main idea education definition

Reading to Understand

• Reading to Understand (8 minutes)
• Working with Context Clues (5 minutes)
• The Main Idea

Steps for Identifying the Main Idea

• Knowledge Check
• Academic Reading Challenges (7 minutes)

The main idea is the point or message - what an author presents and what a reader takes from a text. 

Searching for that main idea is a very important activity in understanding a text. It is usually found in the opening paragraph when the author is  setting up the topic  and  expressing the thesis.  

However, the location can vary according to the type of reading. For example, a research article's main idea is toward the end, whereas a persuasive essay's main idea is conveyed at the beginning.

Pre-read to Determine the Overall Topic

Examine the title and then skim the text to determine who or what the reading is about. If you see the same word repeated you know that it is likely the topic or at least an important element of the topic. The topic should be a noun or a noun phrase such as "online education." The topic itself does not convey any meeting us you must read on to determine the main idea.

Ask yourself questions about the text as you read in-depth. Pay close attention to the introduction, the first sentence of body paragraphs, and the conclusion. In these places, the author typically states and supports the main idea. 

Questions to Ask Yourself While Reading : 

• What elements make up this topic?
• What is the author saying about this topic?
• What does the author want me to know or believe about this topic?

Reflect on what you have read. If the main idea is not immediately apparent to you review the introduction and conclusion. The  main idea should be a complete thought  such as "because of its flexibility, comfort, and lower-cost online education is increasing in popularity for younger generations."

Questions to Ask Yourself While Reflecting:

• What is the message I take away from this reading?
• What point does the information add up to?
• What idea does the author reinforce in the conclusion?
• What is the final impression I have about this topic?

Finding the Main Idea

Once you believe you have found the main idea, check that each body paragraph relates to that main idea. The body paragraph should include  supporting ideas  that reinforce and provide greater detail about the main idea. 

Some students find it beneficial to sketch the main idea and supporting ideas in their notes as a concept map.

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How to Find the Main Idea

ThoughtCo / Mary McLain 

• B.A., English, University of Michigan

Questions about the "main idea" of a passage are popular on reading comprehension tests, but sometimes, those questions are pretty difficult to answer, especially for students who are not completely sure they understand what the main idea really is.  Finding the main idea of a paragraph or longer passage of text is one of the most important reading skills to master, along with concepts like making an inference , finding the author's purpose , or understanding vocabulary words in context.

Here are a few techniques to help understand what, exactly, is a "main idea" and how to identify it accurately in a passage.

How to Define the Main Idea

The main idea of a paragraph is the primary point or concept that the author wants to communicate to the readers about the topic. Hence, in a paragraph, when the main idea is stated directly, it is expressed in what is called the topic sentence . It gives the overarching idea of what the paragraph is about and is supported by the details in subsequent sentences in the paragraph. In a multi-paragraph article, the main idea is expressed in the thesis statement, which is then supported by individual smaller points.

Think of the main idea as a brief but all-encompassing summary. It covers everything the paragraph talks about in a general way, but does not include the specifics. Those details will come in later sentences or paragraphs and add nuance and context; the main idea will need those details to support its argument.

For example, imagine a paper discussing the causes of World War I . One paragraph might be dedicated to the role that imperialism played in the conflict. The main idea of this paragraph might be something like: "Constant competition for massive empires led to increasing tensions in Europe that eventually erupted into World War I." The rest of the paragraph might explore what those specific tensions were, who was involved, and why the countries were seeking empires, but the main idea just introduces the overarching argument of the section.

When an author does not state the main idea directly, it should still be implied , and is called an implied main idea. This requires that the reader look closely at the content—at specific words, sentences, images that are used and repeated—to deduce what the author is communicating.

Finding the main idea is critical to understanding what you are reading. It helps the details make sense and have relevance, and provides a framework for remembering the content. Try these specific tips to pinpoint the main idea of a passage.

1) Identify the Topic

Read the passage through completely, then try to identify the topic. Who or what is the paragraph about? This part is just figuring out a topic like "cause of World War I" or "new hearing devices;" don't worry yet about deciding what argument the passage is making about this topic.

2) Summarize the Passage

After reading the passage thoroughly, summarize it in your own words in one sentence . Pretend you have just ten to twelve words to tell someone what the passage is about—what would you say?

3) Look at the First and Last Sentences of the Passage

Authors often put the main idea in or near either the first or last sentence of the paragraph or article, so isolate those sentences to see if they make sense as the overarching theme of the passage. Be careful: sometimes the author will use words like but , however ,  in contrast , nevertheless , etc. that indicate that the second sentence is actually the main idea. If you see one of these words that negate or qualify the first sentence, that is a clue that the second sentence is the main idea.

4) Look for Repetition of Ideas

If you read through a paragraph and you have no idea how to summarize it because there is so much information, start looking for repeated words, phrases, or related ideas. Read this example paragraph :

A new hearing device uses a magnet to hold the detachable sound-processing portion in place. Like other aids, it converts sound into vibrations, but it is unique in that it can transmit the vibrations directly to the magnet and then to the inner ear. This produces a clearer sound. The new device will not help all hearing-impaired people—only those with a hearing loss caused by infection or some other problem in the middle ear. It will probably help no more than 20 percent of all people with hearing problems. Those people who have persistent ear infections, however, should find relief and restored hearing with the new device.

What does this paragraph consistently talk about? A new hearing device. What is it trying to convey? A new hearing device is now available for some, but not all, hearing-impaired people. That's the main idea!

Avoid Main Idea Mistakes

Choosing a main idea from a set of answer choices is different than composing a main idea on your own. Writers of multiple choice tests are often tricky and will give you distractor questions that sound much like the real answer. By reading the passage thoroughly, using your skills, and identifying the main idea on your own, though, you can avoid making these 3 common mistakes : selecting an answer that is too narrow in scope; selecting an answer that is too broad; or selecting an answer that is complex but contrary to the main idea. 

Resources and Further Reading

• How to Find a Stated Main Idea
• How to Find an Implied Main Idea
• Finding the Main Idea Practice
• Finding Main Ideas In Paragraphs,  http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/topic.html
• Finding the Main Idea , Columbia College

Updated by Amanda Prahl 

• Questions for Each Level of Bloom's Taxonomy
• How to Find the Implied Main Idea
• How to Find the Stated Main Idea
• Find the Main Idea Worksheets and Practice Questions
• Finding the Main Idea Worksheet 2
• How to Outline a Textbook Chapter
• Top 5 ACT Reading Strategies
• Paragraph Unity: Guidelines, Examples, and Exercises
• How To Write an Essay
• How to Find the Main Idea - Worksheet
• How to Teach Topic Sentences Using Models
• How to Boost Reading Comprehension With Reciprocal Teaching
• How to Write a Descriptive Paragraph
• An Introduction to Academic Writing
• How to Make an Inference in 5 Easy Steps
• What is The Author's Purpose?

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Praxis Core Reading

Course: praxis core reading   >   unit 1, main idea | quick guide.

• Supporting ideas | Quick guide
• Meanings of words | Quick guide
• Organization | Quick guide
• Inferences | Quick guide
• Evaluation of evidence | Quick guide
• Purpose of component | Quick guide
• Relationship of ideas | Quick guide
• Fact or opinion | Quick guide
• Author's attitude | Quick guide
• Recognize similar situations | Quick guide
• Draw conclusions | Quick guide

Main Idea Questions

What’s the “big idea”.

• The main idea is what the passage says
• The primary purpose is why the author wrote the passage

Active reading strategies

• Restate the thesis in your own terms
• Identify the point of view of the author, and note how it differs from other views presented in the passage (e.g., the perspectives of other individuals or groups)
• Take special note of contrast language: yet, but, although, however, etc.
• Jot quick notes to yourself on the scratch paper provided
• After every paragraph, check your comprehension by saying the main idea of that paragraph back to yourself in your own words
• Look at the first and last sentences of each paragraph to find big ideas

Common wrong choice types

• Too narrow: Choices that are too narrow will accurately describe a part of the passage, but they’ll exclude the broader point. The main point of a passage won't show up in just one place.
• Too strong or extreme: Some distractors will draw upon a point that is made in the passage, but take it further than can be directly supported. Be wary of “blanket” words like “always” “any” “all” “ever” and “never.”
• Beyond the scope: These wrong options bring in content that, while related, is ultimately outside of the scope of the passage. These choices feature ideas or information that you might reasonably expect to find in a larger excerpt from the same source that the passage was taken from, but the statement simply can't be supported by information in the text in front of you.
• Conflicts and contradictions: Some options contain language that is in direct conflict with information presented in the passage. These wrong choices can be the easiest to rule out, but many students find themselves drawn to strong statements on the opposing sides of arguments. It can also be easy to overlook negations like "not" or "isn't", so read choices closely to avoid these tempting distractors!
• True statements: Just because a choice contains a true statement doesn't make it a correct statement of the idea or purpose of the passage!
• Things that the author might agree with Don’t select a choice just because you think the author would agree with the idea expressed; that may not be the main point the author was making in the passage.
• Sounds familiar? Be careful with choices that use words found in the passage. Read the passage and every choice carefully—a quick skim of the passage may not be enough to determine the main idea or primary purpose.
• (Choice A)   examine Shakespeare's life in light of his dramatic works A examine Shakespeare's life in light of his dramatic works
• (Choice B)   contest a theory that attempts to explain why Shakespeare wrote the kinds of plays he did B contest a theory that attempts to explain why Shakespeare wrote the kinds of plays he did
• (Choice C)   explain the terms "comedy," "tragedy," and "tragicomedy" as they are used in discussions of Shakespeare's plays C explain the terms "comedy," "tragedy," and "tragicomedy" as they are used in discussions of Shakespeare's plays
• (Choice D)   compare Shakespeare's plays with the works of other dramatists of his day D compare Shakespeare's plays with the works of other dramatists of his day
• (Choice E)   discuss what is known about Shakespeare's psychological states E discuss what is known about Shakespeare's psychological states

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Teaching Main Idea / Central Idea – Activities to Build Understanding

Teaching main idea and supporting details / central idea to 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students can be a very frustrating experience; it is such a difficult skill to understand.  Very few of my lessons seemed to have an effect on my 3rd grade students - either they understood how to find the main idea without my help, or they didn't understand no matter what I did or said.

