What is your educational philosophy ? Modern and postmodern approaches to foreign language education

The present study discusses the concepts of education and training, while also highlighting the paradigm wars of the positivistic and naturalistic views, beginning with the age of ancient philosophies and continuing to the latest era of postmodernism. Additionally, language education is examined considering the linguistic and educational fundamentals which all need to be based on and combined by a philosophy. The research in foreign language (FL) education is evaluated from both the teaching and learning perspectives in order to reach conclusions concerning the current situation and the requisites of futuristic and innovative FL education. What is my educational philosophy? is proposed as a key question that not only FL teachers but also all educators should ask themselves; a question that will guide teachers throughout their entire lives and illuminate their minds throughout their teaching practice. Teacher and learner roles are discussed in order to determine whether teachers or learners should come first in the process of education. It is emphasised that the philosophical perspectives of education urgently need to be built into the minds of educators prior to asking them to convey knowledge of any kind or to apply the materials of a specific teaching method. The study concludes with the observation that there exists a serious discrepancy between the needs, preferences and interests of the learners and the views held by educational decision makers, who seem to fail to catch up with the trends in technology and globalisation.

The authority of those who want to teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn. -CICERO On-going and everlasting complaints, explanations, and debates in the world of education and training testify to the existence of serious problems or shortcomings concerning not only the processes but also the procedures, which are directly related to the philosophical perspectives of those who are involved.In the quest for a clearer view of the big picture, in the following an attempt will be made to delve into the concepts of education and training, and also highlight the paradigm wars of the positivistic and naturalistic views in the light of approaches adopted in education, beginning with the age of ancient philosophies and continuing to the latest era of postmodernism.Additionally, foreign language (FL) education will be examined considering its linguistic and educational fundamentals, which all need to be based on and united by a philosophy.Research in FL education will be evaluated from both the teaching and learning perspectives in order to gain an insight into the current situation and the requisites of futuristic and innovative approaches and applications in the teaching of English as a FL.

What Is My Educational Philosophy?
What is my educational philosophy? is the key question that not only FL teachers but also all educators should ask themselves; a question that will guide teachers throughout their entire lives and illuminate their minds in the course of their careers.In order to find an answer to this question, it might be useful for each individual to comprehend the differences between some basic concepts such as education versus training, teaching versus learning, and the positivistic approach versus the naturalistic approach, as well as to decide about the value of each, which is a subjective matter indeed, and also to consider the roles of teachers and learners in the process of education.Teacher candidates need to be encouraged to be creative and active thinkers in order to minimise their reliance on memorisation and passive implementations of foreordained methods, techniques, activities, materials, and so forth, that is, implementing directives that require following fixed procedures and actions, without much thinking, modification, or contribution by the practitioner.

