_The Good Life of Teaching_ extends the recent revival of virtue ethics to professional ethics and the philosophy of teaching. It connects long-standing philosophical questions about work and human growth to questions about teacher motivation, identity, and development. Makes a significant contribution to the philosophy of teaching and also offers new insights into virtue theory and professional ethics Offers fresh and detailed readings of major figures in ethics, including Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor, and Bernard Williams and the practical philosophies of (...) Hannah Arendt, John Dewey and Hans-Georg Gadamer Provides illustrations to assist the reader in visualizing major points, and integrates sources such as film, literature, and teaching memoirs to exemplify arguments in an engaging and accessible way Presents a compelling vision of teaching as a reflective practice showing how this requires us to prepare teachers differently. (shrink)

Stefan Collini challenges the common claim that universities need to show that they help to make money in order to justify getting more money.

This chapter enquires into the nature of university teaching. I consider whether Alasdair MacIntyre's notion of a practice, together with some of his related ideas, is useful to us here. My argument is that MacIntyre's talk of incommensurable rationalities tells in the end against the fragmentation of higher education and rather points to one distinctive and important role for the university: that the university should be conceived in some respects as a therapeutic community, whose function it is to encourage and (...) enable its members to think together. (shrink)

The book brings together social philosophy and educational theory. Liberalism's unresolved tensions between freedom and equality, public and private good, individual and state, etc., are illuminated by controversies in educational theory and policy.

Throughout most of the history of Western civilization, Christianity and Classical ideals played a dominant part in education. In most western countries, however, this is no longer the case. In modern pluralist Democracies, church influence struggles with pervasive influences from elsewhere for the hearts and minds of the public. Educational policy remains, however, an instrument to be used by major power groups, and in many countries has become, to a greater or lesser extent, an active or unwitting accomplice in furthering (...) acquisitiveness and the accumulation of material advantage. (shrink)