User:Phlsph7/Education

Education plays various roles in society, including in social, economic, and personal fields. On a social level, education makes it possible to establish and sustain a stable society. It helps individuals acquire the basic skills needed to interact with their environment and fulfill their basic needs and desires. In modern society, this involves a wide range of fundamental skills like being able to speak, read, and write as well as to solve problems and to perform basic arithmetic tasks. It also includes the ability to handle information and communications technology. Children are socialized into society by acquiring these skills. Another key part of socialization is to learn how to live in social groups and interact with others by coming to understand the social and cultural norms and expectations. This requires an understanding of what kinds of behavior are considered appropriate in different contexts. This way, new members are introduced to the culture, norms, and values that are dominant in their society. Socialization happens throughout life but is of particular relevance to early childhood education. It enables a form of social cohesion, stability, and peace needed for people to productively engage in their daily business. Education plays a key role particularly for democracies by increasing civic participation in the form of voting and organizing and through its tendency to promote equal opportunity for all.^[1]

A further issue is to enable people to become productive members of society by learning how to contribute to it. Through education, individuals acquire the technical and analytical skills needed to pursue their profession, produce goods, and provide services to others. In early societies, there was little specialization and each child would generally learn most of the tasks relevant to help their group. Modern societies are increasingly complex and many professions are only mastered by relatively few individuals who receive specialized training in addition to general education. Some of the skills and tendencies learned to function in society may conflict with each other and their value depends on the context of their usage. For example, fostering a questioning mind is necessary to develop the ability of critical thinking but in some cases, obedience to an authority is required to ensure social stability.^[2][3][4]

By helping people become productive members of society, education can stimulate economic growth and reduce poverty. It helps workers become more skilled and thereby increases the quality of the produced goods and services, which in turn leads to prosperity and increased competitiveness.^[5] In this regard, public education is often understood as a long-term investment to benefit society as a whole. The rate of return is especially high for investments in primary education.^[6][3] Besides increasing economic prosperity, it can also lead to technological and scientific developments as well as decrease unemployment while promoting social equity.^[7]

Education can prepare a country to adapt to changes and successfully face new challenges. For example, it can help raise awareness and contribute to the solution of contemporary global problems, like climate change and sustainability as well as the widening inequalities between the rich and the poor.^[8] By making students aware of how their lives and actions affect others, it may inspire some to work toward realizing a more sustainable and fair world.^[9] This way, education serves not just the purpose of reproducing society as it is but can also be an instrument of development by realizing social transformation to improve society.^[10] This applies also to changing circumstances in the economic sector. For example, due to technological advances and increased automation, many jobs may be lost in the coming decades.^[11] This may render currently taught skills and knowledge redundant while shifting the importance to other areas. Education can be used to prepare individuals for such changes by giving more priority to subjects involving digital literacy and skills in handling new technologies,^[12][13][14] for example, by including online education in the form of massive open online courses.^[15]

On a more individual level, education promotes personal development. This can include factors such as learning new skills, developing talents, fostering creativity, and increasing self-knowledge as well as improving problem-solving and decision-making abilities.^[16][17][18] It further has positive effects on health and well-being.^[19] The benefits are not restricted to learners but are present for teaching as well.^[20] While education is of particular relevance in childhood, it does not end with adulthood and continues throughout life. This phenomenon is known as lifelong learning and is of specific significance in contemporary society due to the rapid changes on many different levels and the need for people to adjust to them.^[21][22][23]

Organized institutions play a key role for various aspects of education. The education sector or education system is a group of institutions (ministries of education, local educational authorities, teacher training institutions, schools, universities, etc.) whose primary purpose is to provide education to children and young people in educational settings. It involves a wide range of people (curriculum developers, inspectors, school principals, teachers, school nurses, students, etc.). The education sector is fully integrated into society, through interactions with numerous stakeholders and other sectors. These include parents, local communities, religious leaders, and NGOs as well as stakeholders involved in health, child protection, justice, law enforcement, media, and political leadership.^[24][25]

