ABSTRACT
Education is often taken to mean schooling, as school is the main formal educational institution in society. This can lead to a situation where education thinking and practice becomes the professional and specialist preserve of school teachers. But of course education is broader than schooling and involves parents, policy makers, religious organisations and many other interested parties. Education is an intensely personal as well as a social and political matter. Like matters of national defence which are too important to be left to the armed services, education is too central to the well-being of individuals, institutions and the state to be left solely to professional educators. With such a broadly based stake and involvement in educational outcomes we would expect differing and conflicting ideas about educational aims and methods. Authoritative perspectives about the nature of education might be expected from professionals who specialise in a field. But in the case of teachers and teaching, the daily personal demands of the work and the tight professional conditions of work lead many teachers to adopt a ‘practicality ethic’ in their approach to educational thinking and research (Doyle and Ponder, 1977).
