Applied epistemology of education

In this chapter, I provide a state-of-the-art overview of applied epistemological issues in education. In the first part of the chapter, I consider how we should understand three concepts that are important in epistemology and education: learning, teaching, and education. In the second part, I place education within the social epistemology of epistemic institutions. I hold that while the education system is an epistemic institution in its own right, “education” also refers to an epistemic function that is shared between many epistemic institutions. In the third part, I give an account of education as the improvement of people’s thinking and review the debate between proponents of the “critical thinking” and “intellectual virtue” traditions in thinking about the epistemic aims of education.