Educational software for Windows

Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Various researchers emphasize the role of critical thinking in order to distinguish education from indoctrination. Some theorists require that education results in an improvement of the student while others prefer a value-neutral definition of the term. In a slightly different sense, education may also refer, not to the process, but to the product of this process: the mental states and dispositions possessed by educated people. Education originated as the transmission of cultural heritage from one generation to the next. Today, educational goals increasingly encompass new ideas such as the liberation of learners, skills needed for modern society, empathy, and complex vocational skills.

Types of education are commonly divided into formal, non-formal, and informal education. Formal education takes place in education and training institutions, is usually structured by curricular aims and objectives, and learning is typically guided by a teacher. In most regions, formal education is compulsory up to a certain age and commonly divided into educational stages such as kindergarten, primary school and secondary school. Nonformal education occurs as addition or alternative to formal education. It may be structured according to educational arrangements, but in a more flexible manner, and usually takes place in community-based, workplace-based or civil society-based settings. Lastly, informal education occurs in daily life, in the family, any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts may be considered educational, whether unintentional or intentional. In practice there is a continuum from the highly formalized to the highly informalized, and informal learning can occur in all three settings. For instance, homeschooling can be classified as nonformal or informal, depending upon the structure.

Regardless of setting, educational methods include teaching, training, storytelling, discussion, and directed research. The methodology of teaching is called ''pedagogy''. Education is supported by a variety of different philosophies, theories and empirical research agendas.

There are movements for education reforms, such as for improving quality and efficiency of education towards relevance in students' lives and efficient problem solving in modern or future society at large, or for evidence-based education methodologies. A right to education has been recognized by some governments and the United Nations. Global initiatives aim at achieving the Sustainable Development Goal 4, which promotes quality education for all.

Definitions

Numerous definitions of education have been suggested by theorists belonging to diverse fields. Many agree that education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, especially the transmission of knowledge. But they often include other aims as well, such as fostering skills and character traits. However, there are deep disagreements about the exact nature of education besides these general characteristics. According to some conceptions, it is primarily a process that occurs during events like schooling, teaching, and learning. Others understand it not as a process but as the achievement or product brought about by this process. On this view, education is what educated persons have, i.e. the mental states and dispositions that are characteristic of them. However, the term may also refer to the academic study of the methods and processes taking place during teaching and learning, as well as the social institutions involved in these processes. Etymologically, the word "education" is derived from the Latin word '' ēducātiō'' ("A breeding, a bringing up, a rearing") from '' ēducō'' ("I educate, I train") which is related to the homonym '' ēdūcō'' ("I lead forth, I take out; I raise up, I erect") from '' ē-'' ("from, out of") and '' dūcō'' ("I lead, I conduct").

Some researchers, like R. S. Peters, have proposed precise definitions by spelling out the necessary and sufficient conditions of education, for example: (1) it is concerned with the transmission of knowledge and understanding; (2) this transmission is worthwhile and (3) done in a morally appropriate manner in tune with the student's interests. This and similar attempts are often successful at characterizing the most paradigmatic forms of education but have received numerous criticisms nonetheless, usually in the form of specific counterexamples for which the proposed criteria fail. These difficulties have led various theorists to develop less precise conceptions based on family resemblance. This means that all the different forms of education are similar to each other even though they need not share an essential set of features characteristic of all of them. This view can also be combined with the idea that the meaning of the term "education" is context-dependent and may thus vary depending on the situation in which it is used. Having a clear idea of what the term means is important for various issues: it is needed to identify and coherently talk about it as well as to determine how to achieve and measure it.

There is disagreement in the academic literature on whether education is an evaluative concept. So-called ''thick definitions'' affirm this, for example, by holding that an improvement of the learner is a necessary requirement of education. However, different thick definitions may still disagree among themselves on what constitutes such an improvement. ''Thin definitions'', on the other hand, try to give a value-neutral account of education. A closely related distinction is that between ''descriptive'' and ''prescriptive conceptions''. Descriptive conceptions aim to describe how the term is actually used by regular speakers while prescriptive conceptions try to express what good education is or how it should be done.

