Pedagogy, praxis and practice-based higher education

In this chapter, I first consider Pedagogyi as a discipline and tradition, and some of the various traditions that have existed within Pedagogy in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and into the twenty-first. Second, I consider the notion of praxis which, in the view of Marcus Aurelius (120-180AD), consists in acting for the good for the human community. If, on this basis, we can think of education ' and the old tradition of Pedagogy ' as being to prepare people to live well in a world worth living in, then we might think, on the basis of Stoic philosophy, for example, about preparing our students in higher education for living well ' as citizens and as professionals ' in a contemporary world worth living in. Once upon a time, before the Scholastics of the medieval era, education was always regarded as a preparation for life, not as a preparation for assessments, examinations and qualifications. In those days, education was always practice-based. My principal aim in this paper is to provide a particular kind of framework against which to understand 'Pedagogy' and 'praxis,' so that we might more richly understand practice-based education as a distinctive kind of Pedagogy, aimed at a particular kind of praxis in people's ordinary lives and in their professional practice.