Many aspects of formal education are regulated by the policies of governmental institutions. They determine at what age children need to attend school and at what times classes are held as well as issues pertaining to the school environment, like infrastructure. Regulations also cover the exact requirements for teachers and how they are trained. An important aspect of educational policy concerns the curriculum used for teaching at schools, colleges, and universities. A curriculum is a planned sequence of instructions or a program of learning that intends to guide the experience of learners to achieve educational aims. The topics are usually selected based on their importance and depend on the type of school. For example, the goals of public school curricula are usually to offer a comprehensive and well-rounded education while vocational trainings focus more on specific practical skills within a field. The curricula also cover various aspects besides the topic to be discussed, such as the teaching method, the objectives to be reached, and the standards for assessing progress. By determining the curricula, governmental institutions have a strong impact on what knowledge and skills are transmitted to the students.^[26]

International organizations also play a key role in education. For example, UNESCO is an intergovernmental organization that promotes education in many different ways. One of its activities is to advocate educational policies, like the treaty UNCRC, which states that education is a human right of all children and young people, and the Education for All initiative, which aimed to offer basic education to all children, adolescents, and adults by the year 2015 and was later replaced by the initiative Sustainable Development Goals as goal 4.^[27] Related policies include the Convention against Discrimination in Education and the Futures of Education initiative.^[28][29]

Besides intergovernmental organizations, there are also non-governmental international organizations involved, like the International Association of Universities, which promotes the exchange of colleges and universities around the world, and the International Baccalaureate, which offers international diploma programs.^[30][31] Various institutions, like the Erasmus Programme, facilitate student exchanges between different countries.^[32]

Many factors influence educational achievement. They include psychological factors, which concern the student as an individual, and sociological factors, which pertain to the student's social environment. Further factors include access to educational technology, teacher quality, and parental involvement. Many of these factors overlap and influence each other.^[33]

Psychological

On a psychological level, relevant factors include motivation, intelligence, and personality.^[34] Motivation is the internal force propelling individuals to engage in learning.^[35][36][37] Motivated students are more likely to interact with the content to be learned by participating in classroom activities like discussions, which often results in a deeper understanding of the subject. It can also help students overcome difficulties and setbacks. An important distinction is between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsically motivated students are driven by an interest in the subject and the learning experience itself while extrinsically motivated students seek external rewards, for example, in the form of good grades and recognition by their peers. It is often claimed that intrinsic motivation is more beneficial by leading to increased creativity and engagement as well as long-term commitment.^[38] Educational psychologists try to discover how to increase motivation, for example, by encouraging a certain level of competition among students or by balancing positive and negative feedback in the form of praise and criticism.^[35][39]

Intelligence is another important factor in how individuals respond to education. It is a mental quality associated with the ability to learn from experience, to understand, and to employ knowledge and skills to solve problems. Those who have higher scores in intelligence metrics tend to perform better at school and go on to higher levels of education.^[40] Intelligence is often primarily associated with the so-called IQ, a standardized numerical metric for assessing intelligence. However, it has been argued that there different types of intelligences pertaining to different areas. According to Howard Gardner, they include linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, naturalist, and existentialist intelligence. These different forms are largely independent of each other, meaning that an individual may excel at one type while scoring low on another.^[41][42] A closely related factor concerns different learning styles. A learning style is a preferred form of acquiring knowledge and skills. For example, students with an auditory learning style find it easy to follow spoken lectures and discussions while visual learners benefit if information is presented visually in diagrams and videos. For efficient learning, it is often beneficial to include a wide variety of learning modalities.^[43][44][45] The learner's personality may also affect educational achievement. For example, the features of conscientiousness and openness to experience from the Big Five personality traits are associated with academic success.^[46] Further psychological factors include self-efficacy, self-esteem, and metacognitive abilities.^[34][47]

Sociological

Unlike psychological factors, sociological factors focus not on the mental attributes of learners but on their social status and environment. They include socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and cultural background as well as gender. They are of particular interest to researchers since they are associated with inequality and discrimination. For this reason, they play a key role in policy-making in attempts to mitigate their effects.^[48]

Socioeconomic status is primarily associated with income but includes other factors as well, such as financial security, social status, and social class as well as quality of life attributes. Low socioeconomic status affects educational success in various ways. It is associated with slower cognitive developments in language and memory and higher drop-out rates. Poor families may not have enough money to invest in educational resources like stimulating toys, books, and computers. Additionally, they may be unable to afford tuition at prestigious schools and are more likely to attend schools in poorer areas. Such schools tend to offer lower standards of teaching, for example, because of teacher shortages or because they lack educational materials and facilities, like libraries. Poor parents may also be unable to afford private lessons if their children lack behind. Students from a low socioeconomic status often have less access to information on higher education and may face additional difficulties in securing and repaying student loans. Low socioeconomic status has also various indirect negative effects by being associated with lower physical and mental health. Due to these factors, social inequalities on the level of the parents are often reproduced in the children.^[49][50][51]

