The Activities of Teaching

 

by Thomas F. Green

 

"Having this book back in print will be a boon to all who want to understand the deeper and more elusive meanings of teaching.  The penetrating analyses are as pertinent today as they were nearly thirty years ago when the book was first published."

                          —Gary D. Fenstermacher, The University of Michigan

 

Written during a time when ordinary language analysis dominated Anglo-American philosophy, The Activities of Teaching  ranks among the most thorough and illuminating examinations of the concept of teaching.  However, it is more than a text about teaching; it is a text that teaches.  Written with grace and clarity, the reader is always the author's first consideration.  Each chapter contains two parts; the first extends and deepens the analysis of teaching; the second provides the reader with the background necessary to grasp the increasingly sophisticated argument.  Each chapter concludes with a set of questions for further exploration of the ideas presented in the text.  Suitable as a text for graduate courses in foundations and philosophy of education, in teaching and teacher education, or as a reference for those who study teaching, this work remains one of the very best analytical treatments of the concept of teaching.

 

Partial table of contents:

The Structure of Teaching

The Modes of Teaching

Teaching & the Formation of Beliefs

Teaching, Knowing, & the Problem of Certainty

Teaching, Truth, & False Belief

Learning

Teaching, Explaining, & Giving Reasons

Judging

Wondering & the Roots of Motivation

A Nonanalytic Postscript on the Activities of Teaching

 

Thomas F. Green is professor emeritus of education and educational foundations and the founding editor of the Educational Policy Research Center at Syracuse University.  He has been a member of many of the preeminent philosophy societies and was president of the Philosophy of Education Society in 1975.  Professor Green is also the author of  Predicting the Behavior of the Educational System and Work, Leisure, and the American School.

1998/ 260 pp./ paper $30.95/ISBN: 0-9658339-5-X