Many thick and prescriptive conceptions base their account on the aims of education, i.e. regarding the goals that the activity of education tries to achieve. These aims are sometimes categorized into ''epistemic goods'', like knowledge and understanding, ''skills'', like rationality and critical thinking, and character traits, like kindness and honesty. Some theorists focus on one overarching purpose of education and see the more specific aims as means to this end. This can take the form of socialization, in which accumulated knowledge is transmitted from one generation to the next with the goal of helping the student function as a regular citizen in society. More person-centered definitions focus on the well-being of the student instead: education is to help them lead a good life or the life they wish to lead. Various researchers emphasize critical thinking as an aim in order to distinguish education from indoctrination. This is motivated by the idea that mere indoctrination is only interested in instilling beliefs in the student without concern for their evidential status. Education, on the other hand, should also foster the rational ability to critically reflect on those beliefs and question them. However, some theorists contend that certain forms of indoctrination may be necessary in the early stages of education until the child's mind is sufficiently developed.

Education can be characterized from the teacher's or the student's perspective. Teacher-centered definitions focus on the perspective and role of the teacher, for example, in the form of transmitting knowledge and skills while doing so in a morally appropriate manner. Student-centered definitions, on the other hand, outline education based on the student's experience in the learning process, for example, based on how education transforms and enriches their subsequent experience. However, conceptualizations taking both perspectives into account are also possible. This can take the form of describing the process as the shared experience of a common world that involves discovery as well as posing and solving problems.

Types

There are various ways how forms of education are commonly subdivided into different types. The most common subdivision is between formal, non-formal, and informal education. However, some theorists only distinguish between formal and informal education. A process of teaching constitutes formal education if it happens in a complex institutionalized framework. Such frameworks are usually chronologically and hierarchically organized as in modern schooling systems, which have different classes based on the student's age and progress, all the way from primary school to university. Because of its scale, formal education is usually controlled and guided by a governmental entity and is normally compulsory up to a certain age. Non-formal and informal education differ from formal education due to their lack of such a governmental institutionalized framework. Non-formal education constitutes a middle ground in the sense that it is also organized, systematic, and carried out with a clear purpose in mind, such as tutoring, fitness classes, or the scouting movement. Informal education, on the other hand, happens in an unsystematic way through daily experiences and exposure to the environment. Unlike formal and non-formal education, there is usually no designated authority figure responsible for teaching. Informal education is present in many different settings and happens throughout one's life, mostly in a spontaneous manner. This is how children usually learn their mother tongue from their parents or when learning how to prepare a certain dish by cooking together. Some accounts tie the difference between the three types mainly to the location where the learning takes place: in school for formal education, in places of the individual's day-to-day routine for informal education, and in other places occasionally visited for non-formal education. It has been argued that the motivation responsible for formal education is predominantly extrinsic, whereas it tends to be mainly intrinsic for non-formal and informal education. The distinction between the three types is normally clear for the paradigmatic cases but there are various intermediate forms of education that do not easily fall into one category.

Formal education plays a central role in modern civilization. But in primitive cultures, most of the education happens not on the formal but on the informal level. This usually means that there is no distinction between activities focused on education and other activities. Instead, the whole environment may be seen as a form of school and many or all adults may act as teachers. An important reason for moving to formal forms of education is due to the sheer quantity of knowledge to be passed on, which requires both a formal setting and well-trained teachers to be transmitted effectively. A side effect of the process of formalization is that the educational experience becomes more abstract and more removed from daily life. In this regard, more emphasis is put on grasping general patterns instead of observing and imitating particular behavior.

