Education as Initiation to a Form of Life: Conceptual Investigation and Education Theory

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According to L. Wittgenstein and Wittgensteinians, there is a set of intuitions, propositions and practices that forms the community’s bounds of sense. In this paper I discuss how fruitful this idea can be for education theory. I argue that, although the idea of an existing everyday framework can help explain how education works, any efforts to defend our current worldview as binding of our understanding boils down to conservatism. Following this view is the assertion that many problems posed today by philosophers and scientists are bogus and should be dismissed on the ground that they question our ordinary framework. Hence prescribing an even stronger version of conservatism that promotes quietism over intellectual challenge.

Stream: Curriculum and Pedagogy; Student Learning, Learner Experiences, Learner Diversity

Paper: , Education as Initiation to a “Form of Life”

Zacharoula (Renia) Gasparatou is a lecturer of Philosophy at the University of Patras, Greece. She received her BS in Philosophy from the University of Athens, Greece (1992-1996) and her PhD in contemporary Epistemology from the University of Crete, Greece (1999-2005). Part of her PhD research was undertaken in the Department of Philosophy and History of Science of the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), where she was a visiting scholar (2002-2003). Since 2005, she teaches Epistemology in the Department of Philosophy and in the Department of Educational Science of the University of Patras. Her research interests include the use of intuitions and thought experiments in science, philosophy and education, the relation of science and philosophy, the nature of emotions in explanation and understanding.