You are on page 1of 12

1

GOOD EDUCATION: WHAT IT IS AND WHY WE NEED IT


Inaugural Lecture
Professor Gert Biesta
The Stirling Institute of Education
4
th
March 2009, 5.00-6.00

Introduction
The topic I have chosen for this lecture is good education. By using the phrase good
education and not, for example, effective education, successful education or
excellent education I wish to make it clear from the outset that I am dealing with a
normative question. In my view questions about education always raise normative
issues and therefore always require value judgements, i.e., judgements about what we
consider to be desirable. In plural democracies like ours we should not expect that
there will only be one answer to the question as to what constitutes good education. It
rather is a sign of a healthy democracy that there are ongoing discussions about the
purpose and direction of such a crucial common endeavour as education. After all,
education is not simply a private good; it is also and in my view first and foremost
a public good and therefore a matter of public concern. Education, in its widest sense,
is about how we welcome newcomers
1
into our worlds. It therefore raises important
questions about how we (re)present our worlds to newcomers something which
involves selection, choice and judgement.

One reason why I consider it important to pay attention to the question as to what
constitutes good education has to do with recent tendencies in policy, research and
practice that seem to suggest that this question no longer matters or, to be more
precise, that seem to suggest that this question can be resolved without engaging in
discussions about value and purpose. One of these tendencies is the rise of an
international league-table industry which is increasingly influencing education
policy at national and local level. Studies such as the Trends in International
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the Progress in International Reading
Literacy Study (PIRLS) and, most notoriously, OECDs Programme for International
Student Assessment (PISA), generate a never-ending stream of comparative data that
are supposed to tell us which educational systems are better and which are best.
Although there is nothing against attempts to make such judgements, the problem
with league-tables is that they give the impression that the data can speak for
themselves. As a result, the deeper question whether such studies indeed measure
what we value or create a situation in which we are valuing what is or can be
measured, is easily forgotten. Whether a high score on TIMMS, PIRLS or PISA does
indeed indicate good education is an entirely open question that crucially depends on
what we expect from education. And even if we were to accept the validity of such
measures, there are always further questions about the material and immaterial costs
involved in achieving a high score, both for individual students and for the
educational system as a whole.


1
I use the term newcomers to refer to anyone who is new in a particular situation. The
category of newcomer therefore includes children, immigrants, but also those who are new
in relation to a particular trade or profession, such as student hairdressers, student teachers,
and so on. Elsewhere I have made a case for seeing the idea of coming into the world as a
fundamental education category. (see Biesta 2006).

2
A second tendency that has contributed to the marginalisation of questions about good
education can be found in calls for turning education into an evidence-based
profession based on research knowledge about what works.
2
Again, I do think that
to a certain extent it can be useful to examine the effectiveness of particular
educational practices and procedures, as long as one bears in mind that in the social
domain there are at most probabilistic relationships between actions and consequences
and never deterministic relationships between causes and effects. After all, if teaching
is going to have any impact on students, it is not because of some kind of mysterious
force that teachers exert upon their students, but because of the fact that students
interpret and make sense of what they are being taught. The links between teaching
and learning are, in other words, achieved through processes of interpretation and
such links are by definition weak.
3
But the most important point here is that
effectiveness in itself is never a sufficient reason for adopting a particular approach
or procedure. There is, after all, both effective and ineffective brain washing, just as
there is effective and ineffective torturing. Effectiveness, to put it differently, is an
instrumental value a value that says something about the ways in which certain ends
can be achieved, but which does not say anything about the desirability of the ends in
themselves. To address the latter question we need normative judgements about what
we consider educationally desirable. To call for effective schools, effective teaching,
effective assessment, and so on, is therefore meaningless until one specifies what it is
one aims to achieve and why what one aims to achieve is desirable or good. With
regard to educational effectiveness we therefore always need to ask: Effective for
what? and also Effective for whom?
4


These are some of the reasons why I consider it important to put the question of good
education back on the agenda of educators, researchers and policy makers. But my
ambition with this lecture is not only to make a case for considering the goodness of
education and in what follows I will say more about the ways in which I think that
this question might be addressed. I also want to make a case for the importance of
education or, to be more precise, for the need to use the language of education when
we discuss educational matters. Putting it this way may sound odd, so let me try to
explain why I not only want to make a case for good education but also for good
education.

