Educational Modality as Belief: an exploratory primer for implications and questions connected to educational theorising

This paper considers an emerging thesis that adherence to a particular educational modality such as democratic education, autonomous home education or mainstream authoritarian education has similarities to the nature of belief systems, such as a belief in God. The theoretical thread developed is taken from empirical data collected in a study on the nature of the discovery of the possibility of elective home education. The idea that an understanding, option for and use of a particular pedagogy is linked to a belief in the nature and efficacy of a pedagogy – rather than merely an opinion about these things – sets education within a context of interaction with the self. Belief in a particular form, or modality, of education is seen to be the result of location of the self within a defining paradigm of belief about education which also affects ontology. Thus, the educational paradigm is a determinant of the nature of the self and of the self’s ‘becoming...’ by virtue of the differences of modality (and outcome) to be found in various educational systems such as timetabled, school-based, peer-tiered education or home education of the autonomous kind. This paper explores awareness of how education as modality interacts with the Self as belief and in so doing has the power to take on a significance hitherto unexplored or acknowledged in education.