Good Life of Teaching (Paperback)

Preface (Richard Smith).

Acknowledgements.

Introduction: Why We Need a Virtue Ethics of Teaching.

Saints and scoundrels.
A brief for teacherly self-cultivation.
From the terrain of teaching to the definition of professional ethics.
Outline of the argument.

PART I. The Virtues of Vocation: From Moral Professionalism to Practical Ethics.

Chapter 1. Work and Flourishing: Williams' Critique of Morality and its Implications for Professional Ethics.

Retrieving Socrates' question.
Modern moral myopia.
What do moral agents want?
From moral professionalism to professional ethics.

Chapter 2. Worlds of Practice: MacIntyre's Challenge to Applied Ethics.

The architecture of MacIntyre's moral theory.
A closer look at internal goods.
The practicality of ethical reflection.
What counts as a practice: The proof, the pudding, and the recipe.
Boundary conditions: Practitioners, managers, interpreters, and fans.

Chapter 3. Labour, Work, and Action: Arendt's Phenomenology of Practical Life.

Arendt's Singular Project.
Defining the Deed.
Hierarchy and interdependence in the vita activa.
Praxis in the professions.

Chapter 4. A Question of Experience: Dewey and Gadamer on Practical Wisdom.

The constant gardener.
The existential and aesthetic dimensions of vocation.
Our dominant vocation.
Practical wisdom and the circle of experience.
The open question.

PART II. A Virtue Ethics for Teachers: Problems and Prospects.

Chapter 5. The Hunger Artist: Pedagogy and the Paradox of Self-Interest.

A blind spot in the educational imagination.
The hunger artist.
The very idea of a helping profession.
This ripeness of self.

Chapter 6. Working Conditions: The Practice of Teaching and the Institution of  School.

A prima facie case for teaching as a practice.
MacIntyre's Objection.
Schools as surroundings.

Chapter 7. The Classroom Drama: Teaching as Endless Rehearsal and Cultural Elaboration.

Education as the drama of cultural renewal.
A false lead.
Teaching as labour, work, and action.
Education, shelter, and mediation.
Teaching as endless rehearsal.
Teaching as cultural elaboration.

Chapter 8. Teaching as Experience: Toward a Hermeneutics of Teaching and Teacher Education.

Teaching as vocational environment.
Batch processing, kitsch culture, and other obstacles to teacher vocation.
The syntax of educational claims.
The shape of humanistic conversation.
Horizons of educational inquiry.
Teacher education for practical wisdom.

Index.