The Journal of Philosophy of Education Book Series

The Journal of Philosophy of Education Book Series publishes titles that represent a wide variety of philosophical traditions. They vary from examination of fundamental philosophical issues in their connection with education, to detailed critical engagement with current educational practice or policy from a philosophical point of view. Books in this series promote rigorous thinking on educational matters and identify and criticise the ideological forces shaping education.

Titles in the series include:

Citizenship for the Learning Society: Europe, Subjectivity, and Educational Research
Naomi Hodgson

Philosophy East/West: Exploring Intersections between Educational and Contemplative Practices
Edited by Oren Ergas and Sharon Todd

The Ways We Think: From the Straits of Reason to the Possibilities of Thought
Emma Williams

Philosophical Perspectives on Teacher Education
Edited by Ruth Heilbronn and Lorraine Foreman-Peck

Re-Imagining Relationships In Education: Ethics, Politics and Practices
Edited by Morwenna Griffiths, Marit Honerød Hoveid, Sharon Todd and Christine Winter

Education Vygotsky, Philosophy and Education
Jan Derry

Education and the Growth of Knowledge: Perspectives from Social and Virtue Epistemology
Edited by Ben Kotzee

Education Policy: Philosophical Critique
Edited by Richard Smith

Levinas, Subjectivity, Education: Towards an Ethics of Radical Responsibility
Anna Strhan

Philosophy for Children in Transition: Problems and Prospects
Edited by Nancy Vansieleghem and David Kennedy

The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice
Chris Higgins

Reading R. S. Peters Today: Analysis, Ethics, and the Aims of Education
Edited by Stefaan E. Cuypers and Christopher Martin

The Formation of Reason
David Bakhurst

What Do Philosophers of Education Do? (And How Do They Do It?)
Edited by Claudia Ruitenberg

Evidence-Based Education Policy: What Evidence? What Basis? Whose Policy?
Edited by David Bridges, Paul Smeyers and Richard Smith

New Philosophies of Learning
Edited by Ruth Cigman and Andrew Davis

The Common School and the Comprehensive Ideal: A Defence by Richard Pring with Complementary Essays
Edited by Mark Halstead and Graham Haydon

Philosophy, Methodology and Educational Research
Edited by David Bridges and Richard D Smith

Philosophy of the Teacher
Nigel Tubbs

Conformism and Critique in Liberal Society
Edited by Frieda Heyting and Christopher Winch

Retrieving Nature: Education for a Post-Humanist Age
Michael Bonnett

Education and Practice: Upholding the Integrity of Teaching and Learning
Edited by Joseph Dunne and Pádraig Hogan

Educating Humanity: Bildung in Postmodernity
Edited by Lars Lovlie, Klaus Peter Mortensen and Sven Erik Nordenbo

The Ethics of Educational Research
Edited by Michael Mcnamee and David Bridges

In Defence of High Culture
Edited by John Gingell and Ed Brandon

Enquiries at the Interface: Philosophical Problems of On-Line Education
Edited by Paul Standish and Nigel Blake

The Limits of Educational Assessment
Edited by Andrew Davis

Illusory Freedoms: Liberalism, Education and the Market
Edited by Ruth Jonathan

Quality and Education
Edited by Christopher Winch

Teachers' Know-How: A Philosophical Investigation
Christopher Winch

What is good teaching? What is the know-how that teachers need? Around the world, and as never before, governments are vexed by questions about the quality of teaching and the preparation of teachers. Economic competitiveness is dependent upon having an educated workforce, and this in turn depends upon high-performing schools. Yet recurrently there is uncertainty as to how exactly such schools are to be created and how the right teachers are to be produced.

Now, as never before, however, we do have global measures for that performance, and hence conclusions can be drawn about the kind of teacher training and education that works best. First, the appeal of the teaching profession is of critical importance. In the countries with the best examination performance, teachers enjoy relatively high social status and competitive remuneration. This status is reflected in the comparative autonomy they have in the classroom: where teachers are not regarded as mere technicians or servants of the system, greater respect for them is generated, within and beyond the school. Second, it is clear that teacher education matters. The best courses provide extensive practical experience in schools, research-based teacher methods and emphasis on specific expertise in the subject to be taught, as well as the ability to work with a wide variety of child-development issues. Third, it is clear that ongoing professional development matters too. Apart from leading to improvements in practice, this enables teachers to develop as people in their profession, reinforcing their confidence and commitment to that practice. Time allocated for working together is an important contribution to this, as is the shared study of method and technique with support from fellow teachers.

This at least is the prevailing wisdom, as expressed in OECD recommendations based on PISA studies and other policy recommendations. Governments are disposed to pay careful attention to the comparisons that PISA has provided, not surprisingly given the economic pressures that can be brought to bear on those that do not take such findings seriously. But many have also found it convenient to push responsibility for reform down towards the schools themselves, rather than investing in the teaching profession and specifically in teacher education in the ways outlined here. Sometimes there has been a tendency to debunk educational expertise and to champion simplistic notions of the skills the teacher needs. In these circumstances, political debate about teacher education becomes ideological in new ways, mired in confusion about what it is that teachers need to know, about the qualities they must bring to their professional roles and about the ongoing development in expertise needed to sustain them in this. And even in circumstances where governments have acted on these three main recommendations, the tendency has been for teaching to be turned into something formulaic. The variety of the circumstances and the challenges that teachers face, and the complex and again varying demands of their relationship with the subject matter they are passing on, are rarely appreciated in the way that is needed. Comparisons can be immensely valuable, especially where they serve for something more than simply shoring up an orthodoxy. But too often the appeal of a systematic approach that the orthodoxy offers obscures the benefits such research might otherwise provide. So how might things be moved forward and a better understanding of teaching achieved?

