ABSTRACT

A growing number of researchers have maintained that the Aristotelian-inspired idea of phronesis or ‘practical wisdom’ is indispensable for understanding and cultivating teacher expertise. Phronesis denotes a synthetic and dynamic intellectual disposition that allows practitioners to perceive the ethical complexities of challenging practical situations and consistently act in a way that realises the goods inherent in the practical environment. Although this is an attractive conceptual ideal, we argue in this article that advocates of phronesis have generally overlooked a necessary prerequisite for developing phronesis: a comprehensive and extended habituation in the ethical virtues (ethismos). Because most pre-service teachers will lack the ethical habituation required for phronesis, we show that phronesis-inspired models of teacher education need to be extended to include experiences we call ‘epiphanies’. Epiphanies refer to moments of insight that can jumpstart the ethical habituation process necessary to usher pre-service teachers towards phronetic expertise.

摘要

越来越多的研究人员认为，亚里士多德启发的实践或“实践智慧”理念对于理解和培养教师专业知识是不可或缺的。实践指的是一种综合的、动态的智力倾向，它使从业者能够感知具有挑战性的实际情况的道德复杂性，并始终如一地以实现实际环境中固有的利益的方式行事。尽管这是一个有吸引力的概念理想，但我们在本文中认为，实践性的倡导者普遍忽视了发展实践性的一个必要先决条件：对道德美德的全面而广泛的习惯（ethismos））。由于大多数职前教师缺乏实践所需的道德习惯，因此我们表明，受实践启发的教师教育模式需要扩展，以包括我们称之为“顿悟”的体验。顿悟是指顿悟的时刻，它可以启动必要的道德习惯过程，从而引导职前教师获得语音专业知识。