Degree of Bachelor in education, social sciences or the humanities, and the equivalent of Swedish secondary school English 6alternativelyA professional qualification specialising in teaching that comprises 180 credits, of which 15 credits from an independent project, and the equivalent of Swedish secondary school English 6

Main field Education A1N

The course intends to enable students to develop broad knowledge of the history of ideas and theoretical foundations of the philosophy of science, pedagogy and various educational aims and teaching forms. Furthermore, students will develop an understanding of recurrent debates and controversies about, and within, educational theory and engage with them.

The course applies the perspective of the history of ideas to address practices in education. A central component of the course content focuses on how educational theories have developed in relation to other fields of study in various cultural contexts, and how related controversies have arisen. In addition, the course critically assesses perspectives in philosophy of science in relation to pedagogy and educational sciences.

Upon completion of the course, the student should be able to

1. apply a historical and contemporary philosophy of science perspective to the presentation and critically review educational theories that form the basis of different aims and forms of education;
2. analyse contextual, epistemological and ontological conditions related to various educational practices;
3. analyse how historical and contemporary perspectives on education have been received and challenged in the contexts of philosophy of science and pedagogy.

The course is based on regular lectures, seminars and joint study of literature. There will be opportunities for feedback between the students throughout the course.

Oral exam (15 credits). This test will examine all learning outcomes.

The course coordinator will provide information about grading criteria at the start of the course.
It must be possible to distinguish between individual performances for all assessments

Aristotle (2004). The Nichomachean Ethics. London: Penguin Classics (336 p.)

Dewey, John (1916/1997). Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education. New York: The Free Press (360 p.)

Friesen, Norm (2020). ´Education as a Geistewissenschaf´: an introduction to human science pedagogy, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 52:3, 307-322 (15 p.)

Godfrey-Smith, Peter (2021). Theory and reality: an introduction to the philosophy of science. New ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (288 p.)

Grayling, Anthony C. (2020). The History of Philosophy. London: Penguin Books (720 p.)

Illich, Ivan (1971/1996). Deschooling Society. London: Marion Boyars (116 p.)

Kant, Immanuel (1784/2009). An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’ London: Penguin Books (121 p.)

Masschelein, Jan (2018). An Educational Cave Story (on animals that go to 'school'). In P. Smeyers (ed.)International Handbook of Philosophy of Education. Dordrecht: Springer (pp. 1185-1200) (15 p.)

Mollenhauer, Klaus (1983/2014). Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing (trans. and ed. N. Friesen). Abingdon: Routledge (135 p.)

Peters, Richard S. (1963). Education as Initiation. London: The University of London Institute of Education (pp. 7-48) (41 p.)

Plato (1963). The allegory of the cave. In Collected Dialogues of Plato. Princeton: University Press (pp. 747-752) (6 p.)

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1762/1979). Emile or On Education. New York: Basic Books (501 p.)

Suissa, Judith (2019). Anarchist education. In C. Levy, M. Adams (Eds.) The Palgrave Handbook of Anarchism. Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan (pp. 511-529) (19 p.)

Malmö University provides students who participate in, or who have completed a course, with the opportunity to express their opinions and describe their experiences of the course by completing a course evaluation administered by the University. The University will compile and summarise the results of course evaluations. The University will also inform participants of the results and any decisions relating to measures taken in response to the course evaluations. The results will be made available to the students (HF 1:14).

If a course is no longer offered, or has undergone significant changes, the students must be offered two opportunities for re-examination based on the syllabus that applied at the time of registration, for a period of one year after the changes have been implemented.

If a student has a Learning support decision, the examiner has the right to provide the student with an adapted test, or to allow the student to take the exam in a different format. The syllabus is a translation of a Swedish source text.