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This research aims to examine the educational philosophy of teachers in classrooms. Teachers' educational philosophy influences the power balance, course content function, student and teacher roles, responsibility for learning and assessment purposes and processes. The research also analyzes whether gender, qualification, specialization and experience significantly influence classroom educational philosophies.

The study utilized a quantitative research design, utilizing data from 193 teachers working in a public higher education institution in the Sultanate of Oman. The study utilized a survey method to solicit data from the respondents. Besides utilizing descriptive statistics such as mean and standard deviation, the study used analysis of variance (ANOVA) and t-test to test the hypotheses.

Analysis revealed an instructional strategy's preference, including elements of both teacher-centered and student-centered educational philosophies. Elements of progressivism, constructivism, reconstructivism and perennialism are more relevant in the teacher's instructional design. The results show no significant differences in teachers' pedagogical philosophy that exist based on gender, specialization and experience. However, teachers' age significantly influences their educational philosophy preferences.

This research centers on a public higher education institution in the Sultanate of Oman, with a particular focus on the Department of Business Studies. This resarch delimits its discussion on teachers' chosen educational philosophy. Other possible factors may also impact student retention and effective teaching and learning.

This research offers valuable insights to academicians, higher education administrators, and policymakers. Specifically, this research emphasizes the significance of employing a blended approach, which incorporates both student-centered and teacher-centered educational philosophies, to enhance student engagement, retention, and effective teaching and learning.

This research emphasizes the importance of educators' adoption of a blended educational philosophy in promoting student retention and engagement within higher education institutions. To achieve desirable outcomes, policymakers in higher education must ascertain which educational philosophy is most effective in the classroom. Additionally, ensuring congruence between preferred educational philosophy and teachers’  instructional practices is vital in facilitating effective teaching and learning.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind among teachers in higher education in the Sultanate of Oman. The outcome of this study helps detail the specific strategies teachers deploy and categorize into various educational philosophies.

Sound administrative theory and research may ultimately provide the knowledge whereby administrative leaders in education can function most effectively. Such knowledge will never tell us, however, whether it is desirable to take a particular administrative action in any society at any time. Thus, an administrator should understand his personal philosophical foundations and value system, and do his best to construct a philosophical position that is as consistent and logical as possible. Five such positions, reconstructionism, experimentalism, idealism, realism, and existentialism, can serve as guidelines. Each position, whether it is basically progressivistic or essentialistic, has a reasonably distinct approach to the nature of reality, educational aims and objectives, and the educative process. The development of language analysis as philosophy's most important contribution to man is discussed briefly. A self‐evaluation check list has been developed, which may be employed by an administrator to assess his present philosophy of educational administration.

This chapter discusses a number of well-known African Philosophies of Education (APE) that could significantly improve the development of an international educational leadership curriculum. These include Preparedness/Preparationism, Utilitarianism/Functionalism, Communalism; Holisticism and Perennialism, Ethnophilosophy, Ubuntu, Community, Reasonableness, Moral Maturity, Maat or Ma'at African philosophies discovered from papyrus manuscripts including Imhotep, The Teachings of the Vizier Ptahhotep, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, and The Dialogue of a Man with his Soul, Kemit and As Above so Below, etc. In so doing, I identify the salient values of these philosophies, bringing out their qualities as well as their limitations, and discussing ways in which they could be incorporated into the contemporary field of developing an international leadership curriculum. This chapter first reviews contemporary literature on African Indigenous Education (AIE) and APE and their relevance in developing an international leadership curriculum using a descriptive and analytical interpretive approach then proposes an epistemic leadership theoretical framework to guide the delivery of APE in educational leadership learning. Such a leadership curriculum framework could be developed as part of the de-colonial epistemic movement within the Global South. The chapter concludes that while the link between APE, policy and practice is significant and new in the context of educational leadership curriculum research, its survival depends on the establishment of such a de-colonial epistemic theoretical framework.

The purpose of this paper is to use entrepreneurship to bridge the traditional-progressive education rift.

The rift between traditional and progressive education is first deconstructed into five dualisms. Conceptual question-based analysis is then applied to determine if and how three entrepreneurial tools could contribute to bridging this rift; effectuation, customer development and appreciative inquiry. Finally, pattern-based generalizations are drawn from this analysis.

Patterns in the analysis motivate the articulation of an overarching educational philosophy – learning-through-creating-value-for-others – grounded in entrepreneurship and capable of bridging the educational rift.

Only three entrepreneurial tools are included in the conceptual analysis, signifying a need to explore whether other tools could also help teachers bridge the traditional-progressive education rift. Entrepreneurial tools and the new educational philosophy manifesting entrepreneurship could also need to be further contextualized in order to be useful in education.

The tentatively new educational philosophy has been shown to be capable of bridging five dualisms in education which are currently problematic for teachers in their daily practice, and to remedy teacher challenges such as complexity, lack of resources, assessment difficulties and student disengagement.