The Problem with Learning
The simplest way to present my case for an educational language is to contrast it with
the language I think we should not be using when discussing educational matters
and this is the language of learning. I am not suggesting that the word learning has
no place in education. But I do wish to argue that learning and education are two
radically different concepts and that we shouldnt conflate them. This is not simply a
matter of the proper use of language. The concepts we have available in a particular
domain of human action such as education in a very fundamental sense structure what
we can say, think, and do and therefore also impact upon what cannot be said, thought
and done. This is why language matters, also in education.


2
For a detailed analysis see Biesta (2007a).
3
For more on this see Vanderstraeten & Biesta (2006); Biesta (in press[a]).
4
See Bogotch, Mirn & Biesta (2007).

3
My concerns about the notion of learning or, to be more precise, about the
conflation of learning and education should be understood against the background
of the remarkable rise of the concept of learning within educational discussions over
the past two or three decades; a phenomenon to which I have referred as the rise of
the new language of learning (see Biesta 2004a; 2006). This rise can, for example,
be found in the redefinition of teaching as the facilitation of learning or the provision
of learning opportunities or learning experiences. It can be found in the use of the
word learner instead of pupil or student or of the phrase adult learner instead of
just adult. And it is manifest in the transformation of the field of adult education into
that of lifelong learning. It is also worth noting that the word education no longer
appears in the name of the two UK government departments that deal with
educational matters (they are now known as The Department for Children, Schools
and Families and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills), unlike in
Scotland where there is at least still a Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong
Learning. What perhaps also fits in with this picture is the case of Watercliffe
Meadow, an institution that was formed as a merge between three former primary
schools in Sheffield and that decided to refer to itself as a place of learning rather
than a school.
5


The rise of the new language of learning can be seen as the expression of a more
general trend to which I have referred with a deliberately ugly term as the
learnification of education (see Biesta 2009). By this I mean the translation of
everything there is to say about education in terms of learning and learners. A focus
on learning is, of course, not entirely problematic. Although not a new insight, the
idea that learning is not determined by teaching but depends on the activities of
students can help teachers to rethink what they might do best to support their students.
There are even emancipatory opportunities in the new language of learning to the
extent to which it can empower individuals to take control of their own educational
agendas. Yet there are also problems with the rise of the new language of learning and,
more specifically, with the concept of learning itself.

One problem with the word learning is that it is basically an individualistic concept.
It refers to what people do as individuals. This stands in stark contrast to the concept
of education which generally denotes a relationship. Whereas one can educate
someone and someone can be educated by someone else, one cannot learn someone.
This already reveals one problem with the language of learning: it makes it difficult to
articulate the fact that education is about relationships, and more specifically about
relationships between teachers and students. The language of learning makes it
difficult to acknowledge the relational character of education and also makes it
difficult to raise questions about the particular role and responsibility of the educator
in such relationships. This is one reason why the words education and learning are
not the same and are not interchangeable. This does not mean, of course, that they
have nothing to do with each other. One could say that the general aim of educational
activities is that people will learn from them. But that doesnt make education into
learning; it simply says that learning is the intended outcome of educational processes
and practices. All this also doesnt mean that people cannot learn without or outside
of education. It simply highlights the fact that when we talk about education we refer

5
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watercliffe_Meadow [accessed 26 February 2009]

4
to a specific setting in which learning takes place; a setting, moreover, with a specific
set of relationships, roles and responsibilities.

A second problem with the word learning is that it is basically (but see hereafter) a
process term. This means that it is open if not empty with regard to content. Yet in
educational situations the aim is never simply that learning will occur; the interest is
always in the learning of something and this, in turn, is connected to particular reasons
for wanting the student to learn something. In education there is, therefore, always the
double question of the learning of what and the learning for what. The problem
with the language of learning is that it makes questions about content and purpose
much more difficult to ask yet education, unlike learning, is always structured by
purpose and content. This is the second reason why education and learning are not the
same and why the language of learning is actually quite unhelpful in discussing
educational matters. An example of the emptiness of the language of learning can be
found in the Scottish Standard for Chartered Teacher which, unlike the Standard for
Full Registration, is rather permeated by a language of learning. In the document one
of the four professional values and personal commitments is described as
effectiveness in promoting learning in the classroom, which is further broken down
into the requirement to demonstrate the capacity to (1) effect further progress in
pupils' learning and development: (2) create and sustain a positive climate for
learning; and (3) use strategies which increase pupils' learning (see GTCS 2002).
Very little, if anything, is said about what students should learn and for what they
should learn. Even less is said about what would be required from Chartered Teachers
in terms of their ability to make informed value judgements about the content and
direction of their teaching and wider educational endeavours.
6
When we look more
closely at the language used, a phrase such as increasing pupils learning is actually
rather incomprehensible in my view.

