Professor at Department of International Education and Lifelong Learning and Director of General Education Office: -
"The problem with concepts like learning and knowledge is that they reinforce out-dated models of education and obscure what is really important, which is teaching young people to be excellent thinkers who can make good judgements about matters of importance. This is not just a cognitive exercise: good thinking – at least, when we are learning how to do it – has to be both collaborative and caring, as well as critical and creative."
Area of expertise:
- Philosophy in education
Recent research outputs:
- Communities of Inquiry in Hong Kong Schools: an Intervention Study
The project aims at developing skills for guiding quality discussion and teaching for better thinking; and helping teachers transform classrooms into communities of inquiry, where students can improve their thinking skills, develop positive attitudes toward deep inquiry, and learn to engage in respectful dialogue with each other. We are providing a series of professional development activities for teachers, and are working with participating schools to transform classrooms into communities of inquiry. At the primary school level, the project has focused on introducing Philosophy to teachers and students in P5-6; at the secondary school level, the focus has been on the inquiry dimensions of the new Liberal Studies subject for senior secondary schools in the new curriculum.
- Agency, thought, and language: analytic philosophy goes to school
Professor Splitter: I take as my starting point concerns from within educational psychology about the need to treat the conceptual and philosophical underpinnings of empirical research in the field more seriously, specifically in the context of recent theorising about the self, mind and agency. Developing this theme, I find such conceptual support in the writings of P. F. Strawson and Donald Davidson, two giants of analytic philosophy in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Drawing particularly on Davidson’s later work, in which he seeks to integrate key claims about subjectivity, objectivity, belief, truth and knowledge, within what he refers to as a triangular framework of two speakers and a common world, I find support for pedagogic and classroom organisational structures based on collaborative thinking and dialogue. While Davidson did not write about education, I argue that his framework has much to offer, most particularly in view of the priority it affords language and dialogue as the necessary and sufficient conditions for reason, belief and thought — in short, for being a person in the world.
- Citizenship, identity, morality and personhood
Professor Splitter: I argue that citizenship and related concepts should be treated warily by educators and researchers. Citizenship cannot define who I am, nor can it plausibly ground moral or values education. For both these tasks, the relational concept of being a person does a better, and simpler, job. I suggest that classrooms which take the concept of personhood seriously should function as inquiring communities, in which such issues as the meaning and importance of our affiliations and associations may be critically examined. There may be good reasons for the recent expansion of what I term “the citizenship industry” in educational research, but they should not be taken for granted, particularly given that the concept of citizenship is often used by governments around the world to support strongly nationalistic policies which are inimical to genuine inquiry and personhood.
- Dispositions in education: nonentities worth talking about
Professor Splitter: The concept of dispositions has commanded considerable attention in both philosophy and education. In this essay, I draw on analytic philosophy to take a fresh look at dispositions in education, specifically teacher education. Bypassing the pitfalls of both subjectivity and crude behaviorism, I propose a conceptual framework in which dispositions figure as drivers or triggers of our intentional behavior, one that gives prominence to language in general and to dialogue in particular. I draw on an emerging school of thought that treats classrooms as inquiring communities to argue that students at all levels - including teacher education - should engage in dialogue about what does or does not, and should or should not, move them to behave in certain ways. Finally, I offer a way through the sociopolitical battleground on which the topic of dispositions in teacher education has recently found itself.
Professor Laurance J. Splitter’s profile
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