The ethico-aesthetics of teaching: Toward a theory of relational practice in education

Abstract

This paper discusses what constitutes good teaching, taking as its cue the ‘aesthetic’ concept treated in everyday aesthetics and ‘internal good’ accounted by McIntyre. Teaching is viewed as practice, not merely as a basic action, due to its epistemological nature as everyday work. What everyday aesthetics teaches us is that even in the practice of teaching, sensory experiences such as comfort, familiarity, discomfort, ordinariness, etc. can be viewed as aesthetic experience. This kind of aesthetic experience constitute intuition supporting ’good teaching’ that confirmed by examining Dreyfus et al. This ‘good teaching’ sensitivity is not specific to the individual practitioner, but is considered to be an ‘in-practice value (internal good?)’ (McIntyre) shared by the community of practice. From the aesthetic perspective, this value could be called ‘aesthetic value in practice’. In the teaching community of practice, ‘good teaching’ is both ‘beautiful teaching’ and ‘ethically good’ teaching. Teaching should be seen as a relational practice, and for this reason, The Ethico-Aesthetics of Teaching should be constructed.

Keywords:

• Ethico-aesthetics
• teaching
• internal good
• relational practice
• everyday ethtetics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yasushi Maruyama

Yasushi Maruyama, Ph. D. (Florida State University) is Professor of Philosophy of Education at Hiroshima University, Japan. His research interests contain the philosophy of Wittgenstein, philosophy of mind, ethics of teaching, professional ethics education and postcolonialism. Among his publications are ‘Ethics Education for Professionals in Japan: A Critical Review’ (in Educational Philosophy and Theory, vol. 42, no. 4, 2010); ‘How Should We Recognize the Otherness of Learners? Hegelian and Wittgensteinian Views’ (in A Companion to Wittgenstein on Education: Pedagogical Investigations, Springer, 2017); and Hermeneutics of Educational Relationship. Email: [email protected]

Miyuki Okamura

Miyuki Okamura, Ph. D. (Hiroshima University) is Associate Professor at Professional School of Education, Hiroshima University, Japan. Her research interests contain teacher education, theory of knowledge, philosophy of mind and reflective practice. Among her publications is ‘Revisiting Donald Schön’s “Reflection-In-Action”: from an Examination of his “Epistemology of Practice”’ (in The Annual Bulletin of the Japanese for the Study on Teacher Education, vol. 26, 2017, in Japanese). E-mail: [email protected]