Browsing by Subject "Practical knowledge"
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Item Korean pre-service teachers' practical knowledge regarding circle time(2013-12) Kim, Hyun Su, active 2013; Worthy, JoThis dissertation investigates Korean pre-service kindergarten teachers’ practical knowledge regarding teaching circle time developed through both teaching practices and contextual factors during their field experience. To investigate this, a qualitative case study examining four pre-service kindergarten teachers working their field experience was conducted. Data collected through observation, stimulated recall interviews and semi-structured interviews of four participants during field experience was analyzed in order to answer the research questions. Data analysis revealed two major types of practical knowledge for teaching circle time: 1) practical knowledge about classroom management strategies; 2) practical knowledge about the teacher’s role in teacher-children interaction. The findings of the study were organized for presentation in Chapter 4 by combining the types of practical knowledge with separation of pre-existing and developed practical knowledge: the first section covers both pre-existing and developed classroom management strategies; the second section covers both pre-existing and developed practical knowledge regarding the teacher’s role in teacher-children interaction. The third section covers contextual factors which influence that development. While the pre-service teachers may have had sudden moments of inspiration where things coalesced for them, in general practical knowledge was not an instant acquisition. Indeed, this study witnessed what developed though successive teaching practices during their field experience. The use of (stimulated recall) interviews allowed for candid and timely revelations from the pre-service teachers, giving important insight into some specifics on the acquisition of practical knowledge, such as facing challenges as a vehicle for change, and the need for critical reflection. In this study, the primary contextual factor recognized as influencing pre-service teachers’ practical knowledge is the classroom teacher, through modeling and post-lesson conferences. Chapter 5 addresses the significance of the findings of this research and compares it to other research in the field, focusing on three aspects: 1) the specific types of practical knowledge developed through circle time teaching practice; 2) the process of the development of practical knowledge; and; 3) the influence of classroom teachers on that development. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of implications for: 1) pre-service kindergarten teachers at the same stage of their education, 2) teacher educators who are responsible for designing and reforming teacher education programs for pre-service kindergarten teachers, and 3) administrators of teacher education programs who can establish systemized regulations for field experience and recommendations for future research.Item Practical necessity : a study in ethics, law, and human action(2011-05) O'Brien, Matthew Bennett; Deigh, John; Dancy, Jonathan; Koons, Robert; Woodruff, Paul; Kane, Robert; Pink, ThomasThe dissertation is an examination of obligation, which I argue is a mode of rational necessity that is proper to human agency. I begin from G. E. M. Anscombe’s celebrated attack against modern moral philosophy, and then sketch a positive theory of obligation as it figures in morality and in law, drawing upon the work of Aquinas and Aristotle. The first chapter explicates this idea of “practical necessity” and the second chapter shows that Aristotelian ethics, because it is not a theological law conception of ethics, has no place for a peculiarly moral conception of obligation. The third chapter examines Aquinas’s conception of moral law and argues that Aquinas vindicates Anscombe’s negative critique of the “moral ought.” The fourth chapter shows that the application of exceptionless moral norms (i.e. moral absolutes), which is one kind of obligation, requires attention to aspects of social practices. Attention to social practices allows the resolution of controverted problems about specifying intentions and applying the principle of double effect in a way that makes exceptionless moral norms workable. The fifth and final chapter defends the conception of intentional action assumed in the fourth chapter, and demonstrates that the scholastic ‘sub specie boni’ thesis is an integral part of action explanation, as well as Anscombe’s notion of “practical knowledge”. The upshot of the dissertation is an integrated investigation into how the ideas of good and necessity figure in ethics, law, and human action.Item Reasons, objective and explanatory : an Anscombean defense of reasons externalism(2013-12) Davey, Stephen Robert Alan; Dancy, JonathanThis is an essay about reasons for action. It begins with two rather ordinary observations. The first is that these two uses of the term ‘reason’ roughly correspond with the two main roles that a reason can play: the role of favoring a prospective course of action, and the role of explaining action. Each of these roles seems crucial to a philosophical account of reasons, and it is not obvious that either has claim to priority. The second observation is that accommodating each of these roles seems to place restrictions on what we can say about reasons for action, and those who lean toward giving priority to one role rather than the other tend also to give priority to the corresponding set of restrictions. They take that set as given, and then focus their efforts on finding a way to meet the other set if they can. Accommodating the explanatory role has seemed to many to require that a reason bear some relation to the motivations of the agent for whom it is reason. One might wonder: what sense could there be in calling something a reason for me to act if it were not in any way capable of explaining my being moved to act? I argue, however, that accepting this sort of internalist condition on something’s being a reason to act precludes accepting a condition of objectivity that is imposed on us if we wish to accommodate the favoring role: sometimes, at least, when we have a reason to act, we could not cease to have that reason simply by having a (perhaps radically) different set of attitudes. I then consider whether the reverse might be true of externalist theories. Does taking the favoring role as one’s starting point preclude a full account of the explanatory role of reasons? I argue that it does not. I show that an Anscombean conception of intentional action allows for a fairly clean solution to a pair of puzzles that motivate this worry. This approach relieves much of the pressure to think of reasons as being tied to motivational attitudes.