EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS

Educational Settings

Educational Settings

Introduction

Education should raise the awareness of the students so that they become subjects, rather than objects, of the world. This is done by teaching students to think democratically and to continually question and make meaning from (critically view) everything they learn.

Our relationship with the learners demands that we respect them and demands equally that we be aware of the concrete conditions of their world, the conditions that shape them. To try to know the reality that our students live is a task that the educational practice imposes on us: Without this, we have no access ' to the way they think, so only with great difficulty can we perceive what and how they know. There are no themes or values of which one cannot speak, no areas in which one must be silent.

Research in urban educational settings: setting the scene

The Center for Urban Education is dedicated to supporting school-based research and reform efforts that focus on the problems and issues confronting urban schools. Spencer-funded graduate students in the School of Education will be provided research training opportunities and support based on their individual interests in urban educational issues, but linked as much as possible to actual work being done in urban settings and schools. Through collaborations with urban schools and community-based non-profits, the Center seeks to support efforts to improve the quality of education available to students in` low-income urban areas.

Science, Knowledge and the Truth about Society: what can we know, how do we find out and can we be sure?

The development of the scientific method has made a significant contribution to our understanding of knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. The scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.

Science, and the nature of scientific knowledge have also become the subject of Philosophy. As science itself has developed, knowledge has developed a broader usage which has been developing within biology/psychology—discussed elsewhere as meta-epistemology, or genetic epistemology, and to some extent related to "theory of cognitive development".  

Other biological domains where "knowledge" might be said to reside, include: (iii) the immune system, and (iv) in the DNA of the genetic code. See the list of four "epistemological domains": Popper, (1975); and Traill (2008 : Table S, page 31)—also references by both to Niels Jerne.

Such considerations seem to call for a separate definition of "knowledge" to cover the biological systems. For biologists, knowledge must be usefully available to the system, though that system need not be conscious. Thus the criteria seem to be:

The system should apparently be dynamic and self-organizing (unlike a mere book on its own).

The knowledge must constitute some sort of representation of "the outside world", or ways of dealing with it (directly or indirectly).

There must be some way for the system to access this information quickly enough for it to be ...