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Role and Function of ‘Philosophy of Education’ within the Educational Sciences: A Cross-National Attempt

Disciplinary structures of education across Europe are rather different mainly due to the fact that education as an anthropological phenomenon is deeply rooted in specific cultural and national contexts. For this reason the role philosophy of education plays within the given national educational sciences is somewhat divergent and not easy to compare. In face of these difficulties the article argues for a cross-national attempt using theorems deriving from modern systems theory. From such a perspective philosophy of education can be regarded as a special ‘knowledge system’ and its function consists in re-including what has been excluded in the process of rationalisation of education; it serves, so to speak, as a special type of reflection knowledge which is as timeless as it is necessary and therefore of meta-national relevance and indispensable for the process of Europeanisation of education. It is reasonably easy to accept Kraft's claim that education is indeed a local social practice, which has emerged out of complex historical and social forces. But to do so is not to accept that there is some kind of incommensurability between the conceptual languages that emerge out of such local conditions. Indeed underlying the particular understandings/problem/challenges that emerge in particular political and cultural contexts are deep commonalities and it is part of the task of philosophy of education to make sense of these. In distinction to Kraft's proposal that we disaggregate the theoretical and the practical, so as to free up the philosophical to do its proper work, the argument presented here is that such dissociation will fail to enable philosophy to do the work of moving education forward. It will fail because it leaves the teacher bereft of the necessary intellectual resources to engage professionally in the task of education. Education is ineluctably a normative engagement and as such requires the teacher to reflect philosophically on its nature.