What is Education? Final Coursework

This document outlines a higher education module titled "What is Education?" It details the module's aims, exploring key questions about the purpose, values, and nature of education. The module uses a combination of readings, discussions, and activities to engage students with philosophical an...Read More

 General
Welcome to the module:
What is Education?
This module serves as an exploration of the main ideas that underpin a study
of education. It is guided by six key questions which we draw upon in order to
encourage and enable you to question your understanding of education, both
in relation to your own context and more generally. These questions are as
follows:
o What is education for, what is its purpose, both here and now
and looking to the future?
o What should be its fundamental values and ethics?
o What do we mean by knowledge and learning (including
formal and informal learning)?
o What is our concept of education?
o What is our image of the learners, educators, learner
contexts, and of community/society?
o Who is responsible for education, and what does it mean to
be responsible?
(These questions are drawn from Fielding, M. and Moss, P. (2011) Radical
education and the common school: a democratic alternative. London:
Routledge.)
You can read more about the aims and intended learning outcomes of the
module in the module handbook

Helpful documents
We have included an induction week at the beginning of the module to give
you the time to familiarise yourself with the information found in the
documents below, among other activities. Your tutors and the lecturers will
assume that you have done so.
 Module HandbookFile 67.6KB Word document
 Module Aims and OutcomesFile 427.1KB Word document
 Reading ListFile 37KB Word document
 General questions for module readingsFile 14.5KB Word document
 Assessment GuidelinesFile 426.4KB Word document
 Guide to ReferencingFile 26.6KB Word document
 Academic Literacy and Plagiarism File14.9KB Word document
 Information on Turnitin (to be used for final coursework submission)File 16.5KB Word
document
 Academic Writing CentrePage
Module Assessment and Evaluation
Submit your final coursework here. Do remember to attach a front cover sheet.
5000 words
Ariel/Times New Roman 12 point.
Double line spacing.
Please remember to proof read.
 Final Coursework SheetFile
 Assignment Cover SheetFile 12.9KB Word document
Please complete the assignment cover sheet and add it to your document, making
the assignment cover sheet your first page. You can only add one document to the
final Turnitin Submission Box.

Week 1: Getting started: Introduction to What is
Education?
The purpose of the session, activities and readings this week is to introduce
you to the module and enable you to become familiar with the ways in which
we will be working.
 Required reading: Chapter One of "The state we're in" in Michael Fielding & Peter
Moss ,Radical education and the common school : a democratic alternative. Routledge,
2011.
 Required reading: Mezirow, J. (1997) Transformative Learning: Theory to Practice. New
Directions for Adult and Continuing Education. 74: 5-12. This is an article from an
ejournal which you can access from the IOE library. Follow this link to find the article (you
may need to enter your UCL IOE username and password to access the article).
Suggested activities for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Jalongo, M. R. (1991). Finding our voices as
teachers. Creating learning communities: the role of the teacher in the 21st Century. (75-
91). Bloomington: National Educational Service. (This is no longer available electronically
but the book is in libraries)
 Suggestion for further reading: Pring, R. (2012) Putting persons back into
education. Oxford Review of Education. 38(6): 747-760. This is an article from an
ejournal which you can access from the IOE library.
Week 2: Must we educate? Philosophical perspectives
on the moral and political aspects of education. (Dr
Judith Suissa)

 Required activities to be completed this week
 Required Reading (to be read in advance of attending the taught session): Carl
Bereiter, “Must We Educate?” Prentice-Hall, 1973. Chapter One, pp. 3-20.File 394.3KB
PDF document
 Suggested activity for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Paul Standish, “Education Without Aims?” , in R. Marples
(Ed.) The Aims of Education, Routledge, 1999. This is available as an ebook from the
IOE library.
Week 3: Changing values in education. (Dr Jacek
Brant)
Required activities to be completed this week
 Required reading (to be completed in advance of attending the taught sesion):
Chapter 2 (Aims and Values) in Pring, R et al (2009) Education for all: The future of
Education and Training for 14-19 year olds London: Routledge.File 236.6KB PDF document
 Required reading (to be read in advance of attending the taught session): Skelton, A
(2011) Value conflicts in higher education teaching, Teaching in Higher Education, 17:3,
257-268 This is available as an ejournal which you can access via the IOE library. Follow
this link to find the article.
Suggested activity for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Brant, J. and Panjwani, F. (2015). 'School Economics and
the Aims of Education: Critique and Possibilities', Journal of Critical Realism, 14, (3),
306–324.
Week 4: What are schools for? (Professor Michael
Young)

