Category talk:Education

Categorization of Education articles and subcategories
One of the general guidelines for categorizing is, "Articles should not usually be in both a category and its subcategory." For example, an article about "Cultural learning" generally should not be placed in both "Education" and "Learning" or one of its subcategories. The preferred choice is to use the more descriptive subcategory. You can help to keep this category's combined article + subcategory count below the dreaded 200 barrier (keeping all entries on one page) by looking for ways to support this general guideline. Rfrisbietalk 20:40, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

This category has been updated using three general guidelines:
 * Articles should not usually be in both a category and its subcategory. For example, an article about "Cultural learning" generally should not be placed in both "Education" and "Learning" or one of its subcategories.  The preferred choice is to use the more descriptive subcategory.  (General guidelines)
 * THE TOPIC ARTICLE RULE — When an article is the topic article for a category. Articles should be placed in the category with the same name. However, the article and the category do not have to be categorized the same way. The article belongs in categories populated with similar articles. The category should be put into categories populated with similar subcategories. For an example of this see George W. Bush and Category:George W. Bush. When an article and the subcategory with the same name end up in the same category, the double listing sends the message to the user that there is an article about the topic, and there are also more articles to be found in the subcategory of the same name. It makes it easier to find main topic articles (by eliminating having to go to the subcategory). It also creates a complete listing of articles at the higher level category. It points readers of the topic article to the category and vice versa. (Reasons for duplication)
 * Acceptable loops exist. Self-referencing systems such as the meta- fields naturally create cycles that provide many examples. This type of cycle involves making a category one of its own subcategories. A real-world example of a self-referencing system is “education about education,” such as:
 * Classification: Education: .. Academic disciplines: Social sciences: Education: ( Cycles should usually be avoided) Rfrisbietalk 16:57, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Resources for creating and organizing categories
Many established resources for creating and organizing education categories exist. The following list is a start. Please add links to additional resources by country when available. Rfrisbietalk 22:21, 26 February 2006 (UTC) Added Wikitools. Rfrisbietalk 19:31, 12 March 2006 (UTC) Added category tree. Rfrisbietalk 19:36, 12 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Wikitools
 * Education category tree
 * Education search:
 * United States
 * Education Resources Information Center (ERIC): Thesaurus
 * Education scope note: "Process of imparting or obtaining knowledge, attitudes, skills, or socially valued qualities of character or behavior -- includes the philosophy, purposes, programs, methods, organizational patterns, etc., of the entire educational process as most broadly conceived"
 * National Center for Education Statistics: Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP 2000)

List of education categories
A one-page list of education categories is available to help see how existing categories relate to each other. This is a manually-updated list that includes the top three levels. Rfrisbietalk 17:44, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind. Here's something better. It's always all-inclusive and up to date! :-) Rfrisbietalk 15:46, 11 March 2006 (UTC) Category tree for "Education"

Categories Academia and Education
I'm not sure I understand why Category:Education is a subcategory of Category:Academia. As far as I can intuit, common usage and the dictionary suggest that neither one is entirely inclusive of the other: "academia" does not usually include primary or secondary education, and "education" does not usually include scholarship or research. Further, it seems as though there are a lot of articles currently in Education that bear exclusively and specifically on the university (e.g. Graduate student, etc.) and would more properly be placed in Academia (which, it seems to me, is the proper place for articles on Tenure, University, Professor, etc.). Am I missing something, or could this category scheme use some rethinking? -- Rbellin 21:03, 20 Aug 2004 (UTC)
 * They should be children of one another, if the graph-like categorization system doesn't mind the introduction of cycles (cyclic references). Courtland 01:58, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)
 * I would suggest that the hierarchy be reversed. Education is the overarching concept, one that academia fits into. Marc Mywords 01:12, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Too many subcategories?
I think there are simply too many subcategories. No one is going to go through lists of 200 categories at a time. Subcategories should be limited to 100 in a single category.Icurite 09:05, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * The problem is that the category is broken into two (or more) pages when the number of subcategories plus articles is greater than 200. I propose that the number of subcategories plus articles be limited to 200 so that the whole education category is displayed on a single page. This can be done by (a) creating more subcategories so that the number of articles can be reduced; and (b) restructuring the subcategories to reduce number at the top level, e.g. make educational software a subcategory of educational technology. Nesbit 16:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