Before I draw my conclusions about the language of learning and move to a
discussion about the question of the goodness of education, there is one more
peculiarity of the word learning that I wish to address briefly. Although there are
ongoing discussions within the educational literature about definitions of learning, it
is generally accepted that learning can at least be defined as any change that is not
the result of maturation or, in a slightly more precise definition, as any more or less
durable change that is not the result of maturation. In addition to this, many
definitions specify the kinds of change that are considered to be important, such as
changes in skilfulness, in cognition, in mastery and so on. One important point here is
that learning refers to those changes that are the result of engagement with our
environments, which means that in this regard we can say that all learning is by
definition experiential learning, i.e., learning from experience and experiencing. An
important implication of this line of thinking is that when we use the word learning
such as in sentences like Mary has learned how to ride a bicycle or Mary has

6
There is a similar problem with regard to the notion of effectiveness which is also used as
something that is good in itself, rather than that it is positioned as an instrumental value. This
can, for example, be seen in the following two statements: the Chartered Teacher should
regularly and systematically demonstrate and evaluate his or her effectiveness as a teacher;
and the Chartered Teacher should demonstrate the capacity to contribute to the professional
development of colleagues and to make a fuller contribution to the educational effectiveness
of the school and the wider professional community than could be expected of teachers near
the outset of their career (see GTCS 2002).

5
learned the first law of thermodynamics we are not so much describing something
as that we are making a judgement about changes that have taken place. The point
here is that when we look at Mary more carefully we will probably be able to find
numerous changes going on all the time. The reason for identifying some of the
changes as learning and others just as changes is because we value these changes
and because we have reason to believe that these changes are the result of engagement
with the environment, not just effects of maturation. (Which isnt to suggest that this
distinction is easy to make and that the difference is always clear-cut.) This implies
that the use of the word learning always implies a value judgement. Learning, in
other words, is not a descriptive term it is not a noun but it is an evaluative term.

The upshot of this is that we can only use the word learning retrospectively, i.e., after
some change has happened. Whether any current activity will actually result in
learning that is, whether it will actually result in more or less durable changes that
we find valuable is not something we can know when we are engaged in the activity.
Whether you will learn anything from listening to this lecture is, in other words, a
question that can only be answered in the future and sometimes it can take a very
long time before we can conclude that we have learned something from a particular
experience or event, which is an important argument against an exclusive focus on
short-time result in education. This implies that the word learning does not refer to
an activity and we can summarise this by saying that learning is also not a verb. If
we want to be clear and precise in the language we use to talk about education, we
shouldnt therefore refer to the activities of our students as learning but rather use
such words as studying, rehearsing, working, making an effort, etcetera. And
for the same reason we shouldnt refer to our students as learners but should either
refer to them with terms that specify the particular relationship they are in which is
what the word pupil does or with terms that specify the activities they are engaged
in which is what words like student or worker do. (The Dutch progressive
educator Kees Boeke referred to the students in his school as workers and referred to
the school that he established and which still exists in Bilthoven as a workplace.)

For all these reasons I therefore wish to argue that the language of learning is rather
unhelpful for discussion of educational matters as it tends to obscure the relational
dimensions of education the fact that education is always about teachers and
students in relationship and also because it makes it more difficult to raise questions
about content and purpose. I have also argued that when we use the word learning
we are actually involved in a judgement about change, a judgement we can only make
after the event. For that reason using the word learning to describe the activities of
students is as imprecise as it is to refer to students as learners. This is also the reason
why we cannot ask from students that they take responsibility for their own learning
they can only take responsibility for their studying, their activities, their efforts,
etcetera, and it is this that teachers should demand from students. All this also means
that learning can not be the object of any strategy. Despite the many teaching and
learning strategies that are being developed in schools, colleges and universities, and
despite the fact that many of such institutions make individuals responsible for
teaching & learning, it is only teaching and related aspects such as curriculum and
assessment that can be the object of a strategy and thus can be the responsibility of
individuals whose task it is to take care of what, with a simple word, we might
perhaps best refer to as education.


6
If this suffices as an indication of why we need education that is, why we need an
educational language with proper educational concepts I now wish to turn to
questions about what constitutes good education.