The curriculum my district used was no help - it introduced central idea by having students read a fictional story from our textbook (about 15 pages long) and fill out the main idea and supporting details in a blank graphic organizer together while we were reading. The students were magically supposed to understand main idea and details after this one activity.

Needless to say, the majority of my students needed a LOT more scaffolding, examples, and strategies in order to have a thorough understanding of main idea.

(Don't have much time?  Then go straight to this Main Idea Freebie for 3 main idea activities you can use today.)

Why Most Main Idea Lessons Don't Work

The problem with most main idea resources is that they don't teach students HOW to find the main idea; instead, the resources simply provide students with lots of practice of a skill that they don't really understand. And then students practice finding main idea in the wrong way and form misconceptions that can be very difficult to correct.

Over the years, I experimented with a variety of different ways and strategies to teach main idea and supporting details to my students.  I compiled all of the most effective strategies in this Scaffolded Main Idea and Details Resource.

It starts simple and isolates different skills required in order for students to understand main idea.  Then, it gets increasingly difficult until students are eventually thinking about the central idea of an entire passage.

This resource minimizes your prep time while maximizing student learning.  But if you don't mind a little prep work, then check out the 4 lesson ideas below that will help you teach main idea in a way that struggling students will actually understand.  

Minimize prep, maximize learning with this Main Idea and Details Scaffolded Resource.   The resources start simple and get increasingly more difficult, make it easy for you to differentiate, reteach, or simply introduce main idea to your students.

Best of all, almost all of the resources require absolutely no prep!

A Main Idea / Central Idea Lesson Example Using Titles

Teaching students how to use a title to help them figure out the main idea of a reading passage is an easy and often overlooked strategies.

In nonfiction texts especially, the title will usually tell you exactly what the topic of the passage will be, which is the first step to figuring out the main idea.

Let's say your 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade class is reading Sheila Keenan's Animals in the House: A History of Pets and People . Just based on this title, students should be able to make reasonable predictions as to the main idea and supporting details of the text. You could ask some different questions to help encourage that thinking:

• What will this book be mostly about?
• Do you think one of the supporting details in this book will be about elephants?  Why or why not?
• Do you think one of the supporting details in this book will be about dogs?  Why or why not?
• What other animals might the author include to support the main idea?  How do you know?
• Which of the following statements is more likely to be the main idea of the book: "Dogs make great pets because they are friendly, loving, and loyal," OR "Throughout history, people have depended on a variety of pets for help, companionship, and protection."

Just by thinking carefully about this title, students should be able to predict a reasonable central idea to the book, as well as possible supporting details. In nonfiction books or passages, students can also use headings to make similar predictions of the main idea and details of smaller sections.

You could also cover up the title of a book or passage, and have students make predictions about what the title is after reading. This will get students thinking about what was most important and what the text was mostly about.

Topic VS Supporting Details Activity - Grouping Words

This is a simple yet powerful activity that can help students distinguish between the topic and supporting details. Simply provide students with a list of words from several categories, have students organize those words into groups, and then have them come up with an appropriate title for each group.

This activity helps address an important struggle students have when it comes to main idea. Students have a hard time understanding that the details that support a certain main idea or topic are all different, yet related to each other. Requiring students to sort words into groups is a great introduction into this concept.

Another important aspect of this activity is having students come up with an appropriate title for each group of words. This is a great way to introduce the concept of topic to your students - which later will help them better understand main idea.

Younger learners, ESOL students, or struggling upper elementary readers could do this same activity using pictures rather than words. They will still get valuable practice with the skill without the frustration of reading words without any context.

Get one of these cut and paste activities - and as well as two others main idea activities - for free.

Teaching Students That Details Should Support the Main Idea

This activity takes a lot more prep if you do it yourself instead of using this Scaffolded Main Idea Resource, but it is a valuable way to assess students' understanding of main idea and supporting details while getting them to think more critically.

Before your main idea lesson, write a paragraph that has a very clear main idea. Then, add a sentence to the paragraph that is somewhat on topic, but doesn't really support the main idea of the paragraph. Students must read the paragraph and determine which sentence doesn't belong.

In order for this activity to be effective, the paragraphs must be written thoughtfully.  The sentence that does not belong should not be immediate obvious to students, but instead require students to think carefully about how the details relate to each other to support the central idea.

This is a much better assessment of main idea understanding than the typical "Find the Topic Sentence" activity that many main idea worksheets have.

This activity is also included in this main idea and details free printable!

How to Use Main Idea Graphic Organizers

I've seen a huge variety of cute main idea graphic organizers in my search for main idea resources - umbrellas, flowers, hamburgers, hands, tables, ice cream cones, clouds, popcorn - you name it, it's been done.

But no matter how cute or fun it is, the graphic organizer itself is probably not going to make confused upper elementary students miraculously understand how to find the main idea better.

One of the most frustrating things about typical main idea resources and graphic organizers is that they go straight to having students come up with the main idea of a passage without any scaffolding. This is a HARD skill for students - many adults struggle with this as well!

Instead of expecting students to be able to come up with the main idea statement themselves on a blank graphic organizer, provide students with the main idea and details but DON'T tell them which statements are the details and which statement is the main idea.

Then, have students put the statements in the correct spots on the graphic organizer. This takes away the frustration students feel of trying to come up with the main idea from thin air, while at the same time giving students valuable practice in distinguishing between the main idea and supporting details.  (Get a free example of this main idea activity here.)

The more students do this type of activity, the more capable they will be able to find the main idea and supporting details themselves.

According to the feedback I have gotten from my Scaffolded Main Idea Resource,  these scaffolded graphic organizers are one of the most helpful resources for teaching main idea.

This scaffolded main idea resource is my best seller for a reason.  It is almost completely no prep while drastically improving students' understanding of main idea.

The resource has cut and paste activities, worksheets, task cards, graphic organizers, reading passages, and more that will help your students understand the differences between topic, supporting details, and main idea.

You might also like these other main idea tips, activity ideas, and freebies!

Want These Free, No Prep Main Idea Activities?

Comments 17

Pingback: Teaching Main Idea & Details | Tips & Materials | Christin Sanders

Pingback: Teaching Main Idea and Details | ceiliúradh

Pingback: Teaching Main Idea & Details | Tips & Materials | A Happy Learner

Can you share your ideas with me to help me DI for my inclusion students?

I think inclusion students often are most successful when they are provided good scaffolding. I’ve shared some of my ideas for scaffolding a few different skills here. . I hope you find something helpful.

Thank you so much for the ideas. I am always looking for new ideas to implement in my classroom. My K students have to give main ideas to be at the reading level the district would like by the end of kindergarten. This is a very difficult concept for 5 and 6 year old’s to understand. It has no place for assessment in Kindergarten. Thank you for sharing.

I agree, that does not seem like an age appropriate expectation!

I really enjoyed the flow of these concepts and how they were each carefully thought out. They rocked!

Ideas provide scaffolding

Your ideas for teaching main ideas are awesome. I’m truly relieved from stress of looking for how to do it. God bless you.

So happy to be able to help!

Thank you very much! These activities are easy to teach for teachers as well as easy to understand for students to learn about main idea and details. I love it!

This is awesome.. I will definitely use your ideas. The strategies really make sense and will minimize stress of the students

I love your main idea and details lessons!

It’s an excellent website of resourceful information

Thank you so much!

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Evaluating a Text

Main idea, purpose, & audience.

Text evaluation and analysis usually start with the core elements of that text: main idea, purpose, and audience.  An author needs to consider all three of these elements before writing, as they help determine the author’s content and language.  As a reader, it’s important to ascertain these aspects of a text which exist as a foundation for the author’s content and language.

Always start with the main idea.  Main ideas may be stated directly in the text or implied; you need to read a text carefully in order to determine the main idea. Put the main idea into your own words, so that it’s expressed in a way that makes sense to you.  Then ask and answer the following basic questions about that main idea:

• Is the main idea reasonable/believable to most readers?
• Is the main idea clear and if not, why do you think the author embedded it?
• Is the main idea the author’s opinion, or is it something that the author asserts about an issue?

Asking and answering these questions should help you get a sense of the author’s intention in the text, and lead into considering the author’s purpose.

Main idea and purpose are intricately linked. There are a few basic purposes for texts; figuring out the basic purpose leads to more nuanced text analysis based on its purpose. Basic purposes of a text include:

• to inform – to describe, explain, or teach something to your audience
• to persuade/argue – to get your audience to do something, to take a particular action, or to think in a certain way
• to entertain – to provide your audience with insight into a different reality, distraction, and/or enjoyment

The following video more fully explains these different purposes of a text, and adds a fourth, to share insights or feelings.

Main Idea & Purpose Determine Analysis

The author’s main idea and purpose in writing a text determine whether you need to analyze and evaluate the text.  They also determine the pieces of the text you should analyze—content or language or both.

If the purpose is to persuade or argue

You always need to analyze the text to see if the main idea is justified.  Do the supporting ideas relate to and develop the main idea? Is the supporting evidence taken from recognized, valid sources?  Is the author arguing via language instead of evidence or facts?  Persuasion and argument need to present logically valid information to make the reader agree intellectually (not emotionally) with the main idea.