 * That makes sense to me. I've also noticed that articles often are coded in multiple levels, such as Education and one or more subcats.  Cutting back to the most specific subcat on the article page also would reduce the number of articles on the Education cat and top level subcat pages. Rfrisbietalk 16:52, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Educational technology
What would the reaction be to the creation of a new sub-category, Category:Educational technology that would include artifacts used in the process of education. This new sub-category could absorb Category:Educational toys, though as the term is well known, the toys sub-category would/should be made a child of the new sub-category (edu. tech.). In the new category could go things like Cobb Education Television and other education-oriented broadcasting, among other things such as tests (SAT, PSAT, GMAT, etc.), training room tech such as smartboard devices, etc.

I'm asking here because I'd give 50-50 odds that such a subcategory already exists and I'm just not savvy enough to find it.

Courtland 01:56, 2005 Jun 17 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me. -- Reinyday, 00:56, 9 September 2005 (UTC)


 * I have created the Educational technology category
 * Alan Pascoe 21:16, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

re-catting
I reduced the cat's for this to just two: Culture and Systems. The latter is in Category:Fundamental which helps reduce cycles. Marskell 11:18, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Propose removing cleancat tag
I propose removing the cleancat tag. The number of articles + subcategories in the main education category has been reduced well below the 200 page-break limit, mostly by placing articles only in their more specific category and moving many categories to be lower-level subcategories. For all remaining work to be done, I recommend we use the "to do list" at the top of the page. Rfrisbietalk 20:49, 24 February 2006 (UTC)


 * p.s. Seeing no objections, I'm removing the tag.Rfrisbietalk 20:56, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

More subcategories

 * I did further subcategorizing of articles and created a training subcategory. I think we should reduce the articles in the Education category to only a very few that deal with education at the most general level. Also, we should create a few more subcategories. My suggestions for new subcategories:
 * educational research
 * education in media and culture (or similar words)
 * educational leadership (educational administration)
 * Nesbit 03:02, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I added "research" and "leadership," along with "personnel."

Education in media and culture (or similar words)
I've been trying to find a good title for something like your third category. I've been looking in the area of "foundations." The U.S. Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP 2000) has the following high-level definition. I see a good deal of overlap with your suggestion.


 * "Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education.  A program that focuses on the systematic study of education as a social and cultural institution, and the educational process as an object of humanistic inquiry. Includes instruction in such subjects as the philosophy of education, history of education, educational literature, educational anthropology, sociology of education, economics and politics of education, educational policy studies, and studies of education in relation to specific populations, issues, social phenomena, and types of work."


 * I like the long title because it's fairly descriptive, but a short title like "Educational foundations" might be more wiki-ish. We still could put a description in the category. This would collect a few more subcategories under a high-level umbrella.


 * Actually I was thinking about something different. There are articles on films, anime and literature that feature education as a narrative theme, for example, the movie "To Sir, With Love." Already we have a subcategory called "school manga" that may be currently misclassified under "educational materials." An education subcategory of Education in media could contain such topics. Nesbit 00:02, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, I think I get it now. I was focusing on "culture" while you focused on "media." I looked for a good parallel, related super-category.  Category:Mass media doesn't seem to work very well, but Category:Genres does.  How about a subcategory called "Education as a genre"? It could include Category:School manga and School and university in literature, etc. Rfrisbietalk 04:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I did a minor survey in WP to see how this is handled for other topics. I found Robots in literature, Brainwashing in fiction, Literary influences (of Horatio Nelson). My preference so far is Education in fiction because that would cover movies, manga, etc. Sorry to be contrary, but in cases where education is featured in, say, a novel, it can not always be identified as the genre of the novel (e.g., the Harry Potter novels). Nesbit 18:44, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * At School and university in literature, the See also list has:
 * Teaching in popular culture (includes film and television)
 * Boarding schools in fiction
 * List of fictional schools
 * List of fictional Oxford colleges
 * List of fictional Cambridge colleges
 * Campus novel
 * Class reunion