Good Education
My ambition with raising the question of good education is not to specify what good
education, a good school, a good college or a good university should look like. As I
said in my introduction, we shouldnt expect that in plural democracies like ours there
will only be one answer to this question. Yet it is of crucial importance that there is an
ongoing discussion about the content, purpose and direction of education first and
foremost because education is and should be a matter of public concern. I do not
only think that it is important to have a plurality of opinions about what constitutes
good education. I also believe that it is important to have a plurality of actual
educational practices. Here I am partly biased as a result of my upbringing in the
Netherlands, a country which over the past century has developed and has managed to
maintain an interesting level of plurality within a state-funded system of compulsory
education. Although there are some advantages of educational standardisation and
the main advantage, one that we have to take very seriously from a social justice angle,
is that it can bring about an equality of provision I also believe that there are many
disadvantages to the MacDonaldisation (or perhaps we should now call this the
Starbuckisation) of education.

One disadvantage of standardisation is that it takes away opportunities for educational
professionals to make their own judgements about what is necessary and desirable in
the always particular situations they work in. My experience in England has been that
the scope for professional judgement and professional action in education has
systematically been eroded as a result of a massive top-down standardisation of
education, combined with narrow-minded forms of inspection based on low trust.
7
At
this point I can only say that I have encountered a significantly different culture
within Scottish education, and here I particularly want to single out the idea of the
Chartered Teacher as the expression of a belief in the power of education and as a
serious investment in and commitment to the development of professionality and a
high trust culture in education.

A second disadvantage of educational standardisation is that it takes away any
opportunity for a plurality of opinions about good education. This is often done
through the construction of a quasi-consensus around an alleged common sense
notion of what good education is. One popular version of such a quasi-consensus is
the idea that in order to remain competitive within the global knowledge economy
schools need to produce a highly-skilled workforce; hence the most important task for
schools is that of raising standards in English, science and mathematics. While this
story may sound appealing and many policy makers at national and supra-national
level (such as the OECD) seem to believe it it is based on questionable assumptions,
for example because it assumes that in the knowledge economy we will all have
complex jobs that require a high level of education, whereas in reality those jobs are
only available for a happy few and the bulk of jobs in many post-industrial societies is
to be found in the low-skilled and low-paid service industry (and here we can, again,
refer to MacDonalds, Starbucks, call-centres, and the like). Yet the problem with such

7
For more on this see Biesta (2004b).

7
constructions about what good education is, is not only that they are based upon
questionable assumptions. The problem of stories that express a quasi-consensus
about good education is also that they suggest that there is no alternative. It is,
however, not too difficult to see that instead of economic competitiveness, we could
also argue that as a society we should give priority to care care for the elderly, care
for the environment or to democracy and peaceful co-existence. Such priorities
suggest a complete different set of educational arrangements and articulate radically
different views about what good education might look like.

My contribution to the discussion about what constitutes good education is not about
suggesting alternative futures for education. Although this is important as well, I wish
to confine myself in this lecture to a more modest task, viz. that of presenting a
framework that might be helpful in asking more precise questions about what good
education is or might be. My main point in suggesting this framework is to emphasise
that educational processes and practices serve a number of different functions and
purposes. This not only means that the answer to the question as to what constitutes
good education is likely to be different in relation to the different functions. By
distinguishing between the different functions it also becomes possible to explore the
extent to which emphasising one function might interfere with the quality of
education in relation to one of the other functions. The framework can help, in other
words, to think about costs and trade-offs of particular educational arrangements.

Although the everyday use of the word education often gives the impression that it
refers to a single reality, education is actually a composite concept. This becomes
clear when we ask what education is for. In answering this question I wish to suggest
that education serves (at least) three different functions. One important function of
education has to do with qualification, that is, with the ways in which education
contributes to the acquisition of knowledge, skills and dispositions that qualify us for
doing something a doing which can range from the very specific (such as the
training for a particular job) to the very general (such as in the case of liberal
education). The qualification function is without doubt one of the major functions of
organised education and is an important rationale for having state-funded education in
the first place. The argument, as I have mentioned, is often an economic one, i.e., that
people need knowledge and skills in order to become employable. But the acquisition
of knowledge and skills is also important for other aspects of peoples lives. Here we
can think, for example, of political literacy the knowledge and skills needed to
exercise ones citizenship rights or cultural literacy the knowledge and skills
considered to be necessary for functioning in society more generally.
8


A second function of education has to do with the ways in which, through education,
individuals become part of existing socio-cultural, political and moral orders. This is
the socialisation function of education. Schools partly engage in socialisation
deliberately, for example, in the form of values education, character education,
religious education or citizenship education, or, and this is more explicit at the level of
colleges and universities, in relation to professional socialisation. Socialisation also
happens in less visible ways, as has been made clear in the literature on the hidden
curriculum and the role of education in the reproduction of social inequality. It is, in

8
What kind of knowledge and skills we need to function in society is, of course, a
complicated matter. I do not have the space to go into this here, but see Biesta (2002).

