page_title: Education
section_title: Philosophy
hierarchical_section_title: Education / Theory / Philosophy
caption_attribution_description: Title page to Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education
context_page_description: Education is the process of facilitating learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, beliefs, and habits. Educational methods include teaching, training, storytelling, discussion and directed research. Education frequently takes place under the guidance of educators, however learners can also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational. The methodology of teaching is called pedagogy.
  Formal education is commonly divided formally into such stages as preschool or kindergarten, primary school, secondary school and then college, university, or apprenticeship.
  A right to education has been recognized by some governments and the United Nations. In most regions, education is compulsory up to a certain age. There is a movement for education reform, and in particular for evidence-based education.
context_section_description: As an academic field, philosophy of education is "the philosophical study of education and its problems its central subject matter is education, and its methods are those of philosophy". "The philosophy of education may be either the philosophy of the process of education or the philosophy of the discipline of education. That is, it may be part of the discipline in the sense of being concerned with the aims, forms, methods, or results of the process of educating or being educated; or it may be metadisciplinary in the sense of being concerned with the concepts, aims, and methods of the discipline." As such, it is both part of the field of education and a field of applied philosophy, drawing from fields of metaphysics, epistemology, axiology and the philosophical approaches (speculative, prescriptive or analytic) to address questions in and about pedagogy, education policy, and curriculum, as well as the process of learning, to name a few. For example, it might study what constitutes upbringing and education, the values and norms revealed through upbringing and educational practices, the limits and legitimization of education as an academic discipline, and the relation between education theory and practice.
caption: John Locke's work Some Thoughts Concerning Education was written in 1693 and still reflects traditional education priorities in the Western world.
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