Education Versus Training
Immanuel Kant stressed that education differs from training in that the latter involves thinking, whereas the former does not.According to him, it was essential to address the development of character and teaching of moral val-ues, which would be best realised through public education and learning by doing (Cahn, 1997, p. 197).Therefore, it seems that training should be considered superior to education because it produces high quality personalities initially spiritually but also intellectually.However, education encourages adoption and acquiescence of certain data, without much criticism or complaint.Indeed, the differences between the concepts of education and training used to be stressed quite often in Turkey, with the implication that training (the process of equipping individuals with moral values, skills, and creativity that does not necessarily have to be realised at a school, college, or university) should come to the fore and be more important than education (the process of equipping people with pure, fixed and absolute information as theoretical knowledge).Nevertheless, the current criteria of qualification in Turkey depend mostly on exam results rather than skills and personality.There are over twenty types of examinations and tests used for assessment and evaluation of education (e.g., STS, ÜDS, YGS, JANA, DUS, TUS, ALS, OMSS, TODAIE, ALES, KPDS, LYS, YÇS, PMYO, KPSS, DGS, UGYS, YDUS, etc.; see the website of the Centre for Assessment, Selection, and Placement for further information: http://www.osym.gov.tr/ana-sayfa/1-0/20120920.html), but very few that concentrate on training.Almost every member of the society is urged by the system to undergo these types of assessment throughout his/her life as this happens, for instance, when one applies to become a student, teacher, police officer, fireman, and so on.Moreover, it is customary that a Turkish person is granted their driving licence only if s/he knows the parts of the engine, has some theoretical knowledge about first aid, and so on; the knowledge is normally tested in the course of a pen and paper exam.By contrast, nobody would question the driver candidate's psychological state, or ask him/her to apply a first aid procedure.In fact, this holds true almost about all evaluation procedures.For instance, a teacher candidate would be asked about theoretical knowledge of the field but not whether s/he loves children and/or teaching; a fireman candidate would most probably have to answer questions related to physics, mechanics, medicine, and so on, but would never be asked to demonstrate his/her practical skills.Therefore, education versus training has been a controversial issue for some time, the fact which seems to have been forgotten or somehow simply ignored recently.In short, the Turkish educational system highlights the value of training but functions in favour of education, which applies to both formative and summative aspects of testing.Furthermore, it should be pointed out that evaluation in Turkey is mostly summative rather than formative and relies mostly on multiple choice tests.
The reason for adopting this stance or approach to training and education should be related to the behaviouristic, cognitive, and constructivist understandings of the modern, which define and standardise the aims and procedures of education with much focus on communal pragmatism rather than on individual benefit.In other words, the perspectives of the modern highlight the necessity and importance of "communal" behaviourism, constructivism, and cognitive processing, and tend to make judgements concerning the good and bad, appropriate and inappropriate, relevant and irrelevant, and so on, according to this fixed view of the world.Therefore, the present mass education should be very natural and rational given this understanding of collectivism, which conceives of a common intellect, morals, habits, and so on, for everyone.On the other side of the coin, the same view recognizes and does not deny, but at the same time neglects the multiple intelligences, needs, and interests, as they would require individual or "differentiated instruction" (see Tomlinson, 1999), and thus causes much difficulty and many problems in the system of mass education.Therefore, this might be one basic reason why education has been consolidated more than training throughout human history.Formal education seems to have replaced informal "person training" as it existed in the medieval times of less knowledge but more virtue.As mentioned before, modern systems urge people to learn and follow the common information, trends, and criteria to survive in the global society.However, in the past people were mostly treated as individual creatures that had to be illuminated from inside, that is, they would get to know themselves better, and begin to question and think about every behaviour, idea, reason, conclusion, and so on.Each professional would question why s/he is doing the thing s/he is doing, and also how well, appropriately, or timely s/he is doing it.A teacher would question his/her knowledge and the messages s/he conveys to his/her students, and also the way s/he assesses his/her students.And students, on the other hand, would question the things they learn, why they learn them, and also make links with the virtues and values that they have learnt from their ancestors.
In sum, what matters today seems to be the degree to which a person is close to the common knowledge, skills, values and the like of society, regardless of individual predispositions.Education is provided to classrooms rather than to individuals who not only have to breathe the same air but who are also to absorb and internalise the same things, although this might happen in different ways and at different levels.Training seems to have been a value of past ages which has lost its currency and value to a great extent and no longer "feeds" the individual.Despite this, it is still carried out, if not as a global or governmental policy, as an individual pastime.
Teaching versus learning.Teaching and learning are two crucial elements of a continuum that approach education from different perspectives.The differences between the concepts of this dichotomy are important because they are directly related to the philosophies, theories, processes, approaches and applications in education.What is done in schools and how it is carried out reveals from what perspective the whole action is approached or based on.Table 1 sheds light on teaching and learning regardless of the cultural, geographical, or physical varieties that may occur.It exemplifies not only the continuum that begins with a philosophy and ends with a result but also the processes of teaching and learning.The table does not assert that the evolution should necessarily be as specified in the columns, but rather points out that the nature of the total action is directed more or less by the dichotomies mentioned above.These views or paths have actually resulted in a conflict, namely the paradigm wars, which will be explained in the following section.Paradigm wars of the positivistic and naturalistic worlds.The term paradigm wars refers to the ontological and epistemological debates among those who possess a different view related to a particular problem, aim, or application.The sides of this war might be the "positivists," "interpretivists," and "critical theorists" (Anderson & Herr, 1999) or the "technologists," "social pragmatists," and "critical analysts" (Chapelle, 2003, pp. 1-9), or even the teachers, students, and parents, and so on, depending on the subject matter or the field of action.