Closely related to the distinction between formal and informal education is that between conscious education, which is done with a clear purpose in mind, and unconscious education, which occurs on its own without being consciously planned or guided. This may happen in part through the personality of teachers and adults by having indirect effects on the development of the student's personality. Another categorization depends on the age group of the learners and includes childhood education, adolescent education, adult education, and elderly education. The distinction can also be based on the subject, encompassing fields like science education, language education, art education, religious education, and physical education. The educational methodology may be used as well for classifications, such as the difference between the traditional teacher-centered education, in which the teacher takes the center stage in providing students with information, in contrast to student-centered education, in which students take on a more active and responsible role in shaping the classroom activities. The term " alternative education" is sometimes used for a wide range of educational methods and approaches outside mainstream pedagogy, for example, like the emphasis on narration and storytelling found in indigenous education or autodidacticism. Forms of education can also be categorized by the medium used, for example, as distance education, like online education, e-learning, or m-learning, in contrast to regular classroom or onsite education. Various types of online education take the form of open education, where the courses and materials are made available with a minimal amount of barriers. Another classification is based on the social institution responsible for education and may include categories for institutions like family, school, civil society, state, and church. When the term education is used in the sense of an achievement or a product, expressions like ''type'' or ''level of education'' refer to the person's academic or professional qualification, such as high school completion, bachelor's degree, master's degree, doctor's degree, or degrees in vocational training.

Formal

Formal education occurs in a structured environment whose explicit purpose is teaching students. Usually, formal education takes place in a school environment with classrooms of multiple students learning together with a trained, certified teacher of the subject. It can be subdivided into various categories or levels. The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) was created by UNESCO as a statistical base to compare education systems. In 1997, it defined seven levels of education and 25 fields, though the fields were later separated out to form a different project. The current version ISCED 2011 has nine rather than seven levels, created by dividing the tertiary pre-doctorate level into three levels. It also extended the lowest level (ISCED 0) to cover a new sub-category of early childhood educational development programs, which target children below the age of three years.

Early childhood

Education designed to support early development in preparation for participation in school and society. The programmes are designed for children below the age of three. This is ISCED level 01. Preschools provide education from ages approximately three to seven, depending on the country when children enter primary education. The children now readily interact with their peers and the educator. These are also known as nursery schools and as kindergarten, except in the US, where the term ''kindergarten'' refers to the earliest levels of primary education. Kindergarten "provides a child-centred, preschool curriculum for three- to seven-year-old children that aim at unfolding the child's physical, intellectual, and moral nature with balanced emphasis on each of them." This is ISCED level 02.

Primary

This is ISCED level 1. Primary (or elementary) education consists of the first four to seven years of formal, structured education. In general, primary education consists of six to eight years of schooling starting at the age of five to seven, although this varies between, and sometimes within, countries. Globally, in 2008, around 89% of children aged six to twelve were enrolled in primary education, and this proportion was rising. Under the Education For All programs driven by UNESCO, most countries have committed to achieving universal enrollment in primary education by 2015, and in many countries, it is compulsory. The division between primary and secondary education is quite arbitrary, but it generally occurs at about eleven or twelve years of age. Some education systems have separate middle schools, with the transition to the final stage of secondary education taking place at around the age of fifteen. Schools that provide primary education, are mostly referred to as ''primary schools ''or ''elementary schools''. Primary schools are often subdivided into infant schools and junior schools.

In India, for example, compulsory education spans over twelve years, with eight years of elementary education, five years of primary schooling and three years of upper primary schooling. Various states in the republic of India provide 12 years of compulsory school education based on a national curriculum framework designed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training.

Secondary

This covers the two ISCED levels, ISCED 2: Lower Secondary Education and ISCED 3: Upper Secondary Education.

In most contemporary educational systems of the world, secondary education comprises the formal education that occurs during adolescence. In the United States, Canada, and Australia, primary and secondary education together are sometimes referred to as K-12 education, and in New Zealand Year 1–13 is used. The purpose of secondary education can be to give common knowledge, to ensure literacy, to prepare for higher education, or to train directly in a profession.

Secondary education in the United States did not emerge until 1910, with the rise of large corporations and advancing technology in factories, which required skilled workers. In order to meet this new job demand, high schools were created, with a curriculum focused on practical job skills that would better prepare students for white collar or skilled blue collar work. This proved beneficial for both employers and employees, since the improved human capital lowered costs for the employer, while skilled employees received higher wages.

Secondary education has a longer history in Europe, where grammar schools or academies date from as early as the sixth century, in the form of public schools, fee-paying schools, or charitable educational foundations, which themselves date even further back.

It spans the period between the typically universal compulsory,