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40 Philosophy of Education Examples, Plus How To Write Your Own

Learn how to define and share your teaching philosophy.

These days, it’s become common for educators to be asked what their personal teaching philosophy is. Whether it’s for a job interview, a college class, or to share with your principal, crafting a philosophy of education can seem like a daunting task. So set aside some time to consider your own teaching philosophy (we’ll walk you through it), and be sure to look at philosophy of education examples from others (we’ve got those too!).

What is a philosophy of education?

Before we dive into the examples, it’s important to understand the purpose of a philosophy of education. This statement will provide an explanation of your teaching values and beliefs. Your teaching philosophy is ultimately a combination of the methods you studied in college and any professional experiences you’ve learned from since. It incorporates your own experiences (negative or positive) in education.

Many teachers have two versions of their teaching philosophy: a long form (a page or so of text) and a short form. The longer form is useful for job application cover letters or to include as part of your teacher portfolio. The short form distills the longer philosophy into a couple of succinct sentences that you can use to answer teacher job interview questions or even share with parents.

What’s the best teaching philosophy?

Here’s one key thing to remember: There’s no one right answer to “What’s your teaching philosophy?” Every teacher’s will be a little bit different, depending on their own teaching style, experiences, and expectations. And many teachers find that their philosophies change over time, as they learn and grow in their careers.

When someone asks for your philosophy of education, what they really want to know is that you’ve given thought to how you prepare lessons and interact with students in and out of the classroom. They’re interested in finding out what you expect from your students and from yourself, and how you’ll apply those expectations. And they want to hear examples of how you put your teaching philosophy into action.

What’s included in strong teaching philosophy examples?

Depending on who you ask, a philosophy of education statement can include a variety of values, beliefs, and information. As you build your own teaching philosophy statement, consider these aspects, and write down your answers to the questions.

Purpose of Education (Core Beliefs)

What do you believe is the purpose of teaching and learning? Why does education matter to today’s children? How will time spent in your classroom help prepare them for the future?

Use your answers to draft the opening statement of your philosophy of education, like these:

• Education isn’t just about what students learn, but about learning how to learn.
• A good education prepares students to be productive and empathetic members of society.
• Teachers help students embrace new information and new ways of seeing the world around them.
• A strong education with a focus on fundamentals ensures students can take on any challenges that come their way.
• I believe education is key to empowering today’s youth, so they’ll feel confident in their future careers, relationships, and duties as members of their community.
• Well-educated students are open-minded, welcoming the opinions of others and knowing how to evaluate information critically and carefully.

Teaching Style and Practices

Do you believe in student-led learning, or do you like to use the Socratic method instead? Is your classroom a place for quiet concentration or sociable collaboration? Do you focus on play-based learning, hands-on practice, debate and discussion, problem-solving, or project-based learning? All teachers use a mix of teaching practices and styles, of course, but there are some you’re likely more comfortable with than others. Possible examples:

• I frequently use project-based learning in my classrooms because I believe it helps make learning more relevant to my students. When students work together to address real-world problems, they use their [subject] knowledge and skills and develop communication and critical thinking abilities too.
• Play-based learning is a big part of my teaching philosophy. Kids who learn through play have more authentic experiences, exploring and discovering the world naturally in ways that make the process more engaging and likely to make a lasting impact.
• In my classroom, technology is key. I believe in teaching students how to use today’s technology in responsible ways, embracing new possibilities and using technology as a tool, not a crutch.
• While I believe in trying new teaching methods, I also find that traditional learning activities can still be effective. My teaching is mainly a mix of lecture, Socratic seminar, and small-group discussions.
• I’m a big believer in formative assessment , taking every opportunity to measure my students’ understanding and progress. I use tools like exit tickets and Kahoot! quizzes, and watch my students closely to see if they’re engaged and on track.
• Group work and discussions play a major role in my instructional style. Students who learn to work cooperatively at a young age are better equipped to succeed in school, in their future careers, and in their communities.

Students and Learning Styles

Why is it important to recognize all learning styles? How do you accommodate different learning styles in your classroom? What are your beliefs on diversity, equity, and inclusion? How do you ensure every student in your classroom receives the same opportunities to learn? How do you expect students to behave, and how do you measure success?

Sample teaching philosophy statements about students might sound like this:

• Every student has their own unique talents, skills, challenges, and background. By getting to know my students as individuals, I can help them find the learning styles that work best for them, now and throughout their education.
• I find that motivated students learn best. They’re more engaged in the classroom and more diligent when working alone. I work to motivate students by making learning relevant, meaningful, and enjoyable.
• We must give every student equal opportunities to learn and grow. Not all students have the same support outside the classroom. So as a teacher, I try to help bridge gaps when I see them and give struggling students a chance to succeed academically.
• I believe every student has their own story and deserves a chance to create and share it. I encourage my students to approach learning as individuals, and I know I’m succeeding when they show a real interest in showing up and learning more every day.
• In my classroom, students take responsibility for their own success. I help them craft their own learning goals, then encourage them to evaluate their progress honestly and ask for help when they need it.
• To me, the best classrooms are those that are the most diverse. Students learn to recognize and respect each other’s differences, celebrating what each brings to the community. They also have the opportunity to find common ground, sometimes in ways that surprise them.

How do I write my philosophy of education?

Think back to any essay you’ve ever written and follow a similar format. Write in the present tense; your philosophy isn’t aspirational, it’s something you already live and follow. This is true even if you’re applying for your first teaching job. Your philosophy is informed by your student teaching, internships, and other teaching experiences.

Lead with your core beliefs about teaching and learning. These beliefs should be reflected throughout the rest of your teaching philosophy statement.

Then, explain your teaching style and practices, being sure to include concrete examples of how you put those practices into action. Transition into your beliefs about students and learning styles, with more examples. Explain why you believe in these teaching and learning styles, and how you’ve seen them work in your experiences.

A long-form philosophy of education statement usually takes a few paragraphs (not generally more than a page or two). From that long-form philosophy, highlight a few key statements and phrases and use them to sum up your teaching philosophy in a couple of well-crafted sentences for your short-form teaching philosophy.

Still feeling overwhelmed? Try answering these three key questions:

• Why do you teach?
• What are your favorite, tried-and-true methods for teaching and learning?
• How do you help students of all abilities and backgrounds learn?

If you can answer those three questions, you can write your teaching philosophy!

Short Philosophy of Education Examples

We asked real educators in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE group on Facebook to share their teaching philosophy examples in a few sentences . Here’s what they had to say:

I am always trying to turn my students into self-sufficient learners who use their resources to figure it out instead of resorting to just asking someone for the answers. —Amy J.

My philosophy is that all students can learn. Good educators meet all students’ differentiated learning needs to help all students meet their maximum learning potential. —Lisa B.

I believe that all students are unique and need a teacher that caters to their individual needs in a safe and stimulating environment. I want to create a classroom where students can flourish and explore to reach their full potential. My goal is also to create a warm, loving environment, so students feel safe to take risks and express themselves. —Valerie T.

In my classroom, I like to focus on the student-teacher relationships/one-on-one interactions. Flexibility is a must, and I’ve learned that you do the best you can with the students you have for however long you have them in your class. —Elizabeth Y

I want to prepare my students to be able to get along without me and take ownership of their learning. I have implemented a growth mindset. —Kirk H.

My teaching philosophy is centered around seeing the whole student and allowing the student to use their whole self to direct their own learning. As a secondary teacher, I also believe strongly in exposing all students to the same core content of my subject so that they have equal opportunities for careers and other experiences dependent upon that content in the future. —Jacky B.

All children learn best when learning is hands-on. This works for the high students and the low students too, even the ones in between. I teach by creating experiences, not giving information. —Jessica R.

As teachers, it’s our job to foster creativity. In order to do that, it’s important for me to embrace the mistakes of my students, create a learning environment that allows them to feel comfortable enough to take chances, and try new methods. —Chelsie L.

I believe that every child can learn and deserves the best, well-trained teacher possible who has high expectations for them. I differentiate all my lessons and include all learning modalities. —Amy S.

All students can learn and want to learn. It is my job to meet them where they are and move them forward. —Holli A.

I believe learning comes from making sense of chaos. My job is to design work that will allow students to process, explore, and discuss concepts to own the learning. I need to be part of the process to guide and challenge perceptions. —Shelly G.

I want my students to know that they are valued members of our classroom community, and I want to teach each of them what they need to continue to grow in my classroom. —Doreen G.

Teach to every child’s passion and encourage a joy for and love of education and school. —Iris B.

I believe in creating a classroom culture of learning through mistakes and overcoming obstacles through teamwork. —Jenn B.

It’s our job to introduce our kids to many, many different things and help them find what they excel in and what they don’t. Then nurture their excellence and help them figure out how to compensate for their problem areas. That way, they will become happy, successful adults. —Haley T.

Longer Philosophy of Education Examples

Looking for longer teaching philosophy examples? Check out these selections from experienced teachers of all ages and grades.

• Learning To Wear the Big Shoes: One Step at a Time
• Nellie Edge: My Kindergarten Teaching Philosophy
• Faculty Focus: My Philosophy of Teaching
• Robinson Elementary School: My Teaching Philosophy
• David Orace Kelly: Philosophy of Education
• Explorations in Higher Education: My Teaching Philosophy Statement
• University of Washington Medical School Faculty Teaching Philosophy Statements

Do you have any philosophy of education examples? Share them in the We Are Teachers HELPLINE Group on Facebook!

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How to write your philosophy of education statement

The Philosophy of Education Statement is an important piece in your educator portfolio. It may be requested by hiring personnel at schools to be included with a cover letter and resume. Your teaching philosophy should be thoughtful, organized and well-written. The summary should be between 1-2 pages and should document and support your core educational principles.

• First, state your objectives as a teacher. These need to be achievable through some form of assessment.
• Second, you will want to outline the methods by which you will achieve your teaching objectives.
• Third, you will need to have demonstrated evidence of your achievements. This may take the form of standardized assessments or evaluations.
• Forth, allude to the factors that motivate you to be in the teaching profession. This is where you can be cerebral. State what motivates you to be in the teaching profession. 

Some Important Considerations

Your core values and beliefs.

The statement should reflect your core values and beliefs in terms of teaching. Consider your thoughts regarding the nature of students, the purpose of education and how people learn, and the role of teacher. As you develop your educational philosophy, think about completing the following statements: 

• I believe the purposes of education are ... 
• I believe that students learn best when... 
• I believe that the following curriculum basics will contribute to the social, emotional, intellectual and physical development of my students ... 
• I believe that a good learning environment is one in which ... 
• I believe that all students have the following basic needs ... 
• In order to further the growth and learning of my students, these basic needs will be met in my classroom through ... 
• I believe that teachers should have the following qualities ... 

Why You Teach

• What is the purpose of education? 
• What is your role as an educator?

Whom You Teach

• How will you reach the diverse students in your classroom? 
• How do you define your community of learners?

How and What You Teach

• What are your beliefs about how students learn?
• How will your beliefs affect your teaching? Think about management, instructional strategies, curriculum design and assessment.
• How do you balance the needs of the individual learner with the needs of the classroom community?
• What are your goals for students? 

Where You Teach

• How will you bring a global awareness to your classroom? 
• What will be your relationship with the community, parents, teaching colleagues and administration? 

Completing the Application 

Don't cut corners! As you are completing your applications, keep in mind that they are as important to your job search as your resume, letter of interest and other documents in your application packet. You are encouraged not to rush through completing your applications. Regional applications may be required instead of or in addition to the employer’s individual application.

• Be consistent with the information you provide on the application and on your resume. Make sure there are no contradictions of dates and places of employment and education.
• Do not make up an answer. Be honest. If you embellish, it will eventually catch up with you and you will leave a negative impression on the employer.
• Extra-curricular activities, which you may be willing to sponsor or coach, may be listed on most applications. Your willingness to sponsor activities can sometimes enhance your consideration for positions.
• Follow the application directions exactly. The directions may be different for each application you complete, so read all the directions carefully. Enter the correct information in the correct fields.
• Grammatical rules should be followed at all times. Teachers are held to high standards. Errors are unacceptable.
• Humor in your responses on an application can come across as sarcastic or flippant.
• Remember, an application may be a prospective employer’s first introduction to you; make it a professional one.
• Incomplete applications give the appearance of poor attention to detail. It is always best to respond to each question posed on an application whenever possible. An employer would not ask it if s/he did not want an answer.
• Never answer a question with “See my resume.”

Center for Teaching

Teaching statements.

Print Version

• What is a teaching statement?
• What purposes does the teaching statement serve?
• What does a teaching statement include?

General Guidelines

• Reflection questions to help get you started
• Exercises to help get you started
• Evaluating your teaching statement
• Further resources

What is a Teaching Statement?

A Teaching Statement is a purposeful and reflective essay about the author’s teaching beliefs and practices. It is an individual narrative that includes not only one’s beliefs about the teaching and learning process, but also concrete examples of the ways in which he or she enacts these beliefs in the classroom. At its best, a Teaching Statement gives a clear and unique portrait of the author as a teacher, avoiding generic or empty philosophical statements about teaching.

What Purposes does the Teaching Statement Serve?

The Teaching Statement can be used for personal, professional, or pedagogical purposes. While Teaching Statements are becoming an increasingly important part of the hiring and tenure processes, they are also effective exercises in helping one clearly and coherently conceptualize his or her approaches to and experiences of teaching and learning. As Nancy Van Note Chism, Professor Emerita of Education at IUPUI observes, “The act of taking time to consider one’s goals, actions, and vision provides an opportunity for development that can be personally and professionally enriching. Reviewing and revising former statements of teaching philosophy can help teachers to reflect on their growth and renew their dedication to the goals and values that they hold.”

What does a Teaching Statement Include?

A Teaching Statement can address any or all of the following:

• Your conception of how learning occurs
• A description of how your teaching facilitates student learning
• A reflection of why you teach the way you do
• The goals you have for yourself and for your students
• How your teaching enacts your beliefs and goals
• What, for you , constitutes evidence of student learning
• The ways in which you create an inclusive learning environment
• Your interests in new techniques, activities, and types of learning

“If at all possible, your statement should enable the reader to imagine you in the classroom, teaching. You want to include sufficient information for picturing not only you in the process of teaching, but also your class in the process of learning.” – Helen G. Grundman, Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

• Make your Teaching Statement brief and well written . While Teaching Statements are probably longer at the tenure level (i.e. 3-5 pages or more), for hiring purposes they are typically 1-2 pages in length.
• Use narrative , first-person approach. This allows the Teaching Statement to be both personal and reflective.
• Be sincere and unique. Avoid clichés, especially ones about how much passion you have for teaching.
• Make it specific rather than abstract. Ground your ideas in 1-2 concrete examples , whether experienced or anticipated. This will help the reader to better visualize you in the classroom.
• Be discipline specific . Do not ignore your research. Explain how you advance your field through teaching.
• Avoid jargon and technical terms, as they can be off-putting to some readers. Try not to simply repeat what is in your CV. Teaching Statements are not exhaustive documents and should be used to complement other materials for the hiring or tenure processes.
• Be humble . Mention students in an enthusiastic, not condescending way, and illustrate your willingness to learn from your students and colleagues.
• Revise . Teaching is an evolving, reflective process, and Teaching Statements can be adapted and changed as necessary.

Reflection Questions To Help You Get You Started:*

• Why do you teach the way you do?
• What should students expect of you as a teacher?
• What is a method of teaching you rely on frequently? Why don’t you use a different method?
• What do you want students to learn? How do you know your goals for students are being met?
• What should your students be able to know or do as a result of taking your class?
• How can your teaching facilitate student learning?
• How do you as a teacher create an engaging or enriching learning environment?
• What specific activities or exercises do you use to engage your students? What do you want your students to learn from these activities?
• How has your thinking about teaching changed over time? Why?

* These questions and exercises are meant to be tools to help you begin reflecting on your beliefs and ideas as a teacher. No single Teaching Statement can contain the answers to all or most of these inquiries and activities.

Exercises to Help You Get You Started:*

• The Teaching Portfolio , including a section on teaching statements, Duquesne University Center for Teaching Excellence. This website includes five effective exercises to help you begin the writing process
• Teaching Goals Inventory , by Thomas A. Angelo and K. Patricia Cross and their book Classroom Assessment Techniques . This “quiz” helps you to identify or create your teaching and learning goals.

