interesting but self-indulgent, detracting from the core business of teacher quality
and competence as the proper concern of research in teacher education.
But many of the philosophers who are engaged in researching teacher education
are themselves teacher educators (for examples, see Heilbronn and Foreman-Peck
(eds., 2015 ) or teachers, e.g. Fordham ( 2015 )). Hogan’s ontological interests in the
transformative qualities of learning, or Higgins’ethical defence of the‘self-ful’,
self-cultivating teacher are examples of serious philosophical arguments that have
arisen out of direct engagement with teachers’professional development.
Therefore, in this section, we consider philosophy as a mode of teacher edu-
cation research and the potential difference that being a teacher educator might
bring to the philosophical inquiry being undertaken. We distinguish between the
potential for specialised philosophical thinking in teacher education and a more
general form of philosophy undertaken by teachers and teacher educators. As
philosophers who are teacher educators have demonstrated, this potential in each
respect remains under-developed.
36.3.1 The Contribution of Teacher Education Practice
to Philosophical Inquiry
Specialist philosophy is not for everyone but we have shown in the previous section
that philosophy remains as relevant as ever to the education of teachers.
Furthermore, there are teachers as well as teacher educators both willing and able in
principle to engage with ideas of this nature and type. Positioned within teacher
education, they are well-placed to identify valuable new areas for philosophical
inquiry rooted in that experience, including the direct impact of policy initiatives,
whether through philosophical or inter/multidisciplinary inquiry. Take the follow-
ing two examples which are currently being investigated because a philosopher who
is a practitioner has initiated them.
First, a prominent debate in teacher education at present concerns teachers’
knowledge and understanding of the warrants of educational research. Tom Bennett
( 2013 ), a teacher whosefirst degree is in philosophy, has promoted the urgent need
for teachers to be able to distinguish good educational research from bad, drawing
on a long-standing debate about‘visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learning styles’,
once popular in teacher education programmes, and now downplayed, following
widespread criticism. Bennett argues that teachers themselves should be equipped
to distinguish authoritative from non-authoritative research during their initial
training, to protect them from the imposition of popular fads and to enable them to
identify‘quality’research most likely to impact positively on their practice.
Furthermore, the much neglected area of developing teachers’ethical sensitivity
through professional learning is now being addressed by philosophers who are
teacher educators (e.g. Orchard and Heilbronn 2014 ). The moral and ethical
dimensions of teachers’classroom practice are recognised widely as critical to good
548 D. Bridges et al.