As is evident from the beginnings of philosophy, the role of the teacher is crucial to human flourishing and to the development of a good society, and understanding of this has been important to the development of philosophy itself. Over the course of the centuries, some of the greatest philosophers have returned to questions about what it is to teach and to do this well. In contemporary philosophy of education, the challenge of teaching has been addressed in fresh ways in the present series, as indicated by Nigel Tubbs' Philosophy of the Teacher (2005) and Christopher Higgins' The Good Life of Teaching: An Ethics of Professional Practice (2011), as well as the recent collection of essays, Philosophical Perspectives on Teacher Education, edited by Ruth Heilbronn and Lorraine Foreman-Peck (2015).

The present addition to the series, Teachers' Know-How: A Philosophical Investigation, extends work on the topic to address more specifically epistemological questions: these are matters of critical importance, yet they are often neglected or treated in only a cursory manner. Winch broaches questions about the quality of education in a way that answers to the concerns not only of teachers but also of policymakers, the public and parents. Crucial to his exploration of teacher ability is a careful examination of the relationship between teaching and learning. His focus is on the know-how that is involved in teaching, understood in the broadest sense. And his preference for the unfussy and practically attuned expression ‘know-how’, as opposed to ‘competence’, ‘expertise’ and other more fashionable terms, avoids the tendency towards jargon that often characterises theorising about these matters: it suggests an embracing of the knowledge and various practical abilities that teachers require, with a strong sense of the ways in which such knowledge is integrated and realised in those abilities. What kind of knowledge is it that teachers need if their practice is to be effective? And how far does the acquisition of such knowledge contribute to the characterising of, even the constitution of, teaching as a profession?

Inevitably such questions need to be addressed with an eye focussed realistically on the practical demands of particular institutions and on the educational systems within which they operate, and Winch's attention is turned in particular towards the relatively formal setting of public school-centred education. But this specification of context in fact contributes to the book's ability to say things that can be seen to extend more widely through practices of teaching and learning: fundamental questions about teaching, learning and assessment are, after all, not confined to those contexts but of relevance more universally. What the book provides is a grammatical exploration of these concepts, as a means to become clear about what the know-how of a good teacher consists.

A salient feature of the account is the attention it gives to the important work Lee Shulman has undertaken into the pedagogical demands and possibilities that arise in relation to specific subject knowledge. Indeed, enquiry of this kind is important in the generation of coherent curricular and teaching strategies, and its value is obscured where teaching and learning are understood in generic terms or in generalised thinking skills. The book makes an invaluable contribution in taking this discussion forward.

It is possible to find a number of models for conceptualising teaching. Winch takes particularly seriously the ideas of teaching as a craft, but he eschews any simplistic assumption that the know-how that this implies is necessarily devoid of theoretical knowledge. He shows how it is necessary to become clearer about the relationships between craft knowledge and more systematic technical knowledge. What becomes clear, in addition, is that a proper examination of these matters cannot leave the concept of the ‘professional teacher’ undisturbed. Addressing such matters takes the reader further into the relationship between teaching and content knowledge. The discussion leads not only through the ‘Taylorised’ views that have exerted such influence, including contemporary reincarnations of these, but also into such central philosophical literature as is provided by Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind.

Winch has undertaken important research into the thinking of Georg Kerschensteiner (1854–1932), with its insights into the social role of work and the bearing this has on vocational education. Such a conception invites us to think in terms of not solely specific skills and expertise but also forms of know-how that involve aspects of a person's character and sense of who they are. Here these ideas are extended in inspiring ways, addressing the question of what it is to pursue a career in teaching in terms of what Winch calls its ‘civic’ role.

Winch leads the reader towards a view of initial teacher education that nicely balances the practical and academic. With the recognition that the expectation of complete precision in respect of matters of teaching and learning is likely to be the basis of fantasy, his approach is healthily pragmatic: achieving the ‘greatest precision possible’ in the light of the demands of the content being taught will be, in his phrase, no mean achievement. On a rather more sombre note, he recognises that that achievement may well be compromised in a socio-economic environment that places too much faith in ‘market forces’, constructing learners as consumers with consumers' expectations and teachers as technical operatives whose function is to ‘deliver’, while indulging in excessive faith in high-stakes testing and imposing punitive measures on those who do not ‘perform’ (in what are, in effect, often bogus forms of competition). This degenerate model is to be contrasted with a ‘service’ conception of teaching, but here once again Winch avoids simplistic solutions, with a sensitivity to the demands of large-scale educational provision that pitches realism against formulaic answers.

In this way the book holds onto a pragmatic and robust account of the nature of knowledge and the specific know-how that is at the heart of teaching. Winch takes the reader through obvious and less obvious (though in fact essential) steps along the way, and he does this with exemplary clarity. This is a book that marries careful analysis and commitment. It will assist policymakers and practitioners, as well as interested members of the wider public, in coming to a better understanding of what it is that teachers need to know.

Paul Standish
Series Editor