Category: Education Essay Examples
See our collection of education essay examples. These example essays are to help you understanding how to write an essay on education essay topics. Modern education is an interdisciplinary field, including disciplines (to name just a few) such as history and sociology, as well as topical areas such as globalization and technology. Education essay examples below include essays on many disciplinary areas such as curriculum in education, educational policy and law, theories of education, the history of education, and the philosophy of education.
Émile Durkheim, a Frenchman, was the founder of modern sociology, emphasizing empirical studies of society to develop sociology as a rigorous, modern science. He founded France’s first social science research journal, the Année Sociologique, in 1898. Durkheim’s academic success led to his appointment as Professor of the Science …
Elliot Eisner is Emeritus Professor of Art and Education at Stanford University. Trained as a painter, Eisner then earned a Ph.D. in education from the University of Chicago (1962). His scholarship has focused on arts education, curriculum studies, educational evaluation, and qualitative research. Eisner has been an advocate …
Ralph Waldo Emerson was a preacher, philosopher, poet, outspoken critic, sage, and the leading advocate of the American Transcendentalist movement, although reducing Emerson to “transcendentalist” would ultimately be a disservice to someone who vehemently opposed categorization, a process that he thought limited scope, influence, and potential. Even though …
Michel Foucault, French philosopher and intellectual historian, emerged as one of the more controversial thinkers in the Western world during the twentieth century, shaping much of postmodern philosophical thought. Foucault demonstrated the socially constructed and historically contingent nature of both persons and disciplines, including his detailed account of …
Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator who is one of the twentieth century’s most important educational theorists. His ideas have been globally influential upon a wide variety of social and educational movements, and they have played a central role in founding the contemporary international movement in education known …
Friedrich Froebel is best known for his book The Education of Man (1826) and for being the founder of the kindergarten movement. In the book, he described his educational philosophy in which all life was based on an eternal law of unity. Because Froebel believed that God was …
In his groundbreaking 1983 book, Frames of Mind, Gardner challenged educators to change how they define and value intelligence. His theory of multiple intelligences continues to shape curriculum and instruction. Gardner was born July 11, 1943, in Scranton, PA. He earned a bachelor’s degree at Harvard University, completed …
Paul Goodman was a poet, novelist, psychoanalyst, social critic, and educational innovator whose critique of American schools, Growing Up Absurd (1960), was a bible for educational radicals during the 1960s. Goodman condemned American schools for repressing children’s creative instincts while leaving them incompetent to do anything worthwhile as …
Antonio Gramsci, one of the most important Marxists, theorized on many aspects of Italian society and culture in the early part of the twentieth century. Among his key ideas were the notions that a system of political and cultural dominance, which he called hegemony, maintained an elite in …
Maxine Greene uses her skills as philosopher, imaginer, and inquirer to explore the meaning of human existence and the means to engage in epistemology. Through her inquiries into sociology, history, and especially philosophy and literature, she explores living in awareness and “wide-awakeness” in order to advance social justice. …
Madeleine Grumet, a curriculum theorist, professor, feminist, and former dean of education at the University of North Carolina, addresses how societal influences and norms influence schooling practices as well as the educational process. In her seminal work, Bitter Milk: Women and Teaching, she reveals that “knowledge evolves in …
Margaret Haley was an early-twentieth-century educator and union leader who was concerned about social reform, particularly with regard to the working conditions of teachers. For three decades, Haley led the Chicago Teachers’ Federation, the first teachers’ labor union in America. During her tenure, she campaigned for increases in …
Stanley Hall founded the American child study movement, shifted the American school curriculum to the developing nature of the child as part of early progressive educational reforms, advanced psychology and human development as integral dimensions in the study of education and its professional practice, supported the beginnings of …
William Torrey Harris, educator, philosopher, and policy maker, influenced the foundation for the American public school system that exists today. As Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906, Harris advocated for equal education, the grade school system, and free universities. He was also instrumental in establishing the first …
Johann Friedrich Herbart is best known for the educational movement known as Herbartianism that took hold after 1865 when Tuiskon Ziller, a professor at Leipzig, published Grundlegung zur Lehre vom erziehenden Unterricht (Basics of the Doctrine of Instruction as a Moral Force), but he also wrote purely philosophical …
Patty Smith Hill was a leader in the kindergarten movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Hill was an outspoken advocate for progressive education within the International Kindergarten Union (IKU), was influential in professionalizing teacher training, and was the first woman to head a department at …
Bell hooks is the pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins, who is recognized nationally and internationally as an African American intellectual, feminist, social activist, and educator. Her work focuses on how race, class, and gender play a role in social, economic, and political systems. Hooks was born in …
Hu Shih (known in Mandarin Chinese as Hu Shi) was among the main liberal thinkers in the Chinese Revolution in the decades of the 1920s and 1930s. A philosopher and educator, Hu Shih played a critical role in introducing Western philosophical ideas into Chinese culture, in particular the …
Dwayne Huebner is a philosopher and curriculum theorist who helped shepherd the reconceptualist movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. Through Huebner’s work, curriculum scholars began to consider language, environment, politics, and history as critical elements within their theorizing. Language was a significant element within Huebner’s curriculum theorizing. …
Ivan Illich was a historian, theologian, and social critic who dedicated his life to understanding people and the joys and hardships that all humans share. He called for the disestablishment of compulsory education, arguing that it should be replaced with student-driven learning webs. This entry summarizes his life …
