The purposes of the study were: (1) to operationalize Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching (Engineering, Apprenticeship, Developmental, Nurturing and Social Reform), (2) to predict conception of teaching scores, (3) to determine the existence of dominant conceptions of teaching, and (4) to determine the extent to which personal, socio— cultural/educational and program variables predict dominant conceptions of teaching. A 75-item instrument, Conception of Teaching Scales (CTS) was developed to operationalize Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching. A pilot study revealed that the instrument had good face, content, and convergent validities as well as acceptable test-retest reliability and internal consistency. A sample of 471 Vancouver School Board and New Westminster School Board adult education instructors responded to a mailed questionnaire survey conducted in the Fall of 1993. Responses to the CTS were evaluated to determine whether Pratt’s five conceptions were operationalized successfully. Factor analysis was employed to determine whether the items in the CTS were representative of Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching. Results revealed that 63 out of 75 original items in the CTS successfully operationalized five conceptions of teaching, with Pratt’s Apprenticeship conception split into Apprenticeship-Practice and Apprenticeship-Modelling. Further refinement streamlined this number to a six—scale 50—item Revised Conception of Teaching Scales (CTS—R). Personal, socio—cultural/educational and program variables were used as predictors in multiple regressions to explain variance in six conception scores. There was no single common predictor of conceptions. On the average, the significant predictors in the six regression equations accounted for 14.5% of variance in the conception scores. The only prominent predictor which accounted for most variance (2R = 17%) in the Nurturing conception was personality—nurturance measure. An instructor’s dominant conceptions were predicted by nine independent variables, namely, gender, ethnicity, personality— dominance, personality—nurturance, years of teaching adults, content upgrade, living arrangement, level of education and class size. These variables were collapsed into three significant discriminant functions which correctly classified 34.7% of the 288 eligible cases into one of the six dominant conception groups. The study concluded that: (1) Pratt’s five conceptions of teaching could be operationalized and that a Revised Conception of Teaching Scales (CTS-R) was a valid and reliable instrument to assess people’s conceptions of teaching, (2) conceptions of teaching were independent concepts having their own existence, (3) most instructors held at least one single most dominant conception of teaching, and (4) dominant conceptions of teaching were predicted by four personal variables (gender, ethnicity, personality—dominance and personality—nurturance), four socio— cultural/educational variables (living arrangement, level of education, years of teaching adults and content upgrade effort) and one program variable (class size).

<p> This study investigates the relationship among students' autonomy, agency and emergent learning interests in two open democratic private K-12 schools. Surprisingly, I find that these innovative schools sometimes promote sometimes suppress student agency. I suggest that we need a new means to define education, as our current means seems to constrain even innovative projects.</p><p> I begin by tracing the historical path of liberal arts education down two paths for student agency. Historical classical liberal arts education concerned itself with the student as a thinker, while modern conventional education concerns itself with the standardization of students' acquiring content. This has lead to a split the means to empower students' agency. The first is agency-as-capacity in academic subjects, the second is as personal agency and relates to the first, as students are viewed as becoming more able as they master more subject material, but also expresses agency as students' ability to be self-determining, voice their ideas, and reflect critically on their own and other's ideas. I argue that the first path has taken over conventional education and leads education to be outcome based and focused on credentialism. In reaction to the loss of emphasis on personal agency in learning, innovative educators, progressives, democratic educators, free-schoolers, and unschoolers, have sought to return autonomy to students for their own learning decision and deeper meaning making in their learning. The democratic schools in this study follow a distinct line of innovation that departs from progressive educators in that they endeavor to protect and promote the development of students' political and epistemic autonomy through shared student and staff governance of the school and by underlying strong philosophical commitments against imposed curriculum. Out of this study came three findings. First, in spite of the seemingly chaotic environment with little culturally recognizable learning practices at both schools, I observed that children are learning and transforming in their abilities in culturally valued practices primarily through play. I suggest that the individual and cognitive notions of learning coupled with a Industrial Age work architectonic underpinning schooling practices makes it difficult for the students' learning at these schools to be visible to outsiders and sometimes to the staff as well. Student's play and other free choice activity revealed that learning can be evidenced through students' changing genres of participation.</p><p> Second, I found that in spite of the belief that students in autonomy supportive environments will find it easy to be engaged in their learning, middle school students, in one school struggled to develop their learning interests. Contrary to the schools' philosophy about the role of student interest in their learning, I found that student inquiries or even their interest is not necessarily the beginning of learning, and questions the notion that students self-determined autonomy is sufficient for their learner agency. </p><p> Third, in the second school, in spite of the autonomy afforded students and the ongoing critical dialogue that form a large part of the second school's culture and matching historically classical concerns for the student as a thinker, students experienced a suppression of their agency. The form of critical dialogue the school engages in I define as positive and modernist drawing on the work of Isaiah Berlin (1969) and define a second negative and postmodern critical dialogue rooted in the work of literary critic, Mikhail Bakhtin. </p><p> Finally, I suggest that we need to move beyond the current Industrial Age work architectonic of conventional schooling. I recommend a playful/cultural architectonic based on the work of Marjanovic-Shane (2010) as a means to capitalize on the social nature of learning. A play/cultural dynamic can act as a counter force to the reification of knowledge, meaning making, and hierarchical roles in education that tend to suppress the development of students' personal and epistemic agency. This play/cultural architectonic of learning, in my view, better matches the kinds of transformation of agency that students' make in these autonomy-valuing environments. I suggest that schooling, if based on a play/cultural genre of interaction would support both students becoming more capable in culturally valued practices and support students' present and increasing capacity in enacting their personal agency. My conclusion i that we are still realizing students as co-participants and co-creators of the culture.</p>