Ethnic background is often associated with cultural differences and language barriers, which make it more difficult for students to adapt to the school environment and follow classes. Additional factors are explicit and implicit biases and discrimination toward ethnic minorities, which may affect the students' self-esteem and motivation as well as their access to educational opportunities. For example, teachers may hold stereotypical views even if they are not overtly racist, which can lead them to grade comparable performances differently based on the child's ethnicity.^[52]

Historically, gender has been a central factor in education since the roles of males and females were defined differently in many societies. Education tended to strongly favor males, who were expected to provide for the family. Females, on the other hand, were expected to manage the household and rear children, which severely hampered the educational opportunities available to them. And while these inequalities have improved in most modern societies, there are still gender differences in education. Among other things, this concerns biases and stereotypes associated with the role of gender in education, like seeing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics as male-oriented fields and discouraging female students to follow them.^[53][54][55]

One aspect of many social factors is given by the expectations associated with stereotypes. They work both on an external level, based on how people react to a person belonging to a certain group, and on an internal level, based on how the person internalizes them and acts accordingly. In this sense, the expectations may turn into self-fulfilling prophecies by causing the educational outcomes they anticipate. This can happen both for positive and for negative stereotypes.^[56][57]

Technology and others

Technology plays another significant role in educational success. Educational technology is commonly associated with the use of modern digital devices, like computers. But understood in the broadest sense, it involves a wide range of resources and tools for learning, including basic aids that do not involve the use of machines, like regular books and worksheets.^[58][59]

Educational technology can benefit learning in various ways. In the form of media, it often takes the role of the primary supplier of information in the classroom. This means that the teacher can focus their time and energy on other tasks, like planning the lesson and guiding students as well as assessing educational performance.^[58] It can also make information easier to understand, for example, by presenting it using graphics and videos rather than through mere text. In this regard, interactive elements may be used to make the learning experience more engaging, for example, in the form of educational games. Technology can be employed to make educational materials accessible to many people, like when using online resources. It additionally facilitates collaboration between students and communication with teachers.^[60][61][62] Lack of educational technology is an issue specifically in various developing countries and many efforts are made to address it, like the One Laptop per Child initiative.^[63][64][65]

A closely related issue concerns the effects of school infrastructure. It includes various physical aspects of the school, like its location and size as well as the available school facilities and equipment. For example, a healthy and safe environment, well-maintained classrooms, and suitable classroom furniture as well as the availability of a library and a canteen tend to contribute to educational success.^[66][67]

The quality of the teacher also has an important impact on educational success. For example, skilled teachers are able to motivate and inspire students and are able to adjust their instructions to the students' abilities and needs. Important in this regard are the teacher's own education and training as well as their past teaching experience.^[68]

An additional factor to boost educational achievement is parental involvement. It can make children more motivated and invested if they are aware that their parents care about their educational efforts. This tends to lead to increased self-esteem, better attendance rates, and more constructive behavior at school. Parent involvement also includes communication with teachers and other school staff, for example, to make other parties aware of current issues and how they may be resolved.^[69][70][71] Further relevant factors sometimes discussed in the academic literature include historical, political, demographic, religious, and legal aspects.^[72][73]

The main discipline investigating education is called education studies, also referred to as education sciences. It tries to determine how people transmit and acquire knowledge by studying the methods and forms of education. It is interested in its aims, effects, and value as well as the cultural, societal, governmental, and historical contexts that shape education.^[75] Education theorists integrate insights from many other fields of inquiry, including philosophy, psychology, sociology, economics, history, politics, and international relations. Because of these influences, some theorists claim that education studies is not an independent academic discipline like physics or history since its method and subject are not as clearly defined.^[76][77] Education studies differs from regular training programs, such as teacher training, since its focus on academic analysis and critical reflection goes beyond the skills needed to be a good teacher. It is not restricted to the topic of formal education but investigates all forms and aspects of education.^[78][79][80]

