EDUCATIONAL INQUIRY AND PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE - TOWARDS A COPERNICANREVOLUTION

Current conceptions of the nature of education and teaching would appe ar to be dominated by a generally technicist interpretation of educati onal enquiry and conduct which has also influenced recent perspectives on professionalism in education. This technicist view, which rests in itially on a misreading of the logical character of educational discou rse, is further reinforced by certain theories of schooling and pedago gy hailing from the social sciences. It is argued here, however, that since it is the morally normative language of ethical principles and d ispositions rather than the instrumentally normative language of techn iques which lies at the heart of discourse about education and teachin g, the idea of a virtue provides a better model for understanding prof essional competence than that of a skill.