If the purpose is to inform

You usually need to analyze the text, since the text needs to present valid information in as objective a way as possible, in order to meet its purpose of explaining concepts so a reader understands.

If the purpose is to entertain

You may or may not need to analyze the text. Writing that entertains does not necessarily have to be either logical or complete in order to accomplish its purpose. You may want to analyze the text for language, though, to see how the author manipulates language to accomplish their purpose.

Who are the author’s intended readers?  Figuring out this will help you understand an author’s approach to providing the main idea with a particular purpose. Does the audience know little or nothing about the topic, or are they already knowledgeable?  Is the audience’s knowledge at beginner or expert level, somewhere in between, or mixed? Does the audience include people who may be skeptical of the author’s ideas?  Does the audience include people who outright oppose the author’s ideas? As you can see, asking and answering questions about audience can help an author determine the type and amount of content to include in a text. As a reader, it’s important to figure out the author’s intended audience, to help you analyze the type, amount, and appropriateness of the text’s information.

The following video presents the concept of audience from a writer’s perspective, but the concepts are applicable to you as a reader who needs to consider audience as a foundation for evaluating a text.

You may also want to link to one of Purdue’s Online Writing Lab’s page on Author and Audience to get a sense of the wide array of variables that can influence an author’s purpose, and that an author may consider about an audience.

Read the article “ Forget Shorter Showers ” by Derrick Jensen.

Note that most of the Try It exercises in this section of the text will be based on this article, so you should read carefully, annotate, take notes, and apply appropriate strategies for reading to understand a text.

Then answer the following questions about the article’s main idea, purpose, and audience.

Which selection best represents the author’s main idea?

• We have it in our power and right to take action to stop the industrial economy over-using and wasting our natural resources.
• We are victims of a campaign of misdirection, being told and accepting that our personal use of natural resources is both the cause of scarcity and the solution to preservation.
• Because we have accepted our identities as consumers, we reduce our forms of political existence to consuming and not consuming.
• Simple living is better for the planet than over-consumption.

Sentence 1 is the best answer. Although sentences 2 and 3 extract main ideas from the text, they are key supporting points that help lead to the author’s conclusion and main idea.

Which selection best represents the author’s purpose?

• to inform readers about the actual use of resources by individuals vs. the industrial economy
• to persuade readers to consider taking action against an unjust situation that assigns blame to individuals instead of big business in regard to the depletion of natural resources
• to persuade readers to re-think their personal attempts to live more simply and more “green”
• to entertain readers interested in nature with accusations against the industrial economy

Selection 2 best represents the author’s purpose. The author’s purpose is to get readers thinking about conservation of resources in order to spur them to action against a system that, in his opinion, exploits those resources as well as individuals. His purpose is both to inform and persuade, but persuasion seems to take precedence, as he both starts and ends with a reminder about historically justified instances of activism.

Who comprises the author’s audience and what cues can you use to determine that audience?

The author is writing to an audience of readers who are interested in nature and conservation. If you look on the Orion website and read the “About” section on Mission and History, you’ll see that this publication started as a magazine about nature and grew from there. Based on reading the text, the author’s intended audience has the following characteristics:

• Educated – The author assumes that readers know about WWII, the Civil Rights Act of 1974, and other historic events.  The author also uses language such as “systematic misdirection,” “solar photovoltaics,” and even “consensus” (instead of agreement).
• Concerned about the environment – because they are reading this magazine in the first place
• Willing to entertain the idea of taking action to improve quality of life and preserve resources
• Comfortable enough (with themselves? with their social status? with their personal philosophies?) to feel that their voices might make a difference if they choose to protest the current use of natural resources
• Purpose & Audience. Authored by : Susan Oaks. Project : Introduction to College Reading & Writing. License : CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
• video The Author's Purpose. Authored by : Marc Franco. Provided by : Snap Language. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6H2NLPqWtI . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
• video Audience: Introduction & Overview. Authored by : Gracemarie Mike and Daniel Liddle. Provided by : The Purdue Online Writing Lab. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_ypxLRYsrE . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
• image of woman with a stack of books instead of a head, facing shelves of books. Authored by : Gerd Altmann. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/photos/books-question-mark-student-stack-4158244/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
• image of the word Evaluation. Authored by : Gerd Altmann. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/illustrations/district-evaluation-assessment-1264717/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved

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Identifying Main Ideas

A main idea is the most important thought on your topic. So let’s get into how to spot, and create, a really good one!

Explicit Main Idea

A main idea is the author’s controlling point about the topic.  It usually includes the topic and the author’s attitude or opinion about the topic.  To identify the main idea, ask yourself:

• Who or what is the paragraph about?  The answer is the topic .  The topic can be stated in just a few words.
• What does the author think about the topic?  The answer is the  point. The point can also be stated in just a few words.

Once you’ve identified these pieces, you can combine them to state the author’s main idea in a single sentence.

Topic + Point = Main Idea

Topic = the cool-down period

Point  = important parts of exercise workouts

( Topic + Point = Main Idea )

The cool-down period is an important part of an exercise workout .

Placement of Main Ideas & Topic Sentences

Often, but not always, the main idea of a paragraph is written as that paragraph’s topic sentence .  A topic sentence is a single sentence that states the topic and words that qualify the topic by revealing the author’s opinion about the topic or the author’s approach to the topic and also reveal the author’s thought pattern or organizational strategy. When you’ve identified both the main idea and the thought pattern, you can identify the topic sentence.

Main Idea = The cool-down period is an important part of an exercise workout

Thought Pattern  = several reasons

The cool-down period is an important part of an exercise workout for several reasons .

Main Idea +  Thought Pattern = Topic Sentence

Below are more examples of how to craft topic sentences.

General to Specific

The topic sentence is the one sentence that is general enough to include all the ideas in the paragraph.  Therefore, a topic sentence that begins a paragraph or appears within the first few sentences of a paragraph signals a move from general ideas to specific ideas.  

Specific to General to Specific

At times, an author begins a paragraph with details to stir the reader’s interest in the topic.  The flow of ideas moves from the specific to the general and back to the specific.

Specific to General

Sometimes, an author waits until the end of the paragraph to state the topic sentence and main idea.  This allows the details to build up to the main idea and is sometimes called “climactic order.”

Implicit Main Idea

Implicit main idea refers to a main idea that is not stated directly but is strongly suggested by the supporting details in the passage.  Many paragraphs in college textbooks do not provide a topic sentence, instead using supporting details to imply the main idea.  To determine the implied main idea, look at:

• The supporting details: facts, examples, descriptions, and explanations given
• The author’s thought pattern
• The author’s purpose

Read the sample paragraph below:

Egypt’s pyramids are the oldest existing buildings in the world.  These ancient tombs are also among the world’s largest structures.  The largest pyramid stands taller than a 40-story building and covers an area greater than that of ten football fields.  More than 80 pyramids still exist, and their once-smooth limestone surfaces hide secret passageways and rooms.  The pyramids of ancient Egypt served a vital purpose: to protect the pharaoh’s bodies after death.  Each pyramid held not only the pharaoh’s preserved body, but also all the goods he would need in his life after death.

1.The topic of the paragraph is pyramids

2. There are three groups of supporting details: age, size, and purpose

3.The author has organized the supporting details into “characteristics” or “traits” of the pyramids.

4.The author purpose seems to be trying to define a pyramid.

Implied Main Idea: Pyramids are structures with several distinctive traits.

Remember, the main idea must be broad enough to cover all the details in the paragraph without being so broad that it includes details not mentioned.  

Michael|2019

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/.

How to find the main idea

Determining the main idea of any text can be tricky. Let’s take a look at some helpful ways to zero in on it.

Author Taylor Hartley

Published January 19, 2024

Published Jan 19, 2024

• Key takeaways
• Think of the main idea as the point – The main idea is the primary argument or claim discussed by the author, around which all other supporting details and explanations revolve.
• Make sure you read the full text – You can determine the main idea by reading the full text, annotating its key points, summarising, and looking for any repeating ideas or statements.
• There are a few key questions to ask – While reading, it’s always important to look for the Who, What, Where and Why. These details will help explain why the author believes what they do.

Table of contents

What exactly is the main idea?

How to find the main idea in five easy steps.

• Questions to ask when trying to find the main idea​
• Watch out for distractors​

The main idea of a text can be a difficult thing to nail down, but it’s the most important detail of any passage you come across. As you travel along your journey towards mastering reading comprehension, you’ll need to build a habit of figuring out what the main idea is. Once you’ve accomplished that, you’ll have a better chance at consistently understanding even the most complicated of paragraphs. 

The main idea is the central argument or point a paragraph is trying to communicate. It’s often the first claim an author makes when they begin their work but it can also be formed based on key details and facts dispersed throughout the body of a paragraph, too. Think of the main idea as the anchor of a paragraph, holding the passage steady and providing a foundation for other important points. 

Is there a difference between the central idea and the main idea?

You might be a bit confused if you discover people referencing a “central idea,” of a paragraph or essay. But fear not! The central idea and the main idea are one and the same. The central idea represents the same key talking points and details as the main idea–the primary argument an author is trying to make. 

Is there a difference between a supporting detail and a main idea?

Even though the central idea and the main idea are the same, there are a few differences between the main idea and it various supporting details. Supporting details are another important part of reading comprehension, as they provide some much needed context, or explanation of the overall main idea. 