It is of utmost importance to realize that any conscious effort of action depends on the thought and/or belief of the beholders (e.g., policy makers, professionals, practitioners, etc.) or of those in charge.Respective points of view and perceptions of reality as well as an understanding of what is significant lay behind the means, definitions, and applications that will be preferred and used throughout the lives of human beings.For instance, while one mind-set would concentrate on concrete acquisitions (i.e., specific information, behaviour related to the skills, etc.), the other would aim at abstract acquisitions (i.e., improvement of emotional feelings, satisfaction of the inner world, etc.).Therefore, different views of the world lead to different paradigms (patterns or models) in action.This natural occurrence of differentiation might stem from either the variation of human minds or the influence of the two philosophers on these minds, namely Plato and Aristotle.Although many philosophical views have been introduced so far, from the first day of humanity to the present, it is possible to divide them into two major groups which may be labelled positivistic and naturalistic.As it has been previously explained, these philosophies depend basically on how reality is perceived.Therefore, while one approach argues that "reality is within us," as in Idealism, the other claims that "reality is external to us," as in Realism.Recently, another approach has been emphasised more often, namely the one saying that "reality is socially constructed," but again it is possible to postulate that the roots of this recent view would go back either to Idealism or Realism, or both.Table 2 exemplifies the views of the positivistic and naturalistic worlds or mindsets, while also showing how the social-constructivist views might be embedded into these.As it can be seen in Table 2, the knowledge that would be favoured by the positivistic perception (PP) would be the one that is based on the five senses and it would be consolidated by statistical measurements.Consequently, what should be transmitted to or learned by others should be this kind of data and information as reliable realities.Therefore, books, materials, or applications of this understanding would not teach things such as angels, fairies, conscience, love, dreams, and so on.On the other hand, naturalistic perception (NP) seems to adopt a more flexible stance, and thus it would be tolerant of any idea, belief, or application.For instance, it would be even possible and probable to spend a whole semester dis-cussing and debating the sixth sense (i.e., moral, spiritual, and metaphysical issues).As the third element of Table 2, social constructivist perception (SCP) will be bound to and will build on both of these perspectives, depending on the degree and weight of exposure (i.e., positivistic or naturalistic tenets) that is forwarded by the two channels (i.e., PP and NP).To put it differently, the views of SCP should be embedded both in PP and NP depending on the tendencies, traditions, beliefs, and so on, of the adopted perspective.For instance, one might suggest that religion as a domain has followed mainly the NP, and thus the SCP of this domain should have built on the essentials of the NP, while for the technology/science domain it would be the opposite.Therefore, it would be natural to observe a kind of naturalistic social constructivism (NSC) in many of the domains of social systems, and positivistic social constructivism (PSC) in most of the scientific systems.In short, information and knowledge would be constructed by the society, which would employ a naturalistic or positivistic perception of reality or of what is significant, and, thus, convert it to NSC or PSC.However, this should not mean that these two types cannot be mixed in some cases.On the contrary, it is always suggested both by the PP and the NP that there should be a kind of balance as, for instance, a human being cannot be a robot devoid of human feelings.This kind of triangulation or mixed approach to the world would certainly be valid and reliable in every case and domain.
As a consequence of the above, it would not be naïve to postulate that the educational implications and materials as well as the concepts and definitions in these views (i.e., PP and NP) will be highly influenced by the understanding or mindset that lies behind them.Besides the educational philosophies, the functional approaches such as behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism have important effects on the total process and procedures.One simple example might be the definition of education by Erturk (1985, p.6) as in the following: "istendik davran de ikli i" (desired behaviour alteration).This collocation has always been the best-known definition of education in Turkish educational circles (e.g., Cayci & Ünal, 2007;Demirel, 1999;Deniz, Avsaroglu, & Fidan, 2006;Dilekman, Basci, & Bektas, 2008).This definition of education represents an obvious behaviouristic approach which evokes strong feelings of a positivistic mindset.Moreover, it is also implied that the most basic duty of teachers is to create behaviour alterations in the lives of people in accordance with the aims.At this specific point, it becomes unavoidable to ask two critical questions: Whose aims are implied by this understanding?and Is education only about disciplining the behaviours of people?Additionally, Pring (2004, p. 13) postulated that education is concerned with the life of the mind, and the job of the teacher is to facilitate this through putting the learner in contact with further experience or with what others have said.Therefore, another question should occupy our minds: What is concerned with the life of the heart and the soul if education is going to concentrate purely on the life of the mind?And actually, is education just an intellectual process rather than full satisfaction of both the mind and the feelings?Best and Kahn (2006, p. 3) pointed out that human beings are the unique product of their creation and evolution.Therefore, if we consider each human being as a different world, we should not deny the necessity of providing each individual with a unique exposure to information and experiences, so that s/he will be able to make progress in her/his development.Otherwise, if the same knowledge and experiences were imposed on all individuals for the sake of a "mutual consensus," then it would be hard to talk about some kind of uniqueness.Therefore, the approaches to education seem to call for a careful reconsideration and revision in order for us to be able to adopt and adapt them successfully in our practices to meet the needs of each individual.Table 3 is intended to shed further light on this matter.Building on the norms and tendencies of the day Table 3 indicates that the functional approaches to education would not necessarily mean to be unique to some specific philosophical view, but rather that different philosophical understandings would require different actions.From ancient ages to the present time, human beings have been "naturally" and "unavoidably" in a process that has required them to behave, cogitate, and construct in some specific ways.Moreover, these ways have always been directed or affected by wise men or authorities, or written materials, or more recently by audio and visual media, behind which similarly lies a person or group of persons.Furthermore, these decision makers have had the right to create knowledge, implement procedures, and evaluate the outcomes of processes.
In the following section, the issues presented and explained above will be discussed within the context of FL education, and the assumptions, implications, and applications will be evaluated from a postmodern perspective.