Evaluating Your Teaching Statement

Writing A Statement Of Teaching Philosophy For The Academic Job Search (opens as a PDF), The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan.

This report includes a useful rubric for evaluating teaching philosophy statements. The design of the rubric was informed by experience with hundreds of teaching philosophies, as well as surveys of search committees on what they considered successful and unsuccessful components of job applicants’ teaching philosophies.

Further Resources:

General information on and guidelines for writing teaching statements.

• Writing a Philosophy of Teaching Statement , Faculty and TA Development at The Ohio State University. This site provides an in-depth guide to teaching statements, including the definition of and purposes for a teaching statement, general formatting suggestions, and a self-reflective guide to writing a teaching statement.
• Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement , Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Iowa State University. This document looks at four major components of a teaching statement, which have been divided into questions—specifically, to what end? By what means? To what degree? And why? Each question is sufficiently elaborated, offering a sort of scaffolding for preparing one’s own teaching statement.
• Writing a Meaningful Statement of Teaching Philosophy , McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning at Princeton University. This website offers strategies for preparing and formatting your teaching statement.

Articles about Teaching Statements

• Grundman, Helen (2006). Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement (opens as a PDF), Notices of the AMS , Vol. 53, No. 11, p. 1329.
• Montell, Gabriela (2003). How to Write a Statement of Teaching Philosophy , from the Chronicle Manage Your Career section of the Chronicle of Higher Education .
• Montell, Gabriela (2003). What’s Your Philosophy on Teaching, and Does it Matter? , from the Chronicle Manage Your Career section of the Chronicle of Higher Education .

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A teaching philosophy statement, or an educational philosophy statement, is a brief essay that nearly all prospective teachers must write when applying for an academic position. The statement generally reflects on the writer's teaching beliefs and includes concrete examples of how those beliefs have informed the writer's teaching practices.

A well-crafted teaching statement gives a clear and unique portrait of the writer as a teacher. Teaching philosophy statements are important because a clear teaching philosophy can lead to a change in teaching behavior and foster professional and personal growth. As a result, it can also be effective for practicing teachers to conceptualize their teaching approaches by writing a statement—even if they aren't applying for another teaching role.

Examples of Teaching Philosophy Statements

This passage is an example of a strong statement of teaching philosophy because it puts students at the front and center of the teacher's focus. An author who writes such a statement will likely always ensure student needs are the primary focus of all lessons and schoolwork.

"My philosophy of education is that all children are unique and must have a stimulating educational environment where they can grow physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. It is my desire to create this type of atmosphere where students can meet their full potential. I will provide a safe environment where students are invited to share their ideas and take risks.

"I believe that there are five essential elements that are conducive to learning. (1) The teacher's role is to act as a guide. (2) Students must have access to hands-on activities. (3) Students should be able to have choices and let their curiosity direct their learning. (4) Students need the opportunity to practice skills in a safe environment. (5) Technology must be incorporated into the school day."

The following statement is a good example of a teaching philosophy because the author emphasizes that all classrooms and students are unique, with specific learning needs and styles. A teacher with this philosophy is likely to ensure they spend time helping each student achieve their highest potential.

"I believe that all children are unique and have something special that they can bring to their own education. I will assist my students to express themselves and accept themselves for who they are, as well embrace the differences of others.

"Every classroom has its own unique community; my role as the teacher will be to assist each child in developing their own potential and learning styles. I will present a curriculum that will incorporate each different learning style, as well as make the content relevant to the students' lives. I will incorporate hands-on learning, cooperative learning, projects, themes, and individual work to engage and activate students learning." 

This statement provides a solid example because the author emphasizes the moral objective of teaching: She will hold each student to the highest expectations and ensure each one is diligent in their studies. This statement also implies the teacher will not give up on any student.

"I believe that a teacher is morally obligated to enter the classroom with only the highest of expectations for each and every one of her students. Thus, the teacher maximizes the positive benefits that naturally come along with any self-fulfilling prophecy. With dedication, perseverance, and hard work, her students will rise to the occasion."

"I aim to bring an open mind, a positive attitude, and high expectations to the classroom each day. I believe that I owe it to my students, as well as the community, to bring consistency, diligence, and warmth to my job in the hope that I can ultimately inspire and encourage such traits in the children as well."

The following statement takes a slightly different approach. It states that classrooms should be warm and caring communities, and unlike the first two sample statements, it focuses more on community-based learning, as opposed to an individualized approach. The teaching strategies mentioned, such as morning meetings and community problem-solving, follow this community-based philosophy.

"I believe that a classroom should be a safe, caring community where children are free to speak their mind, blossom, and grow. I will use strategies to ensure our classroom community will flourish, like the morning meeting, positive vs. negative discipline, classroom jobs, and problem-solving skills.

"Teaching is a process of learning from your students, colleagues, parents, and the community. This is a lifelong process where you learn new strategies, new ideas, and new philosophies. Over time, my educational philosophy may change, and that's okay. That just means that I have grown and learned new things."

Components of a Teaching Philosophy Statement

A teaching philosophy statement should include an introduction, body, and conclusion—just as you would expect of your students if they were writing a paper. But there are other specific components that you need to include:

Introduction: This should be your thesis statement where you discuss your general belief about education (such as: "I believe all students have a right to learn"), as well as your teaching ideals. Consider what students will have learned once they depart your class, and what those lessons learned say about your teaching philosophy and strategies.

Body: ​In this part of the statement, discuss what you see as the ideal classroom environment and how it makes you a better teacher, addresses student needs, and facilitates interactions between parents and their children. Discuss how you would facilitate age-appropriate learning  and involve students in the assessment process . Explain how you would put your educational ​​ideals into practice.

Clearly state your goals and objectives for students. Layout specifically what you hope your teaching will help students to accomplish. Be specific by telling a story or detailing a teaching strategy you've used. Doing so helps your reader understand how your teaching philosophy would play out in the classroom.

Conclusion : In this section, talk about your goals as a teacher, how you have been able to meet them in the past, and how you can build on them to meet future challenges. Focus on your personal approach to pedagogy and classroom management, as well as what makes you unique as an educator, and how you wish to advance your career.

Cite your sources. Explain where your teaching philosophy originated—for example, from your experiences as an undergraduate, from a faculty mentor you worked with during your teacher-training program, or perhaps from books or articles on teaching that had a particular influence on you.

Formatting Your Statement

There are some general rules to follow when writing a teaching philosophy statement.

Keep it brief. The statement should be no more than one-to-two pages, double-spaced.

Use present tense , and write the statement in the first person, as the previous examples illustrate.

Avoid jargon. Use common, everyday language, and not technical terms. If you must use jargon, explain what you're writing about in everyday terms as well.

Be personal. Make sure you talk about your experiences and beliefs, and ensure your statement is original and truly describes the methods and philosophy you would employ in teaching.

Vanderbilt University. " Teaching Statements ."

The Chronicle of Higher Education. " 4 Steps to a Memorable Teaching Philosophy ."

The Ohio State University. " Philosophy of Teaching Statement ."

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Philosophy of Education

Philosophy of education is the branch of applied or practical philosophy concerned with the nature and aims of education and the philosophical problems arising from educational theory and practice. Because that practice is ubiquitous in and across human societies, its social and individual manifestations so varied, and its influence so profound, the subject is wide-ranging, involving issues in ethics and social/political philosophy, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and language, and other areas of philosophy. Because it looks both inward to the parent discipline and outward to educational practice and the social, legal, and institutional contexts in which it takes place, philosophy of education concerns itself with both sides of the traditional theory/practice divide. Its subject matter includes both basic philosophical issues (e.g., the nature of the knowledge worth teaching, the character of educational equality and justice, etc.) and problems concerning specific educational policies and practices (e.g., the desirability of standardized curricula and testing, the social, economic, legal and moral dimensions of specific funding arrangements, the justification of curriculum decisions, etc.). In all this the philosopher of education prizes conceptual clarity, argumentative rigor, the fair-minded consideration of the interests of all involved in or affected by educational efforts and arrangements, and informed and well-reasoned valuation of educational aims and interventions.

Philosophy of education has a long and distinguished history in the Western philosophical tradition, from Socrates’ battles with the sophists to the present day. Many of the most distinguished figures in that tradition incorporated educational concerns into their broader philosophical agendas (Curren 2000, 2018; Rorty 1998). While that history is not the focus here, it is worth noting that the ideals of reasoned inquiry championed by Socrates and his descendants have long informed the view that education should foster in all students, to the extent possible, the disposition to seek reasons and the ability to evaluate them cogently, and to be guided by their evaluations in matters of belief, action and judgment. This view, that education centrally involves the fostering of reason or rationality, has with varying articulations and qualifications been embraced by most of those historical figures; it continues to be defended by contemporary philosophers of education as well (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2007, 2017). As with any philosophical thesis it is controversial; some dimensions of the controversy are explored below.

This entry is a selective survey of important contemporary work in Anglophone philosophy of education; it does not treat in detail recent scholarship outside that context.

1. Problems in Delineating the Field

2. analytic philosophy of education and its influence, 3.1 the content of the curriculum and the aims and functions of schooling, 3.2 social, political and moral philosophy, 3.3 social epistemology, virtue epistemology, and the epistemology of education, 3.4 philosophical disputes concerning empirical education research, 4. concluding remarks, other internet resources, related entries.

The inward/outward looking nature of the field of philosophy of education alluded to above makes the task of delineating the field, of giving an over-all picture of the intellectual landscape, somewhat complicated (for a detailed account of this topography, see Phillips 1985, 2010). Suffice it to say that some philosophers, as well as focusing inward on the abstract philosophical issues that concern them, are drawn outwards to discuss or comment on issues that are more commonly regarded as falling within the purview of professional educators, educational researchers, policy-makers and the like. (An example is Michael Scriven, who in his early career was a prominent philosopher of science; later he became a central figure in the development of the field of evaluation of educational and social programs. See Scriven 1991a, 1991b.) At the same time, there are professionals in the educational or closely related spheres who are drawn to discuss one or another of the philosophical issues that they encounter in the course of their work. (An example here is the behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner, the central figure in the development of operant conditioning and programmed learning, who in works such as Walden Two (1948) and Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972) grappled—albeit controversially—with major philosophical issues that were related to his work.)

What makes the field even more amorphous is the existence of works on educational topics, written by well-regarded philosophers who have made major contributions to their discipline; these educational reflections have little or no philosophical content, illustrating the truth that philosophers do not always write philosophy. However, despite this, works in this genre have often been treated as contributions to philosophy of education. (Examples include John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education [1693] and Bertrand Russell’s rollicking pieces written primarily to raise funds to support a progressive school he ran with his wife. (See Park 1965.)

Finally, as indicated earlier, the domain of education is vast, the issues it raises are almost overwhelmingly numerous and are of great complexity, and the social significance of the field is second to none. These features make the phenomena and problems of education of great interest to a wide range of socially-concerned intellectuals, who bring with them their own favored conceptual frameworks—concepts, theories and ideologies, methods of analysis and argumentation, metaphysical and other assumptions, and the like. It is not surprising that scholars who work in this broad genre also find a home in the field of philosophy of education.

As a result of these various factors, the significant intellectual and social trends of the past few centuries, together with the significant developments in philosophy, all have had an impact on the content of arguments and methods of argumentation in philosophy of education—Marxism, psycho-analysis, existentialism, phenomenology, positivism, post-modernism, pragmatism, neo-liberalism, the several waves of feminism, analytic philosophy in both its ordinary language and more formal guises, are merely the tip of the iceberg.

Conceptual analysis, careful assessment of arguments, the rooting out of ambiguity, the drawing of clarifying distinctions—all of which are at least part of the philosophical toolkit—have been respected activities within philosophy from the dawn of the field. No doubt it somewhat over-simplifies the complex path of intellectual history to suggest that what happened in the twentieth century—early on, in the home discipline itself, and with a lag of a decade or more in philosophy of education—is that philosophical analysis came to be viewed by some scholars as being the major philosophical activity (or set of activities), or even as being the only viable or reputable activity. In any case, as they gained prominence and for a time hegemonic influence during the rise of analytic philosophy early in the twentieth century analytic techniques came to dominate philosophy of education in the middle third of that century (Curren, Robertson, & Hager 2003).

The pioneering work in the modern period entirely in an analytic mode was the short monograph by C.D. Hardie, Truth and Fallacy in Educational Theory (1941; reissued in 1962). In his Introduction, Hardie (who had studied with C.D. Broad and I.A. Richards) made it clear that he was putting all his eggs into the ordinary-language-analysis basket:

The Cambridge analytical school, led by Moore, Broad and Wittgenstein, has attempted so to analyse propositions that it will always be apparent whether the disagreement between philosophers is one concerning matters of fact, or is one concerning the use of words, or is, as is frequently the case, a purely emotive one. It is time, I think, that a similar attitude became common in the field of educational theory. (Hardie 1962: xix)

About a decade after the end of the Second World War the floodgates opened and a stream of work in the analytic mode appeared; the following is merely a sample. D. J. O’Connor published An Introduction to Philosophy of Education (1957) in which, among other things, he argued that the word “theory” as it is used in educational contexts is merely a courtesy title, for educational theories are nothing like what bear this title in the natural sciences. Israel Scheffler, who became the paramount philosopher of education in North America, produced a number of important works including The Language of Education (1960), which contained clarifying and influential analyses of definitions (he distinguished reportive, stipulative, and programmatic types) and the logic of slogans (often these are literally meaningless, and, he argued, should be seen as truncated arguments), Conditions of Knowledge (1965), still the best introduction to the epistemological side of philosophy of education, and Reason and Teaching (1973 [1989]), which in a wide-ranging and influential series of essays makes the case for regarding the fostering of rationality/critical thinking as a fundamental educational ideal (cf. Siegel 2016). B. O. Smith and R. H. Ennis edited the volume Language and Concepts in Education (1961); and R.D. Archambault edited Philosophical Analysis and Education (1965), consisting of essays by a number of prominent British writers, most notably R. S. Peters (whose status in Britain paralleled that of Scheffler in the United States), Paul Hirst, and John Wilson. Topics covered in the Archambault volume were typical of those that became the “bread and butter” of analytic philosophy of education (APE) throughout the English-speaking world—education as a process of initiation, liberal education, the nature of knowledge, types of teaching, and instruction versus indoctrination.

Among the most influential products of APE was the analysis developed by Hirst and Peters (1970) and Peters (1973) of the concept of education itself. Using as a touchstone “normal English usage,” it was concluded that a person who has been educated (rather than instructed or indoctrinated) has been (i) changed for the better; (ii) this change has involved the acquisition of knowledge and intellectual skills and the development of understanding; and (iii) the person has come to care for, or be committed to, the domains of knowledge and skill into which he or she has been initiated. The method used by Hirst and Peters comes across clearly in their handling of the analogy with the concept of “reform”, one they sometimes drew upon for expository purposes. A criminal who has been reformed has changed for the better, and has developed a commitment to the new mode of life (if one or other of these conditions does not hold, a speaker of standard English would not say the criminal has been reformed). Clearly the analogy with reform breaks down with respect to the knowledge and understanding conditions. Elsewhere Peters developed the fruitful notion of “education as initiation”.

The concept of indoctrination was also of great interest to analytic philosophers of education, for, it was argued, getting clear about precisely what constitutes indoctrination also would serve to clarify the border that demarcates it from acceptable educational processes. Thus, whether or not an instructional episode was a case of indoctrination was determined by the content taught, the intention of the instructor, the methods of instruction used, the outcomes of the instruction, or by some combination of these. Adherents of the different analyses used the same general type of argument to make their case, namely, appeal to normal and aberrant usage. Unfortunately, ordinary language analysis did not lead to unanimity of opinion about where this border was located, and rival analyses of the concept were put forward (Snook 1972). The danger of restricting analysis to ordinary language (“normal English usage”) was recognized early on by Scheffler, whose preferred view of analysis emphasized

first, its greater sophistication as regards language, and the interpenetration of language and inquiry, second, its attempt to follow the modern example of the sciences in empirical spirit, in rigor, in attention to detail, in respect for alternatives, and in objectivity of method, and third, its use of techniques of symbolic logic brought to full development only in the last fifty years… It is…this union of scientific spirit and logical method applied toward the clarification of basic ideas that characterizes current analytic philosophy [and that ought to characterize analytic philosophy of education]. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 9–10])

After a period of dominance, for a number of important reasons the influence of APE went into decline. First, there were growing criticisms that the work of analytic philosophers of education had become focused upon minutiae and in the main was bereft of practical import. (It is worth noting that a 1966 article in Time , reprinted in Lucas 1969, had put forward the same criticism of mainstream philosophy.) Second, in the early 1970’s radical students in Britain accused Peters’ brand of linguistic analysis of conservatism, and of tacitly giving support to “traditional values”—they raised the issue of whose English usage was being analyzed?