A supporting detail might go into greater detail on a specific topic, and give you a bit more understanding of the main point the author is trying to drive home. However, these supporting details don’t exist as their own main ideas, they’re simply there to support the main idea and reinforce it.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what the main idea is, you’ll need to start learning ways to identify it when you encounter it in the wild. Follow along as we walk through some helpful tips on pinpointing the main idea of a passage.  

1. Identify the topic.

One of the first tools you can use for locating the main idea is referencing the title of a paper or any subtitles used throughout. Titles are a great way of gaining a grasp on the central topic of an author’s argument. Take the title of this article, “How to find the main idea.” We can learn a lot about what a piece of writing is about by looking at its title. 

2. Read the entire passage.

The second step in finding the main idea? You guessed it, thoroughly read the passage so you can get a firm handle on what it’s trying to say. You might be tempted to skim the writing to save time, but it’s important to read each sentence with intent so no details go unseen. Remember, even the smallest detail can provide you with the extra confidence and understanding you need to define the main idea. 

3. Annotate as you go, underlining key points or ideas you see.

One helpful tip to help guide your understanding of the main idea is to annotate, or take notes, while you read the text. Doing this will give you a brief but helpful outline of the main points the passage makes. You can look back through your notes once you’re done reading and use them to solve the main idea puzzle. Remember to write down any details you find particularly impactful.  

4. At the end, summarise the passage and what you think it’s arguing.

When you’re finished reading and annotating, use what you’ve learned from the text to form a summary of the entire passage. Your summary should include the main arguments and supporting evidence the author used to get their point across. By creating a summary, you’ve reinforced the main ideas of the text in your head, making it easier to discover what the author is really trying to say. 

5. Read the first sentence and last sentence and look for repeating ideas in your annotations.

The main idea is often expressed in the first few lines of a text and reiterated in the closing lines of a passage. Knowing this, take a good look at both the first and last lines of a paragraph, and see if there are any recurring details or statements within each one. If there are similarities, there’s a good chance that these statements reflect what the main idea is. 

Questions to ask when trying to find the main idea

Although it’s important to take note of each detail you come across in a passage, some can be more valuable when trying to determine the main idea. These details are key parts of the summary you’ll need to create. They’re known as the Who, the What, the Where, and the Why. 

The Who relates to the subject of the text; the person or thing the passage is describing. It’s most often a person or group of people, but it can also range from animals to robots to insects! Identifying the Who is an important part of grasping the main idea, because you’ll need to determine just who the author is writing about if you’re going to figure out what the author is trying to say about them.

What is happening within the passage? What actions are taken by the Who? These actions, or reactions, are known as the What. This is the meat of the paragraph, the behaviours or movements of characters and people that the author uses to describe what’s happening in their writing.

The When is another important detail you’ll need to define as you discover the main idea. The When of a passage is the time period the paragraph itself takes place in or references. Think of the When as a date on a calendar. The Who and What you’ve already defined, but on what date – or at what time of the day – do they appear?

What is the setting or location of the paragraph? Where does the action take place? Is it in a specific state or country, or maybe a specific city or neighbourhood? By defining the Where, you’ll be able to determine how the setting influences the main idea. Maybe there are specific laws or rules tied to the setting that affect the main idea, or maybe the geography of the setting affects what the author is trying to say about the region and the people who live in it. No matter what the Where is, you need to define it so that you can understand how the setting of a passage relates to the main idea. 

And most importantly, why?

The Why is perhaps the most important piece of the main idea puzzle. To define the Why, ask yourself how the author explains the reasoning behind their argument. Why do certain things work the way they do? Why do people act in the ways that they do? The answer to these questions are within the text, and they’re probably the most important facts regarding the main idea. If you can define the Why, or the explanation for why the author thinks the way they do, you can find the main idea. 

Watch out for distractors

As you work your way through a multiple-choice test, reading comprehension questions will normally ask you to pick the main idea out from a collection of possible answers. The creators of these tests can be tricky, and might try to mislead you with answers that don’t actually align with the true main idea.

Because of this, it’s important that you read the passage carefully, paying close attention to the little details throughout that might clue you in to the main idea’s meaning. Make sure to come up with your own main idea, and don’t rely on the answers provided to you by the test. Wrong answers are often either too narrow in their description of the text, too broad, or make claims that are contrary to the argument posed by the author.

Creating your own outline of the passage once you’ve carefully read it will help you summarise the text, pick out its key arguments, and determine the best answer for what the main idea is.

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FAQs about the main idea

The main idea should include the main talking points of a paragraph. Think of it as a summary of the author’s writing that represents their central argument. The main idea includes the key statements, facts, or opinions the author chooses to include that embody what they’re trying to say. 

There are several strategies you can use to help you find the main idea. Techniques such as looking at the title of the work, or any subtitles, writing down your own summary of the text, looking at the first and last sentences of a paragraph, and identifying recurring ideas are ways to discover the main idea. You can also take notes throughout your reading so that you have a brief outline of key details. 

Yes, it’s extremely important for you to read the passage in its entirety if you want the best chance at understanding its main idea. You may feel tempted to skim or speed-read your way through an essay, but be wary that you might miss certain details or key ideas that could have helped you define the central argument. The best way to go about defining the main idea is to read each sentence intently. 

The central claim and the main idea are synonymous with one another, meaning they represent the same thing. If you’ve identified the central claim of a passage, you’ll be happy to know that you’ve also found the main idea!

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The main idea represents the central point or message that an author wants readers to take away from a text. It summarizes the overall purpose or focus of a piece of writing.

Think of the main idea as the key takeaway from a movie. Just like how a movie trailer gives you a glimpse of what the film is about, the main idea provides readers with an understanding of the core concept in a text.

Related terms

Supporting Details : Supporting details are specific pieces of information that help develop and reinforce the main idea. They provide evidence and examples to support the central point.

Theme : Theme refers to the underlying message or universal truth explored in a literary work. It goes beyond just summarizing events and connects to broader ideas or human experiences.

Central Argument : The central argument is similar to the main idea but often used in persuasive or argumentative writing. It represents the author's position on an issue and is supported by evidence and reasoning.

" Main Idea " appears in:

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AP English Language - 1.2 Examining how evidence supports a claim

AP English Language - 3.3 Introducing and integrating sources and evidence

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[ meyn ahy- dee - uh ]

Find the main idea in each paragraph.

Discover More

Word history and origins.

Origin of main idea 1

Example Sentences

The main idea is that you want all of your images somewhere in your sitemaps.

While the main idea is to get some laughs during a grim time, the goat video calls have managed to keep the 500-year-old farm afloat — and staff members employed.

“The main idea of the museum is to cheer people up,” Wynd says.

It is the myth in its entirety which is alone important: its parts are only of interest in so far as they bring out the main idea.

Fernald got up, and acting as though his main idea was just to stretch his legs, strolled up to the front of the car.

His main idea was, that he would see how much Bella knew before committing himself.

Perhaps the main idea in this was to have a handy refuge in case a sudden need arose.

The writer has already used the main idea of the allegory in the Ancrene Wisse (M 172, 271).

Related Words

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• Our Mission

What Is Education For?

Read an excerpt from a new book by Sir Ken Robinson and Kate Robinson, which calls for redesigning education for the future.

What is education for? As it happens, people differ sharply on this question. It is what is known as an “essentially contested concept.” Like “democracy” and “justice,” “education” means different things to different people. Various factors can contribute to a person’s understanding of the purpose of education, including their background and circumstances. It is also inflected by how they view related issues such as ethnicity, gender, and social class. Still, not having an agreed-upon definition of education doesn’t mean we can’t discuss it or do anything about it.

We just need to be clear on terms. There are a few terms that are often confused or used interchangeably—“learning,” “education,” “training,” and “school”—but there are important differences between them. Learning is the process of acquiring new skills and understanding. Education is an organized system of learning. Training is a type of education that is focused on learning specific skills. A school is a community of learners: a group that comes together to learn with and from each other. It is vital that we differentiate these terms: children love to learn, they do it naturally; many have a hard time with education, and some have big problems with school.

There are many assumptions of compulsory education. One is that young people need to know, understand, and be able to do certain things that they most likely would not if they were left to their own devices. What these things are and how best to ensure students learn them are complicated and often controversial issues. Another assumption is that compulsory education is a preparation for what will come afterward, like getting a good job or going on to higher education.

So, what does it mean to be educated now? Well, I believe that education should expand our consciousness, capabilities, sensitivities, and cultural understanding. It should enlarge our worldview. As we all live in two worlds—the world within you that exists only because you do, and the world around you—the core purpose of education is to enable students to understand both worlds. In today’s climate, there is also a new and urgent challenge: to provide forms of education that engage young people with the global-economic issues of environmental well-being.

This core purpose of education can be broken down into four basic purposes.

Education should enable young people to engage with the world within them as well as the world around them. In Western cultures, there is a firm distinction between the two worlds, between thinking and feeling, objectivity and subjectivity. This distinction is misguided. There is a deep correlation between our experience of the world around us and how we feel. As we explored in the previous chapters, all individuals have unique strengths and weaknesses, outlooks and personalities. Students do not come in standard physical shapes, nor do their abilities and personalities. They all have their own aptitudes and dispositions and different ways of understanding things. Education is therefore deeply personal. It is about cultivating the minds and hearts of living people. Engaging them as individuals is at the heart of raising achievement.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights emphasizes that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” and that “Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.” Many of the deepest problems in current systems of education result from losing sight of this basic principle.

Schools should enable students to understand their own cultures and to respect the diversity of others. There are various definitions of culture, but in this context the most appropriate is “the values and forms of behavior that characterize different social groups.” To put it more bluntly, it is “the way we do things around here.” Education is one of the ways that communities pass on their values from one generation to the next. For some, education is a way of preserving a culture against outside influences. For others, it is a way of promoting cultural tolerance. As the world becomes more crowded and connected, it is becoming more complex culturally. Living respectfully with diversity is not just an ethical choice, it is a practical imperative.