Various research methods are used to study educational phenomena. They can roughly be divided into quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches. Quantitative research emulates the methods found in the natural sciences by using precise numerical measurements to gather data from many observations and employs statistical tools to analyze it. It aims to arrive at an objective and impersonal understanding. Qualitative research usually has a much smaller sample size and tries to get an in-depth insight into more subjective and personal factors, like how different actors experience educational processes. Mixed-methods research aims to combine data gathered from both approaches to arrive at a balanced and comprehensive understanding. Data can be gathered in various ways, like using direct observation or test scores as well as interviews and questionnaires.^[81][82] Research can be employed to study fundamental factors affecting all forms of education, investigate specific applications, look for solutions to concrete problems, and evaluate the effectiveness of projects.^[83]

Subfields

Education studies encompasses various subfields like philosophy of education, pedagogy, psychology of education, sociology of education, economics of education, comparative education, and history of education.^[84][85] The philosophy of education is the branch of applied philosophy that examines many of the fundamental assumptions underlying educational theory and practice. It investigates education both as a process and as a discipline while trying to provide exact definitions of its nature and how it differs from other phenomena. It further studies the purpose of education and its different types as well as how to conceptualize teachers, students, and their relationship.^[86] It includes educational ethics, which examines various moral issues in relation to education, for example, what ethical principles underlie it and how teachers should apply them to specific cases. The philosophy of education has a long history and was already discussed in ancient Greek philosophy.^[87][88][89]

The term "pedagogy" is sometimes used as a synonym for education studies but when understood in a more restricted sense, it refers to the subfield interested in teaching methods.^[90] It investigates how the aims of education, like the transmission of knowledge or fostering skills and character traits, can be realized.^[91][92][93] It is particularly interested in the methods and practices used for teaching in regular schools and some researchers restrict it to this domain. But in a wider sense, it covers all types of education, including forms of teaching outside schools.^[94] In this general sense, it explores how teachers can bring about experiences in learners to advance their understanding of the studied topic and how the learning itself takes place.^[91][92]

The psychology of education studies how education happens on the mental level, specifically how new knowledge and skills are acquired as well as how personal growth takes place. It investigates the factors responsible for successful education and how these factors may differ from individual to individual. Important factors include intelligence, motivation, and personality. A central topic in this field is the interplay between nature and nurture and how it affects educational success. Influential psychological theories of education are behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism.^[95][39][96] Closely related fields are the neurology of education and educational neuroscience, which are interested in the neuropsychological processes and changes brought about through learning.^[97]

The sociology of education is concerned with how social factors influence education and how it leads to socialization. Social factors differ from mental factors studied by psychology and include aspects like socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and gender. The sociology of education studies how these factors, together with the dominant ideology in society, affect what kind of education is available to a person and how successful they are. Closely related questions include how education affects different groups in society and how educational experiences can form someone's personal identity. The sociology of education is particularly interested in aspects that result in inequalities and is relevant to education policy, for example, when trying to identify what causes inequality and how to reduce it.^[98][99] Two influential schools of thought are consensus theory and conflict theory. Consensus theorists hold that education benefits society as a whole by preparing individuals for their roles. Conflict theories have a more negative outlook on the resulting inequalities and see education as a force used by the ruling class to promote their own agenda.^[100][101]

The economics of education is the field of inquiry studying how education is produced, distributed, and consumed. It tries to determine how resources should be used to improve education. Examples are questions like to what extent the quality of teachers is increased by raising their salary, how smaller class sizes affect educational success, and how to invest in new educational technologies. In this regard, it helps policy-makers decide how to distribute the limited resources most efficiently to benefit society as a whole. It also tries to understand what long-term role education plays for the economy of a country by providing a highly skilled labor force and increasing its competitiveness. A closely related issue concerns the economic advantages and disadvantages of different educational systems.^{[102][103][104]}

Comparative education is the discipline that examines and contrasts educational systems. Comparisons can happen from a general perspective or focus on specific factors, like sociological, political, or economic aspects. It is often applied to different countries to assess the similarities and differences of their educational institutions and practices as well as to evaluate the consequences of the distinct approaches. It can be used to learn from other countries which educational policies work and how one's own educational system may be improved.^{[105][106][107]} This practice is known as policy borrowing and is associated with various difficulties since the success of policies can depend to a large degree on the social and cultural context of students and teachers. A closely related and controversial topic concerns the question of whether the educational systems of developed countries are superior and should be exported to less developed countries.^{[108][109][110]} Other key topics are the internationalization of education and the role of education in transmitting from an authoritarian regime to a democracy.^[109][111]