 * How about "Education in popular culture"? Rfrisbietalk 19:46, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
 * See also Category:In popular culture. Rfrisbietalk 20:04, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree. Not perfect, because it seems to leave out high brow culture (yet culture alone would be too inclusive). Because there exists the WP precendent that you found, it deserves a try. Nesbit 19:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, I got it started. Rfrisbietalk 21:08, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Lifelong learning and Early Childhood education
A couple more subcategory suggestions: Lifelong learning and Early childhood education. The rationale is that these are not formal educational stages in the same way as, say, high school or graduate school. Both categories will gather at least several articles over time. Nesbit 00:35, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of lifelong learning as a subcategory of Category:Learning. The question then gets to distinguishing “formal” vs. “informal” or not, which can get dicey.  The  template adds “formal” to the equation, then gets hit with the “other” articles.  That category doesn’t make the formal/informal distinction.  If Category:Educational stages were renamed to “Formal educational stages,” then the template would define the category, and the “others” could mostly go under the Lifelong learning category.


 * I can see early childhood education under lifelong learning among some others, including a redefined Category:Educational stages, so they look something like this. In such a category scheme, the developmental subcategories would include both formal and informal topics, while the “formal” category would be the template topics. Rfrisbietalk 03:40, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Learning
 * Lifelong learning
 * Early childhood education
 * Middle childhood education
 * Adolescent and young adult education
 * Adult education
 * Formal educational stages
 * Educational years


 * Hi. I was afraid some might think lifelong learning should go under learning, because that is the literal interpretation. I'd argue that lifelong learning is not a type of learning per se because it really describes education (sometimes informal) that occurs throughout life. I like your other categories, but I think they should all go immediately under category:education instead of category:learning. I think our goal should be to define a convenient user interface, not necessarily reproduce a strictly logical hierarchy, which is probably not possible anyway. Since categories appear as an alphabetized list, we could go up to, say, 60 to 120 subcategories; so we've got lots of room for more. I'd vote for this structure:
 * Education
 * Learning
 * Lifelong learning
 * Early childhood education
 * Middle childhood education
 * Adolescent and young adult education
 * Adult education
 * Formal educational stages
 * Educational years
 * Nesbit 05:45, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Here's the definition of education' "Education encompasses --> teaching <-- (my emphasis) and learning specific skills, and also something less tangible but more profound: the imparting of knowledge, good judgment and wisdom."
 * Here's the definition for learning. "Learning is the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, attitudes, or values, through study, --> experience, <-- (my empahsis) or teaching, that causes a change of behavior that is persistent, measurable, and specified or allows an individual to formulate a new mental construct or revise a prior mental construct (conceptual knowledge such as attitudes or values)."
 * "Learning" doesn't require "teaching," which is a defining element of "education." It still seems like lifelong learning is a subset of learning, not a parallel concept. The way you have it, taking away all of the "formal and informal" "stages" seems to define the category very narrowly. I'm not at all sure what's left to go under it, or that it would support a very comprehensive and potentially powerful article, which now is very weak. Rfrisbietalk 16:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

There is no problem finding enough content for a substantial article on learning. It is a process that occurs inside and outside education. Learning obviously has implications for pedagogy (Comenius's didactics) which would be described in the article as an entailment. But the core of the article would be about biological, psychological, and socio-cultural theories of learning; that is to say, not so much emphasis on education. As an educational psychologist, I see education and learning as two very large and intersecting domains of knowledge. One does not fit neatly under the other. Lifelong learning, however, is a topic more of concern to educational theorists than learning theorists. For example, a graduate course on lifelong learning would more likely be given through a faculty of education than a department of psychology. That is why I would put it directly under education. Nesbit 16:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * As a psychologist and educator, I have no problems with the distinctions between education and learning. I can live with putting "lifelong learning" directly under education. However, your comments about it being more relevant to education theorists vs. learning theorists seems to be a good argument for the remaining categories to be subcategories of lifelong learning! ;-) Did I miss something there? Rfrisbietalk 18:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Looking back, I realize I made an error in my proposed category structure. I really meant this... (sorry!)
 * Education
 * Learning
 * Lifelong learning
 * Adult education
 * Early childhood education
 * Middle childhood education
 * Adolescent and young adult education
 * Formal educational stages
 * Educational years
 * Nesbit 19:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * While the term "lifelong learning" literally incorporates, say, middle childhood education, people mostly use the term in opposition to the idea of education and learning being specific to children. It is more aligned to the idea of Andragogy, and the need for continual learning in an information society. An alternative structure that I would go for is:
 * Education
 * Learning
 * Lifelong learning
 * Adult education
 * Formal educational stages
 * Adult education
 * Early childhood education
 * Middle childhood education
 * Adolescent and young adult education
 * Educational years
 * Nesbit 19:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I looked at the ERIC Thesaurus and found this for Lifelong learning.
 * Scope Note: "Process by which individuals consciously acquire formal or informal education throughout their life spans for personal development or career advancement"
 * Broader Terms: "Learning"
 * Narrower Terms: "n/a"
 * Related Terms: lots of "adult education" types of terms