A well-ordered environment is essential to the learning process. Alfred North Whitehead acknowledged, "freedom and discipline are the two essentials of education". The Shady Hill School embodies this doctrine in spirit but not body. I have endeavored to shape this body into a disciplined, rigorous environment to free the intellect for discovery. The Master Plan is defined by buildings sited to structure the natural environment into a series of activity spaces, and, by the order of the original campus: the building orientation, fenestration, scale and interrelationships. Additional order was found through the siting of the large, multifunctional buildings. The Main Building, beyond providing for Administration and Assembly functions, acts as the "propylaeum" for the plane of education and initiates an experiential promenade. The Grade Building, which is an intermediate unit--larger than a classroom yet smaller than a school--is ordered from the inside by three, classrooms designed to satisfy, very flexibly, the spatial and functional requirements of each grade. The centralized space acts to celebrate the existence of the students in their building.

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This thesis proposes that Charles Taylor's notion of the 'dialogical human life'---or what I call 'dialogical being in the world'---can be expanded to include pedagogical and democratical aspects. Furthermore, given the collapse of foundational epistemologies, I propose that teacher fulfillment may be negotiated through 'hermeneutical understanding', which recognizes the participation of the knower ('I') in the known (the 'other'). Such hermeneutical understanding is achieved through acknowledging my 'dialogical, democratical and pedagogical being in the world' (my life) as an unfolding story, which connects present acts of understanding the 'other' (including the otherness of self) with the past and future vision of fulfillment.

<p> This phenomenological study explored the concept of wisdom as perceived and experienced by adolescents. The research questions were: How do adolescents conceptualize wisdom?; Which aspects of 'being wise,' if any, do adolescents believe they possess?; Do adolescents believe wisdom is attainable or desirable?; and Do adolescents believe that their formal education (school) is guiding them toward the development of wisdom? From these research questions, interview questions were created and semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 adolescents between the ages of 10-14 across two school locations. Through a process of coding the interview data for emergent themes, the findings of this study revealed that adolescent beliefs about and definitions of wisdom are in line with the existing literature and that adolescents find wisdom both desirable and attainable. Moreover, since formal education experiences are expected to play a role in wisdom development in adolescents, implications for educator practice are discussed. In particular, critical pedagogy and experiential education may be key elements for educator practice in facilitating learning experiences which cultivate wisdom, particularly in the context of the transformation economy.</p>

This thesis is a response to the fragmentation prevalent in the practice of contemporary Western pedagogy. The mechanistic paradigm set in place by the advance of classical science has contributed to an ideology that places the human being in a world that is objective, antiseptic, atomistic and disjointed. As a result, education has largely become a practice in which the learner is encouraged to identify with, and "successfully" live according to, a world that is competitive, materialistic, lonely and devoid of any spiritual dimension. / This paradigm is presently being challenged by recent developments in the sciences, from physics to biology. The vision emerging recognises the universe as holistic and fundamentally interconnected. Moreover the idea of interconnectivity is seen as the key to a richer understanding of both matter and consciousness. Seeking out expressions of such interconnectivity in education offers a space in which learners can identify the self with an extended context of life. With the knowledge that one's individuality exists by virtue of its relationship to a larger community, the learner may begin to experience the self and the world in a way that is more whole and more meaningful. The philosophy of science discussed in this thesis offers a language where the spirituality of education may be reclaimed.

This thesis expands upon the discussions of Martha Nussbaum (1991) regarding scientific and Aristotelian conceptions of rationality and how each treats issues of moral reasoning and moral education. It posits that this scientific rationality provides an inherently flawed and limiting conception of the practical reasoner, and that its prevalence within the field of education, as well as in educational research has had damaging effects upon students and educators alike. Thus, it advocates the adoption of an Aristotelian view of reason, one which characterizes the person of practical reason as one who possesses a rich awareness of detail, emotion, context and complexity. Further, it examines the current and potential roles that educational researchers play in either the affirmation or questioning of these conceptions of rationality, and in turn, how these researchers affect change in education, and in society in general.

In our current education system learning is organized as a series of sequential steps and the curriculum is constituted by a set of independent objects. Here students are not encouraged to make connections between subjects or between the subjects and their own personal lives. In this positivistic view of reality teaching is reduced to technique. This thesis is a reflection on the nature and importance of a more holistic and interconnected education. Using the concept of "non-linear learning" as an organizing principle, it outlines the various components of an alternative paradigm.

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