Perspectives on Education as Educology (ePub)

Perspectives on Education as Educology provides a discussion, from many points of view, of the justification for the use of the term educology and of the distinguishing characteristics, applications and utility of educology. The term educology is offered as a means to achieving clarity in discourse about education. The term education is reserved to denote the phenomenon of someone teaching and someone studying under guidance something in some physical, social and cultural setting, with a view to extending the student's range of knowing and understanding. The term educology is reserved to denote the fund of recorded knowledge about the phenomenon of education. Educological knowledge consists of recorded true statements about education. Educology is produced from successful disciplined educological inquiry. Inquiry from an educological perspective treats education as the dependent variable and provides analyses of how other variables (teachers, students, content, setting – physical, social, cultural, including values, norms, traditions, religion, politics, government, laws, regulations, policies, economics, etc.) affect education. The product of successful educological inquiry is recorded true statements about education. The kinds of statements which constitute educology include analytic, normative and empirical. The production of educology requires careful, disciplined inquiry which is guided by the use of at least three disciplines in educological inquiry, viz. analytic, normative and empirical rules of verification. Educology includes knowledge about

1. the implicative meaning of language used in education,
2. past states of affairs in education,
3. good (and bad) states of affairs in education,
4. the effects of laws, rules and regulations upon states of affairs in education,
5. extant states of affairs in education,
6. effective practices for and in education.

The term educology can be used to eliminate ambiguity in the names of professional organizations and organizational units in universities (schools, colleges, departments, divisions, etc.). The concept of educology can be used to organize, systematically and without category mistakes, educological curriculum, educological degree programs, educological research activities and educological academic staff in universities. A student studies educology to develop a range of educological knowing and understanding. Sound and extensive educological understanding enables one to

1. discern educational situations,
2. conduct disciplined inquiry about education,
3. analyze, characterize and explain educational situations,
4. evaluate and make sound prescriptions and recommendations for educational states of affairs,
5. justify evaluations of and prescriptions for educational states of affairs and
6. undertake effective action to achieve intended consequences in educational states of affairs.

Educology is a fund of knowledge, not a discipline. Educological discipline is the set of rules of verification for making knowledge claims about education. Educological discipline guides educological inquiry, which is the activity of, carefully and in a disciplined way, asking and answering questions about education, and verifying the answers with necessary and sufficient evidence to warrant the claim that the answers are true. The object about which educological inquiry is conducted is the phenomenon of education, and the phenomenon of education is the transactional system in which the elements of teachers, students, content and setting (physical, social, cultural) stand in some relation (constructive, destructive, reconstructive) to each other. The product of successful, disciplined educological inquiry is educology.