There should be three cultural priorities for schools: to help students understand their own cultures, to understand other cultures, and to promote a sense of cultural tolerance and coexistence. The lives of all communities can be hugely enriched by celebrating their own cultures and the practices and traditions of other cultures.

Education should enable students to become economically responsible and independent. This is one of the reasons governments take such a keen interest in education: they know that an educated workforce is essential to creating economic prosperity. Leaders of the Industrial Revolution knew that education was critical to creating the types of workforce they required, too. But the world of work has changed so profoundly since then, and continues to do so at an ever-quickening pace. We know that many of the jobs of previous decades are disappearing and being rapidly replaced by contemporary counterparts. It is almost impossible to predict the direction of advancing technologies, and where they will take us.

How can schools prepare students to navigate this ever-changing economic landscape? They must connect students with their unique talents and interests, dissolve the division between academic and vocational programs, and foster practical partnerships between schools and the world of work, so that young people can experience working environments as part of their education, not simply when it is time for them to enter the labor market.

Education should enable young people to become active and compassionate citizens. We live in densely woven social systems. The benefits we derive from them depend on our working together to sustain them. The empowerment of individuals has to be balanced by practicing the values and responsibilities of collective life, and of democracy in particular. Our freedoms in democratic societies are not automatic. They come from centuries of struggle against tyranny and autocracy and those who foment sectarianism, hatred, and fear. Those struggles are far from over. As John Dewey observed, “Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”

For a democratic society to function, it depends upon the majority of its people to be active within the democratic process. In many democracies, this is increasingly not the case. Schools should engage students in becoming active, and proactive, democratic participants. An academic civics course will scratch the surface, but to nurture a deeply rooted respect for democracy, it is essential to give young people real-life democratic experiences long before they come of age to vote.

Eight Core Competencies

The conventional curriculum is based on a collection of separate subjects. These are prioritized according to beliefs around the limited understanding of intelligence we discussed in the previous chapter, as well as what is deemed to be important later in life. The idea of “subjects” suggests that each subject, whether mathematics, science, art, or language, stands completely separate from all the other subjects. This is problematic. Mathematics, for example, is not defined only by propositional knowledge; it is a combination of types of knowledge, including concepts, processes, and methods as well as propositional knowledge. This is also true of science, art, and languages, and of all other subjects. It is therefore much more useful to focus on the concept of disciplines rather than subjects.

Disciplines are fluid; they constantly merge and collaborate. In focusing on disciplines rather than subjects we can also explore the concept of interdisciplinary learning. This is a much more holistic approach that mirrors real life more closely—it is rare that activities outside of school are as clearly segregated as conventional curriculums suggest. A journalist writing an article, for example, must be able to call upon skills of conversation, deductive reasoning, literacy, and social sciences. A surgeon must understand the academic concept of the patient’s condition, as well as the practical application of the appropriate procedure. At least, we would certainly hope this is the case should we find ourselves being wheeled into surgery.

The concept of disciplines brings us to a better starting point when planning the curriculum, which is to ask what students should know and be able to do as a result of their education. The four purposes above suggest eight core competencies that, if properly integrated into education, will equip students who leave school to engage in the economic, cultural, social, and personal challenges they will inevitably face in their lives. These competencies are curiosity, creativity, criticism, communication, collaboration, compassion, composure, and citizenship. Rather than be triggered by age, they should be interwoven from the beginning of a student’s educational journey and nurtured throughout.

From Imagine If: Creating a Future for Us All by Sir Ken Robinson, Ph.D and Kate Robinson, published by Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2022 by the Estate of Sir Kenneth Robinson and Kate Robinson.

Main Idea Definition

Main Idea includes the overall message of the text that a writer intends to convey to the audience . Almost all genres of literature have one or two main ideas in them. However, the main idea in literature is not limited to one sentence or paragraph; instead, it develops and grows throughout the text. It works as the central, unifying element of the story which ties together all other elements. In this sense, it can be best defined as the dominant impression or the generic truth incorporated in the literary piece. Etymologically, the central idea is the phrase of two words ‘main’ and ‘idea.’ The meaning is clear that it is the most important thought of a text which enables the readers to understand the layered meanings of the concerned text.

Examples Main Idea from Literature

“ A Red, Red Rose ” by Robert Burns

“O my Luve is like a red, red rose That’s newly sprung in June; O my Luve is like the melody That’s sweetly played in tune. So fair art thou, my bonnie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; I will love thee still, my dear, While the sands o’ life shall run. And fare thee weel, my only luve! And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve, Though it were ten thousand mile.”

This is one of the famous poems of Robert Burns, a renowned Scottish poet, and lyricist. The poem illustrates the intense love of the speaker for his beloved . The central idea of the poem is love, which the writer has declared in the opening lines. However, he further supports this idea by comparing his beloved with a red rose. He has also employed literary elements to make the readers understand his version of love. To him, beauty is transitory, but his love is holy and eternal. Thus, the central idea plays a great role in advancing the action of this poem.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

The poem, having an artistic expression, was composed to illustrate the courageous stance of a person in unfortunate circumstances. The main idea of the poem is the resilience of human spirit in the face of miseries and challenges of life. Despite having troubles and adverse circumstances, the speaker holds his spirit high and face the difficult time of his life bravely. His optimism and ability to overcome the adversity makes him stronger as he calls himself the master of his fate. He is not afraid of the problems and, this belief enables him to overcome any obstacle that comes to his way. Therefore, courage makes up the main idea of the poem.

SCENE I. A desert place. (Macbeth by William Shakespeare, Act I, Scene I)

Thunder and lightning. Enter three Witches First Witch When shall we three meet again In thunder, lightning, or in rain ? Second Witch When the hurlyburly’s done, When the battle’s lost and won. Third Witch That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch Where the place? Second Witch Upon the heath. Third Witch There to meet with Macbeth . First Witch I come, Graymalkin! Second Witch Paddock calls. Third Witch Anon. ALL Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air.

This extract has been taken from one of the famous plays of Shakespeare, Macbeth. This is the opening scene of Macbeth in which three witches discuss their next meeting point , where they plan to see Macbeth. This opening scene not only sets the tone of the play but also highlights the recurring motif of the supernatural creatures. The audience immediately gets an idea that the text is about the evil and foul play.

Main Idea Meaning and Function

Main idea serves as the pause for the audience. It provides them an opportunity to understand the writer’s intention or the reason for his writing. It also makes them recognize and appreciate the deeper meanings of the texts. The writers also use it as a tool that enables them to project their inner thoughts and persuade the readers. Moreover, some of the academic writings unconsciously instill main ideas into the subconscious of the readers with ulterior motives which can be good or bad.

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education, community-building and change

What is education? A definition and discussion

Education is the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning and change undertaken in the belief that we all should have the chance to share in life.

Mark k smith explores the meaning of education and suggests it is a process of being with others and inviting truth and possibility., contents : introduction • education – cultivating hopeful environments and relationships for learning • education, respect and wisdom • education – acting so all may share in life • conclusion – what is education • further reading and references • acknowledgements • how to cite this piece, introduction.

When talking about education people often confuse it with schooling. Many think of places like schools or colleges when seeing or hearing the word. They might also look to particular jobs like teacher or tutor. The problem with this is that while looking to help people learn, the way a lot of schools and teachers operate is not necessarily something we can properly call education. They have chosen or fallen or been pushed into ‘schooling’ – trying to drill learning into people according to some plan often drawn up by others. Paulo Freire (1973) famously called this banking – making deposits of knowledge. Such ‘schooling’ too easily descends into treating learners like objects, things to be acted upon rather than people to be related to.

Education, as we understand it here, is a process of inviting truth and possibility, of encouraging and giving time to discovery. It is, as John Dewey (1916) put it, a social process – ‘a process of living and not a preparation for future living’. In this view educators look to learning and being with others rather than acting upon them. Their task is to educe (related to the Greek notion of educere ), to bring out or develop potential both in themselves and others. Such education is:

• Deliberate and hopeful. It is learning we set out to make happen in the belief that we all can ‘be more’;
• Informed, respectful and wise. A process of inviting truth and possibility.
• Grounded in a desire that at all may flourish and share in life . It is a cooperative and inclusive activity that looks to help us to live our lives as well as we can.

In what follows we will try to answer the question ‘what is education?’ by exploring these dimensions and the processes involved.

Education – cultivating hopeful environments and relationships for learning

It is often said that we are learning all the time and that we may not be conscious of it happening. Learning is both a process and an outcome. As a process, it is part of being and living in the world, part of the way our bodies work. As an outcome, it is a new understanding or appreciation of something.

In recent years, developments in neuroscience have shown us how learning takes place both in the body and as a social activity. We are social animals. As a result, educators need to focus on creating environments and relationships for learning rather than trying to drill knowledge into themselves and others.

Teachers are losing the education war because our adolescents are distracted by the social world. Naturally, the students don’t see it that way. It wasn’t their choice to get endless instruction on topics that don’t seem relevant to them. They desperately want to learn, but what they want to learn about is their social world—how it works and how they can secure a place in it that will maximize their social rewards and minimize the social pain they feel. Their brains are built to feel these strong social motivations and to use the mentalizing system to help them along. Evolutionarily, the social interest of adolescents is no distraction. Rather, it is the most important thing they can learn well. (Lieberman 2013: 282)

The cultivation of learning is a cognitive and emotional and social activity (Illeris 2002)

Alison Gopnik (2016) has provided a helpful way of understanding this orientation. It is that educators, pedagogues and practitioners need to be gardeners rather than carpenters. A key theme emerging from her research over the last 30 years or so that runs in parallel with Lieberman, is that children learn by actively engaging their social and physical environments – not by passively absorbing information. They learn from other people, not because they are being taught – but because people are doing and talking about interesting things. The emphasis in a lot of the literature about parenting (and teaching) presents the roles much like that of a carpenter.

