Phronesis in teacher education: a critical reexamination

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Phronesis
• Aristotle
• teacher education
• moral education
• epiphany

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Douglas W. Yacek

Douglas W. Yacek is a research fellow at the Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany. His research focuses on questions at the intersections of educational ethics, moral and democratic education, and the history of educational thought.

Mark E. Jonas

Mark E. Jonas is a Professor of Education and Professor of Philosophy (by courtesy) at Wheaton College, USA. His research interests include virtue ethics and moral education.