The history of education examines the evolution of educational practices, systems, and institutions. It discusses various key processes, their possible causes and effects, and their relations to each other.^[112]

Aims and ideologies

A central topic in education studies concerns questions like why people should be educated and what goals should guide this process. Many different aims of education have been suggested. On a fundamental level, education is about the acquisition of knowledge and skills but may also include personal development and fostering of certain character traits. Common suggestions encompass features like curiosity, creativity, rationality, and critical thinking as well as the tendency to think, feel, and act morally. Certain scholars focus on liberal values associated with freedom, autonomy, and open-mindedness. But others prioritize qualities like obedience to authority, ideological purity, piety, and religious faith. An important discussion in this regard concerns the role of critical thinking and to what extent indoctrination forms part of education. On a social level, it is often emphasized that education should socialize individuals and turn them into productive members of society while promoting good citizenship and preserving cultural values.^[113] A controversial issue in this regard concerns who primarily benefits from education: the educated individual, society as a whole, or dominant groups within society.^{[114][115][116]}

Educational ideologies are systems of fundamental philosophical assumptions and principles. They cover various additional issues besides the aims of education, like what topics are learned, how the learning activity is structured, what the role of the teacher is, and how the results are to be assessed. They also include claims on how to structure the institutional framework and policies. There are many different ideologies and they often overlap in various ways. For example, teacher-centered ideologies place the main emphasis on the teacher's role in transmitting knowledge to students while student-centered ideologies give a more active role to the students in the process. Product-based ideologies discuss education from the perspective of the result to be achieved. They contrast with process-based ideologies, which focus on the processes of teaching and learning themselves. Other frequently discussed ideological classifications include traditionalism, progressivism, conservatism, humanism, romanticism, essentialism, encyclopaedism, and pragmatism as well as authoritarian and democratic ideologies.^{[117][118][119]}

Learning theories and teaching

Learning theories are theoretical frameworks that explain how learning happens. Influential theories are behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Behaviorism understands learning as a change in behavior in response to environmental stimuli. This happens by presenting the learner with a stimulus, associating this stimulus with the desired response, and solidifying this stimulus-response pair. Cognitivism sees learning as a change in cognitive structures and focuses on the mental processes involved in storing, retrieving, and processing information. According to constructivism, learning is based on the personal experience of each individual. It puts more emphasis on social interactions and how they are interpreted by the learner. These theories have important implications for how to teach. For example, behaviorists tend to focus on drills while cognitivists may advocate the use of mnemonics and constructivists tend to employ collaborative learning strategies.^[120]

An influential developmental theory of learning is due to Jean Piaget, who outlines four stages of learning through which children pass on their way to adulthood: the sensorimotor, the pre-operational, the concrete operational, and the formal operational stage. They correspond to different levels of abstraction: early stages focus more on simple sensory and motor activities while later stages include more complex internal representations and information processing in the form of logical reasoning.^[121][34] Various theories suggest that learning is more efficient when it is based on personal experience and when it aims at a deeper understanding by connecting new to pre-existing knowledge rather than merely memorizing a list of unrelated facts.^[122][123]

The teaching method concerns the way the content is presented by the teacher, for example, whether group work is used instead of a focus on individual learning. There are many specific teaching methods available. Which one is most efficient in a particular case depends on various factors, like the subject matter as well as the learner's age and competence level.^{[124][91][92]} This is reflected in the fact that modern school systems organize students by age, competence, specialization, and native language into different classes to ensure a productive learning process.^[91][92] Different subjects frequently use very different approaches: for example, methods focusing on verbal learning are common in language education while mathematical education is about abstract and symbolic thinking together with deductive reasoning.^[91][92] One central requirement for teaching methodologies is to make certain that the learner remains motivated, for example, because of interest and curiosity or through external rewards.^[91][125]

Further aspects of teaching methods include the instructional media used, such as books, worksheets, and audio-visual recordings, and having some form of test or assessment to evaluate the learning progress. An important pedagogical aspect in many forms of modern education is that each particular lesson is part of a larger educational enterprise governed by a syllabus, often covering several months or years.^[91][126] According to Herbartianism, teaching is divided into different phases. The initial phase consists of preparing the student's mind for new information. Next, new ideas are first presented to the learner and then associated with ideas with which the learner is already familiar. In later phases, the understanding shifts to a more general level behind the specific instances and the ideas are then put into concrete practice.^[127][128]