You should pay some attention to the kind of material you are working with, and it may have some influence on what you try to do. But essentially your job is to shape that material into a final product that will fit the scheme you had in mind to begin with.

Instead, Gopnik argues, the evidence points to being a gardener.

When we garden, on the other hand, we create a protected and nurturing space for plants to flourish. It takes hard labor and the sweat of our brows, with a lot of exhausted digging and wallowing in manure. And as any gardener knows, our specific plans are always thwarted. The poppy comes up neon orange instead of pale pink, the rose that was supposed to climb the fence stubbornly remains a foot from the ground, black spot and rust and aphids can never be defeated.

Education is deliberate. We act with a purpose – to build understanding and judgement and enable action. We may do this for ourselves, for example, learning what different road signs mean so that we can get a license to drive; or watching wildlife programmes on television because we are interested in animal behaviour. This process is sometimes called self-education or teaching yourself. We join with the journey that the writer, presenter or expert is making, think about it and develop our understanding. Hopefully, we bring that process and understanding into play when we need to act. We also seek to encourage learning in others (while being open to learning ourselves). Examples here include parents and carers showing their children how to use a knife and fork or ride a bike; schoolteachers introducing students to a foreign language; and animators and pedagogues helping a group to work together.

Sometimes as educators, we have a clear idea of what we’d like to see achieved; at others, we do not and should not. In the case of the former, we might be working to a curriculum, have a session or lesson plan with clear objectives, and have a high degree of control over the learning environment. This is what we often mean by ‘formal education’. In the latter, for example, when working with a community group, the setting is theirs and, as educators, we are present as guests. This is an example of informal education and here two things are happening.

First, the group may well be clear on what it wants to achieve e.g. putting on an event, but unclear about what they need to learn to do it. They know learning is involved – it is something necessary to achieve what they want – but it is not the main focus. Such ‘incidental learning’ is not accidental. People know they need to learn something but cannot necessarily specify it in advance (Brookfield 1984).

Second, this learning activity works largely through conversation – and conversation takes unpredictable turns. It is a dialogical rather than curricula form of education.

In both forms, educators set out to create environments and relationships where people can explore their, and other’s, experiences of situations, ideas and feelings. This exploration lies, as John Dewey argued, at the heart of the ‘business of education’. Educators set out to emancipate and enlarge experience (1933: 340). How closely the subject matter is defined in advance, and by whom, differs from situation to situation. John Ellis (1990) has developed a useful continuum – arguing that most education involves a mix of the informal and formal, of conversation and curriculum (i.e. between points X and Y).

Those that describe themselves as informal educators, social pedagogues or as animators of community learning and development tend to work towards the X; those working as subject teachers or lecturers tend to the Y. Educators when facilitating tutor groups might, overall, work somewhere in the middle.

Acting in hope

Underpinning intention is an attitude or virtue – hopefulness. As educators ‘we believe that learning is possible, that nothing can keep an open mind from seeking after knowledge and finding a way to know’ (hooks 2003: xiv) . In other words, we invite people to learn and act in the belief that change for the good is possible. This openness to possibility isn’t blind or over-optimistic. It looks to evidence and experience, and is born of an appreciation of the world’s limitations (Halpin 2003: 19-20).

We can quickly see how such hope is both a part of the fabric of education – and, for many, an aim of education. Mary Warnock (1986:182) puts it this way:

I think that of all the attributes that I would like to see in my children or in my pupils, the attribute of hope would come high, even top, of the list. To lose hope is to lose the capacity to want or desire anything; to lose, in fact, the wish to live. Hope is akin to energy, to curi­osity, to the belief that things are worth doing. An education which leaves a child without hope is an education that has failed.

But hope is not easy to define or describe. It is:

An emotion . Hope, John Macquarrie (1978 11) suggests, ‘consists in an outgoing and trusting mood toward the environment’. We do not know what will happen but take a gamble. ‘It’s to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk’ (Solnit 2016: 21).

A choice or intention to act . Hope ‘promotes affirmative courses of action’ (Macquarrie 1978: 11). Hope alone will not transform the world. Action ‘undertaken in that kind of naïveté’, wrote Paulo Freire (1994: 8), ‘is an excellent route to hopelessness, pessimism, and fatalism’. Hope and action are linked. Rebecca Solnit (2016: 22) put it this way, ‘Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope… To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable’.

An intellectual activity . Hope is not just feeling or striving, according to McQuarrie it has a cognitive or intellectual aspect. ‘[I]t carries in itself a definite way of understanding both ourselves – and the environing processes within which human life has its setting’ ( op. cit. ).

This provides us with a language to help make sense of things and to imagine change for the better – a ‘vocabulary of hope’. It helps us to critique the world as it is and our part in it, and not to just imagine change but also to plan it (Moltman 1967, 1971). It also allows us, and others, to ask questions of our hopes, to request evidence for our claims. (See, what is hope? ).

Education – being respectful, informed and wise

Education is wrapped up with who we are as learners and facilitators of learning – and how we are experienced by learners. In order to think about this, it is helpful to look back at a basic distinction made by Erich Fromm (1979), amongst others, between having and being. Fromm approaches these as fundamental modes of existence. He saw them as two different ways of understanding ourselves and the world in which we live.

Having is concerned with owning, possessing and controlling. In it we want to ‘make everybody and everything’, including ourselves, our property (Fromm 1979: 33). It looks to objects and material possessions.

Being is rooted in love according to Fromm. It is concerned with shared experience and productive activity. Rather than seeking to possess and control, in this mode, we engage with the world. We do not impose ourselves on others nor ‘interfere’ in their lives (see Smith and Smith 2008: 16-17).

These different orientations involve contrasting approaches to learning.

Students in the having mode must have but one aim; to hold onto what they have ‘learned’, either by entrusting it firmly to their memories or by carefully guarding their notes. They do not have to produce or create something new…. The process of learning has an entirely different quality for students in the being mode… Instead of being passive receptacles of words and ideas, they listen, they hear , and most important, they receive and they respond in an active, productive way. (Fromm 1979: 37-38)

In many ways, this difference mirrors that between education and schooling. Schooling entails transmitting knowledge in manageable lumps so it can be stored and then used so that students can pass tests and have qualifications. Education involves engaging with others and the world. It entails being with   others in a particular way. Here I want to explore three aspects – being respectful, informed and wise.

Being respectful

The process of education flows from a basic orientation of respect – respect for truth, others and themselves, and the world. It is an attitude or feeling which is carried through into concrete action, into the way we treat people, for example. Respect, as R. S. Dillon (2014) has reminded us, is derived from the Latin respicere , meaning ‘to look back at’ or ‘to look again’ at something. In other words, when we respect something we value it enough to make it our focus and to try to see it for what it is, rather than what we might want it to be. It is so important that it calls for our recognition and our regard – and we choose to respond.

We can see this at work in our everyday relationships. When we think highly of someone we may well talk about respecting them – and listen carefully to what they say or value the example they give. Here, though, we are also concerned with a more abstract idea – that of moral worth or value. Rather than looking at why we respect this person or that, the interest is in why we should respect people in general (or truth, or creation, or ourselves).

First, we expect educators to hold truth dearly . We expect that they will look beneath the surface, try to challenge misrepresentation and lies, and be open to alternatives. They should display the ‘two basic virtues of truth’: sincerity and accuracy (Williams 2002: 11). There are strong religious reasons for this. Bearing false witness, within Christian traditions, can be seen as challenging the foundations of God’s covenant. There are also strongly practical reasons for truthfulness. Without it, the development of knowledge would not be possible – we could not evaluate one claim against another. Nor could we conduct much of life. For example, as Paul Seabright (2010) has argued, truthfulness allows us to trust strangers. In the process, we can build complex societies, trade and cooperate.

Educators, as with other respecters of truth, should do their best to acquire ‘true beliefs’ and to ensure what they say actually reveals what they believe (Williams 2002: 11). Their authority, ‘must be rooted in their truthfulness in both these respects: they take care, and they do not lie’ op. cit.).

Second, educators should display fundamental respect for others (and themselves) . There is a straightforward theological argument for this. There is also a fundamental philosophical argument for ‘respect for persons’. Irrespective of what they have done, the people they are or their social position, it is argued, people are deserving of some essential level of regard. The philosopher most closely associated with this idea is Immanuel Kant – and his thinking has become a central pillar of humanism. Kant’s position was that people were deserving of respect because they are people – free, rational beings. They are ends in themselves with an absolute dignity

Alongside respect for others comes respect for self. Without it, it is difficult to see how we can flourish – and whether we can be educators. Self-respect is not to be confused with qualities like self-esteem or self-confidence; rather it is to do with our intrinsic worth as a person and a sense of ourselves as mattering. It involves a ‘secure conviction that [our] conception of the good, [our] plan of life, is worth carrying out’ (Rawls 1972: 440). For some, respect for ourselves is simply the other side of the coin from respect for others. It flows from respect for persons. For others, like John Rawls, it is vital for happiness and must be supported as a matter of justice.