Third, criticisms of language analysis in mainstream philosophy had been mounting for some time, and finally after a lag of many years were reaching the attention of philosophers of education; there even had been a surprising degree of interest on the part of the general reading public in the United Kingdom as early as 1959, when Gilbert Ryle, editor of the journal Mind , refused to commission a review of Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things (1959)—a detailed and quite acerbic critique of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and its espousal of ordinary language analysis. (Ryle argued that Gellner’s book was too insulting, a view that drew Bertrand Russell into the fray on Gellner’s side—in the daily press, no less; Russell produced a list of insulting remarks drawn from the work of great philosophers of the past. See Mehta 1963.)

Richard Peters had been given warning that all was not well with APE at a conference in Canada in 1966; after delivering a paper on “The aims of education: A conceptual inquiry” that was based on ordinary language analysis, a philosopher in the audience (William Dray) asked Peters “ whose concepts do we analyze?” Dray went on to suggest that different people, and different groups within society, have different concepts of education. Five years before the radical students raised the same issue, Dray pointed to the possibility that what Peters had presented under the guise of a “logical analysis” was nothing but the favored usage of a certain class of persons—a class that Peters happened to identify with (see Peters 1973, where to the editor’s credit the interaction with Dray is reprinted).

Fourth, during the decade of the seventies when these various critiques of analytic philosophy were in the process of eroding its luster, a spate of translations from the Continent stimulated some philosophers of education in Britain and North America to set out in new directions, and to adopt a new style of writing and argumentation. Key works by Gadamer, Foucault and Derrida appeared in English, and these were followed in 1984 by Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition . The classic works of Heidegger and Husserl also found new admirers; and feminist philosophers of education were finding their voices—Maxine Greene published a number of pieces in the 1970s and 1980s, including The Dialectic of Freedom (1988); the influential book by Nel Noddings, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , appeared the same year as the work by Lyotard, followed a year later by Jane Roland Martin’s Reclaiming a Conversation . In more recent years all these trends have continued. APE was and is no longer the center of interest, although, as indicated below, it still retains its voice.

3. Areas of Contemporary Activity

As was stressed at the outset, the field of education is huge and contains within it a virtually inexhaustible number of issues that are of philosophical interest. To attempt comprehensive coverage of how philosophers of education have been working within this thicket would be a quixotic task for a large single volume and is out of the question for a solitary encyclopedia entry. Nevertheless, a valiant attempt to give an overview was made in A Companion to the Philosophy of Education (Curren 2003), which contains more than six-hundred pages divided into forty-five chapters each of which surveys a subfield of work. The following random selection of chapter topics gives a sense of the enormous scope of the field: Sex education, special education, science education, aesthetic education, theories of teaching and learning, religious education, knowledge, truth and learning, cultivating reason, the measurement of learning, multicultural education, education and the politics of identity, education and standards of living, motivation and classroom management, feminism, critical theory, postmodernism, romanticism, the purposes of universities, affirmative action in higher education, and professional education. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education (Siegel 2009) contains a similarly broad range of articles on (among other things) the epistemic and moral aims of education, liberal education and its imminent demise, thinking and reasoning, fallibilism and fallibility, indoctrination, authenticity, the development of rationality, Socratic teaching, educating the imagination, caring and empathy in moral education, the limits of moral education, the cultivation of character, values education, curriculum and the value of knowledge, education and democracy, art and education, science education and religious toleration, constructivism and scientific methods, multicultural education, prejudice, authority and the interests of children, and on pragmatist, feminist, and postmodernist approaches to philosophy of education.

Given this enormous range, there is no non-arbitrary way to select a small number of topics for further discussion, nor can the topics that are chosen be pursued in great depth. The choice of those below has been made with an eye to highlighting contemporary work that makes solid contact with and contributes to important discussions in general philosophy and/or the academic educational and educational research communities.

The issue of what should be taught to students at all levels of education—the issue of curriculum content—obviously is a fundamental one, and it is an extraordinarily difficult one with which to grapple. In tackling it, care needs to be taken to distinguish between education and schooling—for although education can occur in schools, so can mis-education, and many other things can take place there that are educationally orthogonal (such as the provision of free or subsidized lunches and the development of social networks); and it also must be recognized that education can occur in the home, in libraries and museums, in churches and clubs, in solitary interaction with the public media, and the like.

In developing a curriculum (whether in a specific subject area, or more broadly as the whole range of offerings in an educational institution or system), a number of difficult decisions need to be made. Issues such as the proper ordering or sequencing of topics in the chosen subject, the time to be allocated to each topic, the lab work or excursions or projects that are appropriate for particular topics, can all be regarded as technical issues best resolved either by educationists who have a depth of experience with the target age group or by experts in the psychology of learning and the like. But there are deeper issues, ones concerning the validity of the justifications that have been given for including/excluding particular subjects or topics in the offerings of formal educational institutions. (Why should evolution or creation “science” be included, or excluded, as a topic within the standard high school subject Biology? Is the justification that is given for teaching Economics in some schools coherent and convincing? Do the justifications for including/excluding materials on birth control, patriotism, the Holocaust or wartime atrocities in the curriculum in some school districts stand up to critical scrutiny?)

The different justifications for particular items of curriculum content that have been put forward by philosophers and others since Plato’s pioneering efforts all draw, explicitly or implicitly, upon the positions that the respective theorists hold about at least three sets of issues.

First, what are the aims and/or functions of education (aims and functions are not necessarily the same)? Many aims have been proposed; a short list includes the production of knowledge and knowledgeable students, the fostering of curiosity and inquisitiveness, the enhancement of understanding, the enlargement of the imagination, the civilizing of students, the fostering of rationality and/or autonomy, and the development in students of care, concern and associated dispositions and attitudes (see Siegel 2007 for a longer list). The justifications offered for all such aims have been controversial, and alternative justifications of a single proposed aim can provoke philosophical controversy. Consider the aim of autonomy. Aristotle asked, what constitutes the good life and/or human flourishing, such that education should foster these (Curren 2013)? These two formulations are related, for it is arguable that our educational institutions should aim to equip individuals to pursue this good life—although this is not obvious, both because it is not clear that there is one conception of the good or flourishing life that is the good or flourishing life for everyone, and it is not clear that this is a question that should be settled in advance rather than determined by students for themselves. Thus, for example, if our view of human flourishing includes the capacity to think and act autonomously, then the case can be made that educational institutions—and their curricula—should aim to prepare, or help to prepare, autonomous individuals. A rival justification of the aim of autonomy, associated with Kant, champions the educational fostering of autonomy not on the basis of its contribution to human flourishing, but rather the obligation to treat students with respect as persons (Scheffler 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988). Still others urge the fostering of autonomy on the basis of students’ fundamental interests, in ways that draw upon both Aristotelian and Kantian conceptual resources (Brighouse 2005, 2009). It is also possible to reject the fostering of autonomy as an educational aim (Hand 2006).

Assuming that the aim can be justified, how students should be helped to become autonomous or develop a conception of the good life and pursue it is of course not immediately obvious, and much philosophical ink has been spilled on the general question of how best to determine curriculum content. One influential line of argument was developed by Paul Hirst, who argued that knowledge is essential for developing and then pursuing a conception of the good life, and because logical analysis shows, he argued, that there are seven basic forms of knowledge, the case can be made that the function of the curriculum is to introduce students to each of these forms (Hirst 1965; see Phillips 1987: ch. 11). Another, suggested by Scheffler, is that curriculum content should be selected so as “to help the learner attain maximum self-sufficiency as economically as possible.” The relevant sorts of economy include those of resources, teacher effort, student effort, and the generalizability or transfer value of content, while the self-sufficiency in question includes

self-awareness, imaginative weighing of alternative courses of action, understanding of other people’s choices and ways of life, decisiveness without rigidity, emancipation from stereotyped ways of thinking and perceiving…empathy… intuition, criticism and independent judgment. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 123–5])

Both impose important constraints on the curricular content to be taught.

Second, is it justifiable to treat the curriculum of an educational institution as a vehicle for furthering the socio-political interests and goals of a dominant group, or any particular group, including one’s own; and relatedly, is it justifiable to design the curriculum so that it serves as an instrument of control or of social engineering? In the closing decades of the twentieth century there were numerous discussions of curriculum theory, particularly from Marxist and postmodern perspectives, that offered the sobering analysis that in many educational systems, including those in Western democracies, the curriculum did indeed reflect and serve the interests of powerful cultural elites. What to do about this situation (if it is indeed the situation of contemporary educational institutions) is far from clear and is the focus of much work at the interface of philosophy of education and social/political philosophy, some of which is discussed in the next section. A closely related question is this: ought educational institutions be designed to further pre-determined social ends, or rather to enable students to competently evaluate all such ends? Scheffler argued that we should opt for the latter: we must

surrender the idea of shaping or molding the mind of the pupil. The function of education…is rather to liberate the mind, strengthen its critical powers, [and] inform it with knowledge and the capacity for independent inquiry. (Scheffler 1973 [1989: 139])

Third, should educational programs at the elementary and secondary levels be made up of a number of disparate offerings, so that individuals with different interests and abilities and affinities for learning can pursue curricula that are suitable? Or should every student pursue the same curriculum as far as each is able?—a curriculum, it should be noted, that in past cases nearly always was based on the needs or interests of those students who were academically inclined or were destined for elite social roles. Mortimer Adler and others in the late twentieth century sometimes used the aphorism “the best education for the best is the best education for all.”

The thinking here can be explicated in terms of the analogy of an out-of-control virulent disease, for which there is only one type of medicine available; taking a large dose of this medicine is extremely beneficial, and the hope is that taking only a little—while less effective—is better than taking none at all. Medically, this is dubious, while the educational version—forcing students to work, until they exit the system, on topics that do not interest them and for which they have no facility or motivation—has even less merit. (For a critique of Adler and his Paideia Proposal , see Noddings 2015.) It is interesting to compare the modern “one curriculum track for all” position with Plato’s system outlined in the Republic , according to which all students—and importantly this included girls—set out on the same course of study. Over time, as they moved up the educational ladder it would become obvious that some had reached the limit imposed upon them by nature, and they would be directed off into appropriate social roles in which they would find fulfillment, for their abilities would match the demands of these roles. Those who continued on with their education would eventually become members of the ruling class of Guardians.

The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 was the most notable event in the history of political philosophy over the last century. The book spurred a period of ferment in political philosophy that included, among other things, new research on educationally fundamental themes. The principles of justice in educational distribution have perhaps been the dominant theme in this literature, and Rawls’s influence on its development has been pervasive.

Rawls’s theory of justice made so-called “fair equality of opportunity” one of its constitutive principles. Fair equality of opportunity entailed that the distribution of education would not put the children of those who currently occupied coveted social positions at any competitive advantage over other, equally talented and motivated children seeking the qualifications for those positions (Rawls 1971: 72–75). Its purpose was to prevent socio-economic differences from hardening into social castes that were perpetuated across generations. One obvious criticism of fair equality of opportunity is that it does not prohibit an educational distribution that lavished resources on the most talented children while offering minimal opportunities to others. So long as untalented students from wealthy families were assigned opportunities no better than those available to their untalented peers among the poor, no breach of the principle would occur. Even the most moderate egalitarians might find such a distributive regime to be intuitively repugnant.

Repugnance might be mitigated somewhat by the ways in which the overall structure of Rawls’s conception of justice protects the interests of those who fare badly in educational competition. All citizens must enjoy the same basic liberties, and equal liberty always has moral priority over equal opportunity: the former can never be compromised to advance the latter. Further, inequality in the distribution of income and wealth are permitted only to the degree that it serves the interests of the least advantaged group in society. But even with these qualifications, fair equality of opportunity is arguably less than really fair to anyone. The fact that their education should secure ends other than access to the most selective social positions—ends such as artistic appreciation, the kind of self-knowledge that humanistic study can furnish, or civic virtue—is deemed irrelevant according to Rawls’s principle. But surely it is relevant, given that a principle of educational justice must be responsive to the full range of educationally important goods.

Suppose we revise our account of the goods included in educational distribution so that aesthetic appreciation, say, and the necessary understanding and virtue for conscientious citizenship count for just as much as job-related skills. An interesting implication of doing so is that the rationale for requiring equality under any just distribution becomes decreasingly clear. That is because job-related skills are positional whereas the other educational goods are not (Hollis 1982). If you and I both aspire to a career in business management for which we are equally qualified, any increase in your job-related skills is a corresponding disadvantage to me unless I can catch up. Positional goods have a competitive structure by definition, though the ends of civic or aesthetic education do not fit that structure. If you and I aspire to be good citizens and are equal in civic understanding and virtue, an advance in your civic education is no disadvantage to me. On the contrary, it is easier to be a good citizen the better other citizens learn to be. At the very least, so far as non-positional goods figure in our conception of what counts as a good education, the moral stakes of inequality are thereby lowered.

In fact, an emerging alternative to fair equality of opportunity is a principle that stipulates some benchmark of adequacy in achievement or opportunity as the relevant standard of distribution. But it is misleading to represent this as a contrast between egalitarian and sufficientarian conceptions. Philosophically serious interpretations of adequacy derive from the ideal of equal citizenship (Satz 2007; Anderson 2007). Then again, fair equality of opportunity in Rawls’s theory is derived from a more fundamental ideal of equality among citizens. This was arguably true in A Theory of Justice but it is certainly true in his later work (Dworkin 1977: 150–183; Rawls 1993). So, both Rawls’s principle and the emerging alternative share an egalitarian foundation. The debate between adherents of equal opportunity and those misnamed as sufficientarians is certainly not over (e.g., Brighouse & Swift 2009; Jacobs 2010; Warnick 2015). Further progress will likely hinge on explicating the most compelling conception of the egalitarian foundation from which distributive principles are to be inferred. Another Rawls-inspired alternative is that a “prioritarian” distribution of achievement or opportunity might turn out to be the best principle we can come up with—i.e., one that favors the interests of the least advantaged students (Schouten 2012).

The publication of Rawls’s Political Liberalism in 1993 signaled a decisive turning point in his thinking about justice. In his earlier book, the theory of justice had been presented as if it were universally valid. But Rawls had come to think that any theory of justice presented as such was open to reasonable rejection. A more circumspect approach to justification would seek grounds for justice as fairness in an overlapping consensus between the many reasonable values and doctrines that thrive in a democratic political culture. Rawls argued that such a culture is informed by a shared ideal of free and equal citizenship that provided a new, distinctively democratic framework for justifying a conception of justice. The shift to political liberalism involved little revision on Rawls’s part to the content of the principles he favored. But the salience it gave to questions about citizenship in the fabric of liberal political theory had important educational implications. How was the ideal of free and equal citizenship to be instantiated in education in a way that accommodated the range of reasonable values and doctrines encompassed in an overlapping consensus? Political Liberalism has inspired a range of answers to that question (cf. Callan 1997; Clayton 2006; Bull 2008).

Other philosophers besides Rawls in the 1990s took up a cluster of questions about civic education, and not always from a liberal perspective. Alasdair Macintyre’s After Virtue (1984) strongly influenced the development of communitarian political theory which, as its very name might suggest, argued that the cultivation of community could preempt many of the problems with conflicting individual rights at the core of liberalism. As a full-standing alternative to liberalism, communitarianism might have little to recommend it. But it was a spur for liberal philosophers to think about how communities could be built and sustained to support the more familiar projects of liberal politics (e.g., Strike 2010). Furthermore, its arguments often converged with those advanced by feminist exponents of the ethic of care (Noddings 1984; Gilligan 1982). Noddings’ work is particularly notable because she inferred a cogent and radical agenda for the reform of schools from her conception of care (Noddings 1992).