The history of education studies the processes, methods, and institutions involved in teaching and learning. It also tries to explain why contemporary education is the way it is, for example, why certain practices and policies are followed while others were discarded.^[129][130] Education began in prehistory, as adults trained the young in the knowledge and skills deemed necessary in their society. For most part, there were no specialized teachers and most adults taught the youth, usually informally during everyday activities. Education was achieved through oral communication and imitation and could take the form of storytelling and singing to pass knowledge, values, and skills from one generation to the next.^[131][132]

The earliest ancient civilizations developed in the period from 3000 to 1500 BCE in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and North China. Ancient education was characterized by the invention of writing and the development of formal education.^[133][134] The invention of writing had a significant influence on the history of education. It made it possible to store and preserve information as well as to make it accessible to more people. This made various subsequent developments possible, for example, the creation of educational tools, like textbooks, and institutions, like schools.^{[135][136][137][58]}

Another key aspect of ancient education was the establishment of formal education. This became necessary since the amount of knowledge grew as civilizations evolved and informal education proved insufficient to transmit all knowledge from one generation to the next. Teachers would act as specialists to impart knowledge and education became more abstract and further removed from daily life. In ancient civilizations, formal education was still quite rare in society and restricted to the intellectual elites. It happened in the form of training scribes and priests and covered various subjects besides reading and writing, including the humanities, science, medicine, mathematics, law, and astrology.^[133][58] Often-discussed achievements of ancient education include the founding of Plato's Academy in Ancient Greek, which is frequently described as the first institute of higher education,^{[138][139][140]} and the establishment of the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt, which is usually seen as the most prestigious library of the ancient world.^[141]

In the medieval period, religious authorities had a lot of influence over formal education. This applied specifically to the role of the Catholic Church in Europe but is also seen in the Muslim world, where education focused on the study of the Quran and its interpretations but also included knowledge of the sciences and the arts. Additionally, this period saw the establishment of the first universities as concentrated centers of higher education and research, such as the University of Bologna, the University of Paris, and Oxford University.^{[142][143][144][145][146]} Another development was the estabilshment of guilds. Guilds were associations of skilled craftsmen and merchants who controlled the practice of their trades. This included the education of new members, who often had to pass through several phases, like apprentice, journeyman, and master.^[147][148]

The invention and popularization of the printing press in the middle of the 15th century by Johann Gutenberg had a profound impact on general education. It significantly reduced the cost of producing books, which were hand-written before, and thereby augmented the dissemination of written documents, including new forms like newspapers and pamphlets. The increased availability of written media had a profound impact on the general literacy of the population.^{[149][150][151][58]}

These changes prepared the rise of public education in the 18th and 19th centuries. This period saw the establishment of publicly funded schools with the aim of providing education for all. This contrasts with earlier periods, where formal education was primarily provided by private institutions, religious institutions, and individual tutors.^{[152][153][154][155][156]} Aztek civilization was an exception in this regard since formal education was mandatory for the youth regardless of social class as early as the 14th century.^{[157][158][159]} Closely related changes were to make education compulsory and free of charge for all children up to a certain age.^{[160][161][162]} Initiatives to promote public education and universal access to education made significant progress in the 20th and the 21st centuries and were promoted by intergovernmental organizations like the UN. Examples include the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, Education for All initiative, the Millennium Development Goals, and the Sustainable Development Goals.^{[163][164][165]} For example, in 1970, 28% of primary-school-age children worldwide did not attend school while by 2015, this number dropped to 9%.^[166]

A side effect of the establishment of public education was the introduction of standardized curricula for public schools as well as standardized tests to assess the students' progress. It also affected teachers by setting in place institutions and norms to guide and oversee teacher training, for example, by establishing certification standards for teaching at public schools.^{[167][168][169]}

A further influence on contemporary education are new educational technologies. For example, the widespread availability of computers and the internet dramatically increased access to educational resources and made new types of education possible, such as online education. This was of particular relevance during the COVID-19 pandemic, when schools all around the world had to close for extended periods and many offered remote learning through video conferencing or pre-recorded video lessons to continue instruction.^{[170][171][172][173][174][175][58]} A further contemporary factor is the increased globalization and internationalization of education.^[176][177]