8
other words, both an important function and an important effect of (engaging in)
education.

Whereas some would argue that education should only focus on qualification this is
often seen as the justification of the traditional school as place for the transmission
and acquisition of knowledge and whereas others defend that education has an
important role to play in the socialisation of children and young people, there is a
third function of education which is different from both qualification and socialisation.
This function has to do with the ways in which education contributes to the
individuation or, as I prefer to call it for a number of philosophical reasons, the
subjectification of children and young people. The individuation or subjectification
function might perhaps best be understood as the opposite of the socialisation function.
It is not about the insertion of newcomers into existing orders, but about ways of
being that hint at independence from such orders; ways of being in which the
individual is not simply a specimen of a more encompassing order. It is, to put a big
and complex concept against it, about the ways in which education makes a
contribution to human freedom.
9


Whether all education actually does contribution to individuation is debatable. Some
would argue that this is not necessarily the case and that the actual influence of
education can and should be confined to qualification and socialisation. Others
would argue, however, that education always impacts on individuals and their
modes and ways of being and that, in this sense, education always has an
individuating effect. What matters more, however -- and here we need to shift the
focus of the discussion from questions about the functions of education to questions
about the aims and ends of education is the quality of individuation, i.e., the
question what forms of subjectivity are made possible in and through particular
educational arrangements. It is in relation to this that some would argue and actually
have argued that any education worthy of its name should always allow for forms of
individuation and subjectification that allow those being educated to become more
autonomous and independent in their thinking and acting.

The distinction between the three functions of education, that is, between three areas
in which education operates and has effects, can be helpful when we engage in
discussions about what constitutes good education because it can make us aware of
the fact that the question about good education is a composite question: it consists of
(at least) three different questions. An answer to the question what constitutes good
education should therefore always specify its views about qualification, socialisation
and individuation even in the unlikely case that one would wish to argue that only
one of them matters. To say that the question of what constitutes good education is a
composite question, is not to suggest that the three dimensions of education can and
should be seen as entirely separate. The contrary is the case. When we engage in
qualification, we always also impact on socialisation and on individuation. Similarly,
when we engage in socialisation, we always do so in relation to particular content
and hence link up with the qualification function and will have an impact on
individuation. And when we engage in education that puts individuation first, we will

9
I wish to emphasise that the idea of freedom can be articulated in a range of different ways,
from egocentric, self-obsessed freedom to do anything one wants to responsible, relational
and difficult freedom to use a phrase form the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas.

9
usually still do so in relation to particular curricular content and this will always also
have socialising effects. The three functions of education can therefore best be
represented in the form of a Venn-diagram, i.e., as three overlapping areas, and the
more interesting and important questions are actually about the intersections between
the areas rather than the individual areas per se.

The distinction between the three functions of education is not only important when
we engage in discussions about the aims and purposes of education and the shape and
form of good education; it can also be a helpful framework for analysing existing
educational practices and policies. With regard to this I just want to make one brief
observation which is that in many recent discussions about the shape and form of
education, particularly at the level of education policy, the discussion is shifting more
and more towards the socialisation function of education. Increasingly discussions
about the aims and ends of education try to describe the kind of person that should be
produced through education, rather than that the focus is on the things that should be
learned as a result of engagement with education.

A good example of this can be found in the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence
which, although it refers to itself as a document about Curriculum, actually specifies
the intended outcomes of education in terms of personal qualities and many of you
in this room will be familiar with the four capacities that frame the Scottish
Curriculum for Excellence: successful learners, confident individuals, responsible
citizens, effective contributors.
10
Although I generally welcome attempts to introduce
new languages into the educational discussion as they allow us to see and do things
differently, I do think that the shift towards socialisation such as expressed in the
Scottish Curriculum for Excellence is worrying for two reasons. One is that by
emphasising what students should be or become, questions about what they should
know and be able to do become secondary. The danger here is, in other words, that we
forget to pay sufficient attention to the qualification function of education and thus
might forget that in many cases and for many individuals knowledge is still power.

