INNOVATIVE PEDAGOGY AND THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

Abstract

Questions about the nature of the mind and process of education originate in ancient Greek philosophers. What is the role of language? What is the relation between the structure and function in education? Are people free in their choices? Important ancient philosophers, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle and Lucretius, had tried to provide answers to these questions in different ways, while Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant and many others continued where the former stopped at the end of late antiquity. Even today, in the age of technology, contemporary researchers from the fields of philosophy, cognitive science, neurobiology, and artificial intelligence ask similar, albeit technologically informed, questions. Among them are questions about the relation between human and machine or between teachers/students and learning environment and the implications they carry for solving traditional problems inside education, i.e., the problem of mental causation, or the problem of consciousness as well as various mental activities, for instance, decision-making, critical thinking and problem-solving.