Schools of Education

Socio-Cultural-Focused Discourses tend to operate from the assumption that collective knowing unfolds from and is enfolded in individual knowers. Consequently, most of these discourses attend the situated learner and/or the collective learning system – rather than the individual learner. Matters that figure prominently include context, participation, collaboration, ethics, democratic obligation, and tacit norms.

Democratic Citizenship Education encompasses those approaches to schooling that are attentive to collective process and cultural inequities. Informed mainly by the social sciences, its principal aims are to promote social justice and productive collective action, in part through recognizing and (where appropriate) subverting hegemonic structures.

Most, but not all Emergent Complexity Discourses are explicitly aligned with Complex Systems Research – that is, they are concerned with understanding systems that transcend their parts. A uniting theme of Emergent Complexity Discourses is that global behaviors cannot be predicted on the basis of the rules governing the individual agents.

The Medical Model of (Dis)Ability and Motivation Theories complement one another. The former address what learners can/can’t do, and the latter deal with what learners will/won’t do. A comprehensive analysis of the Medical Model of (Dis)Ability is beyond our interests and purpose, and so, in the elaborated entry, we offer brief summaries of the many, many contemporary discourses, categorized as “Models and Types of Intelligence,” “Types of Disabilities,” and “Types of Learning Disorders.”

Personal Agency Discourses address matters related to involving individuals in decisions that define their educational experience. These discourses tend to be grounded in the assumption that the individual learner can and should be trusted to participate in selecting topics, competency levels, learning environments, pacing, and other elements.

Correspondence Discourses are perspectives on learning that assume a radical separation of mental (or internal, or brain-based) and physical (or external, or body-based). That separation sets up the need for a correspondence between what’s happening in the real, objective world and what’s happening in one’s inner, subjective world. Most assume object-based metaphors, linear/direct imagery, and Newtonian mechanics, thus framing learning in terms of acquiring, attaining, inputting, and/or linking.

Within Developmental Discourses, learning is understood as a recursively elaborative process rather than a linear accumulative one. Most Developmental Discourses focus on how learners’ key habits of perception and interpretation change amid predictable sequences of biological, psychological, and emotional transformation.

Standardized Education includes those approaches to schooling that emphasize common programs of study, age-based grade levels, and uniform performance outcomes. The movement drew much of its inspiration and content from ancient traditions and religion, but its main influences have been industry and the physical sciences.

Well-Being Discourses are concerned with the physical, mental, emotional, and/or social health of individuals. For the most part, these discourses are more concerned with the conditions of learning than the dynamics of cognition or approaches to teaching. Some consensus has arisen around the assertion that attending to learners’ well-being is integral to all aspects of formal education.

Coherence Discourses regard distinctions and descriptions as useful devices to make sense of the complex dynamics of learning, but they caution that such devices are mere heuristic conveniences. Coherence Discourses suggest that truths do not exist independently or outside of a system – which is a commentary on humans’ understanding of reality, not a commentary on reality. Most Coherence Discourses employ biological and ecological metaphors, with dynamics framed in evolutionary terms.

Activist Discourses are focused on interrogating the entrenched narratives and structures that infuse, lend support to, and help to perpetuate social norms and cultural institutions. Oriented by the conviction that there are no “neutral” acts or ideas, and critically attentive to the collective roots of personal convictions, Activist Discourses aim for deep understandings in order to inform and orient justice-oriented thinking and acting.

Authentic Education refers to those approaches to schooling rooted in the human sciences that emphasize personal engagement, learner difference, developmental stages, and personalized learning aligned with individual curiosities and goals.

Motivation Theories are attempts to explain the “why” of human action, and most of them are developed around lists of factors. It is difficult to offer overarching categories of these theories, but we find a trio of distinctions to be helpful: Extrinsic Motivation vs. Intrinsic Motivation; Conscious Motivations vs. Unconscious Motivations; Drives/Needs/Desires Theories vs. Cognitive Motivation Theories. Over the past half-century, trends in formal education have shifted from extrinsic, unconscious, drives/needs/desires to intrinsic, conscious, cognitive.

Cognitive Science is the study of cognition in humans, non-human animals, and machines. It brings together psychology, linguistics, computer science, neuroscience, anthropology, philosophy, and other domains. Typically, the foci of Cognitive Science are identified as learning, development, perception, attention, reasoning, emotion, consciousness, memory, language, creativity, and intelligence, and its are identified as better understanding the mind, advancing practical knowledge of learning, and developing intelligent devices.

The core assertion of Lifelong Learning is that learning is constant, present in every activity and every interaction. The perspective is typically introduced as a reaction to the notion that formal education (i.e., school and similar settings) is the main location to learn and the workplace is the main place to apply learnings. The discourse also reflects broadened learning expectations fitted to the contemporary world.

Learning Sciences aims to extend understandings of learning and efforts to influence learning. Concerned with the neurological, psychological, social, and cultural dimensions of learning, Learning Sciences is prominently focused on improving education through creating, studying, and modifying technologies and environments to support learning.

Learning Design encompasses all activities associated with the development of practices, tasks, resources, and technologies intended to support meaningful and engaged learning in a particular situation. Learning Design discourses are the teaching-focused complement of Emergent Complexity Discourses, which are more focused on the adaptive dynamics of learning systems than on the pragmatics of influencing learning.

Folk Theories exist within every realm of human engagement. They are, in effect, uncritical and often-indefensible principles of action and interpretation that are woven through everyday language and broad cultural sensibilities. In effect, most of the past 150 years of research into learning has been focused on exposing Folk Theories and exploring more conscious and scientifically robust alternatives.

Behaviorisms reject the notion that knowledge is some sort of external, stable, and context-free form. Rejecting attempts to explain learning in terms of unobservable mental processes, Behaviorisms focus instead on observable and measurable phenomena – thus operationally defining learning in terms of changes in behavior that are attributable to environmental factors.

Epistemology encompasses all discourses concerned with what knowledge is, its scope and limits, and how it is generated, validated, enacted, and maintained.

Cognitivism is explicitly developed around the metaphor “brain as computer.” It thus focuses on how information is acquired, processed, and organized. Learning is seen in terms of integration of new information into existing structures through processes of internal codification.

The study of mind and behavior.

Positivism asserts that the highest standard of truth is scientific fact – which, it is further asserted, can only be derived through observation, experimentation, and other direct experiences of phenomena.

Andragogy, a discourse focused on adult education, encourages consideration of: adults’ desires to know the reason for learning something; their broad experiences and knowledge bases; their needs for high levels of autonomy; their inclination toward immediately relevant and useful subjects; their preference for informal, problem-centered over formal, content-focused engagements; and their tendencies to be more internally than externally motivated.

The study of human society