ABSTRACT
Philosophy and education have a long, intertwined history at Teachers College, Columbia University. Figures such as John Dewey, William Heard Kilpatrick, George Counts, Jonas Soltis, and Maxine Greene have bequeathed a dynamic inheritance to the current faculty and students in the Program in Philosophy and Education, housed in the College’s Department of Arts & Humanities. This program continues to flourish despite a decline in the number of programs in education that include the formal study of philosophy of education. In this chapter, faculty members David Hansen and Megan Laverty describe the program’s history and its current structure and ethos. They address the possible influence of their program not just on students pursuing degrees in philosophy and education, but on the many teacher candidates and candidates preparing for educational administration who have studied in their program’s courses. They draw upon testimony from graduates from their doctoral program, who are now faculty in schools of education the world over, for their views on the program’s impact, in particular, and on the values for educators of studying philosophy, in general. The authors deploy this narrative as a basis for arguing the continued centrality, in schools and colleges of education, of philosophical study fused with practical preparation.
