Education System
An education system is an intentional system consisting of at least one teacher and one student in a context.
Note: to be an education system:
- it does not have to be a formal school or a university system, which is just one way of organizing education, with a superintendent or president as leaders;
- teachers do not need to be licensed and formally educated adults;
- students are not restricted to those in school or universities, nor only to young persons;
- the context does not need to be a school building or a campus;
- the content does not need to be subject matter typically taught in schools and universities--e.g., math, science, history, biology, music, etc.
The requirements for an education system are that:
- it is an intentional system (trying to guide student learning);
- one or more teachers is doing the guiding;
- one or more students is trying to learn; and
- guidance of learning occurs in a context (i.e., setting which also includes content for learning).
An example of an early education system was Socrates leading his followers in Greece, as described in The Republic by Plato.
- Socrates did the overall leading (e.g., towards the goal of thinking critically about philosophy, and questioning Sophist values);
- Socrates also did the guiding of student learning (e.g., through provocative statements and scenarios, by asking probing questions--later known as Socratic Method of Teaching);
- his band of adult followers were the students;
- the context was places in the city of Athens; and
- the content was topics in philosophy (e.g., theory of universals, What is justice?, What is the ideal city-state? Why should philosopher kings govern?).
This definition of education system used here is taken from the theory of Totally Integrated Education (TIE).
For similar conceptions of an education system, see:
- Frick (2020): Education Systems and Technology in 1990, 2020, and Beyond
- Maccia and Maccia (1966): Educational Systems Theory
- Steiner (1988): Methodology of Theory Building
- Thompson (2008): Axiomatic Theories of Intentional Systems (ATIS)
Common among these definitions: an education system must include teacher, student, content, and context components which are related. For example, teaching-studenting processes and teaching-studenting structures are types of relationships between teachers and students in an education system. Further types of relationships include student-content, teacher-content, etc.
See Frick (2020) for further examples of education system component relations.