Foreign Language Education
The literature and documentation of FL education indicates that, although the implications and application have shown alterations, the assumptions have not changed much at all.In other words, although different methods and techniques have been proposed during the last century, the tendency to view learners according to certain specific proficiency levels, and interpreting FL learning and teaching through the use and access of certain skills have remained the same or similar.
Globally, FL circles have shown much interest in the ways of teaching and transmitting the basics of a given language while also pointing to the necessity for learners to practise these crucial elements.However, little attention has been awarded to individual psychological matters and their reflections within FL classrooms.This might be because of the mass production tendency of the modern era, which has been based on consumption rather than critical thinking and production of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, and thus, has resulted in mass education that in practice has had to ignore individual needs, interests, and so on, although the same era has produced theoretical principles such as multiple intelligences or differentiated instruction.Classrooms, full of people, have been treated with the same approach, method, and techniques as well as books, materials, and exercises.To put it differently, the general tendency of the "modern approach" works as follows: All the learners are put together in the same classroom and are given, for example, the same text to read and urged to follow the same activities afterwards, regardless of the interests or intelligence types of the individuals that form the group.Therefore, it is possible to suggest that until very recently, regardless of what skill was valued more than others or who was in the centre (i.e., teachers or students), formal education, fixed programmes, subjects, time, place, and so on, have dominated the process to a great extent.Learner dependency and standards-focused education have been like a virus that has been hard to get rid of.It is only recently, with the rising voices of postmodernism, that human beings have discovered new ways to deal with the task of learning a FL in the globalised world.The deconstructionism of postmodernism has resulted in the four A-isms (Anyone-Anywhere-Anytime-Anything-ism) that have become sensible to people.Therefore, lifelong learning, learner autonomy, online education, distance education, and so on, have been pronounced more often recently.Moreover, the latest developments in technology and the possible integration of technology in FL education have enhanced learner-centred applications that have become rivals and threat to teacher-centeredness. Actually, a significant amount of criticism has been directed at teacher-centeredness, so that a serious incompatibility is rapidly emerging between the natural occurrences of the age, and the views of the educational authorities, who seem to fail in catching up with the trends in technology and globalisation, and the needs and interests of the youth.Prensky (2001, p. 2) emphasised that the single biggest problem facing education today is that our "digital immigrant" instructors, who speak an outdated language, are struggling to teach a population of "digital natives" that speak a much different language.
Teacher and student roles in the traditional and innovative approaches differ significantly, a fact which also inevitably affects the very basic and essential assumptions, implications, and applications in FL education.Table 4 shows the general differences.The general tendency has been to talk about reflective teachers (e.g., Farrell, 2007;Hatton & Smith, 1995;Kocoglu, Akyel, & Ercetin, 2008;Orr, 2011) with little attention to or interest in reflective learners (e.g.Ahmad, Britland, Bull, & Mabbott, 2010;Chen, Wei, & Liu, 2011;Hsieh, Jang, Hwang, & Chen, 2011), which is an attitude quite open to criticism.The postmodern approaches to FL education would prefer to see the process from the learning side rather than from the teaching side.Therefore, it becomes essential to talk about learner reflection before talking about teacher reflection because of the belief that learning is an individual process, and nobody can teach something to somebody without the consent of the receptor or the processor of information and practitioner of actions.
To that end, one should question and discuss the meaning or value of concentrating so much on teacher reflectivity and neglecting learner reflectivity.After all, no matter how skilful or efficient a teacher is, each student will learn or understand in proportion to his/her capacity, will, or readiness, as the wise saying of Mevlana (Rumi) advises: "Ne kadar bilirsen bil, söylediklerin karsindakilerin anlayabilecegi kadardir" (http://www.tr.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mevlana_Celaleddin-i_Rumi).(No matter how well or much you know, the things you say are only in proportion to the vessel of your interlocutors).Therefore, one might infer that the main duty and responsibility in training or education is on the shoulders of the students, and thus, it might be reasonable to put more effort into the improvement of learner qualifications and experience rather than those of the teachers'.The same idea offers itself when considering the present age of postmodernity, which has led towards the shift in the roles of the two sides.Today, learners have a lot to teach or share with their friends or teachers, as in the example of the social media (e.g., weblogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.).People have the power to raise topics to discuss, put new points of view on the agenda, and share written, visual, and audio information that can easily attract or catch the interest of others and can thus increase cognitive and emotional stimulation.