One persistent controversy in citizenship theory has been about whether patriotism is correctly deemed a virtue, given our obligations to those who are not our fellow citizens in an increasingly interdependent world and the sordid history of xenophobia with which modern nation states are associated. The controversy is partly about what we should teach in our schools and is commonly discussed by philosophers in that context (Galston 1991; Ben-Porath 2006; Callan 2006; Miller 2007; Curren & Dorn 2018). The controversy is related to a deeper and more pervasive question about how morally or intellectually taxing the best conception of our citizenship should be. The more taxing it is, the more constraining its derivative conception of civic education will be. Contemporary political philosophers offer divergent arguments about these matters. For example, Gutmann and Thompson claim that citizens of diverse democracies need to “understand the diverse ways of life of their fellow citizens” (Gutmann & Thompson 1996: 66). The need arises from the obligation of reciprocity which they (like Rawls) believe to be integral to citizenship. Because I must seek to cooperate with others politically on terms that make sense from their moral perspective as well as my own, I must be ready to enter that perspective imaginatively so as to grasp its distinctive content. Many such perspectives prosper in liberal democracies, and so the task of reciprocal understanding is necessarily onerous. Still, our actions qua deliberative citizen must be grounded in such reciprocity if political cooperation on terms acceptable to us as (diversely) morally motivated citizens is to be possible at all. This is tantamount to an imperative to think autonomously inside the role of citizen because I cannot close-mindedly resist critical consideration of moral views alien to my own without flouting my responsibilities as a deliberative citizen.

Civic education does not exhaust the domain of moral education, even though the more robust conceptions of equal citizenship have far-reaching implications for just relations in civil society and the family. The study of moral education has traditionally taken its bearings from normative ethics rather than political philosophy, and this is largely true of work undertaken in recent decades. The major development here has been the revival of virtue ethics as an alternative to the deontological and consequentialist theories that dominated discussion for much of the twentieth century.

The defining idea of virtue ethics is that our criterion of moral right and wrong must derive from a conception of how the ideally virtuous agent would distinguish between the two. Virtue ethics is thus an alternative to both consequentialism and deontology which locate the relevant criterion in producing good consequences or meeting the requirements of moral duty respectively. The debate about the comparative merits of these theories is not resolved, but from an educational perspective that may be less important than it has sometimes seemed to antagonists in the debate. To be sure, adjudicating between rival theories in normative ethics might shed light on how best to construe the process of moral education, and philosophical reflection on the process might help us to adjudicate between the theories. There has been extensive work on habituation and virtue, largely inspired by Aristotle (Burnyeat 1980; Peters 1981). But whether this does anything to establish the superiority of virtue ethics over its competitors is far from obvious. Other aspects of moral education—in particular, the paired processes of role-modelling and identification—deserve much more scrutiny than they have received (Audi 2017; Kristjánsson 2015, 2017).

Related to the issues concerning the aims and functions of education and schooling rehearsed above are those involving the specifically epistemic aims of education and attendant issues treated by social and virtue epistemologists. (The papers collected in Kotzee 2013 and Baehr 2016 highlight the current and growing interactions among social epistemologists, virtue epistemologists, and philosophers of education.)

There is, first, a lively debate concerning putative epistemic aims. Alvin Goldman argues that truth (or knowledge understood in the “weak” sense of true belief) is the fundamental epistemic aim of education (Goldman 1999). Others, including the majority of historically significant philosophers of education, hold that critical thinking or rationality and rational belief (or knowledge in the “strong” sense that includes justification) is the basic epistemic educational aim (Bailin & Siegel 2003; Scheffler 1965, 1973 [1989]; Siegel 1988, 1997, 2005, 2017). Catherine Z. Elgin (1999a,b) and Duncan Pritchard (2013, 2016; Carter & Pritchard 2017) have independently urged that understanding is the basic aim. Pritchard’s view combines understanding with intellectual virtue ; Jason Baehr (2011) systematically defends the fostering of the intellectual virtues as the fundamental epistemic aim of education. This cluster of views continues to engender ongoing discussion and debate. (Its complex literature is collected in Carter and Kotzee 2015, summarized in Siegel 2018, and helpfully analyzed in Watson 2016.)

A further controversy concerns the places of testimony and trust in the classroom: In what circumstances if any ought students to trust their teachers’ pronouncements, and why? Here the epistemology of education is informed by social epistemology, specifically the epistemology of testimony; the familiar reductionism/anti-reductionism controversy there is applicable to students and teachers. Anti-reductionists, who regard testimony as a basic source of justification, may with equanimity approve of students’ taking their teachers’ word at face value and believing what they say; reductionists may balk. Does teacher testimony itself constitute good reason for student belief?

The correct answer here seems clearly enough to be “it depends”. For very young children who have yet to acquire or develop the ability to subject teacher declarations to critical scrutiny, there seems to be little alternative to accepting what their teachers tell them. For older and more cognitively sophisticated students there seem to be more options: they can assess them for plausibility, compare them with other opinions, assess the teachers’ proffered reasons, subject them to independent evaluation, etc. Regarding “the teacher says that p ” as itself a good reason to believe it appears moreover to contravene the widely shared conviction that an important educational aim is helping students to become able to evaluate candidate beliefs for themselves and believe accordingly. That said, all sides agree that sometimes believers, including students, have good reasons simply to trust what others tell them. There is thus more work to do here by both social epistemologists and philosophers of education (for further discussion see Goldberg 2013; Siegel 2005, 2018).

A further cluster of questions, of long-standing interest to philosophers of education, concerns indoctrination : How if at all does it differ from legitimate teaching? Is it inevitable, and if so is it not always necessarily bad? First, what is it? As we saw earlier, extant analyses focus on the aims or intentions of the indoctrinator, the methods employed, or the content transmitted. If the indoctrination is successful, all have the result that students/victims either don’t, won’t, or can’t subject the indoctrinated material to proper epistemic evaluation. In this way it produces both belief that is evidentially unsupported or contravened and uncritical dispositions to believe. It might seem obvious that indoctrination, so understood, is educationally undesirable. But it equally seems that very young children, at least, have no alternative but to believe sans evidence; they have yet to acquire the dispositions to seek and evaluate evidence, or the abilities to recognize evidence or evaluate it. Thus we seem driven to the views that indoctrination is both unavoidable and yet bad and to be avoided. It is not obvious how this conundrum is best handled. One option is to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable indoctrination. Another is to distinguish between indoctrination (which is always bad) and non-indoctrinating belief inculcation, the latter being such that students are taught some things without reasons (the alphabet, the numbers, how to read and count, etc.), but in such a way that critical evaluation of all such material (and everything else) is prized and fostered (Siegel 1988: ch. 5). In the end the distinctions required by the two options might be extensionally equivalent (Siegel 2018).

Education, it is generally granted, fosters belief : in the typical propositional case, Smith teaches Jones that p , and if all goes well Jones learns it and comes to believe it. Education also has the task of fostering open-mindedness and an appreciation of our fallibility : All the theorists mentioned thus far, especially those in the critical thinking and intellectual virtue camps, urge their importance. But these two might seem at odds. If Jones (fully) believes that p , can she also be open-minded about it? Can she believe, for example, that earthquakes are caused by the movements of tectonic plates, while also believing that perhaps they aren’t? This cluster of italicized notions requires careful handling; it is helpfully discussed by Jonathan Adler (2002, 2003), who recommends regarding the latter two as meta-attitudes concerning one’s first-order beliefs rather than lessened degrees of belief or commitments to those beliefs.

Other traditional epistemological worries that impinge upon the epistemology of education concern (a) absolutism , pluralism and relativism with respect to knowledge, truth and justification as these relate to what is taught, (b) the character and status of group epistemologies and the prospects for understanding such epistemic goods “universalistically” in the face of “particularist” challenges, (c) the relation between “knowledge-how” and “knowledge-that” and their respective places in the curriculum, (d) concerns raised by multiculturalism and the inclusion/exclusion of marginalized perspectives in curriculum content and the classroom, and (e) further issues concerning teaching and learning. (There is more here than can be briefly summarized; for more references and systematic treatment cf. Bailin & Siegel 2003; Carter & Kotzee 2015; Cleverley & Phillips 1986; Robertson 2009; Siegel 2004, 2017; and Watson 2016.)

The educational research enterprise has been criticized for a century or more by politicians, policymakers, administrators, curriculum developers, teachers, philosophers of education, and by researchers themselves—but the criticisms have been contradictory. Charges of being “too ivory tower and theory-oriented” are found alongside “too focused on practice and too atheoretical”; but in light of the views of John Dewey and William James that the function of theory is to guide intelligent practice and problem-solving, it is becoming more fashionable to hold that the “theory v. practice” dichotomy is a false one. (For an illuminating account of the historical development of educational research and its tribulations, see Lagemann 2000.)

A similar trend can be discerned with respect to the long warfare between two rival groups of research methods—on one hand quantitative/statistical approaches to research, and on the other hand the qualitative/ethnographic family. (The choice of labels here is not entirely risk-free, for they have been contested; furthermore the first approach is quite often associated with “experimental” studies, and the latter with “case studies”, but this is an over-simplification.) For several decades these two rival methodological camps were treated by researchers and a few philosophers of education as being rival paradigms (Kuhn’s ideas, albeit in a very loose form, have been influential in the field of educational research), and the dispute between them was commonly referred to as “the paradigm wars”. In essence the issue at stake was epistemological: members of the quantitative/experimental camp believed that only their methods could lead to well-warranted knowledge claims, especially about the causal factors at play in educational phenomena, and on the whole they regarded qualitative methods as lacking in rigor; on the other hand the adherents of qualitative/ethnographic approaches held that the other camp was too “positivistic” and was operating with an inadequate view of causation in human affairs—one that ignored the role of motives and reasons, possession of relevant background knowledge, awareness of cultural norms, and the like. Few if any commentators in the “paradigm wars” suggested that there was anything prohibiting the use of both approaches in the one research program—provided that if both were used, they were used only sequentially or in parallel, for they were underwritten by different epistemologies and hence could not be blended together. But recently the trend has been towards rapprochement, towards the view that the two methodological families are, in fact, compatible and are not at all like paradigms in the Kuhnian sense(s) of the term; the melding of the two approaches is often called “mixed methods research”, and it is growing in popularity. (For more detailed discussion of these “wars” see Howe 2003 and Phillips 2009.)

The most lively contemporary debates about education research, however, were set in motion around the turn of the millennium when the US Federal Government moved in the direction of funding only rigorously scientific educational research—the kind that could establish causal factors which could then guide the development of practically effective policies. (It was held that such a causal knowledge base was available for medical decision-making.) The definition of “rigorously scientific”, however, was decided by politicians and not by the research community, and it was given in terms of the use of a specific research method—the net effect being that the only research projects to receive Federal funding were those that carried out randomized controlled experiments or field trials (RFTs). It has become common over the last decade to refer to the RFT as the “gold standard” methodology.

The National Research Council (NRC)—an arm of the US National Academies of Science—issued a report, influenced by postpostivistic philosophy of science (NRC 2002), that argued that this criterion was far too narrow. Numerous essays have appeared subsequently that point out how the “gold standard” account of scientific rigor distorts the history of science, how the complex nature of the relation between evidence and policy-making has been distorted and made to appear overly simple (for instance the role of value-judgments in linking empirical findings to policy directives is often overlooked), and qualitative researchers have insisted upon the scientific nature of their work. Nevertheless, and possibly because it tried to be balanced and supported the use of RFTs in some research contexts, the NRC report has been the subject of symposia in four journals, where it has been supported by a few and attacked from a variety of philosophical fronts: Its authors were positivists, they erroneously believed that educational inquiry could be value neutral and that it could ignore the ways in which the exercise of power constrains the research process, they misunderstood the nature of educational phenomena, and so on. This cluster of issues continues to be debated by educational researchers and by philosophers of education and of science, and often involves basic topics in philosophy of science: the constitution of warranting evidence, the nature of theories and of confirmation and explanation, etc. Nancy Cartwright’s important recent work on causation, evidence, and evidence-based policy adds layers of both philosophical sophistication and real world practical analysis to the central issues just discussed (Cartwright & Hardie 2012, Cartwright 2013; cf. Kvernbekk 2015 for an overview of the controversies regarding evidence in the education and philosophy of education literatures).

As stressed earlier, it is impossible to do justice to the whole field of philosophy of education in a single encyclopedia entry. Different countries around the world have their own intellectual traditions and their own ways of institutionalizing philosophy of education in the academic universe, and no discussion of any of this appears in the present essay. But even in the Anglo-American world there is such a diversity of approaches that any author attempting to produce a synoptic account will quickly run into the borders of his or her competence. Clearly this has happened in the present case.

Fortunately, in the last thirty years or so resources have become available that significantly alleviate these problems. There has been a flood of encyclopedia entries, both on the field as a whole and also on many specific topics not well-covered in the present essay (see, as a sample, Burbules 1994; Chambliss 1996b; Curren 1998, 2018; Phillips 1985, 2010; Siegel 2007; Smeyers 1994), two “Encyclopedias” (Chambliss 1996a; Phillips 2014), a “Guide” (Blake, Smeyers, Smith, & Standish 2003), a “Companion” (Curren 2003), two “Handbooks” (Siegel 2009; Bailey, Barrow, Carr, & McCarthy 2010), a comprehensive anthology (Curren 2007), a dictionary of key concepts in the field (Winch & Gingell 1999), and a good textbook or two (Carr 2003; Noddings 2015). In addition there are numerous volumes both of reprinted selections and of specially commissioned essays on specific topics, some of which were given short shrift here (for another sampling see A. Rorty 1998, Stone 1994), and several international journals, including Theory and Research in Education , Journal of Philosophy of Education , Educational Theory , Studies in Philosophy and Education , and Educational Philosophy and Theory . Thus there is more than enough material available to keep the interested reader busy.

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• –––, 2017, “Emotions Targeting Moral Exemplarity: Making Sense of the Logical Geography of Admiration, Emulation and Elevation”, Theory and Research in Education , 15(1): 20–37. doi:10.1177/1477878517695679
• Kvernbekk, Tone, 2015, Evidence-based Practice in Education: Functions of Evidence and Causal Presuppositions , London: Routledge.
• Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe, 2000, An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Educational Research , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Locke, J., 1693, Some Thoughts Concerning Education , London: Black Swan in Paternoster Row.
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• Lyotard, J-F., 1984, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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• Mehta, Ved, 1963, Fly and the Fly-Bottle: Encounters with British Intellectuals , London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
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• Noddings, Nel, 1984, Caring: A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education , Berkeley: University of California Press.
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• Peters, R.S., (ed.), 1973, The Philosophy of Education , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1981, Moral Development and Moral Education , London: G. Allen & Unwin.
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• –––, 1987, Philosophy, Science, and Social Inquiry: Contemporary Methodological Controversies in Social Science and Related Applied Fields of Research , Oxford: Pergamon.
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autonomy: personal | Dewey, John | feminist philosophy, interventions: ethics | feminist philosophy, interventions: liberal feminism | feminist philosophy, interventions: political philosophy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on autonomy | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on disability | Foucault, Michel | Gadamer, Hans-Georg | liberalism | Locke, John | Lyotard, Jean François | -->ordinary language --> | Plato | postmodernism | Rawls, John | rights: of children | Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Acknowledgments

The authors and editors would like to thank Randall Curren for sending a number of constructive suggestions for the Summer 2018 update of this entry.

Copyright © 2018 by Harvey Siegel D.C. Phillips Eamonn Callan

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• Our Mission

Finding Your School’s Mission and Vision

A former principal explains how mission and vision statements differ and why creating them is crucial to a school’s success.

Most first-year or veteran principals who are newly assigned to their school eventually must affirm the school’s existing mission and vision statements or engage stakeholders in a process of revising them. Sometimes, those statements incorporate and reflect district-wide beliefs, values, ideals, and goals.

When I was a new principal, I struggled with mission and vision statements. I didn’t understand the difference or how to utilize them. Regardless of what I might have learned about them in my preparatory classes, I was overwhelmed by day-to-day challenges. So as a result, any of the existing statements developed by the previous administration and posted throughout the school meant little to me.

That changed, however, when the parent of one of our school’s students with a disability, Billy (not his real name), stumped me one day with this question: “Why does this school exist?” Her son had intense needs. I had spoken with her numerous times but now wondered what had prompted the question. As we talked about why our school existed and what we hoped to achieve—for her son and everyone else—our discussion suddenly helped both of us form a much more meaningful concept of mission and vision. 

Our school’s mission (why we existed) was to teach.

Our vision, reflecting shared beliefs, values, and specific, purposeful goals, was the summation of desired outcomes we wanted, along with strategic plans to achieve them.