Required activities to be completed this week
 Required reading (to be read in advance of attending the taught
session):Young, M. (2016) 'What are schools for?', in Curriculum and the
specialisation of knowledge: studies in the sociology of education, by M
Young. Routledge.
Suggested activities for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Michael Young and David Lambert (2014) Knowledge
and the Future School: curriculum and social justice, Bloomsbury
 Suggestion for a further reading that is more difficult but worth it if you are feeling
brave: Bernstein, Basil (1999) Vertical and Horizontal Discourses; An essay. British
Journal of Sociology of Education, Vol 20, No 2. This is available as an ejournal which
you can access via the IOE library.
 Suggestion for further reading: Beck, J (2013) 'Powerful knowledge, esoteric knowledge,
curriculum Knowledge' in Cambridge Journal of Education, vol.43(2), pp.177-193
 Powerful knowledge: an analytically useful concept or just a 'sexy sounding term'? A
response to John Beck's powerful knowledge, espteric knowledge, curiculum
knowledge' in Cambridge Journal of education vol.43(2), pp.195-198.
Week 5: The Sociology of Knowledge and Pedagogic
Identities. (Dr Claudia Lapping)
Required activities to be completed this week
 Required reading (to be completed in advance of attending the taught
session): Bernstein, B. (1975): 'Class and Pedagogies: visible and invisible',
in Educational Studies, Vol 1(1), pp 23-41. This is available as an ejournal through the
IOE library.

Note: If you find this reading challenging, you could begin by reading the appendix on
toilets and thinking about that before returning to the main text.
 Follow-up note from Claudia - The organisation of social space as 'visible' or
'invisible' pedagogy
Hi all,
I'm attempting to answer the question about the final note in Bernstein's paper:
"It is possible to examine the coding of objects from two perspectives. We can analyse
the coding of overt or visible arrays and we can compare the code with the codings of
covert of invisible arrays (e.g. drawers, cupboards, refrigirators, closets, handbags,
etc.) ..."
I think that Bernstein is extending the notion of pedagogy to the organisation of social
space. Pedagogy is not just something that happens in classrooms, between teachers
and students; architecture and the (dis) organisation of rooms /furniture/buildings also
constitutes a form of pedagogy. And, following his discussion of 'child centred' education,
we can then also begin to speculate on how the organisation of space also supports the
interests of different social groups; and is related to different cultural expectations...
So, we can begin to draw a parallel between the features of 'visible'/'invisible' pedagogy
(teacher/student has apparent control; implicit/explicit criteria for evaluation... etc.) and
the 'visible'/'invisible' pedagogy in the organisation of a room or social space.
Think about the difference between a house with a separate kitchen and sitting room,
with cupboards clearly allocated for different objects (crockery, cutlery, dry goods, tins,
baking stuff); and a house with one room that acts as kitchen and sitting room, where
when you open the cupboards, you find a jumble of items, including perhaps toys,
medicine, items of clothing.... The first has a visible pedagogy; the second has an
invisible pedagogy.
Imagine that you had been invited to lunch, and the host was called away urgently, and
you offered to tidy up, and the host accepted your offer. In the first kitchen it would be
relatively easy for you to work out where to put things, and also, perhaps, the expected
standards of tidiness. In the second, which looks apparently more relaxed, it would be
more difficult for you to work out where to put things, and to judge expectations.
However, even though it looks relaxed, it's quite possible that there are some implicit
rules that you might accidentally break - For example, your host might be upset by your
decision to put (or hide) the plates in a cupboard, when s/he likes them left out on the
side. #

The apparent freedom of the disorganised room masks complex, invisible expectations,
that rely on prior cultural understanding.
Thinking about this (or maybe this is pushing it too far...?) you might also think about the
unstated an changeable rules of authoritarian bureaucracies... Kafka's trial, etc... as a
form of invisible pedagogy...
So, we can look at social spaces as forms of pedagogy, and also, from a sociological
perspective, we can ask, whose interests are served by this mode of organisation?
Thank you all for the class on Tuesday - I really enjoyed it!
Claudia
Suggested activities for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Rogers, S. & Lapping, C. (2012): Recontextualising ‘Play’
in Early Years Pedagogy: Competence, Performance and Excess in Policy and Practice,
British Journal of Educational Studies, 60:3, 243-260. This is available as a ejournal
through the IOE library.
 Suggestion for further reading: Extract from: Walkerdine, V. (1984) ‘Developmental
psychology and the child-centred pedagogy: the insertion of Piaget into early education’
in J. Henriques, et al. Changing the Subject, London and New York: MethuenFile
Week 6: Adult education and social change - exploring
alternatives (Dr Tom Woodin)
Required activities to be completed this week
 Required reading (to be completed in advance of attending the taught session):Tom
Woodin, 'Working Class Education and Social Change in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
Britain', History of Education, vol 36, nos 405, pp 483-496. This is available
electronically. Follow this link to find the article.
Suggested activity for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the
British Working Classes, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Chapter 8,

