Educational Judgment: Linking the Actor and the Spectator

Abstract

The difficulty of connecting the knowledge generated by educational researchers and the practice of classroom teachers is familiar. Academics write about the importance of research for understanding and improving classroom practices; classroom teachers dismiss the academics’ research knowledge as a poor substitute for actual experience. We argue for moving from debates between spectators and actors about knowledge and practice to discussions about how all educators can foster good judgment. We outline two major accounts of judgment in Western thought, Aristotle’s and Kant’s, which ultimately privilege the spectator over the actor. We then introduce the work of Hannah Arendt, who linked thinking and acting without privileging either in her conception of judgment. Focusing on how teachers and researchers might become better educational judges is a crucial, yet neglected, agenda that promises to link these communities.