Billy’s mother eloquently stated, “I just want three things from this school. First, I want my son to learn the basic skills that he will need to get a job someday.” (As I listened, I was thinking to myself that I certainly wanted the same for my daughters.) “Two, I want him to develop good, appropriate social skills so that when he grows up and buys the house next to yours, you won’t want to move.” (I was really listening now.) “And third, I want him to learn to appreciate the finer things in life so that he doesn’t grow up to be a couch potato.” (Wow, she had clarified a vision for her son that any parent should want for their child.)

Missions and visions

The more I thought about it—then and since—the universal mission of every school is to teach. Academics, social skills, creative thinking, healthy living, good choices, and much more. We can embellish the concept of teaching with fancy words that signify academic achievement, physical growth, personal development, wisdom, virtues, transformations, etc., but it all boils down to this: The reason that schools exist is for teaching. Everyone is free to choose their own descriptive words of purpose, but I preferred succinct, easy-to-remember, and personalized wording. And Billy’s mom had helped me shape our mission and vision. 

As I discussed the mission with my staff, we rallied around the ideal that our primary focus was to teach—academics, behaviors, social skills, and aspirations in ways that were most timely, appropriate, individualized, and effective for every child. I helped my staff reflect on their practice and question themselves—if what they were doing didn’t teach, why were they doing it?

My advice for principals—regardless of the wording of your mission statement—is to understand these two basic concepts:

• Your mission is why you exist.
• Your vision is how you accomplish goals. 

Many vision and mission statements are closely related and often used interchangeably. When both are well conceived and meaningful, they can drive your school community’s focus. However, many are often not as effective as they could be. 

At my school, once we agreed that our purpose was to teach (mission), we turned our attention to fulfilling the beliefs, values, and goals embedded in what Billy’s mom had asked for her son (vision). The three visionary targets remained the same, regardless of where each child started.

Academics became more individualized with rigor while teaching the concept of grit. The development of a schoolwide code of conduct (focused on quality work, respect, safety, and kindness) resulted in more effective, personalized ways of teaching social skills and positive behaviors. And so that no student would become a couch potato, we infused the arts and extracurricular activities into every aspect of school that we could think of, teaching and coaching their meaning and value. 

I’m forever indebted to Billy’s mom. She helped me and my staff conceptualize, personalize, and solidify our thinking, define our “why” (mission), and teach to meet the needs of every student. Parents rallied together with me and my teachers around those three stated expectations (vision) from our school—so concise and clear that we have never forgotten them, and never will.

I hope every principal encounters someone like Billy’s mom. When you do, listen, collaborate closely, and learn. Together, you’ll develop the most meaningful awareness of why you do what you do.

16.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Education

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Define manifest and latent functions of education
• Explain and discuss how functionalism, conflict theory, feminism, and interactionism view issues of education

While it is clear that education plays an integral role in individuals’ lives as well as society as a whole, sociologists view that role from many diverse points of view. Functionalists believe that education equips people to perform different functional roles in society. Conflict theorists view education as a means of widening the gap in social inequality. Feminist theorists point to evidence that sexism in education continues to prevent women from achieving a full measure of social equality. Symbolic interactionists study the dynamics of the classroom, the interactions between students and teachers, and how those affect everyday life. In this section, you will learn about each of these perspectives.

Functionalism

Functionalists view education as one of the more important social institutions in a society. They contend that education contributes two kinds of functions: manifest (or primary) functions, which are the intended and visible functions of education; and latent (or secondary) functions, which are the hidden and unintended functions.

Manifest Functions

There are several major manifest functions associated with education. The first is socialization. Beginning in preschool and kindergarten, students are taught to practice various societal roles. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who established the academic discipline of sociology, characterized schools as “socialization agencies that teach children how to get along with others and prepare them for adult economic roles” (Durkheim 1898). Indeed, it seems that schools have taken on this responsibility in full.

This socialization also involves learning the rules and norms of the society as a whole. In the early days of compulsory education, students learned the dominant culture. Today, since the culture of the United States is increasingly diverse, students may learn a variety of cultural norms, not only that of the dominant culture.

School systems in the United States also transmit the core values of the nation through manifest functions like social control. One of the roles of schools is to teach students conformity to law and respect for authority. Obviously, such respect, given to teachers and administrators, will help a student navigate the school environment. This function also prepares students to enter the workplace and the world at large, where they will continue to be subject to people who have authority over them. Fulfillment of this function rests primarily with classroom teachers and instructors who are with students all day.

Education also provides one of the major methods used by people for upward social mobility. This function is referred to as social placement . College and graduate schools are viewed as vehicles for moving students closer to the careers that will give them the financial freedom and security they seek. As a result, college students are often more motivated to study areas that they believe will be advantageous on the social ladder. A student might value business courses over a class in Victorian poetry because she sees business class as a stronger vehicle for financial success.

Latent Functions

Education also fulfills latent functions. As you well know, much goes on in a school that has little to do with formal education. For example, you might notice an attractive fellow student when he gives a particularly interesting answer in class—catching up with him and making a date speaks to the latent function of courtship fulfilled by exposure to a peer group in the educational setting.

The educational setting introduces students to social networks that might last for years and can help people find jobs after their schooling is complete. Of course, with social media such as Facebook and LinkedIn, these networks are easier than ever to maintain. Another latent function is the ability to work with others in small groups, a skill that is transferable to a workplace and that might not be learned in a homeschool setting.

The educational system, especially as experienced on university campuses, has traditionally provided a place for students to learn about various social issues. There is ample opportunity for social and political advocacy, as well as the ability to develop tolerance to the many views represented on campus. In 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement swept across college campuses all over the United States, leading to demonstrations in which diverse groups of students were unified with the purpose of changing the political climate of the country.

Functionalists recognize other ways that schools educate and enculturate students. One of the most important U.S. values students in the United States learn is that of individualism—the valuing of the individual over the value of groups or society as a whole. In countries such as Japan and China, where the good of the group is valued over the rights of the individual, students do not learn as they do in the United States that the highest rewards go to the “best” individual in academics as well as athletics. One of the roles of schools in the United States is fostering self-esteem; conversely, schools in Japan focus on fostering social esteem—the honoring of the group over the individual.

In the United States, schools also fill the role of preparing students for competition in life. Obviously, athletics foster a competitive nature, but even in the classroom students compete against one another academically. Schools also fill the role of teaching patriotism. Students recite the Pledge of Allegiance each morning and take history classes where they learn about national heroes and the nation’s past.

Another role of schools, according to functionalist theory, is that of sorting , or classifying students based on academic merit or potential. The most capable students are identified early in schools through testing and classroom achievements. Such students are placed in accelerated programs in anticipation of successful college attendance.

Functionalists also contend that school, particularly in recent years, is taking over some of the functions that were traditionally undertaken by family. Society relies on schools to teach about human sexuality as well as basic skills such as budgeting and job applications—topics that at one time were addressed by the family.

Conflict Theory

Conflict theorists do not believe that public schools reduce social inequality. Rather, they believe that the educational system reinforces and perpetuates social inequalities that arise from differences in class, gender, race, and ethnicity. Where functionalists see education as serving a beneficial role, conflict theorists view it more negatively. To them, educational systems preserve the status quo and push people of lower status into obedience.

The fulfillment of one’s education is closely linked to social class. Students of low socioeconomic status are generally not afforded the same opportunities as students of higher status, no matter how great their academic ability or desire to learn. Picture a student from a working-class home who wants to do well in school. On a Monday, he’s assigned a paper that’s due Friday. Monday evening, he has to babysit his younger sister while his divorced mother works. Tuesday and Wednesday, he works stocking shelves after school until 10:00 p.m. By Thursday, the only day he might have available to work on that assignment, he’s so exhausted he can’t bring himself to start the paper. His mother, though she’d like to help him, is so tired herself that she isn’t able to give him the encouragement or support he needs. And since English is her second language, she has difficulty with some of his educational materials. They also lack a computer and printer at home, which most of his classmates have, so they have to rely on the public library or school system for access to technology. As this story shows, many students from working-class families have to contend with helping out at home, contributing financially to the family, poor study environments and a lack of support from their families. This is a difficult match with education systems that adhere to a traditional curriculum that is more easily understood and completed by students of higher social classes.

Such a situation leads to social class reproduction, extensively studied by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. He researched how cultural capital , or cultural knowledge that serves (metaphorically) as currency that helps us navigate a culture, alters the experiences and opportunities available to French students from different social classes. Members of the upper and middle classes have more cultural capital than do families of lower-class status. As a result, the educational system maintains a cycle in which the dominant culture’s values are rewarded. Instruction and tests cater to the dominant culture and leave others struggling to identify with values and competencies outside their social class. For example, there has been a great deal of discussion over what standardized tests such as the SAT truly measure. Many argue that the tests group students by cultural ability rather than by natural intelligence.

The cycle of rewarding those who possess cultural capital is found in formal educational curricula as well as in the hidden curriculum , which refers to the type of nonacademic knowledge that students learn through informal learning and cultural transmission. This hidden curriculum reinforces the positions of those with higher cultural capital and serves to bestow status unequally.

Conflict theorists point to tracking , a formalized sorting system that places students on “tracks” (advanced versus low achievers) that perpetuate inequalities. While educators may believe that students do better in tracked classes because they are with students of similar ability and may have access to more individual attention from teachers, conflict theorists feel that tracking leads to self-fulfilling prophecies in which students live up (or down) to teacher and societal expectations (Education Week 2004).

To conflict theorists, schools play the role of training working-class students to accept and retain their position as lower members of society. They argue that this role is fulfilled through the disparity of resources available to students in richer and poorer neighborhoods as well as through testing (Lauen and Tyson 2008).

IQ tests have been attacked for being biased—for testing cultural knowledge rather than actual intelligence. For example, a test item may ask students what instruments belong in an orchestra. To correctly answer this question requires certain cultural knowledge—knowledge most often held by more affluent people who typically have more exposure to orchestral music. Though experts in testing claim that bias has been eliminated from tests, conflict theorists maintain that this is impossible. These tests, to conflict theorists, are another way in which education does not provide opportunities, but instead maintains an established configuration of power.

Feminist Theory

Feminist theory aims to understand the mechanisms and roots of gender inequality in education, as well as their societal repercussions. Like many other institutions of society, educational systems are characterized by unequal treatment and opportunity for women. Almost two-thirds of the world’s 862 million illiterate people are women, and the illiteracy rate among women is expected to increase in many regions, especially in several African and Asian countries (UNESCO 2005; World Bank 2007).

Women in the United States have been relatively late, historically speaking, to be granted entry to the public university system. In fact, it wasn’t until the establishment of Title IX of the Education Amendments in 1972 that discriminating on the basis of sex in U.S. education programs became illegal. In the United States, there is also a post-education gender disparity between what male and female college graduates earn. A study released in May 2011 showed that, among men and women who graduated from college between 2006 and 2010, men out-earned women by an average of more than $5,000 each year. First-year job earnings for men averaged $33,150; for women the average was $28,000 (Godofsky, Zukin, and van Horn 2011). Similar trends are seen among salaries of professionals in virtually all industries.

When women face limited opportunities for education, their capacity to achieve equal rights, including financial independence, are limited. Feminist theory seeks to promote women’s rights to equal education (and its resultant benefits) across the world.

Sociology in the Real World

Grade inflation: when is an a really a c.

In 2019, news emerged of a criminal conspiracy regarding wealthy and, in some cases, celebrity parents who illegally secured college admission for their children. Over 50 people were implicated in the scandal, including employees from prestigious universities; several people were sentenced to prison. Their activity included manipulating test scores, falsifying students’ academic or athletic credentials, and acquiring testing accommodations through dishonest claims of having a disability.

One of the questions that emerged at the time was how the students at the subject of these efforts could succeed at these challenging and elite colleges. Meaning, if they couldn’t get in without cheating, they probably wouldn’t do well. Wouldn’t their lack of preparation quickly become clear?

Many people would say no. First, many of the students involved (the children of the conspirators) had no knowledge or no involvement of the fraud; those students may have been admitted anyway. But there may be another safeguard for underprepared students at certain universities: grade inflation.

Grade inflation generally refers to a practice of awarding students higher grades than they have earned. It reflects the observation that the relationship between letter grades and the achievements they reflect has been changing over time. Put simply, what used to be considered C-level, or average, now often earns a student a B, or even an A.

Some, including administrators at elite universities, argue that grade inflation does not exist, or that there are other factors at play, or even that it has benefits such as increased funding and elimination of inequality (Boleslavsky 2014). But the evidence reveals a stark change. Based on data compiled from a wide array of four-year colleges and universities, a widely cited study revealed that the number of A grades has been increasing by several percentage points per decade, and that A’s were the most common grade awarded (Jaschik 2016). In an anecdotal case, a Harvard dean acknowledged that the median grade there was an A-, and the most common was also an A. Williams College found that the number of A+ grades had grown from 212 instances in 2009-10 to 426 instances in 2017-18 (Berlinsky-Schine 2020). Princeton University took steps to reduce inflation by limiting the number of A’s that could be issued, though it then reversed course (Greason 2020).

Why is this happening? Some cite the alleged shift toward a culture that rewards effort instead of product, i.e., the amount of work a student puts in raises the grade, even if the resulting product is poor quality. Another oft-cited contributor is the pressure for instructors to earn positive course evaluations from their students. Finally, many colleges may accept a level of grade inflation because it works. Analysis and formal experiments involving graduate school admissions and hiring practices showed that students with higher grades are more likely to be selected for a job or a grad school. And those higher-grade applicants are still preferred even if decision-maker knows that the applicant’s college may be inflating grades (Swift 2013). In other words, people with high GPA at a school with a higher average GPA are preferred over people who have a high GPA at a school with a lower average GPA.

Ironically, grade inflation is not simply a college issue. Many of the same college faculty and administrators who encounter or engage in some level of grade inflation may lament that it is also occurring at high schools (Murphy 2017).

Symbolic Interactionism

Symbolic interactionism sees education as one way that labeling theory is seen in action. A symbolic interactionist might say that this labeling has a direct correlation to those who are in power and those who are labeled. For example, low standardized test scores or poor performance in a particular class often lead to a student who is labeled as a low achiever. Such labels are difficult to “shake off,” which can create a self-fulfilling prophecy (Merton 1968).

In his book High School Confidential , Jeremy Iversen details his experience as a Stanford graduate posing as a student at a California high school. One of the problems he identifies in his research is that of teachers applying labels that students are never able to lose. One teacher told him, without knowing he was a bright graduate of a top university, that he would never amount to anything (Iversen 2006). Iversen obviously didn’t take this teacher’s false assessment to heart. But when an actual seventeen-year-old student hears this from a person with authority over her, it’s no wonder that the student might begin to “live down to” that label.

The labeling with which symbolic interactionists concern themselves extends to the very degrees that symbolize completion of education. Credentialism embodies the emphasis on certificates or degrees to show that a person has a certain skill, has attained a certain level of education, or has met certain job qualifications. These certificates or degrees serve as a symbol of what a person has achieved, and allows the labeling of that individual.

Indeed, as these examples show, labeling theory can significantly impact a student’s schooling. This is easily seen in the educational setting, as teachers and more powerful social groups within the school dole out labels that are adopted by the entire school population.

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• Authors: Tonja R. Conerly, Kathleen Holmes, Asha Lal Tamang
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• Book title: Introduction to Sociology 3e
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Teaching Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you write a teaching statement, a 1-4 page document that describes your teaching experiences and pedagogical approaches.The first time you write a teaching statement is often in the context of an application for an academic job or teaching position.

What is a teaching statement?

A teaching statement, or statement of teaching philosophy, highlights academic job candidates’ teaching qualifications, explains their pedagogical approaches, and demonstrates how they will contribute to the teaching culture of prospective institutions.

Because hiring committees for academic jobs cannot observe the teaching of every applicant, they rely on other means of evaluating a candidate’s teaching. These alternatives may include a teaching demonstration during a campus visit; a teaching portfolio consisting of student evaluations, sample syllabi, etc; and/or a teaching statement. By illustrating a candidate’s teaching experiences and philosophy with concrete examples, a teaching statement helps the hiring committee imagine what it would be like inside the candidate’s classroom.

Teaching statements will vary from candidate to candidate (and one candidate’s teaching statements may vary from application to application). The sections below offer guidelines to help you prepare, write, and revise your own teaching statement.

Preparing to write a teaching statement

An effective teaching statement involves both reflection and research. Thinking about your teaching and your goals can be helpful before you begin writing or revising your teaching statement. This process can also prepare you for interview questions that address teaching, should your application lead to an interview.