Foreign Language Learning and Teaching
The promotion of intercultural communication as a result of the improvement in technology, and more specifically, the opportunities that the Internet provides people with, have accelerated FL learning and gradually put learning one step ahead of teaching.Today, autonomous FL learners have the opportunity to find plenty of different types of materials of their own interest and choice on the Internet in contrast to the formal FL programmes that are mostly dependent on fixed materials and curricula.Therefore, there is a need to reconsider the multiple abilities, interests and needs of the learners, to seek for ways to implement differentiated instruction in the classroom in order to satisfy individuals, and to help learners proceed more fruitfully in their individual learning.Unfortunately, the modern educational system has focused more than is necessary on teaching rather than learning, and so there has been a tendency to see individuals as a single large entity that has come to the classroom and to whom the same materials, methods or techniques can be applied at the same time.This tradition might depend on the theory of John Locke about the human mind, and follow the view of tabula rasa, which explains that human minds are blank slates or empty vessels that need to be filled in.Nevertheless, this view has been opposed and criticised by some authors claiming that the authoritarian, strict, pre-ordained knowledge approach of modern traditional education was too concerned with delivering knowledge, and not enough with understanding students' actual experiences (e.g., Dewey, 1938;Freire, 1970;Neil, 2005).The "banking concept of education" of Freire (1970) criticised this approach, which saw individuals as empty containers who have to be filled with information, and blamed it for being an instrument of oppression that leads to the teacher-student contradiction.Therefore, it might be wiser and more beneficial to teach learners the ways of accessing and acquiring information rather than giving it directly, as taught by the following Chinese proverb: "Give me a fish and I eat for a day.Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime."To put it differently, a FL teacher might, for example, try to present the topic of passive voice by asking his/her students to connect to the Internet (and he/she might specify a few websites), to read and do exercises, and to come and share their knowledge with their classmates instead of teaching all of these things and creating teacher dependency and a passive attitude.In this case, teachers should step aside and be ready to adopt the role of facilitator or guide.Moreover, Vygotsky's (1986) research on human psychology and metacognition is in support of this, as in the following: "If you want to learn something, teach it to someone; The one who does the talking, does the learning" (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Lev_Vygotsky).While on the one hand, the modern FL circles are aware of all this, on the other hand, they are lacking in improving these principles and producing learner-centred theories.The literature has accumulated a considerable amount of information that is intended to support teachers with paths and techniques (e.g., the grammar-translation method, audiolingual method, TPR, communicative language teaching, content-based approach, context-based approach, etc.) to teach a FL, but there are not any well-established paths for learners.Although some learning strategies have been suggested by professionals, it would be hard to say that these will be suitable for all learner types.Moreover, these strategies usually provide local solutions for the learning of specific topics or skills such as vocabulary or listening.Nevertheless, FL learners might need and benefit from more general solutions that will support all-around learning, as in the FL teaching methods.This fact is clear evidence of what the dominant philosophy of the FL world has been.In other words, the data produced and accumulated in the FL literature show from what view the nature of FL education has been approached.Despite this, there have also been attempts to create more learnercentred approaches such as the "LdL Method" (Grzega & Schöner, 2008), which has the potential to trigger learner reflectivity and creation of individual paths and techniques.The nature of FL education might be approached and investigated from both the teaching side and the learning side, but the age of postmodernity would require dealing with matters mostly from a bottom-up perspective rather than from a top-down view.Therefore, it should be remembered that classrooms are not places for teacher satisfaction, but places where learners come with particular purposes, and teachers attend the classes because students are there.Simply said, teachers in the current world exist because learners exist, which means that without the learners, teachers would not exist.This should not imply that teachers or teacher education can be underestimated but rather that teachers principally exist for students, and students will continue to learn whether or not teachers exist in the current age of technology and globalisation.Figure 1 is an example of how the nature of FL education can be viewed in the age of postmodernity, which in return can cultivate results that will enhance learner success and satisfaction.Although not in detail, Figure 1 shows the current state of FL education from the learning perspective and student-centred approach.A FL learner might follow either a formal or informal education, where it seems that the informal one will allow for more flexibility and opportunities for individual modification or adaptation.On the informal path learners will have an opportunity to learn language skills together or separately depending on their choice, and also from multiple sources.This should be something good because variation in input can help the learners to deal with richer opportunities, both practically and intellectually.