'The Whole Contention Concerning the Workers' Educational Association', pp
256-297. This is available as a digitised reading. (ebook) Follow this link to find
the ebook.
Week 7: The role and purpose of assessment. (Dr Tina
Isaacs)
Required activities to be completed this week
 Required reading (to be completed in advance of attending the taught session):
Broadfoot, P. (2007) Chapter one: Introducing assessment, in Introduction to
AssessmentFile247.2KB PDF document
 Required reading (to be completed in advance of attending the
taught session): Newton, P. E. (2010). 'The multiple purposes of
assessment'. In B. McGraw, P. E. Peterson and E. L. Baker (Eds),
International Encyclopedia of Education (3rd ed.). Maryland Heights,
MO: Elsevier Science.
Suggested activity for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Stobart, G. (2008). ‘Assessing
assessment’, in Testing Times, Abingdon: Routledge chapter 1, 13-
29. This is available as an ebook from the IOE library.
Week 8: Part one: The Library (Barbara Sakarya); Part
two: What should be the aims of the school
curriculum? (Professor Michael Reiss)
Required activities to be completed this week

 Required reading (to be completed in advance of attending the taught session):
Reiss, M.J. & White, J. (2014) An aims-based curriculum illustrated by the teaching of
science in schools. The Curriculum Journal, 25, 76-89. File543.2KB PDF document
 Required reading (to be completed in advance of the taught session): Young, M. (2013)
Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge-based approach. Journal of
Curriculum Studies, 45(2), 101-118. This journal article is available electronically.
Suggested activity for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Christodoulou, D. (2014) Seven Myths
about Education, Routledge, London
Week 9: Knowledge, Curriculum and Learning
(Professor Alex Moore)
Required activities to be completed this week
 Required reading (to be completed in advance of the taught session): Moore, A.
(2015). 'Knowledge, Curriculum and Learning: ‘What Did You Learn in School?’, in D.
Scott and E. Hargreaves, (Eds.) The Sage Handbook of Learning. SageFile 379.4KB PDF
document
Suggested activities for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Reiss, M.J. & White, J. (2014) An aims-based
curriculum illustrated by the teaching of science in schools. The Curriculum Journal, 25,
76-89. File
 Suggestion for further reading: Scott D. (2008) 'Critical Essays in major
Curriculum Theorists' London: Routledge (you are advised to pick chapters
that look particularly relevant rather than reading the whole book)
 Suggestion for further reading: Schiro M.S. (2013) 'Curriculum Theory'
LA: Sage

Week 10: Education, Ethics and Imagination:
"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no
education at all." (Dr. Farid Panjwani)
Required activities to be completed this week
 Required reading (to complete in advance of the taught session): Nussbaum, M. C.
(1997). Cultivating humanity : a classical defense of reform in liberal education.
Cambridge, Mass ; London: Harvard University Press. [Chapter three: Narrative
Imagination] File
Suggested activities for this week
 Suggestion for further reading: Egan, Kieran ‘A Very Short History of Imagination’
unpublished ms., (Imaginative Education Research Group, Faculty of Education, Simon
Fraser University).URL
 Suggestion for further reading: Hodgson, M. G. S., & Burke, E. (1993). Rethinking world
history : essays on Europe, Islam and world history: Cambridge University Press
[Chapter 1: The interrelations of societies in history]
 Suggestion for further reading: Bronowski, J. (2000) The Reach of Imagination.URL

Week 11: Part one: What is Education? Question time
panel (Professor Chris Husbands, Dr Judith Suissa, Dr
Clare Brooks, Professor Michael Reiss); Part two:
Preparing for the assessment (Dr Fiona Rodger)
Required activities to be completed this week

 Power PointFile 368KB Powerpoint presentation Assessment details
 Clare's articleFile 139.5KB PDF document