As a neuropsychological process, learning results in various changes to the brain, which can be studied through tools like functional magnetic resonance imaging, for example, by studying what brain areas are primarily involved, how brain activity changes during and after learning as well as how these changes depend on the learned content^{[citation needed]} and the style of learning.^[178][179]

behaviorism example^[180]

constructivism, metacognitive theory, multiple intelligence theory^[181]

funcationalism in education^[182]

In 2019, an estimated 260 million children worldwide did not have access to school education, and social inequality was a major cause.^[183]

The Human Rights Measurement Initiative^[184] measures the right to education for countries around the world, based on their level of income.^[185]

An example is school effectiveness research, which uses statistical methods to identify the factors responsible for the effectiveness of schools. Some of its insights are that tracking student progress and together with positive feedback for accomplishments tends to increase exam results and decrease absence rates among students.^{[186][citation needed]}

A great variety of pedagogical theories is discussed in the academic literature. Mental-discipline theories date back all the way to ancient Greek. They see education as a form of training to help the learner improve their intellectual capacities. They often start from a certain ideal of what educated people should be like and formulate their teaching methods accordingly. Naturalist theories assume that there is already an inborn natural tendency in children to develop in a certain way. The teaching process is then organized in such a manner as to ensure that these tendencies and potentials are fully actualized.^[91][92]

Various learning theories are also discussed in pedagogy. They try to understand how learning happens and propose teaching methods according to these findings.^[187] According to apperception or association theories, the mind is initially a blank slate and learns about the world by forming associations between ideas and experiences. Education tries to ensure that the right associations are formed. ^[91][92]

According to the international consortium known as the New London Group, there are four central components to pedagogy. In situated practice, learning takes place by practically engaging in real-life situations. Overt instruction is closer to classical forms of teaching and aims at helping the learner construct new knowledge based on their experiences and pre-existing knowledge. In critical framing, learners reflect on and critically analyze what they learned earlier. Transformed practice involves putting into practice what they learned previously, usually in new contexts and sometimes in the form of teaching others.^[188][189]

Economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis argued in 1976 that there was a fundamental conflict in American schooling between the egalitarian goal of democratic participation and the inequalities implied by the continued profitability of capitalist production.^[190]

However, the relationship between education and economic growth is not always straight-forward since it may depend on various additional factors. For example, investing resources in education draws them away from other areas where they may be needed. And highly educated individuals may fail to find a job that fits their profession.^[191]

The internationalization of education is sometimes equated by critics with the westernization of education. These critics say that the internationalization of education leads to the erosion of local education systems and indigenous values and norms, which are replaced with Western systems and cultural and ideological values and orientation.^[192]

cultural capital^[193]

For example, Nguyen et al. argue that Western-style group learning is often not an appropriate pedagogical technique in certain countries influences by confucionism, like China, Vietnam, Japan, and Korea.^[108]

Both the aims of education and educational ideologies have an important impact on how to educate. This pertains to issues like who receives education and what contents are taught as well as the methods used to teach them.^{[citation needed]}

, and India, where it stood under the influence of Hindu and Buddhist religious institutions^{[citation needed]}

Maya, Aztecs, and Incas^[194]

India 2nd millennium BCE: Brahmans^[195]

Ancient greeks: Higher education: Sophists, Socrates^[196]

Ancient Romans^[197]

Europe in the Middle Ages; The development of the universities^[198]

Development of state education^[199]

Education in the 20th century^[200]

technology^[201]

historyhttps://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Encyclopedia_Americana_(1920)/Education,_History_of^[202][203]

Globalization in the form of increased cultural exchange and interconnectedness has had an important impact on the spread of education. In particular, it has led to an internationalization of education. In this regard, many educational institutions cooperate with each other across country boundaries to allow exchanges of both teachers and students.^[176] Other important factors are the development of new communication technologies, like the internet, which has significantly increased the accessibility of knowledge.^[204]

The contemporary importance of public education is also reflected in the fact that many countries invest a significant amount of their gross domestic product into public education.^[153]

• Bartlett, Steve; Burton, Diana, eds. (2003). Education studies: essential issues. London: SAGE. ISBN 0761940499.
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• Bowen, James; Gelpi, Ettore; Anweiler, Oskar. "Education". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 30 April 2023.