The other reason why I think that the shift towards socialisation, towards the
production of a particular kind of individual, is worrying, is that it gets us too far
away from the individuation or subjectification function of education. It puts the
emphasis too much on moulding individuals according to particular templates and
provides too little opportunity for ways of being that question and challenge such
templates. In my own research I have explored this issue particularly in relation to
citizenship
11
. Here I have argued that the idea of responsible citizenship puts the
emphasis too much on a-political forms of citizenship that are mainly confined to
doing good deeds in the community, and provides too little opportunity for the
acquisition of political literacy, the promotion of political activism and the
development of political agency. Good education in the domain of citizenship should
therefore not be about the production of obedient citizens through effective
socialisation, but should also operate in the domain of individuation and

10
The National Curriculum for England and Wales has recently adopted a similar language to
articulate the aims of education for key stage 3 and 4. It is interesting to see, however, that
they have included three of the four Scottish capacities viz., successful learners, confident
individuals and responsible citizens but not that of effective contributors. See
http://curriculum.qca.org.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/aims/index.aspx [accessed 1 March 2009]
11
See, e.g., Biesta & Lawy (2006); Biesta (2007b); Biesta (2008); Biesta (in press[b]).

10
subjectification by promoting forms of political agency that both contribute to and are
able to question the existing social, cultural and political order. From this angle it is
perhaps significant that the word critical does not appear in any of the four
capacities of the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence.

This brings me to my concluding remarks.

Conclusions
In this lecture I have tried to make a case for good education. I have not done this by
specifying what I think a good school, college or university should look like. What I
have done instead is first of all to argue for the importance of the question of good
education itself. I have argued, in other words, that in our discussions and
deliberations about education we should acknowledge openly and explicitly that we
are dealing with normative questions, and hence with questions that require value
judgements. These are questions, in other words, that can not be resolved simply by
having more information, more data, more knowledge or more research. Secondly I
have argued that in order to address the question of good education properly we need
to make sure that we have a vocabulary that is appropriate for what we are discussing.
It is here that I have argued for the importance of an educational vocabulary rather
than a vocabulary of learning. Thirdly, I have introduced a distinction between
different functions and purposes of education that might help us to ask more precise
questions and have more focused discussions about what good education might look
like. I see the importance of making the distinction between the three functions of
education first and foremost in that it can help us to find a balance in our educational
endeavours rather than to end up in one of the possible extremes. J ust as an exclusive
focus on qualification is problematic and I think that the damaging effects of such a
focus are continuing to influence the lives of many students and teachers around the
world I also think that an exclusive focus on socialisation is problematic and
perhaps we are beginning to see some of the problems of such an approach as well. In
all cases it belongs to my definition of good education that there is also sufficient
attention to opportunities for individuation and subjectification so that education can
continue to contribute to what the philosopher Michel Foucault has so aptly described
as the undefined work of freedom.

Finally: for me the question of good education does not stand on its own. I do believe
that we are living in a time in which the question of goodness is one that we should
ask about all our collective human endeavours. This is first of all important in the
economic sphere, which is why I would argue that we urgently need to shift the
discussion from questions about profitable banking to questions about good banking.
It is also important in the domain of politics and democracy, which means that there is
also a need to engage with questions about what constitutes good politics and good
democracy. The particular answers we give to these questions are perhaps slightly less
important than our commitment to seeing these questions for what they are viz.
normative questions and our commitment to a continued engagement with these
questions, both in generating answers to the question as to what might constitute good
education and by continuing to raise critical questions about such answers as well.
Good education should at least enable and empower everyone to engage in such
crucial deliberations about the shape, form and direction of our collective endeavours.

Thank you.

11

References
Biesta, G.J.J . (2002). How general can Bildung be? Reflections on the future of a
modern educational ideal. British Journal of Philosophy of Education 36(3), 377-390.

Biesta, G.J .J . (2004a). Against learning. Reclaiming a language for education in an age
of learning. Nordisk Pedagogik 23, 70-82.

Biesta, G.J.J. (2004b). Education, accountability and the ethical demand. Can the
democratic potential of accountability be regained? Educational Theory 54 (3), 233-
250.

Biesta, G.J .J . (2006). Beyond Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future.
Boulder, Co: Paradigm Publishers.

