ABSTRACT
A provisional definition of the integrity of any practice might run along the following lines: The integrity of a practice is that which entitles practitioners to the freedom to pursue co-operatively the inherent benefits of the practice to high levels of excellence, with due accountability to the public but without undue interference from outside interests. Now to claim this kind of integrity, or integral-ness, for education as a human undertaking is to give it recognition as a practice of its own kind, or a sui generis practice. Put simply, this means: a practice dedicated to advancing forms of learning that are not harnessed in advance to one or other external party or institutionalized interest. As we have already seen, however, so prevalent are the latter conceptions of education that it may be difficult to envisage what education as a sui generis practice might look like. In the plentiful literature of educational research, not many have given attention to investigating this issue. The critical investigations of authors such as Wilfred Carr have probed the relationship between philosophy and education in ways that yield promising orientations for educational thought and action. These investigations enable the domain of educational practice to be viewed as one requiring the elucidation of different species of thinking than those supplied by academic philosophy or scholarly theory.1 The enquiry underway in this book is largely such an elucidation.