Brainstorming

Before you begin writing your teaching statement, it can be useful to think more generally about your teaching philosophy. Once you’ve brainstormed some ideas, you can then focus on how to clearly and succinctly communicate those thoughts in a teaching statement. For some general brainstorming strategies, you can consult our Brainstorming handout; the following questions will help you brainstorm more specifically about your teaching philosophy:

• What goals do you set for students in your courses?
• How do you enact those goals?
• How do you evaluate how well those goals are being met?
• What is your plan for developing your teaching? What other aspects of pedagogy would you like to develop in your practice?
• What can a student expect to experience in your class?
• What is the relationship between your teaching and research?
• What are the unique challenges or opportunities to teaching in your field?
• What is your favorite aspect of teaching? Why?
• What is your favorite course to teach? Why?
• How do you effectively teach students with diverse identities and backgrounds?
• How do your beliefs about student learning affect your instructional choices?

Consulting models

Looking at sample teaching statements can give you a better sense of the genre and can help you determine what elements you would like to include in your own teaching statement. Students in your program, recent graduates, and professors may be willing to share models, and many examples are also available online through libraries and faculty resource centers.

As you look at sample teaching statements, think about what you do or do not like about each statement. The following questions can help you determine how you might construct your own statement.

• What is the most memorable part of the teaching statement? Why?
• How is the teaching statement organized (e.g. thematically, chronologically)?
• How easily are you able to follow the structure of the statement?
• What is the writing style of the teaching statement (e.g. formal, conversational)?
• What impression of the writer does the writing style convey?
• What image of the writer are you left with after reading the entire statement?
• How well can you imagine yourself as a student in the writer’s class?

Researching the institution

Different institutions will have different teaching cultures and, therefore, will value different types of teaching statements. For example, a research university and a community college may have different approaches to teaching, so the same teaching statement is unlikely to appeal to both institutions. Instead, you should try to tailor your teaching statement to each individual institution (and department) to which you are applying.

As a first step, you can explore the institution and department websites to learn how much emphasis they place on teaching. You might also research the department faculty, their areas of expertise, and the courses they have recently taught. By learning about your audience, their teaching expectations, and their values, you can tailor your teaching statement to demonstrate how well you will fit into the department’s teaching culture.

You might also think about the department’s needs by considering current offerings and what they can tell you about the priorities and values of the department. Without making assumptions, you can ask yourself:

• How do the department’s offerings compare with common or standard course offerings in the field? How do they compare with courses you have taken or taught?
• How does your current research relate to the department’s course offerings?
• Which courses would you be prepared to teach?
• What future courses might you envision creating for the department?
• Does the department offer any special courses, seminars, or initiatives relevant to your research or teaching experience?

Although a targeted teaching statement is important at any point in the application process, the timing of the hiring committee’s request can also inform you about how targeted the statement should be. For example, if the committee requests a teaching statement after they have already reviewed your initial materials, then you should be even more purposeful in demonstrating how you will fit into their specific teaching culture and how you can contribute to their department’s teaching needs.

Drafting a teaching statement

Because teaching statements are variable in design and structure, you will have many choices to make during the drafting process. Here are some common decision points, considerations, and challenges to keep in mind while writing your teaching statement.

Organizational strategies

Teaching statements do not have one set organizational structure. Instead, you can employ different organizational strategies to emphasize different aspects of your teaching. Here are a few examples that you could consider:

Think of your teaching history as a narrative (past, present, future). How have your previous experiences informed your current practices? How might those practices transform within different contexts in the future? This narrative strategy allows you to build upon past experiences to point towards future development.

Structure your statement around your teaching goals, methods, and assessment. How do your goals inform your methods, and how do you assess the extent to which those goals have been reached? This process-oriented strategy can help you highlight connections between goals and outcomes and show how those connections inform your practice.

Identify themes, concepts, ways of thinking, or learning strategies that are prevalent in your teaching. How do these elements help students learn? This approach can characterize what’s distinctive about your teaching and how it serves students.

Be specific and concrete

Including specific details and explanations in your teaching statement will help the audience picture what it’s like to be in your classroom. Rather than simply mentioning a particular innovation or strategy, include examples of how it has helped students in practice.

Explain terms that could be open to interpretation by your reader. For example, if you mention the importance of critical thinking in your teaching statement, explain what that means to you as an instructor.

Use concrete examples from your teaching and classroom experiences to illustrate how your teaching philosophy informs your practice. How does your philosophy shape your students’ experiences in the classroom?

Incorporate inclusivity

While some applications will also require a diversity statement, the teaching statement is your opportunity to express how you consider diversity and foster inclusivity in the classroom through specific examples. Incorporating inclusivity throughout your teaching statement demonstrates that it is an integral part of your philosophy and practice rather than just a required element tacked on at the end. Here are some questions to help you reflect on how you might incorporate inclusivity in your teaching:

• How does your course material reflect contributions from diverse perspectives?
• How do you encourage collaboration among all students?
• How do you help students from diverse backgrounds feel welcome and safe in your classroom?
• How do you cultivate an inclusive learning environment that encourages students to think about the effects of racial, cultural, gender, socioeconomic, and other differences?
• How do you make your instruction accessible to students with physical disabilities and learning differences?

How do I keep my teaching statement both professional and personal?

As with most writing, knowledge of your intended audience can help guide choices around style. You can use the information you gleaned from researching the institution to develop a sense of their values and level of formality. You might also consider models, especially those from applicants at comparable career stages or applying to comparable institutions, and assess the type of language and tone used.

Especially if you are writing a statement as part of an application, your teaching statement should be unique to you. See our handout on Application Essays for more general advice on writing in application contexts.

What if I’m not an experienced teacher?

Although having extensive teaching experience may help you to draw examples for your teaching statement, prior teaching experience is not required to write a quality teaching statement. In some fields, opportunities to teach are few and far between; committees will be understanding of this, especially at institutions where research is prioritized. Regardless of whether you have much teaching experience, be sure to frame yourself as a teacher rather than a student.

Here are some strategies to help you draft a teaching statement, even if you aren’t an experienced teacher:

• If you haven’t taught your own courses, draw upon experiences when you served as a teaching assistant for another instructor.
• If you don’t have any experience teaching in a classroom, think of other transferable experiences like tutoring, coaching, or mentoring that illustrate what you would be like as a teacher.
• If you have time, seek out teaching-related opportunities, such as giving guest lectures or mentoring junior colleagues.
• If you really have no teaching experience, imagine and describe what you will be like as a teacher, propose courses that you could teach, and provide concrete techniques that you will employ in the classroom.

How do I unify diverse teaching experiences?

Having extensive teaching experience may seem like the optimal situation for writing a teaching statement, but teaching experiences that span a broad range of courses or positions may feel disjointed or difficult to connect in a single teaching statement. In these cases, remember that you can use the diversity of your experiences to highlight your strengths and the approaches that you implement in the classroom. Here are some strategies that can help you identify commonalities across your disparate teaching experiences and construct a cohesive narrative:

• Use a strategy like webbing to help you draw connections between the ideas, theories, and/or practices from your various teaching experiences. For more information about this strategy, see our Webbing video.
• Highlight the flexibility of your teaching and explain how your unique combination of skills can contribute to your success in different teaching contexts.
• Focus your teaching statement on the skills and experiences that are most transferable to your targeted position.

Remember that you don’t need to include every teaching experience in your teaching statement. Your CV will cover all of the courses that you have taught, so your teaching statement can be an opportunity to focus on specific experiences in more detail.

Revising a teaching statement

An effective teaching statement is often the product of a series of revisions. Once you have written a draft, the strategies below can help you look for opportunities to strengthen your statement for specific application contexts and audiences.

Review your application holistically

Consider how your teaching statement fits into your application as a whole. Your teaching statement should complement your other application materials without being redundant. For example, your CV likely lists the courses you have taught; your teaching statement should not repeat the list but may highlight certain courses. Similarly, whereas a research statement will go into detail about your scholarship, your teaching statement can be a place to explain how your research and teaching inform each other. Think about how your entire application paints a cohesive picture of you as an applicant, and determine whether any elements are missing and where they could be included.

Seeking feedback

After you have developed a draft of your teaching statement, seek feedback from multiple sources. Professors, especially those who have served on hiring committees, can provide informed suggestions about the genre, but other helpful readers include fellow students, roommates, partners, family members, and coaches at the Writing Center. Asking these readers for feedback about your entire application can help you identify redundancies or gaps that you could address. See our Getting Feedback handout for advice on how to ask for effective feedback.

Editing and proofreading

Like all application materials, your teaching statement should be free of mechanical errors. Be sure to edit and proofread thoroughly. See our Editing and Proofreading handout or Proofreading video for some strategies.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Meizlish, Deborah, and Matthew Kaplan. 2008. “Valuing and Evaluating Teaching in Academic Hiring: A Multidisciplinary, Cross-Institutional Study.” The Journal of Higher Education 79 (5): 489–512. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2008.11772114 .

Montell, Gabriela. 2003. “How to Write a Statement of Teaching Philosophy.” The Chronicle of Higher Education , 27 Mar. 2003. https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Write-a-Statement-of/45133 .

O’Neal, Chris, et al. 2007. “Writing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy for the Academic Job Search.” Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. University of Michigan. http://www.crlt.umich.edu/sites/default/files/resource_files/CRLT_no23.pdf .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Cornell Financial Aid

Search cornell financial aid, identity/statement of educational purpose.

As part of Federal Student Aid, some students are selected for verification. This isn't an indication that anything is wrong with your application, it is just a requirement that selected students have for Federal Student Aid. The federal verification process can include verification of your identity and a requirement that you attest to your educational purpose. If you see this requirement on your  Cornell financial aid to do list  you must provide information to our office to confirm your eligibility for Federal Student Aid. This can be completed in person or through mailing a notarized form with a copy of the identification you presented to the notary to our office.

How to Complete the Requirement in Person:

Please visit the Office of Financial Aid and Student Employment and bring an unexpired valid government-issued photo ID. We will provide you with a form to fill out at our front desk. A list of valid government-issued IDs can be found at the bottom of this page.

How to Complete the Requirement with a Notary:

If you are unable to come to our office in person, you may complete the Identity/Statement of Educational Purpose in the presence of a notary public and mail the original document to our office with a copy of your unexpired valid government-issued photo ID. Please use the address listed on the form below, and be sure to include a copy of the ID you presented to the notary. You may also drop off the document and ID copy at our office.

Select the proper form for your aid year:

• 2023-2024  Identity/Statement of Educational Purpose (with notary)
• 2022-2023  Identity/Statement of Educational Purpose (with notary)

If the notary statement appears on a separate page than the Statement of Educational Purpose, there must be a clear indication that the Statement of Educational Purpose was the document notarized.

If choosing to complete the document with a notary public, the notary public must be an approved U.S. Notary Public. We are unable to accept documents that are completed with the use of a foreign equivalent of a notary public. In these instances, students may be able to visit a U.S. embassy or consulate that is close to the student's or study abroad location to see if a U.S. notary service is available.

Information on Acceptable Identification:

A valid unexpired government-issued photo identification (photo ID) can include, but is not limited to, the following:

• U.S. Passport;
• Driver’s license;
• Non-driver’s identification card;
• Other state-issued ID;
• Permanent Resident Card or Resident Alien Card (I-551, can be photocopied for Title IV purposes);
• Certificate of Naturalization if it contains a recognizable photo (even though it does not have an expiration date);
• Inmate ID from a government facility (even if it does not have an expiration date); or
• State-issued voter ID (even if it does not have an expiration date).

If you have any questions about acceptable identification, or anything else about this requirement please contact our office and we will assist you.

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What you need to know about the right to education

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that education is a fundamental human right for everyone and this right was further detailed in the Convention against Discrimination in Education. What exactly does that mean?

Why is education a fundamental human right?

The right to education is a human right and indispensable for the exercise of other human rights.

• Quality education aims to ensure the development of a fully-rounded human being.
• It is one of the most powerful tools in lifting socially excluded children and adults out of poverty and into society. UNESCO data shows that if all adults completed secondary education, globally the number of poor people could be reduced by more than half.
• It narrows the gender gap for girls and women. A UN study showed that each year of schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5 to 10 per cent.
• For this human right to work there must be equality of opportunity, universal access, and enforceable and monitored quality standards.

What does the right to education entail?

• Primary education that is free, compulsory and universal
• Secondary education, including technical and vocational, that is generally available, accessible to all and progressively free
• Higher education, accessible to all on the basis of individual capacity and progressively free
• Fundamental education for individuals who have not completed education
• Professional training opportunities
• Equal quality of education through minimum standards
• Quality teaching and supplies for teachers
• Adequate fellowship system and material condition for teaching staff
• Freedom of choice

What is the current situation?

• About 258 million children and youth are out of school, according to UIS data for the school year ending in 2018. The total includes 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age.

155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education

• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education
• 8.2% of primary school age children does not go to primary school  Only six in ten young people will be finishing secondary school in 2030 The youth literacy rate (15-24) is of 91.73%, meaning 102 million youth lack basic literacy skills.

  How is the right to education ensured?

The right to education is established by two means - normative international instruments and political commitments by governments. A solid international framework of conventions and treaties exist to protect the right to education and States that sign up to them agree to respect, protect and fulfil this right.

How does UNESCO work to ensure the right to education?

UNESCO develops, monitors and promotes education norms and standards to guarantee the right to education at country level and advance the aims of the Education 2030 Agenda. It works to ensure States' legal obligations are reflected in national legal frameworks and translated into concrete policies.

• Monitoring the implementation of the right to education at country level
• Supporting States to establish solid national frameworks creating the legal foundation and conditions for sustainable quality education for all
• Advocating on the right to education principles and legal obligations through research and studies on key issues
• Maintaining global online tools on the right to education
• Enhancing capacities, reporting mechanisms and awareness on key challenges
• Developing partnerships and networks around key issues

  How is the right to education monitored and enforced by UNESCO?

• UNESCO's Constitution requires Member States to regularly report on measures to implement standard-setting instruments at country level through regular consultations.
• Through collaboration with UN human rights bodies, UNESCO addresses recommendations to countries to improve the situation of the right to education at national level.
• Through the dedicated online Observatory , UNESCO takes stock of the implementation of the right to education in 195 States.
• Through its interactive Atlas , UNESCO monitors the implementation right to education of girls and women in countries
• Based on its monitoring work, UNESCO provides technical assistance and policy advice to Member States that seek to review, develop, improve and reform their legal and policy frameworks.

What happens if States do not fulfil obligations?

• International human rights instruments have established a solid normative framework for the right to education. This is not an empty declaration of intent as its provisions are legally binding. All countries in the world have ratified at least one treaty covering certain aspects of the right to education. This means that all States are held to account, through legal mechanisms.
• Enforcement of the right to education: At international level, human rights' mechanisms are competent to receive individual complaints and have settled right to education breaches this way.
• Justiciability of the right to education: Where their right to education has been violated, citizens must be able to have legal recourse before the law courts or administrative tribunals.

  What are the major challenges to ensure the right to education?

• Providing free and compulsory education to all
• 155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education.
• Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education.
• Eliminating inequalities and disparities in education

While only 4% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school in low-income countries, 36% of the richest do. In lower-middle-income countries, the gap is even wider: while only 14% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school, 72% of the richest do.

• Migration and displacement

According to a 2019 UNHCR report, of the 7.1 million refugee children of school age, 3.7 million - more than half - do not go to school. 

• Privatization and its impact on the right to education

States need to strike a balance between educational freedom and ensuring everyone receives a quality education.

• Financing of education

The Education 2030 Agenda requires States to allocate at least 4-6 per cent of GDP and/or at least 15-20 per cent of public expenditure to education.

• Quality imperatives and valuing the teaching profession

Two-thirds of the estimated 617 million children and adolescents who cannot read a simple sentence or manage a basic mathematics calculation are in the classroom.

• Say no to discrimination in education! - #RightToEducation campaign

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New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

• Progress towards quality education was already slower than required before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has had devastating impacts on education, causing learning losses in four out of five of the 104 countries studied.

Without additional measures, an estimated 84 million children and young people will stay out of school by 2030 and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.

In addition to free primary and secondary schooling for all boys and girls by 2030, the aim is to provide equal access to affordable vocational training, eliminate gender and wealth disparities, and achieve universal access to quality higher education.