Summary and Conclusions
To sum up, in order to make progress not only in education but also in any other field, there are some very basic and essential things to realise, among which philosophy is probably the one that comes first.It is of utmost importance that the parties involved in or related to education should have an idea about the whole process, including its philosophy and human psychology, and in this particular case the psychology of teaching and learning a FL.The world of change should constantly and routinely remind us that the only thing that would not change is the change itself.Therefore, the educational authorities always need to question, observe and follow the innovations, development, and tendencies in technology and learner profiles.It would be helpful to suggest that FL education circles need to work more on autonomous learner and learning theories in the future in order to keep pace with the instantaneous and rapid lifestyle changes and improvements of technology.There is also a need to comprehend that the big picture will depend on what we base education on: ethics versus profit, individual satisfaction versus societal satisfaction, theology versus empiricism/experientialism, and so on.
Consequently, everything in education is about and for human beings.Therefore, if principles such as multiple intelligences, differentiated instruction, lifelong learning, and so on, sound truly humanistic, it would be worth struggling for these, regardless of how difficult or problematic their implications might be.Therefore, it would be beneficial to consider training more often and to set a balance between education and training, and PP and NP, regardless of the theoretical and/or practical difficulties and handicaps.
No thing worth trying is easy, and sometimes the most valuable things are achieved after a fierce struggle.So, as in the following: "… remember, when days are forlorn; it always is darkest before the dawn" (from: Pictures by Katherine Mansfield; http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/mansfield/bliss/pictures.html).

Figure 1
Figure 1The nature of FL education in the age of postmodernity

Table 1
The nature of teaching and learning

Table 2
Positivistic and naturalistic views

Table 3
The philosophical views about and functional approaches to reality and action

Table 4
Teacher and student roles in the traditional and innovative approaches