Biesta, G.J.J . (2007a). Why what works wont work. Evidence-based practice and
the democratic deficit of educational research. Educational Theory 57(1), 1-22.

Biesta, G.J.J. (2007b). Education and the democratic person: Towards a political
understanding of democratic education. Teachers College Record 109(3), 740-769.

Biesta, G.J.J. (2008). What kind of citizen? What kind of democracy? Citizenship
education and the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence. Scottish Educational Review
40(2), 38-52.

Biesta, G.J .J. (2009). Good Education in an Age of Measurement. Educational
Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability 21(1), 33-46.

Biesta, G.J.J . (in press[a]). On the weakness of education. In D. Kerdeman et al. (eds),
Philosophy of Education 2009.

Biesta, G.J.J . (in press[b]). What kind of citizenship for European Higher Education?
Beyond the competent active citizen. European Educational Research Journal 8(2).

Biesta, G.J .J . & Lawy, R.S. (2006). From teaching citizenship to learning democracy.
Overcoming individualism in research, policy and practice. Cambridge Journal of
Education 36(1), 63-79.

Bogotch, I., Mirn, L & Biesta, G. (2007). Effective for What; Effective for Whom?
Two Questions SESI Should Not Ignore. In T. Townsend (ed), International
Handbook of School Effectiveness and School Improvement (93-110).
Dordrecht/Boston: Springer.

GTCS (General Teaching Council for Scotland) (2000). The standard for chartered
teacher.

Vanderstraeten, R. & Biesta, G.J .J . (2006). How is education possible? A pragmatist
account of communication and the social organisation of education. British Journal of
Educational Studies 54(2), 160-174.


12
Biography
Gert Biesta (1957) is Professor of Education at the Stirling Institute of Education and
Visiting Professor for Education and Democratic Citizenship at rebro and
Mlardalen University, Sweden. He is editor-in-chief of Studies in Philosophy and
Education, an international journal published by Springer Science+Business Media.
Before joining Stirling in December 2007 he worked at the University of Exeter (from
1999) and before that at several Universities in the Netherlands. He has a degree in
Education from Leiden University, a degree in Philosophy from Erasmus University
Rotterdam, and a PhD in Education from Leiden University (1992). From 1995-1997
he was a Spencer Post Doctoral Fellow with the National Academy of Education,
USA.

A major focus of his research is the relationship between education and democracy.
His theoretical work focuses on different ways of understanding democracy,
democratisation and democratic education, with particular attention to questions about
educational communication both at the micro-level of classroom interaction and the
macro-level of intercultural communication. He has also written about the philosophy
and methodology of educational research, and the relationships between educational
research, educational policy and educational practice. His empirical research focuses
on democratic learning of young people and adults, with a particular emphasis on
democratic learning in everyday settings. He has a research interest in vocational
education and lifelong learning, democratic conceptions of the learning society,
learning theories and theories of education, the professional learning of teachers, and
the civic role of Higher Education.

He has published widely in many national and international journals. Recent books
include Derrida & Education (Routledge 2001; co-edited with Denise Ega-Kuehne);
Pragmatism and Educational Research (Rowman & Littlefield, 2003; co-authored
with Nicholas C. Burbules); Beyond learning. Democratic education for a human
future (Paradigm Publishers, 2006; a Swedish translation, Bortom lrandet:
Demokratisk utbildning fr en mnsklig framtid, was published by Studentlitteratur in
2006; a Danish translation will appear in 2009); Improving learning cultures in
Further Education (Routledge; co-authored with David J ames); an English and a
German version of George Herbert Meads Lectures on Philosophy of Education (co-
edited with Daniel Trhler; Verlag Julius Klinkhardt 2008; Paradigm Publishers
2008); Education, democracy and the moral life (Springer 2009; co-edited with
Michael Katz ande Susan Verducci); Derrida, Deconstruction and the politics of
pedagogy (Peter Lang 2009; co-authored with Michael A. Peters); Rethinking contexts
for teaching and learning. Communities, activities and networks (Routledge 2009; co-
edited with Richard Edwards and Mary Thorpe). In 2008 his book Beyond Learning
won the American Educational Studies Association Critics' Choice Book Award.

Contact details:
The Stirling Institute of Education, University of Stirling
Stirling, FK9 4LA
Scotland, UK
e-mail: gert.biesta@stir.ac.uk
website: www.gertbiesta.com

You might also like