BRANCHES OF PHILOSOPHY THAT

INPACT OF EDUCATION
Source: Becoming A Teacher, pp.81-83
Six main branches of educational philosophy may influence your personal
philosophy of education.

BRANCH OF
PHILOSOPHY
Metaphysics

CENTRAL BELIEFS

Epistemology

Axiology

Ethics

Aesthetics

Logic

RELEVANCE TO
EDUCATION

concerned with
explaining, rationally
an comprehensively,
the nature of reality
is concerned with the
nature of being
focus on knowledge,
what is true, and how
we know what we
know
studies ways of
knowing:
1. Knowing based on
Authority
2. Knowing based on
divine revelation
3. Knowing based on
empiricism/
experience
4. Knowing based on
reason and logical
analysis
5. Knowing based on
intuition
* concerned with
values

the school curriculum

is based on what we
know of reality

teachers need to
determine what is true,
and what is theoretical,
about what they teach

focus on the what is

good and evil,
right/wrong,
just/unjust
concerned with the
values related to
beauty and art
deals with the process
of reasoning and
identifies rules that will
enable the thinker to

go beyond concerns
about the quantity of
what is taught to
consider the quality of
life that becomes
possible because of
what a person knows
teacher must face the
ethical dilemmas that
are a part of classroom
life
how you address
esthetics in all areas of
the curriculum
consider the role of
discovery (inductive)
teaching in your
classroom

reach valid conclusions

through inductive
( moving from the
specific to the general)
and deductive
reasoning (moving
from the general to the
specific)

consider how/ when

you will use Socratic
methods for lessons