Gnoseology (Gnosiology, Gnostology)

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.

While there are many, many modes of Premodern Education, we use the term here to refer to the immediate precursors to modern schooling, such as the ancient Greek academy, the medieval university, and the early church school. In these settings, there was a tendency to define formal education in terms of maintaining order and Truth – that is, in terms of countering chaos and immorality.

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.

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.

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