نشریه فلسفه تربیت
سال نهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 16، بهار و تابستان 1403)

Understanding the nature and essence of informal education is a necessary and undeniable introduction to intervention in informal education, planning, participation, policy-making, and also explaining the relationship between this type of education and formal education. Therefore, given the importance of this issue, the aim of the present study is to gather the most important definitions provided for the concept of informal education and its characteristics, with a maximal approach and their analysis, and to pave the way for providing a comprehensive definition of informal education and explaining its main characteristics. To achieve this goal, the most important definitions provided for the term "informal education" in verses have been collected and analyzed and analyzed using the "content analysis" method. The result of this work was the organization of the concepts raised in the various definitions of informal education, into two branches: essence and characteristics. Based on this two-branch classification, a definition of informal education, which includes the sum of the common definitions and distinguishes the basic differences, was presented as follows: "Informal education is part of the education process that is realized in a lifelong, intentional and systematic way, in various fields outside the formal education system. This type of education is carried out with the focus of responding to various individual, local and community needs, and with the active participation of guardians and learners in planning, decision-making and implementation.

This study examines human influence with an emphasis on human agency and its implications for education. An analysis of the concepts of free will, agency, autonomy, and authenticity shows that free will not only carries moral responsibility, but is also essential for moral value and self-governance. According to Islamic anthropology and Quranic evidence, human agency plays a fundamental role in shaping one’s identity and destiny. In contrast, the network perspective sees humans not as independent agents but as members of an interacting system. However, agency theory analyzes human behavior in terms of collective and social actions and emphasizes the role of consciousness and will in distinguishing them from other beings. This combined perspective has implications for education, including: 1) emphasizing respect for individuality and free will as the basis for moral education without coercion; 2) fostering independent learning and critical thinking through active interaction with the environment and information networks; 3) Cultivating decision-making and self-regulation skills in the context of social and cultural networks. Finally, this research suggests that educational systems adopt a comprehensive and dynamic approach to education by realistically integrating individual agency and network structures.

Teacher's identity is a complex conceptual combination that has a wide research literature. In this article, according to Charles Taylor's point of view, his conceptualizations in the two ontological and historical dimensions of identity were considered, and by adopting the two bases of "strong evaluation" and "recognition", a dialectic between these two concepts was drawn. On one side of this dialectic are the basic values ​​of the teacher and on the other side "significant others" that contain policies, training and other external frameworks that affect the teacher's identity. This duality forms a synthesis within the teacher that defines the teacher's identity. It was analyzed that it is not possible to obtain a final and standard synthesis of this dialectic once and for all, and the optimal limit will be different according to individuals and societies. Among the implications obtained in the strong evaluation dimension "verifying the existence of moral and mental virtues necessary for teaching candidates" and "verifying the value of the teaching profession for teaching candidates" and in the dimension of recognition can be referred to the implications such as "recognition of teacher’s agency" and "recognition of intellectual and cultural pluralism of teachers" "recognizing teachers as a professional person ".

The book Engaging in a Narrative Inquiry, that published in 2022 by Dr. Jane Clendenin, professor emeritus at the University of Alberta, Canada, has been translated into Persian by Dr. Mahmoud Mehrmohmmadi under the title "Narrative Research in Education." The author takes a foundationalist stance, meaning that he sees the quality of narrative research as stemming from the researcher's philosophical foundation. The author's own position is Deweyian pragmatism. Relying on Dewey's relational approach, which he contrasts with the transcendental approach, he bases his ontology, epistemology, and value theory on relationalism and explains narrative research accordingly. In the author's opinion, narrative is formed in terms of three elements: time, place, and social conditions and narrative research is always subject to change in the context of continuous retelling of narratives. What is crucial is that the results be effective in solving problems. Some aspects of the author's perspective are controversial. Among them, the opposition of relation and transcendence in all three of its philosophical dimensions is subject to criticism; the place of truth in his narrative research is empty and reduced to efficiency; and finally, the collective narrative is not considered in this book and only the social conditions of the individual narrative are focused on.