The Organisation of Education

Abstract

It has been suggested that teaching is a social practice guided by a social tradition which determines the way the teacher sees himself or herself and his or her role in the practice of teaching. Seeing depends on a way of seeing which is learnt from and shared with others; how we relate to the world in our practice similarly depends on a shared way of behaving or doing. To put it another way, both thought and action are structured by a conceptual scheme which is also reflected in the language which we use to talk about what we see and do; in so far as we use the same language and engage in the same social practices we also make use of the same conceptual scheme. It follows that there can be no coherent practice — whether of teaching, medicine or anything else — without a coherent conception of it on the part of its practitioners, although it need not be self-conscious or verbalised. If this is correct then it follows also that in order to change the way a practice is carried out — to change what is actually done — in a fundamental way it is necessary to change the conception of it which its practitioners have, and to change the central features of that conception, not just its details.