Education is the key that will allow many other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved. When people are able to get quality education they can break from the cycle of poverty.

Education helps to reduce inequalities and to reach gender equality. It also empowers people everywhere to live more healthy and sustainable lives. Education is also crucial to fostering tolerance between people and contributes to more peaceful societies.

• To deliver on Goal 4, education financing must become a national investment priority. Furthermore, measures such as making education free and compulsory, increasing the number of teachers, improving basic school infrastructure and embracing digital transformation are essential.

What progress have we made so far?

While progress has been made towards the 2030 education targets set by the United Nations, continued efforts are required to address persistent challenges and ensure that quality education is accessible to all, leaving no one behind.

Between 2015 and 2021, there was an increase in worldwide primary school completion, lower secondary completion, and upper secondary completion. Nevertheless, the progress made during this period was notably slower compared to the 15 years prior.

What challenges remain?

According to national education targets, the percentage of students attaining basic reading skills by the end of primary school is projected to rise from 51 per cent in 2015 to 67 per cent by 2030. However, an estimated 300 million children and young people will still lack basic numeracy and literacy skills by 2030.

Economic constraints, coupled with issues of learning outcomes and dropout rates, persist in marginalized areas, underscoring the need for continued global commitment to ensuring inclusive and equitable education for all. Low levels of information and communications technology (ICT) skills are also a major barrier to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity.

Where are people struggling the most to have access to education?

Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest challenges in providing schools with basic resources. The situation is extreme at the primary and lower secondary levels, where less than one-half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have access to drinking water, electricity, computers and the Internet.

Inequalities will also worsen unless the digital divide – the gap between under-connected and highly digitalized countries – is not addressed .

Are there groups that have more difficult access to education?

Yes, women and girls are one of these groups. About 40 per cent of countries have not achieved gender parity in primary education. These disadvantages in education also translate into lack of access to skills and limited opportunities in the labour market for young women.

What can we do?  

Ask our governments to place education as a priority in both policy and practice. Lobby our governments to make firm commitments to provide free primary school education to all, including vulnerable or marginalized groups.

Facts and figures

Goal 4 targets.

• Without additional measures, only one in six countries will achieve the universal secondary school completion target by 2030, an estimated 84 million children and young people will still be out of school, and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.
• To achieve national Goal 4 benchmarks, which are reduced in ambition compared with the original Goal 4 targets, 79 low- and lower-middle- income countries still face an average annual financing gap of $97 billion.

Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023

4.1  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes

4.2  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and preprimary education so that they are ready for primary education

4.3  By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.4  By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

4.5  By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

4.6  By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

4.7  By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4.A  Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all

4.B  By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

4.C  By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing states

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70 years after brown v. board of education, new research shows rise in school segregation.

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.  

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer , a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022. 

“School segregation levels are not at pre- Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.” 

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens , a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s. 

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991. 

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.  

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . 

Policies shaping recent trends 

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said. 

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens. 

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most. 

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration. 

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   

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FACT SHEET: President   Biden Announces New Actions to Advance Racial and Educational Equity on 70th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of   Education

President Biden believes every student deserves access to a high-quality education that prepares them to be the next generation of leaders. Today, on the 70 th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (Brown) decision, which outlawed racially segregated schools – deeming them unequal and unconstitutional – the Biden-Harris Administration highlights new actions with the release of additional funding and resources to support school diversity and advance the goal that all students have access to a world-class education.

Research shows that racial achievement gaps are strongly associated with school segregation, in turn because schools with high concentrations of Black and Latino students receive fewer resources. The desegregation of schools that followed Brown led to a 30 percent increase in graduation rates for Black students and a 22 percent increase for Latino students. As school districts were released from court-ordered desegregation, research shows that in the 1960s and 1970s, school integration increased rapidly, but that trend has reversed in the past two decades when both racial and economic segregation increased . For example, segregation between white and Black students is up 64 percent since 1988, while segregation by economic status has grown by 50 percent since 1991. According to the U.S. Department of Education’s State of School Diversity Report , racially and socioeconomically isolated schools often lack critical resources and learning experiences and opportunities that prepare students for college and career success. The Department of Education report found that three in five Black and Latino students and two in five American Indian/Alaska Native students attend schools where at least 75% of students are students of color and 42% of white students attend schools where students of color make up less than 25% of the population. 

The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to ensuring the educational success of every child, and to address racial segregation in our schools that leads to worse educational outcomes for children, including through investments in local efforts to increase diversity and equal opportunity. The Administration is focused on academic acceleration and has made record levels of investment in K-12 schools and institutions of higher education to help improve opportunity for all. This includes supporting districts as they work to strengthen and diversify the education profession, enrich educational experiences, and improve school climate and conditions for robust learning.

New Actions to Advance Racial and Educational Equity

To advance racial and educational equity and continue the work of Brown to support educational opportunity for all students, the Biden-Harris Administration announced the following new actions today:

• New Magnet School Grants. The Department of Education’s Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP) will invest $20 million in new awards for school districts in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Texas to establish magnet programs designed to further desegregate public schools by attracting students from different social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. The President’s 2025 budget request includes $139 million for MSAP and $10 million to continue investments in the Fostering Diverse Schools program.
• Establishing a new technical assistance center to help states and school districts provide more equitable and adequate approaches to school funding. The U.S. Department of Education announced a new Technical Assistance Center on Fiscal Equity as part of the Comprehensive Centers Program. The Center on Fiscal Equity will provide capacity-building services to support states and school districts build equitable and adequate resource allocation strategies, improve the quality and transparency of fiscal data, and prioritize supports for students and communities with the greatest need.
• New Data on Equal Access to Math and Science Courses. The Department of Education Office for Civil Rights is releasing a new Civil Rights Data Collection report highlighting students’ access to and enrollment in mathematics, science, and computer science courses and academic programs, drawing from information in the 2020-21 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The report reflects stark continuing racial inequities in access to math, science, and computer science courses for students in high schools with high concentrations of Black and Latino students. 
• Preserving African American History. To further advance the President’s Executive Order on Promoting the Arts, the Humanities, and Museum and Library Services, the Administration is launching an interagency process to develop new actions by the Federal Government to preserve African American history – including preserving historic sites, protecting and increasing access to literature, and ensuring the public, including students, has continuing access to resources. This effort will bolster African American history and culture as integral, indelible parts of American history.

Investing in Underserved Schools

• Under the American Rescue Plan, the nation’s schools received $130 billion in funding – the most in our Nation’s history – with a focus on undeserved schools . The American Rescue Plan also included new requirements that have driven nearly $800 million in State additional education funding, above and beyond the federal investment, to the most underserved school by protecting schools with high rates of poverty from reductions in State and local education funding.
• To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has secured nearly $2 billion in additional Title I funding to support our schools with the highest need, for a record $18.4 billion in annual funding.
• The Biden-Harris Administration has also increased funding for Full-Service Community Schools five-fold, from $30 million in Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 to $150 million in FY 2024 so that underserved schools, including those that serve a majority of students of color, have the additional resources they need to help deliver more services to students and their families, such as health care, housing, and child care, to close resource and opportunity gaps.

Increasing Teacher Diversity

Research indicates that educator diversity can improve student achievement and help close achievement gaps. For example, one study found that Black students randomly assigned to at least one Black teacher in grades K-3 were nearly 19% more likely to enroll in college than their same-school, same-race peers.

• The Administration is prioritizing efforts to increase educator diversity across 15 competitive grant programs that support teacher preparation, development, recruitment, and retention. These programs awarded nearly $450 million to 263 grantees, 92 percent of which were to grantees that addressed specific priorities related to educator diversity.
• The Administration secured and awarded a total of more than $23 million in first-time ever funding for the Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence Grant program which provides grants to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) for teacher preparation programs to increase the number of well-prepared teachers, including teachers of color and multilingual educators.

Strengthening School Diversity

• During this Administration, the Department of Education is investing more than $300 million in programs that increase school diversity This includes increased investment in the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP), which aims to reduce racial isolation, including by creating highly effective schools, and the creation of the Fostering Diverse Schools Demonstration Program (FDS), a new initiative to increase school socioeconomic diversity, which awarded more than $14 million in new grants.
• In August 2023 after the Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, the Department of Education released a Dear Colleague Letter on Race and School Programming to guide schools on lawful programs to promote racially inclusive school communities and, along with the Department of Justice, a Dear Colleague Letter and a Questions and Answers Resource to help colleges and universities understand the Supreme Court’s decision as they continue to pursue campuses that are racially diverse and that include students with a range of viewpoints, talents, backgrounds, and experiences. The Department of Education published a resource summarizing specific guidance describing Federal legal obligations to ensure that all students have equal access to education regardless of race, color, or national origin.
• The Department of Education issued a new rule requiring, among other things, many Charter School Program applicants to assure that proposed charter schools would not negatively affect any desegregation efforts in the communities in which charters are to be located.

Closing the School Readiness Gap

Because of the legacy of discrimination, Black children start school on average nearly seven months behind their white peers in reading. One study finds that one year of universal high-quality pre-K could eliminate most of that gap. Others indicate that students who go to preschool are nearly 50% more likely to finish high school and go on to a college degree. Each of the President’s budgets have included proposals that would provide preschool to every four-year-old in the country. In addition:

• President Biden has secured an additional $1.5 billion for Head Start and nearly a 50% increase in funding for the Child Care & Development Block Grant (CCDBG) program, which helps low-income families afford child care. Approximately 30% of children and families receiving high-quality Head Start services are Black and close to 40% of families benefiting from CCBDG are Black. 
• The American Rescue Plan provided $24 billion to stabilize child care. Over 44% of programs that received assistance were owned or operated by people of color and 53% of providers receiving stabilization funds were operating in the most racially diverse counties.
• The Department of Education released guidance on how districts can leverage the increases the President has secured for Title I to expand access to high-quality preschool services, including through partnerships with Head Start programs. This is the first Department of Education preschool guidance in more than a decade.

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Revised Standards Approved, Effective Date January 1, 2024

NASBA and the AICPA approved revisions to the Statement on Standards for Continuing Professional Education (CPE) Programs ( Standards ). The Standards revisions were approved by NASBA in October and by the AICPA in December.

In addition, the NASBA Board approved and the AICPA Board took a position of support on the revised NASBA Fields of Study document. The NASBA Fields of Study document is referenced in the Standards and provides guidance on the classification of CPE credits into acceptable subject matter areas.

The following documents are available for download:

• The Standards revised January 2024
• Red-lined Standards (indicating changes from 2019 version)
• NASBA Fields of Study revised January 2024

Process for Review and Evaluation of the Standards

Implementation and Application of the Standards The Standards are intended to be an “evergreen” document. As questions arise related to implementation and application of the Standards , the questions will be presented to the CPE Standards Working Group. 

Authoritative interpretations will only be issued by NASBA's CPE Committee, upon the recommendation of the CPE Standards Working Group, in limited cases when the matter is not addressed in the Standards , cannot be addressed specifically with the sponsor, or cannot be addressed in the Best Practices.  All interpretations issued by NASBA's CPE Committee will be reviewed and considered by the Joint AICPA/NASBA CPE Standards Committee upon the next revision of the Standards .

Future Standards Revision Process Every two years from the effective date of the Standards , the Standards will be reviewed in their entirety by the CPE Standards Working Group.  If the Working Group determines that revisions or modifications are required, then the Working Group will make its recommendation to NASBA's CPE Committee and then to the Joint AICPA/NASBA CPE Standards Committee. In the limited situation when an interpretation has been issued by NASBA's CPE Committee, the interpretation will be reviewed and considered at that time by the Joint AICPA/NASBA CPE Standards Committee.

3: What is a Statement?

A Statement of Special Educational Needs (Statement) is a legal document which sets out a child’s educational needs and outlines how the Education Authority (EA) will meet those needs in an educational setting.

Most children’s needs can be met by their school at stages 1-3 . This is sometimes with the help of outside specialists. However, some children’s needs are significant and complex, and the necessary educational provision cannot be provided within the resources normally available to mainstream schools or your child may require a specialist setting. This is where a Statement would be required and the process of getting a statement is through a statutory assessment.

To get a Statement your child will need a Statutory Assessment  The Statutory Assessment process is at Stage 4 and a Statement is issued at Stage 5 of the Special Educational Needs framework.

Proposed or Draft Statement

After a Statutory Assessment has been carried out and the EA decides that a Statement is required, they will send you a copy of the proposed Statement so that you have an opportunity to comment on it.

Letter with the Proposed Statement

The letter with the proposed Statement will also contain copies of the professional reports they received as part of the Statutory Assessment, for example, reports from school or nursery, health trust reports and the educational psychologist report. These reports are sometimes referred to as ‘advices’.

The letter will also include a form for you to name your school of choice and comment on whether you agree with the proposed Statement. You may wish to ask for more to be added to the proposed Statement or ask for more information on the level and type of support proposed. You have 15 days to make your written comments, sometimes called ‘representations’.

Amended proposed statement

The EA may then send you either an amended proposed Statement with all or some of your requested changes

the EA will issue the final Statement with a letter explaining your right of appeal to the Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal (SENDIST) If you are not satisfied with the final Statement you have the right to appeal to the  SENDIST

If you would like help with a proposed statement click here for details of SENAC’s Advice and Advocacy services

What does a Statement look like?

There are six parts to a statement

Part 1 : Introduction

This part contains information on your child’s name, date of birth, home language (if not English) and religion.  This part will also detail the names and addresses of those who hold parental responsibility.

Part 2 : Special Educational Needs (Learning Difficulties)

This section includes details on each of your child’s special educational needs that have been identified during Statutory Assessment.  The advices/reports which were gathered during the assessment are attached to the back of the Statement in the appendices. It is important to check that every special educational need that is identified in the advices is included in Part 2. You can check this by underlining all the educational needs mentioned in each advice and check that these appear in Part 2, then you can move on to Part 3 and check that there is provision detailed in Part 3 to meet each of these needs.

Part 3: Special Educational Provision (Other than Placement)

This part has 3 sub-sections

• Objectives – these are the main educational and developmental goals that you want the provision to achieve.
• Educational provision – details of the educational provision that the EA considers appropriate for the difficulties described in Part 2. The provision in this section should be detailed, specific and quantified. It should set out clearly for example staffing arrangements, equipment or any modifications to the curriculum.
• Monitoring – the arrangements to monitor and review your child’s progress. This will include the preparation of an Individual Education Plan (IEP) by the class teacher and SENCo. A statement should be reviewed annually

For every need described in Part 2 there should be an objective and specified and quantified provision included in Part 3. There should be a description of all the provision to be put in place. In practice however, it is usually only where classroom assistance is offered that specific and quantified provision is detailed. Paragraph 4.21 of the Code of Practice states that “The provision set out should normally be specific, detailed and quantified (in terms, for example, of hours of ancillary or specialist teaching support.)”

Note: In regards to additional adult assistance, if your child needs a full-time one-to-one classroom assistant and/or supervisory assistance and the evidence in the advices supports this, you should request in your response to the draft that this should be written into Part 3, with the number of hours required, the level and type of assistance stated and written as one-to-one for your child alone.

The EA have a legal duty to ensure that the educational provision in Part 3 is arranged, even if some of the provision is to be provided by the school or Health Trust.

Note : It is often the case that general or vague phrases are used in Parts 2 & 3 such as ‘access to adult assistance’ or ‘autistic tendencies’. If you cannot tell from reading the Statement exactly what provision your child is being offered it will be harder to challenge.

Who decides what support is provided for my child?

The EA decides what education provision will be offered in Part 3 based on the ‘advice’ they receive from those who have contributed to the Statutory Assessment. So, it is extremely important that the evidence of need and recommendations for provision is included in the ’advices’. If it is not included you cannot request other provision, however, you can ask for further explanation and description of the specific provision included in Part 3.

You can also ask that the content of an ‘advice’ is reconsidered if you feel the EA have omitted an identified need, a recommendation or a strategy contained within an ‘advice’. If the EA agree to this it will be reflected in the final statement if not, you can appeal the contents of Part 2 and/or 3 to the SENDIST

What provision can be offered in Part 3 of a Statement? 

All needs that are detailed in Part 2 should have provision which should be specified in Part 3.