Third, educators should respect the Earth . This is sometimes talked about as respect for nature, or respect for all things or care for creation. Again there is a strong theological argument here – in much religious thinking humans are understood as stewards of the earth. Our task is to cultivate and care for it (see, for example, Genesis 2:15). However, there is also a strong case grounded in human experience. For example, Miller (2000) argues that ‘each person finds identity, meaning, and purpose in life through connections to the community, to the natural world, and to spiritual values such as compassion and peace’. Respect for the world is central to the thinking of those arguing for a more holistic vision of education and to the thinking of educationalists such as Montessori . Her vision of ‘cosmic education’ puts appreciating the wholeness of life at the core.

Since it has been seen to be necessary to give so much to the child, let us give him a vision of the whole universe. The universe is an imposing reality, and an answer to all questions. We shall walk together on this path of life, for all things are part of the universe, and are connected with each other to form one whole unity. This idea helps the mind of the child to become fixed, to stop wandering in an aimless quest for knowledge. He is satisfied, having found the universal centre of himself with all things’. (Montessori 2000)

Last, and certainly not least, there is a basic practical concern. We face an environmental crisis of catastrophic proportions. As Emmett (among many others) has pointed out, it is likely that we are looking at a global average rise of over four degrees Centigrade. This ‘will lead to runaway climate change, capable of tipping the planet into an entirely different state, rapidly. Earth would become a hell hole’ (2013: 143).

Being informed

To facilitate learning we must have some understanding of the subject matter being explored, and the impact study could have on those involved. In other words, facilitation is intelligent.

We expect, quite reasonably, that when people describe themselves as teachers or educators, they know something about the subjects they are talking about. In this respect, our ‘subject area’ as educators is wide. It can involve particular aspects of knowledge and activity such as those associated with maths or history. However, it is also concerned with happiness and relationships, the issues and problems of everyday life in communities, and questions around how people are best to live their lives. In some respects, it is wisdom that is required – not so much in the sense that we know a lot or are learned – but rather we are able to help people make good judgements about problems and situations.

We also assume that teachers and educators know how to help people learn. The forms of education we are exploring here are sophisticated. They can embrace the techniques of classroom management and of teaching to a curriculum that has been the mainstay of schooling. However, they move well beyond this into experiential learning, working with groups, and forms of working with individuals that draw upon insights from counselling and therapy.

In short, we look to teachers and educators as experts, We expect them to apply their expertise to help people learn. However, things don’t stop there. Many look for something more – wisdom.

Wisdom is not something that we can generally claim for ourselves – but a quality recognized by others. Sometimes when people are described as wise what is meant is that they are scholarly or learned. More often, I suspect, when others are described as ‘being wise’ it that people have experienced their questions or judgement helpful and sound when exploring a problem or difficult situation (see Smith and Smith 2008: 57-69). This entails:

• appreciating what can make people flourish
• being open to truth in its various guises and allowing subjects to speak to us
• developing the capacity to reflect
• 
  being knowledgeable, especially about ourselves, around ‘what makes people tick’ and the systems of which we are a part
• being discerning – able to evaluate and judge situations. ( op. cit. : 68)

This combination of qualities, when put alongside being respectful and informed, comes close to what Martin Buber talked about as the ‘real teacher’. The real teacher, he believed:

… teaches most successfully when he is not consciously trying to teach at all, but when he acts spontaneously out of his own life. Then he can gain the pupil’s confidence; he can convince the adolescent that there is human truth, that existence has a meaning. And when the pupil’s confidence has been won, ‘his resistance against being educated gives way to a singular happening: he accepts the educator as a person. He feels he may trust this man, that this man is taking part in his life, accepting him before desiring to influence him. And so he learns to ask…. (Hodes 1972: 136)

Education – acting so that all may share in life

Thus far in answering the question ‘what is education?’ we have seen how it can be thought of as the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning. Here we will explore the claim that education should be undertaken in the belief that all should have the chance to share in life. This commitment to the good of all and of each individual is central to the vision of education explored here, but it could be argued that it is possible to be involved in education without this. We could take out concern for others. We could just focus on process – the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning – and not state to whom this applies and the direction it takes.

Looking beyond process

First, we need to answer the question ‘if we act wisely, hopefully, and respectfully as educators do we need to have a further purpose?’ Our guide here will again be John Dewey. He approached the question a century ago by arguing that ‘the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth’ (Dewey 1916: 100). Education, for him, entailed the continuous ‘reconstruction or reorganization of experience which adds to the meaning of experience, and which increases the ability to direct the course of subsequent experience. (Dewey 1916: 76). His next step was to consider the social relationships in which this can take place and the degree of control that learners and educators have over the process. Just as Freire (1972) argued later, relationships for learning need to be mutual, and individual and social change possible.

In our search for aims in education, we are not concerned… with finding an end outside of the educative process to which education is subordinate. Our whole conception forbids. We are rather concerned with the contrast which exists when aims belong within the process in which they operate and when they are set up from without. And the latter state of affairs must obtain when social relationships are not equitably balanced. For in that case, some portions of the whole social group will find their aims determined by an external dictation; their aims will not arise from the free growth of their own experience, and their nominal aims will be means to more ulterior ends of others rather than truly their own. (Dewey 1916: 100-101)

In other words, where there are equitable relationships, control over the learning process, and the possibilities of fundamental change we needn’t look beyond the process. However, we have to work for much of the time in situations and societies where this level of democracy and social justice does not exist. Hence the need to make clear a wider purpose. Dewey (1916: 7) argued, thus, that our ‘chief business’ as educators is to enable people ‘to share in a common life’. I want to widen this and to argue that all should have a chance to share in life.

Having the chance to share in life

We will explore, briefly, three overlapping approaches to making the case – via religious belief, human rights and scientific exploration.

Religious belief. Historically it has been a religious rationale that has underpinned much thinking about this question. If we were to look at Catholic social teaching, for example, we find that at its heart lays a concern for human dignity . This starts from the position that, ‘human beings, created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27), have by their very existence an inherent value, worth, and distinction’ (Groody 2007). Each life is considered sacred and cannot be ignored or excluded. As we saw earlier, Kant argued something similar with regard to ‘respect for persons’. All are worthy of respect and the chance to flourish.

To human dignity a concern for solidarity is often added (especially within contemporary Catholic social teaching). Solidarity:

… is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say, to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all. On Social Concern ( Sollicitudo rei Socialis . . . ), #38

Another element, fundamental to the formation of the groups, networks and associations necessary for the ‘common life’ that Dewey describes, is subsidiarity . This principle, which first found its institutional voice in a papal encyclical in 1881, holds that human affairs are best handled at the ‘lowest’ possible level, closest to those affected (Kaylor 2015). It is a principle that can both strengthen civil society and the possibility of more mutual relationships for learning.

Together, these can provide a powerful and inclusive rationale for looking beyond particular individuals or groups when thinking about educational activity.

Human rights. Beside religious arguments lie others that are born of agreed principle or norm rather than faith. Perhaps the best known of these relate to what have become known as human rights. The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it this way:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 26 further states:

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit. (2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms….

These fundamental and inalienable rights are the entitlement of all human beings regardless of their nation, location, language, religion, ethnic origin or any other status (Article 2).

Scientific exploration. Lastly, I want to look at the results of scientific investigation into our nature as humans. More specifically we need to reflect on what it means when humans are described as social animals.

As we have already seen there is a significant amount of research showing just how dependent we are in everyday life on having trusting relationships in a society. Without them even the most basic exchanges cannot take place. We also know that in those societies where there is stronger concern for others and relatively narrow gaps between rich and poor people are generally happier (see, for example, Halpern 2010). On the basis of this material we could make a case for educators to look to the needs and experiences of all. Political, social and economic institutions depend on mass participation or at least benign consent – and the detail of this has to be learnt. However, with our growing appreciation of how our brains work and with the development of, for example, social cognitive neuroscience, we have a different avenue for exploration. We look to the needs and experience of others because we are hard-wired to do so. As Matthew D. Lieberman (2013) has put it:

Our basic urges include the need to belong, right along with the need for food and water. Our pain and pleasure systems do not merely respond to sensory inputs that can produce physical harm and reward. They are also exquisitely tuned to the sweet and bitter tastes delivered from the social world—a world of connection and threat to connection. (Lieberman 2013: 299)

Our survival as a species is dependent upon on looking to the needs and experiences of others. We dependent upon:

  Connecting: We have ‘evolved the capacity to feel social pains and pleasures, forever linking our well-being to our social connectedness. Infants embody this deep need to stay connected, but it is present through our entire lives’ ( op. cit. : 10) Mindreading: Primates have developed an unparalleled ability to understand the actions and thoughts of those around them, enhancing their ability to stay connected and interact strategically… This capacity allows humans to create groups that can implement nearly any idea and to anticipate the needs and wants of those around us, keeping our groups moving smoothly ( op. cit. : 10) Harmonizing: Although the self may appear to be a mechanism for distinguishing us from others and perhaps accentuating our selfishness, the self actually operates as a powerful force for social cohesiveness. Whereas   connection   is about our desire to be social, harmonizing   refers to the neural adaptations that allow group beliefs and values to influence our own. ( op. cit. : 11)

One of the key issues around these processes is the extent to which they can act to become exclusionary i.e. people can become closely attached to one particular group, community or nation and begin to treat others as somehow lesser or alien. In so doing relationships that are necessary to our survival – and that of the planet – become compromised. We need to develop relationships that are both bonding and bridging (see social capital ) – and this involves being and interacting with others who may not share our interests and concerns.

Education is more than fostering understanding and an appreciation of emotions and feelings. It is also concerned with change – ‘with how people can act with understanding and sensitivity to improve their lives and those of others’ (Smith and Smith 2008: 104). As Karl Marx (1977: 157-8) famously put it ‘all social life is practical…. philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; ‘the point is to change it’. Developing an understanding of an experience or a situation is one thing, working out what is good and wanting to do something about it is quite another. ‘For appropriate action to occur there needs to be commitment’ (Smith and Smith 2008: 105).

