Standards governing the Cultural Foundations of Education in the study of the educational enterprise are agreed to and set by the Council for the Social Foundations (CSFE) and used by Foundations scholars with reference to work with the American Educational Studies Association (the field's learned society) and elsewhere. Work in the foundations develops interpretive, normative, and critical perspectives on education, both inside and outside of schools.
- Interpretive perspectives use concepts and theories developed within the humanities and the social sciences to assist students in examining, understanding, and explaining education in different contexts. Foundational studies promote analysis of the intent, meaning, and effects of educational institutions, including-but not limited to-schools. Such studies attend particularly to the diverse contexts within which educational phenomena occur, and how interpretation can vary with different historical, philosophical, and cultural perspectives.
- Normative perspectives assist students in examining and explaining educational programs and processes in light of value orientations. Foundational studies promote understanding of normative and ethical behavior in educational development and recognition of the inevitable presence of normative influences in educational thought and practice. Foundational studies probe the nature of assumptions about education and schooling. They examine the relation of policy analysis to values and the extent to which educational policymaking reflects these values. Finally, they encourage students to develop their own value positions regarding education on the basis of critical study and their own reflections.
- Critical perspectives employ normative interpretations to assist students to develop inquiry skills, to question educational assumptions and arrangements, and to identify contradictions and inconsistencies among social and educational values, policies and practices. In particular, the critical perspectives engage students in employing democratic values to assess educational beliefs, policies, and practices in light of their origins, influences, and consequences.
CSFE Standards for Graduate Programs in Cultural Foundations
Standard 1.
The student understands and can apply disciplinary knowledge from the humanities and social sciences to interpreting the meanings of education and schooling in diverse cultural contexts.
- Knowledge: The student has acquired a knowledge base of resources, theories, distinctions, and analytic techniques developed within the humanities, the social sciences, and the foundations of education
- Knowledge: The student understands the central concepts and tools of inquiry of foundational disciplines that bear on the educational process and can apply these to the formulation and review of instructional, administrative, and school leadership and governance procedures.
- Dispositions: The student has developed habits of using this knowledge base in evaluating and formulating educational practice.
- Performance: The student can examine and explain practice, leadership, and governance of education in different societies in light of its origins, major influences, and consequences, utilizing critical understanding of educational thought and practice and of the decisions and events which have shaped them.
Standard 2.
The student understands and can apply normative perspectives on education and schooling.
- Knowledge: The student understands and employs value orientations and ethical perspectives in analyzing and interpreting educational ideas, practices, and events.
- Dispositions: The student has developed the habits of examining the normative and ethical assumptions of schooling practice and educational ideas.
- Performance: The student can recognize the inevitable presence of normative influences in educational thought and practice.
- Performance: The student can appraise conceptions of truth, justice, caring, and rights as they are applied in educational practice.
- Performance: The student can assist the examination and development of democratic values that are based on critical study and reflection.
Standard 3.
The student understands and can apply critical perspectives on education and schooling.
- Knowledge: The student understands how the foundations of education knowledge base of resources, theories, distinctions, and analytic techniques provides instruments for the critical analysis of education in its various forms.
- Dispositions: The student has developed habits of critically examining educational practice in light of this knowledge base.
- Performance: The student can utilize theories and critiques of the overarching purposes of schooling as well as considerations of the intent, meaning, and effects of educational institutions.
- Performance: The student can identify and appraise educational assumptions and arrangements in a way that can lead to changes in conceptions and values.
- Performance: The student uses critical judgment to question educational assumptions and arrangements and to identify contradictions and inconsistencies among social and educational values, policies, and practices.
Standard 4.
The student understands moral principles related to democratic institutions can inform and direct schooling practice, leadership, and governance.
- Knowledge: The student understands how the foundations of education knowledge base illuminates the conditions which support democracy, democratic citizenship, and education in a democratic society.
- Dispositions: The student understands how various conceptions of the school foster or impede free inquiry, democratic collaboration, and supportive interaction in all aspects of school life.
- Performance: The student values democratic forms of association and supports the conditions essential to them.
- Performance: The student recognizes that political participation constitutes the social basis of democracy.
Standard 5.
The student understands the full significance of diversity in a democratic society and how that bears on instruction, school leadership, and governance.
- Knowledge: The student understands how social and cultural differences originating outside the classroom and school affect student learning.
- Knowledge: The student has acquired an understanding of education that includes sensitivity to human potentials and differences.
- Dispositions: The student is accepting of individual differences that are consistent with democratic values and responsibilities.
- Dispositions: The student is disposed to the acceptance of human commonality within diversity.
- Performance: The student can adapt instruction to incorporate recognition of social and cultural differences to the extent that it does not interfere with basic democratic principles.
- Performance: The student can specify how issues such as justice, social inequality, concentrations of power, class differences, race and ethnic relations, or family and community organization affect teaching and schools.
Standard 6.
The student understands how philosophical and moral commitments affect the process of evaluation at all levels of schooling practice, leadership, and governance.
- Knowledge: The student understands the tacit interests and moral commitments on which the technical processes of evaluation rest.
- Knowledge: The student understands that in choosing a measuring device, one necessarily makes moral and philosophical assumptions.
- Dispositions: The student is prepared to consider the ontological, epistemological, and ethical components of an evaluation method.
- Performance: The student can articulate moral and philosophical assumptions underlying an evaluation process.
- Performance: The student can identify what counts as evidence that a student has (or has not) learned or can (or cannot) learn.