Below are some examples of commonly offered provision.  These are illustrative and are by no means an exhaustive list.  The assessment of your child may call for any number of supports not listed here:

• Placement in a specialist or small group setting.
• Adult assistance in the classroom (for example a learning support assistant or teaching assistant)
• A behaviour management programme
• Specialist teaching, especially if the teaching is required for an area of learning that no support service exists.  For example, numeracy.
• Mentor or Key Adult.
• Access to specialist services such as EA Learning Support Services (e.g. Literacy or Behaviour Support) or Health and Social Care Services (e.g. Therapies, or counselling).
• Training and expertise of staff to have knowledge and understanding of your child’s individual needs.
• Access arrangements for assessments/exams, such as extra time.
• Use of technology as an alternative way of delivering the curriculum.
• Access to a safe space or a sensory room.
• Adaptations made to the Curriculum to meet the child’s needs for example, modifications, differentiation or exemptions from subjects

Part 4:   Special Educational Provision: Placement

In a final Statement, Part 4 will name the school that the EA decide is appropriate to meet the needs of your child.  In a proposed/draft Statement, this section is left blank.  This is because parents have the right to express a preference for a school.

You can express a preference for a grant-aided mainstream or special school or make representations for a placement in any other school, such as an independent or non-grant-aided mainstream or special school

Once you express a preference for a particular school, the EA must name the school in Part 4 of the final statement unless one of the following three conditions cannot be satisfied:

• The placement must be appropriate to the child’s needs
• The child’s attendance there must be compatible with the interests of the children already in the school
• The placement is compatible with the most efficient use of resources

Can my request for a school be turned down?

Yes. If your preference is turned down the EA have a duty to demonstrate that one of the three conditions above has not been met and why your request has been refused.

You may be refused on the grounds that the class in question is deemed as full.  As children with statements are supernumerary (funded in addition to normal funding), class size cannot be the reason for refusal to place a child in the preferred setting.  If the EA feel that another class in the area can offer the same provision, it would be more compatible with efficient use of resources to send your child there.

If, however, there is no other suitable school that can offer the same provision, then the EA would have a duty to arrange suitable resources to ensure that your child’s attendance at your preferred choice would not impact the learning of the children already in that class.

Requesting a placement, or school, does not guarantee that your child will be placed there. If the EA does not name your first choice of school or if no school is named, you have the right to appeal to SENDIST.

Part 5: Non-educational needs

This part describes any non-educational needs as agreed with the health and social services and/or other agencies and the EA. Only needs that are not relevant to the education of your child should be detailed in this section. If there are needs described here that would have an impact on your child’s learning, then you should request that they are moved to Part 2

If your child has been assessed as requiring transport, this will be identified in Part 5.

Part 6: Non-educational provision

Part 6 should clearly set out any non- educational provision required to meet the non-educational needs included in Part 5. This is normally provided by health services and/or social services in response to a request from the EA. However, no-one has an enforceable legal duty to put in place the provision outlined in Part 6.

It is therefore important that all your child’s educational needs are described in Part 2 and the provision is stated in Part 3. This may include therapies such as speech and language and occupational therapy.

If relevant for your child, details of the type of transport provision will be detailed in this section.

It is important to request that any needs that could impact learning are moved from this section to the Special Educational Needs Sections (Parts 2 and 3) as the EA do not have a duty to arrange the provision listed in Parts 6. 

The only exception to this is EA transport, which is arranged by the EA’s transport office. 

Right to appeal the final Statement

If you are unhappy with the contents of your child’s final Statement (Parts 2-4 only) you have a right of appeal to SENDIST within two months of the date you received the letter sent with the final statement.

If you would like further help with appealing decisions made by the Education Authority click here for contact details of SENAC’s Appeals Service

Advice Line 028 9079 5779

For advice about your child’s education, please contact our Advice Line to speak to one of our advisers.

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All About Universities

SOP in Educatio...

SOP in Education: How to Write a Statement of Purpose for Education for MA/MEd?

An advanced degree in Education leads to a wide career opportunities and an inclusive enhancement of the candidate’s potential. Students with a background in humanities and its other majors might aspire to go for a MA in Education or an M.Ed abroad. For applying to the universities, an SOP in education is an essential part of the application process in the top b-schools like Stanford University. 

In addition to the competencies available in your portfolio, these schools also assess writing samples to evaluate your basic skills like creativity and critical thinking. Similarly, other key factors relating to your journey can also be highlighted and substantiated through your SOP for education.

So how can one write an effective statement of purpose for education? Let’s discuss that at length and understand the intricate facets of a SOP in education. 

What can lead an statement of purpose for masters in education to be rejected right away?

Ans. Plagiarism and poor syntax can get your SOP for masters in education rejected.

What is the best writing style for an SOP for masters in education?

Ans. Conversational writing keeps the narrative engaging. So, write your SOP effectively maintaining a positive tone. 

How many SOPs to write for Education?

Ans. Each university requires a separate and original SOP. Hence, you need to write a different SOP for every university you’re applying to.

How to save and submit your SOP?

Ans. SOPs have to be uploaded in PDF as part of the applications. This makes your statement of purpose for masters in education look professional and eliminates the possibility of any formatting inconsistencies. Universities may also provide forms to paste contents of SOP as part of applications with or without the option to upload it.

How to Draft a Statement of Purpose for Education? 

To begin writing your SOP for masters in education, introspect, brainstorm, research, and collect your thoughts. Among the details in your SOP should be life experiences, academic and professional backgrounds (if applicable), career goals, co-curricular activities, volunteering/community involvement, and more.

So, refer to the effective guidelines given below to draft a stellar statement of purpose for masters in education for education programs. 

Introduction

What drove you towards choosing education as your interest? What is the most powerful experience that led you to choose this field? For example , how on Teachers’ Day, you took English lessons for the kids near your residence and that experience of imparting knowledge built your passion for teaching and education.

• Start the introduction with a striking experience that is suggestive of your interest and journey into the field. 
• Alternatively, you might begin with a research problem statement that you consider exploring in your future MA/M.Ed program. 
• However, the main idea here is to show your familiarity with the educational research currently underway at the school of education in your selected university.

Second Paragraph

Developing on the idea of how education motivates you, write about relevant academic and life experiences that have boosted your interest in the field. How has each of these experiences directed your thought process, streamlined it, or transformed it?

• Here, you can describe the relevant undergraduate experiences or courses that led you to develop an interest in education. 
• For example, you might have developed an interest in educational psychology or the different philosophies of education. 
• Write about a few course specifics and how these led you to develop your portfolio and inspired you to work on projects relevant to these interests. 
• You can include any interesting projects you worked on or relevant co-curricular experiences worth sharing. Make sure that your experiences align with your interest in the Education program you’re applying for. 

Third Paragraph

Have you gone through a setback or failure in your academics? If you just made the cut or have lesser scores, you can mention those in this paragraph.

• Have you faced any other unique challenges or setbacks that have redefined your perspectives or interests? It can be any physical setback or even an academic one.
• Mention the ways in which you overcame the challenge faced along with  and the result of these experiences.
• It’s imperative to reflect on the lessons from these experiences to highlight your strength and resilience.

Fourth Paragraph

In this paragraph, you can include extracurriculars. It is a fact that universities are interested to know more than just academics. So, go ahead and describe your hobbies, social work, volunteering, etc, here. You can also include the details of any workshops or certifications which you have taken to upgrade your skills. 

Fifth Paragraph

In this paragraph, you can describe your job role or any work experience that you may have. In case of a lack of work experience, any internship experience can also be added, while contemplating the acquired skills and learnings. Analyse a knowledge gap and or the need for you to go for MA in Education/ M.Ed.

• How have your undergrad studies and work experience/s influenced your career goals? Why do you wish to go for MA in Education/ M.Ed at this point in your career? 
• Write about your short-term and long-term goals. 
• How will the MA in Education/ M.Ed program from a specific university help you achieve these goals? 
• How does the program align with your areas of interest?

The idea is to keep your conclusion as engaging as the introduction.

• What makes you a valuable contributor to the University?
• How can you be an asset to the University?
• What activities, clubs, sports, student associations, groups, etc, piqued your interests?
• What diverse experiences do you bring to your future graduate community? 

Suggested: How to Write a Good SOP? 

Do’s and Don'ts of Sample SOP for Masters in Education

Your sample SOP for masters in education should be honest, precise, engaging, and well-written. Remember that every experience that you present should be coherent and connected well with your experiences. This leaves no space for mistakes. Follow these Do’s and Don’ts in your statement of purpose examples for masters in education. 

Suggested: Common mistakes in Writing SOPs and Application Essay

Skills to Include in Your Sample SOP for Masters in Education

Your SOP for MA in Education/ M.Ed should be thorough and anecdotal. Education is an extensive and skill-based field of study. From special education teachers, career counsellors, curriculum developers, to instruction specialists, educational coordinators, and corporate trainers, the career opportunities are vast.

Therefore, your SOP for masters in education should include these skills to make it unique and appealing that the rest. 

• Instructional capabilities
• Cognitive development
• Problem-solving
• Communication
• Agility and adaptability
• Curiosity and imagination
• Knowledge of Education Specialisation (applying for)

Suggested: Remove Your SOP Writing Fever!

SOP Requirements of Top Universities for Education 

Mostly, all universities have similar SOP requirements for their respective applications. We have shortlisted a few top universities for M.A in Education/ M.Ed with their SOP requirements below

1. Stanford University (Graduate School of Education)

If you are applying for MA in Education at the Graduate School of Education in Stanford University , follow these steps:

• What is your purpose for applying to the program?
• Write precise sentences by backing them up with relevant instances and learnings from your experiences.
• Rather than ceaselessly mentioning all your accomplishments, focus on a particular strength or achievement that is relevant to your purpose.
• Why would the university be a perfect fit for you? How will you contribute to the university’s culture, community, and classes?
• Provide a concise account of how your previous work, background, and/or academic experience supports your decision to apply to the program and how the program will impact your career goals.
• Keep in mind to write the SOP within two pages, with a 12 point regular font, and single spacing with one-inch margins.

2. University of California

Some colleges under the University of California require a personal statement along with an SOP for M.A in Education/M.Ed.

• The personal statement should be approximately one to two pages and double spaced.
• In the personal statement, include your background, culture, economic and social experiences, and how those elements have led you to pursue a graduate degree. 
• For the MA in Education SOP, it is essential to discuss your career objectives, along with a reason substantiating what you intend to gain from the program.
• It is highly recommended to make your SOP research-based for MA in Education. Analyse the faculty members whose research interests align with yours and explain your intention of working with them, highlighting the specific research interests you have in common.
• For the M.Ed SOP, focus more on how the coursework supports your career goals and objectives.
• Also, include your reasons for choosing the particular program and applying at UC.
• For both MA and M.Ed, briefly mention your experiences with teaching or tutoring students from various cultural and language backgrounds. If not applicable in your case, mention any related experience where you got the chance to impart your knowledge.
• Focus on your community service experiences and describe any leadership positions that you may have held.
• Add the reason for choosing UC and the respective college. 

3. Harvard University (Graduate School of Education)

Harvard University has set the limit of the SOP to not more than 1500 words. For writing the SOP for Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), one should include the points mentioned below.

• Start with your background. Mention the notable experiences that have motivated you to further study in the field of education or its related issues. 
• Describe your objective for going into the program at this point in your career. Elaborate on your academic and professional goals along with how the program can aid you in developing your knowledge, skills, and tools.
• Remember to discuss your reason for choosing HGSE, and the selected program with the relevant concentration (Arts and Learning, Early Childhood, Higher Education, Literacy and Languages, etc.) Also, include how the Master’s program would help you in attaining your future goals. 

The SOP writing style for most countries remains the same. However, in the case of program-specific statement of purpose for Education, you can re-engineer the original draft to suit the University/program requirements.

We understand writing an SOP can be daunting. But don’t worry, Yocket is here to help you comprehend the nuances of an actionable SOP in terms of the format and guidelines. Therefore, choose Yocket premium and bring your study abroad dream to life. Our councellors are transparent with the rules, cooperative, and provide unique services. So choose them today! 

Kashyap Matani

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Ranking Member Scott Statement at Hearing with HHS Secretary Becerra

WASHINGTON  – Ranking Member Robert C. “Bobby” Scott (VA-03) delivered the following opening statement at today’s full committee hearing, “Examining the Policies and Priorities of the Department of Health and Human Services” with Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra.

“Thank you, Madam Chair.

“Secretary Becerra, good morning, and thank you for being with us today. It is always a pleasure to welcome you back to the Committee.

“You are familiar with this room, not only from your previous appearances before us as Secretary but also because you and I started our congressional careers right here in this room 30 years ago. It is great to see you back on Capitol Hill, and I thank you for your dedication to public service.

“Under your leadership, the Department of Health and Human Services has made historic progress in helping workers and their families access quality, affordable care.

“In the last Congress, Congressional Democrats passed the  American Rescue Plan Act  without a single Republican vote. That law enhanced premium tax credits to lower monthly costs for low-income Americans, especially by eliminating the subsidy “cliff” so that more individuals could get coverage and get help getting coverage.

“We also passed the  Inflation Reduction Act , which was enacted into law to extend these tax credit enhancements, cap the cost of insulin for people on Medicare, and—for the first time ever—direct the Federal government to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs covered by Medicare.

“These decisive actions yielded positive results. For example, during the 2024 open enrollment period, a record 21.4 million signed up for  Affordable Care Act  (ACA) coverage. That’s not all. 

“Just last week, the Administration took further steps to improve access to coverage by announcing a final rule that would expand health care coverage to Dreamers. 

“We also know that protecting our nation’s health goes beyond improving access to health insurance.  Recently, the Department updated several regulations that will improve the lives of workers and their families. For example, the updated Section 504 regulations will protect disabled individuals from discrimination in programs that receive federal funding through HHS.  

“This will ensure that people with disabilities have equal access to quality care and are treated fairly in systems that are supposed to protect the health and welfare of all Americans.  

“Additionally, the Department issued a number of final regulations that support the health care workforce, seniors in nursing homes, and people with disabilities who rely on Medicaid.  

“Taken together, these rules will work to improve access to and quality of healthcare.

“Unfortunately, my colleagues on the other side speak frequently about their commitment to our nation’s health and safety, but they have not backed up their words with actions.

“For example, my colleagues may talk about child labor problems today. However, the reality is that Republican state legislators in many states across the country are working to reverse child worker protection laws. And, despite our multiple requests for a hearing on this persistent and growing problem, the Majority on this Committee has yet to schedule a hearing or advance legislation to address child labor violations.

“Moreover, we have seen Republicans attempt to: 

• Sabotage quality health care coverage and undermine access to health care and other services that our constituents need;
• Restrict or criminalize a woman’s access to an abortion, jeopardizing the health of women; and, 
• Work against the necessary care that supports the health of transgender individuals. 

“Despite these efforts, Congressional Democrats and the Biden Administration will continue working to lower prescription drug prices, strengthen the ACA, and improve transparency for health care consumers.

“Committee Democrats remain focused on helping this Administration build on our progress to:

• Expand access to care for our most vulnerable communities;
• Lower the cost of quality care; and,
• Meet the changing health care needs of workers and their families.

“The Biden Administration’s proposed investments underscore your commitment to protecting the health and well-being of every American.

“So, Secretary Becerra, thank you for all your work and for joining us today.  I look forward to our discussion.”

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LEADER JEFFRIES STATEMENT MARKING 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION

Washington, DC — House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries released the following statement:

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which struck down the shameful “separate but equal” doctrine established by Plessy v. Ferguson. 

Following the ruling, children simply attempting to attend school were met by violent, racist mobs and local officials sued in federal court to keep their districts segregated. Now, the most segregated school systems in America can be directly traced to policies put in place by opponents of integration in the aftermath of the ruling. Decades later, it remains deeply troubling and unacceptable that we continue to fall short of ensuring all students can flourish on a level playing field.  

Under the leadership of President Biden and Education Secretary Cardona, we’ve made important progress toward school desegregation efforts across the nation, though we still have a long way to go. We owe it not only to heroes like Thurgood Marshall, Daisy Bates, Oliver Brown and Constance Baker Motley who fought to integrate our schools, but to future generations who make up the gorgeous mosaic of America.

Equal access to high-quality education should not be a partisan issue. It’s a problem we must confront together as Americans. Unfortunately, there are people who are more concerned with banning books, rewriting history and bullying children. 

House Democrats know that every student suffers when they are deprived of the opportunity to learn in inclusive settings. That’s why we’re fighting for access to a high-quality education for all students, regardless of race, gender, religion, ethnicity or socioeconomic status.