An educational philosophy grounded in entrepreneurship has arguably not been proposed previously. Contrasting existent educational philosophies, this new philosophy goes beyond learning-through to also emphasize creating-value-for-others. This could facilitate bridging between traditional and progressive education, one of the most important challenges in education. It could also be used to facilitate the infusion of entrepreneurship into general education.

This chapter highlights the characteristics of Asia through the analysis of policy-related documents by five donor countries, namely Japan, South Korea, China, India and Thailand. It will also examine the roles played by regional bodies such as the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and ASPBAE (the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) as the horizontal channels influencing aid policies in respective countries. Together with the analysis of the national and organizational policies, the regional process of building consensus on the post-2015 agenda is examined, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific Regional Education Conference (APREC) held in August 2014.

The analysis reveals that the region has two faces: one is imaginary and the other is functional. There is a common trend across Asian donors to refer to their historical ties with regions and countries to which they provide assistance and their traditional notions of education and development. They highlight Asian features in contrast to conventional aid principles and approaches based on the Western value system, either apparently or in a muted manner. In this sense, the imagined community of Asia with common cultural roots is perceived by the policymakers across the board.

At the same time, administratively, the importance of the region as a stage between the national and global levels is recognized increasingly in the multilateral global governance structure. With this broadened participatory structure, as discussed in the chapter ‘Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’’, the expected function of the region to transmit the norms and requests from the global level and to collect and summarize national voices has increased.

To see how educational philosophies that underlie lecture and case methods of teaching are related to how faculty perform their teaching, research, and service.

This paper is based on the premise that foundational philosophies, worldviews or paradigms underlie educational philosophies, and each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn implies a certain way or method of instruction.

The findings of this paper are that each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn determines not only the way that the instruction is performed but also how faculty perform their teaching, research, and service.

This paper implies that differences between the underlying world views of lecture and case methods of teaching similarly lead to differences in many other aspects of the teaching and learning process.

This paper implies that, in practice, faculty would perform their teaching, research, and service in a more consistent manner if they become consciously aware of the underlying philosophy of their teaching method.

The original contribution of this paper is that it shows how in a systematic manner the differences in teaching philosophy lead to differences in what faculty do in all areas of their activities: teaching, research, and service.

The purpose of this paper is to see how educational philosophies that underlie lecture and case methods of teaching are related to setting course goals, objectives, and contents.

This paper is based on the premise that foundational philosophies, worldviews, or paradigms underlie educational philosophies, and each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn implies a certain way or method of instruction.

The findings of this paper are that each educational philosophy favors a certain instructional methodology, which in turn determines not only the way that the instruction is performed but also how course goals, objectives, and contents are set.

This paper implies that differences between the underlying world views of lecture and case methods of teaching similarly lead to differences in many other aspects of the teaching and learning process.

This paper implies that in practice, faculty would set their course goals, objectives, and contents in a more consistent manner if they become consciously aware of the underlying philosophy of their teaching method.

The original contribution of this paper is that it shows how in a systematic manner the differences in teaching philosophy lead to differences in what faculty would do in all areas of their course activities: goals, objectives, and contents.

The word Ubuntu has become widely known around the world as an African humanitarian wisdom that promotes international solidarity and Indigenous knowledge. The appeal of Ubuntu,as an African traditional philosophy is the emphasis on concern for fellow human beings. The primary aim of this critical literature review is to demonstrate the role Ubuntu can play in enriching social work and shifting the Euro-American foundations of the profession in teaching diaspora African students and practicing social work with diaspora African communities. The humanitarian values of Ubuntu, however, need not be limited to Africans.

This chapter explores how Ubuntu can be adopted in teaching social work and also enriching social work theoretical underpinnings. Social work has roots in Western philosophical foundations and cultural experiences, with a primary focus on supporting disadvantaged people in communities where it is practiced.However, there is a recognised need to expand this Western orientation to include other views as social work expands to be a global academic and practice profession.

An approach to learning and teaching based on Ubuntu has been described as ‘Ubuntugogy’ (Bangura, 2005). Ubuntugogy represents a holistic educational paradigm where education plays a role beyond an individual’s acquisition of knowledge and skills but instead aims at total development for the individual scholar, their community and their physical and social environment. Social work education is aimed at equipping students with the skills to contribute to the welfare of other human beings in the same way Ubuntugogy recognises the importance of mastering skills to transform individual learners and their communities. Both are therefore focused on practical education to create a world that meets the needs of the individuals and their communities.

Ubuntu approaches view education as a means for struggle for survival and liberation from oppression. There are similar approaches in education literature that emphasise the cultural and historical aspects of education (Lave, 2019). Ubuntu philosophy has roots in African traditions and history that also have clear echoes in other traditional societies that emphasise interdependence and relationships between people and their physical world in an intricate web of life.

Social work can learn from Ubuntu if it is to move beyond its traditional Western roots. Ubuntu and social work share the commonality of concern for human welfare. Ubuntu goes a step further in emphasising the intricate linkages between humans and nature in a non-hierarchical web. Social work can also enrich Ubuntu with its body of knowledge, accumulated since the late 19th century, in practical application of the identified Ubuntu ideals. This chapter presents an attempt at such a dialogue.