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Aims of education glossary
27 terms from C01, Aims of education: what schools are for — each defined in the primer's own words. Every term the primer teaches links to the slide that teaches it.
C01 · Purposes and foundations
Aims of education: what schools are for
“Education's job is to transmit content efficiently.”
Every term below is defined in the words of aims of education, primer C01 of understanding the context of education, and opens the primer at the slide where it is taught. 5 terms are also defined by another primer in the series; where the two differ, both wordings are given. The whole context glossary holds all of them together.
| Term | Definition | Referred to in | Read further |
|---|---|---|---|
| B | |||
| Bildung | A German tradition of education as self-formation: becoming a cultivated, thoughtful person through engagement with the sciences, arts and philosophy (Curren, 2025). It is broader than training and older than most modern aims statements. C04 Self-formation. In the German Didaktik tradition, teaching is a meaningful encounter between content and students that contributes to it (Deng, 2018). |
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| C | |||
| Campbell's law | When test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways (Campbell, 1979). C14 The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort the processes it monitors (Campbell, 1979). C17 The more a quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it is to corruption pressures and the more apt to distort the social processes it is intended to monitor (Campbell, 1979). | ||
| Capability | What a person is actually able to do or be if they choose, such as being educated or taking part in public life. Realised capabilities are called functionings (Robeyns & Byskov, 2025). |
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| Character and citizenship education (SG) | Singapore's programme for values, character, social-emotional well-being and citizenship. The 2021 syllabus aims for good character, resilience and well-being, future readiness and active citizenship (Ministry of Education, 2021). |
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| Curriculum narrowing | Teaching narrowed to tested subjects under high-stakes testing, reported in 69% of the 49 US studies Au synthesised; the effect depends heavily on how the tests themselves are built (Au, 2007). |
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| D | |||
| Desired Outcomes of Education (SG) | Attributes Singapore aspires for every student to possess by the end of formal education: confident persons, self-directed learners, active contributors and concerned citizens; first published in 1997 and revised in 2009 (Ministry of Education, n.d.-a). |
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| E | |||
| Education as a public good | The view that education's benefits reach beyond the person educated, to fellow citizens, the economy and democratic life. Labaree (1997) contrasts it with education as a private good used to get ahead. | ||
| F | |||
| Four pillars of learning | The four kinds of learning proposed in the Delors report to UNESCO: learning to know, to do, to live together and to be (Delors et al., 1996). |
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| H | |||
| Holistic education | Education that aims to develop the whole person, intellectually, morally, socially, physically and aesthetically, not only academically. Singapore describes its student development programmes in these five domains (Ministry of Education, 2021). |
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| Human capital | Knowledge, skills and health treated as a form of capital that raises a person's productivity and earnings, largely through deliberate investment such as schooling (Schultz, 1961; Becker, 1964). |
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| Human flourishing | A life going well in the full sense, not only materially. Several philosophers argue it should be the overall aim of education (Kristjánsson, 2020; Brighouse et al., 2018). |
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| L | |||
| Labaree's three goals of schooling | Democratic equality (preparing citizens), social efficiency (training workers) and social mobility (preparing individuals to compete for social positions); the first two treat education as a public good, the third as a private one (Labaree, 1997). |
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| Learner agency | A learner's capacity to set goals, act and take responsibility for their learning. The OECD (2019) notes that it does not mean simple autonomy or choice. Primer C03 covers it in depth. C03 The capacity of learners to set goals, reflect and act to shape their own learning. The OECD (2019) defines student agency as "the capacity to set a goal, reflect and act responsibly to effect change". |
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| Learnification | Biesta's name for the drift in which describing students only as users or learners hides the question of who they are becoming (Biesta, 2015). |
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| Liberal education | Education valued for developing the mind and preparing a person for a free life, rather than for a particular job. In analytic philosophy it is often described as initiation into forms of knowledge (Curren, 2025). |
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| N | |||
| Normative validity | Biesta's term for whether a measure captures what we value, as opposed to technical validity, whether it measures what it claims to measure (Biesta, 2009). |
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| O | |||
| OECD Learning Compass 2030 | An OECD learning framework that sets out points of orientation towards individual and collective well-being; it is neither an assessment framework nor a curriculum framework (OECD, 2019). |
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| P | |||
| Powerful knowledge | Specialised, discipline-based knowledge that gives access to ideas students are unlikely to meet outside school (Young & Muller, 2013). C10 Specialised, discipline-based knowledge that gives those who have it capacities they would not otherwise get, and which most students can reach only through school (Young, 2008, 2013; Young & Muller, 2013). Young contrasts it with "knowledge of the powerful", which asks only who wrote the curriculum. |
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| Purposes of education | The ends education is meant to serve. Biesta (2015) treats the question of purpose as the most fundamental question in education, and as always multi-dimensional. |
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| Q | |||
| Qualification | The domain of purpose concerned with the knowledge, skills and understanding that enable a person to do something, from a trade to taking part in a culture (Biesta, 2009). |
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| S | |||
| Socialisation | The domain of purpose concerned with how education makes people part of existing social, cultural and political orders, whether by design or as a side effect (Biesta, 2009). |
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| Soft skills | Personality traits, goals, motivations and preferences that are valued in the labour market, in school and in many other domains, and that achievement tests do not adequately capture (Heckman & Kautz, 2012). | ||
| Subjectification | The domain of purpose concerned with people coming to exist as subjects of initiative and responsibility, rather than only as members of an order (Biesta, 2015). |
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| T | |||
| The whole child | An approach, promoted by ASCD from 2007, in which each child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported and challenged, instead of a narrow focus on academic achievement (ASCD, n.d.). |
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| V | |||
| Values education | Teaching and practice aimed at the values students hold and act on, such as respect, responsibility and care. It can be explicit, in a programme, or implicit, in how a school runs. |
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| Vocational education | Education that prepares people for particular occupations or trades. It serves qualification most directly, and socialises students into the norms of a profession. |
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