Future of Education Can Schools

Future of Education

Can schools of education hope to transform schooling from the "bottom up," through the preparation of novice teachers who will serve as effective change agents in their professional settings? Once this change is made, can the educators, as they glean more experience in the classroom and the school system, act as change agents in order to improve many of the inequities within the system? Some teacher educators remain committed to the development of programs that promote critical and/or progressivist ideals in their students and the talents for realizing the ideals in the students' future workplaces. Is the future of the American educational system in the hands of the teachers or the politicians? Of course, no pedagogical pattern is fixed; but rather a fluid, sometimes vague set of attitudes, tentative beliefs, complex and even contradictory dispositions, and so many ideologies that just as one seems the new future, the pendulum swings back to another paradigm (Barone, 2000).

Sometimes theory helps construct a template for understanding the implications of so many theoretical structures. Constructivism, for instance, has been the buzz word in education for the last few deacades. It is a theory of knowledge arguing that humans generate knowledge and meaning by way of experience. In science, for instance, this implies epistemology and experimentation, not simply lecture and instructor-generated knowledge (Kim, 2005). In general, social constructivism views each student as having unique needs and backgrounds -- and is quite complex and multidimensional. Social constructivism not only allows for this uniqueness, but actual encourages, utilizes, and even wards it as part of the learning process (Dougiamas, 1998). It encourages the student to arrive at their own version of the truth, of course influenced by their own worldview as well as the nature of instruction. The responsibility of the actual learning, then, resides with the student, and emphasizes the importance of the student remaining actively involved in the process. The motivation for learning is based, in many ways, on Vygotsky's "Zone of proximal development" -- a theory that posits that learners are challenged in proximity to their current level of development, yet slightly above. By experiencing a successful completion of challenging activities, learners gain self-confidence and motivation, guiding them to even more complex challenges (Matthews, 1998).

Tied with Vygotsky, this makes much sense in the classroom and a way to frame the subtext of education. Certainly, there are implications of idealism, realism, pragmatism, and even existentialism in teaching models; but when it comes to what works in the classroom, one can use a model based on utilitarianism with a constructivist bent and find their way through what has become a mire of philosophical argument. Utilitarianism holds that the most ethical thing one can do is any action that will maximize the happiness within an organization or society. Actions have quantitative outcomes and the ethical choices that lead to the "greatest good for the greatest number" are the appropriate decisions, even if that means subsuming the rights of certain individuals. It is considered to be a consequential outlook in the sense that while outcomes cannot be predicted the judgment of an action is based on the outcome -- or, "the ends justify the means." Deontology is similar, arguing that there are norms and truths that are universal for all humans; actions then have a predisposition to right or wrong, moral or immoral. Morality, then, is based on rational thought and is the direction most humans innately want. Roughly, deontology is "the means justify the ends" (Troyer, 2003).