Karl Hostetler

What Is “Good” Education Research?

The question of what counts as good education research has received a great deal of attention, but too often it is conceived principally as a methodological question rather than an ethical one. Good education research is a matter not only of sound procedures but also of beneficial aims and results; our ultimate aim as researchers and educators is to serve people’s well-being. For their research to be deemed good in a strong sense, education researchers must be able to articulate some sound connection between their work and a robust and justifiable conception of human well-being. There is a good deal of history and convention against such a conception of researchers’ work. We need to consider the conditions needed if that conception is to be realized. Among the conditions is a concerted and cooperative endeavor for moral education among researchers and the people with whom they work—a context where questions of well-being are foregrounded, welcomed, and vigorously debated.

Retrieving Meaning In Teacher Education The Question Of Being

In this article we examine “meaning” and “action” within the “good” work of teaching and learning. One premise of our argument is that teachers and students deserve to experience this good. The second premise is that meaning is part and parcel of Being; the debate about meaning must include attention to meaning as a question/project of Being. We offer our experiences as an educational anthropologist, educational philosopher, and teacher educator who strive to retrieve and pursue meaning and Being as common resources and aspirations.

(Mis)Understanding Human Beings: Theory, Value, and Progress in Education Research.

There is renewed interest in what can be called an experimentist approach to education research. The claim is that if researchers would focus on experiments and evidence-based policies and practices, irreversible progress in education can be achieved. This experimentist approach cannot provide the understanding of knowledge and human beings needed for meaningful progress in education. Lacking is adequate appreciation for the role of theory, particularly ethical and other philosophical theory. We especially need a theory of our human condition and a keen awareness for how some conceptions of scientific work can influence, and distort, our conceptions of human beings and worthwhile lives. As paradoxical as it might seem at first, to move ahead in education and our service to persons’ welfare, we need to look backward to revisit old truths.

Ethics and Power: Implications for the Principal's Leadership

The guiding principles for leadership are transactional, not coer cive or charismatic, according to this writer, who explores on these pages the ethical use of power in the principalship.

Beyond Reflection: Perception, virtue, and teacher knowledge

Abstract In this article, I aim to vindicate the belief that many teachers have that their intuitions, insights, or perceptions are legitimate—and indispensible—guides for their teaching. Perceptions can constitute knowledge. This runs counter to some number of views that emphasize ‘reflective practice’ and teachers as ‘reflective practitioners.’ I do not deny that reflection can be important, but it is a derivative task, dependent on teachers being the ‘right sort of subject,’ having the ‘right orientation’ to their work, at the service of achieving that orientation. That orientation is a matter of virtue, where virtue is manifested in the capacity to read situations correctly for what is required to serve persons’ welfare, for them to do well. This entails that good teaching is more experienced-based than research-based. Ultimately, it is life experience that provides for teachers’ ability to see well.

Towards a Perfectionist Response to Ethical Conflict

This paper argues for a pluralist perfectionist response to ethical conflict. This sets for states and their public schools the task of helping people adjudicate conflicts between ethical orientations and of promoting or discouraging particular conceptions of a good life. The aim of deliberation is mutual ethical recognition and growth, judged against a thick yet universally shared conception of human flourishing. The political justification of perfectionism is that it provides a better defense against repression and discrimination than state neutrality on issues of the good life. The paper addresses liberal concerns and counters claims that adjudication threatens human relationships.