ABSTRACT
When George S. Counts published the landmark volume The Social Foundations of Education in 1934, his title did not refer primarily to a component of study in teacher education or school leader preparation programs. Instead, he was referring to the cultural phenomena-institutions, processes, practices, beliefs, values, and ways of knowing-that underlie any society’s educational ideas and practices (Counts, 1934; Tozer, 1993). Those phenomena are both material and ideational: including institutions of family, governance, and the economy, as well as beliefs and values that explain and justify those social institutions and ways of life. Counts argued that teachers and school leaders need to study the social foundations of education if they are to understand the consequences of their actions as educators, and to be able to make informed and ethical choices within their educational practice. A significant part of Counts’s book was devoted to the notion of democratic ideals as an ethical framework that should guide educational decision-making in the United States in the 20th Century.