This combination of reflection; looking to what might be good and making it our own; and seeking to change ourselves and the world we live in is what Freire (1973) talked about as  praxis. It involves us, as educators, working with people to create and sustain environments and relationships where it is possible to:

• Go back to experiences . Learning doesn’t take place in a vacuum. We have to look to the past as well as the present and the future. It is necessary to put things in their place by returning to, or recalling, events and happenings that seem relevant.
• Attend and connect to feelings . Our ability to think and act is wrapped up with our feelings. Appreciating what might be going on for us (and for others) at a particular moment; thinking about the ways our emotions may be affecting things; and being open to what our instincts or intuitions are telling us are important elements of such reflection. (See Boud et. al. 1985).
• Develop understandings . Alongside attending to feelings and experiences, we need to examine the theories and understandings we are using. We also need to build new interpretations where needed. We should be looking to integrating new knowledge into our conceptual framework.
• Commit . Education is something ‘higher’ according to John Henry Newman. It is concerned not just with what we know and can do, but also with who we are, what we value, and our capacity to live life as well as we can . We need space to engage with these questions and help to appreciate the things we value. As we learn to frame our beliefs we can better appreciate how they breathe life into our relationships and encounters, become our own, and move us to act.
• Act . Education is forward-looking and hopeful. It looks to change for the better. In the end our efforts at facilitating learning have to be judged by the extent to which they further the capacity to flourish and to share in life. For this reason we need also to attend to the concrete, the actual steps that can be taken to improve things.

As such education is a deeply practical activity – something that we can do for ourselves (what we could call self-education), and with others.

Conclusion – so what is education?

It is in this way that we end up with a definition of education as ‘the wise, hopeful and respectful cultivation of learning undertaken in the belief that all should have the chance to share in life’. What does education involve?

We can begin with what Aristotle discusses as hexis – a readiness to sense and know. This is a state – or what Joe Sachs (2001) talks about as an ‘active condition’. It allows us to take a step forward – both in terms of the processes discussed above, and in what we might seek to do when working with learners and participants. Such qualities can be seen as being at the core of the haltung and processes of pedagogues and educators (see below). There is a strong emphasis upon being in touch with feelings, attending to intuitions and seeking evidence to confirm or question what we might be sensing. A further element is also present – a concern not to take things for granted or at their face value (See, also, Pierre Bourdieu on education , Bourdieu 1972|1977: 214 n1).

Beyond that, we can see a guiding eidos or leading idea. This is the belief that all share in life and a picture of what might allow people to be happy and flourish. Alongside is a disposition or haltung   (a concern to act respectfully, knowledgeably and wisely) and interaction (joining with others to build relationships and environments for learning). Finally, there is praxis – informed, committed action (Carr and Kemmis 1986; Grundy 1987).

The process of education

At first glance, this way of answering the question ‘what is education?’ – with its roots in the thinking of  Aristotle , Rousseau , Pestalozzi and Dewey (to name a few) – is part of the progressive tradition of educational practice. It seems very different from ‘formal tradition’ or ‘traditional education’.

If there is a core theme to the formal position it is that education is about passing on information; for formalists, culture and civilization represent a store of ideas and wisdom which have to be handed on to new generations. Teaching is at the heart of this transmission; and the process of transmission is education…

While progressive educators stress the child’s development from within, formalists put the emphasis, by contrast, on formation from without— formation that comes from immersion in the knowledge, ideas, beliefs, concepts, and visions of society, culture, civilization. There are, one might say, conservative and liberal interpretations of this world view— the conservative putting the emphasis on transmission itself, on telling, and the liberal putting the emphasis more on induction, on initiation by involvement with culture’s established ideas.(Thomas 2013: 25-26).

As both Thomas and Dewey (1938: 17-23) have argued, these distinctions are problematic. A lot of the debate is either really about education being turned, or slipping, into something else, or reflecting a lack of balance between the informal and formal.

In the ‘formal tradition’ problems often occur where people are treated as objects to be worked on or ‘moulded’ rather than as participants and creators i.e. where education slips into ‘schooling’.

In the ‘progressive tradition’ issues frequently arise where the nature of experience is neglected or handled incompetently. Some experiences are damaging and ‘mis-educative’. They can arrest or distort ‘the growth of further experience’ (Dewey 1938: 25). The problem often comes when education drifts or moves into entertainment or containment. Involvement in the immediate activity is the central concern and little attention is given to expanding horizons, nor to reflection, commitment and creating change.

The answer to the question ‘what is education?’ given here can apply to both those ‘informal’ forms that are driven and rooted in conversation – and to more formal approaches involving a curriculum. The choice is not between what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’ – but rather what is appropriate for people in this situation or that. There are times to use transmission and direct teaching as methods, and moments for exploration, experience and action. It is all about getting the mix right and framing it within the guiding eidos and disposition of education.

Further reading and references

Recommended introductions.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Collier Books. (Collier edition first published 1963). In this book, Dewey seeks to move beyond dualities such as progressive/traditional – and to outline a philosophy of experience and its relation to education.

Thomas, G. (2013). Education: A very short introduction . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simply the best contemporary introduction to thinking about schooling and education.

Boud, D., Keogh, R. and Walker, D. (eds.) (1985). Reflection. Turning experience into learning . London: Kogan Page.

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1972|1977). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. First published in French as Esquisse d’une théorie de la pratique, précédé de trois études d’ethnologie kabyle, (1972).

Brookfield, S. (1984). Adult learners, adult education and the community . Milton Keynes, PA: Open University Press.

Buber, Martin (1947). Between Man and Man. Transl. R. G. Smith. London: Kegan Paul .

Carr, W. and Kemmis, S. (1986). Becoming Critical. Education, knowledge and action research. Lewes: Falmer.

Dewey, J. (1916), Democracy and Education. An introduction to the philosophy of education (1966 edn.). New York: Free Press.

Dewey, J. (1933). How We Think. A restatement of the relation of reflective thinking to the educative process. (Revised edn.), Boston: D. C. Heath.

Dewey, J. (1938). Experience and Education. New York: Collier Books. (Collier edition first published 1963).

Dillon, R. S. (2014). Respect. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). [ http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2014/entries/respect/ . Retrieved: February 10, 2015].

Ellis, J. W. (1990). Informal education – a Christian perspective.   Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith (eds.)   Using Informal Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Emmott, S. (2013). 10 Billion . London: Penguin. [Kindle edition].

Freire, P. (1972). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Freire, P. (1994) Pedagogy of Hope. Reliving Pedagogy of the Oppressed . With notes by Ana Maria Araujo Freire. Translated by Robert R. Barr. New York: Continuum.

Fromm, E. (1979). To Have or To Be . London: Abacus. (First published 1976).

Fromm, E. (1995). The Art of Loving . London: Thorsons. (First published 1957).

Gallagher, M. W. and Lopez, S. J. (eds.) (2018). The Oxford Handbook of Hope . New York: Oxford University Press.

Gopnik, A. (2016). The Gardener and the Carpenter. What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children . London: Random House.

Groody, D. (2007). Globalization, Spirituality and Justice . New York: Orbis Books.

Grundy, S. (1987). Curriculum. Product or praxis . Lewes: Falmer.

Halpern, D. (2010). The hidden wealth of nations . Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Halpin, D. (2003). Hope and Education. The role of the utopian imagination . London: RoutledgeFalmer.

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to Transgress. Education as the practice of freedom , London: Routledge.

hooks, b. (2003). Teaching Community. A pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge.

Hodes, A. (1972). Encounter with Martin Buber. London:   Allen Lane/Penguin.

Illeris, K. (2002). The Three Dimensions of Learning. Contemporary learning theory in the tension field between the cognitive, the emotional and the social. Frederiksberg: Roskilde University Press.

Kant, I. (1949). Fundamental principles of the metaphysic of morals (trans.  T. K. Abbott). New York: Liberal Arts Press.

Kaylor, C. (2015). Seven Principles of Catholic Social Teaching. CatholicCulture.org. [ http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?id=7538#PartV . Retrieved March 21, 2015].

Klein, N. (2014). This Changes Everything. Capitalism vs. the climate . London: Penguin. [Kindle edition].

Liston, D. P. (1980). Love and despair in teaching. Educational Theory . 50(1): 81-102.

MacQuarrie, J. (1978). Christian Hope . Oxford: Mowbray.

Marx, K. (1977). ‘These on Feurrbach’ in D. McLellan (ed.) Karl Marx. Selected writings . Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Acknowledgements : Picture: Dessiner le futur adulte by Alain Bachellier. Sourced from Flickr and reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) licence. http://www.flickr.com/photos/alainbachellier/537180464/

The informal-formal education curriculum diagram is reproduced with permission from Ellis, J. W. (1990). Informal education – a Christian perspective. Tony Jeffs and Mark Smith (eds.) Using Informal Education . Buckingham: Open University Press. You can read the full chapter in the informal education archives: http://infed.org/archives/usinginformaleducation/ellis.htm

The process of education diagram was developed by Mark K Smith and was inspired by Grundy 1987. It can be reproduced without asking for specific permission but should be credited using the information in ‘how to cite this piece’ below.

This piece uses some material from Smith (2019) Haltung, pedagogy and informal education and (2021) What is pedagogy? (see the references above).

How to cite this piece : Smith, M. K. (2015, 2021). What is education? A definition and discussion. The encyclopedia of pedagogy and informal education . [ https://infed.org/mobi/what-is-education-a-definition-and-discussion/ . Retrieved: insert date ].

© Mark K Smith 2015, 2021

Last Updated on April 9, 2024 by infed.org