveys of ideas in education. This is strange given that M ontaigne offers modern educators an exemplary form of communicative discourse which anticipates contemporary education theory's emphasis on the importance of reflective practice and learning from experience. While each of these themes is capable of being rendered as repetitious slogans, sound‐bites even, M ontaigne, through his emphasis on free thinking and self‐study, helps to rescue them from such a fate, identifying a dialectical method called ‘essaying’ which has genuine purchase on practice and its improvement.