 * Even though I still think "lifelong learning" fits better under "learning," that looks like a pretty good arrangement. Why don't we start working on filling that in? :-) Rfrisbietalk 19:37, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Education subcategory title articles
One of the reasons for duplication of subcategories and articles on the same category page is:


 * THE TOPIC ARTICLE RULE — When an article is the topic article for a category. Articles should be placed in the category with the same name. However, the article and the category do not have to be categorized the same way. The article belongs in categories populated with similar articles. The category should be put into categories populated with similar subcategories. For an example of this see George W. Bush and Category:George W. Bush. When an article and the subcategory with the same name end up in the same category, the double listing sends the message to the user that there is an article about the topic, and there are also more articles to be found in the subcategory of the same name. It makes it easier to find main topic articles (by eliminating having to go to the subcategory). It also creates a complete listing of articles at the higher level category. It points readers of the topic article to the category and vice versa.

I would like to suggest we take this basic approach for the Education category and its subcategories. At the top level, the title article list would look something like the blue links below. For the red links, a few title articles for the subcategories might apply, or that might be a good topic for a new article. What do you think? Rfrisbietalk 23:38, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Added some sub-subcategory articles. Rfrisbietalk 01:47, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Seeing no objections, I'm going to start working on this. Rfrisbietalk 18:05, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Added blue links to main category. Rfrisbietalk 18:45, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Academia
 * Alternative education
 * Educational assessment
 * Assessment
 * Educational evaluation
 * Curriculum
 * Educational environment
 * Education finance
 * History of education (goes to Education)
 * Educational leadership


 * Learning
 * Education by location
 * Education lists
 * List of education topics
 * List of academic disciplines
 * List of education articles by country
 * Educational materials
 * Educational organizations
 * Academic institution
 * School


 * Pedagogy
 * People by educational degree
 * Personal development
 * Educational personnel
 * Philosophy of education
 * Education policy
 * Educational programs
 * Educational psychology
 * Qualifications
 * Academic degree
 * Professional certification


 * Educational research
 * Educational stages
 * Students
 * Education by subject
 * Educational technology
 * Training

Categorization with respect to Science.
I was asked about the removal of Education from Category:Applied sciences and will respond here. My intent is to eliminate cycles from among the categories. Perhaps there is a better way to do this than my reversion, so I'll lay out the problem.

These are the portions of the Science tree and Education tree that apply:


 * Category:Applied sciences -> Category:Science ->


 * Category:Academic disciplines -> Category:Academia -> Category:Education

Note that "Science" links to "Acadmic disciplines." The goal is to connect these together in a way that doesn't cause a cycle. I removed, what in this diagram would be an arrow from "Education" back to "Applied sciences".

One must decide which of these categories is the most general, and thus not a subcat of any of the others. To me the candidates are "Science," "Academia" or "Education" (the most general in the current configuration). The one determined to be most general won't link back to the others.

I hope this makes some sort of sense. JonHarder 03:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, it does make sense. The essential problem lies not with applied science (i.e., whether education is an applied science) but in the fact that academia is treated as type of education, and education is also an academic discipline within academia thus introducing circularity. I think the solution is to remove academia as a subcat of education. Replace it with a subcat like tertiary education, post-secondary education, or universities and colleges. Nesbit 15:38, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll let you folks sort out and implement the best way to organize this. On a related note, I think one of the education-related reorganizations caused a cycle involving dozens of categories that I fixed last night be deciding "Building engineering" is not a subcategory of "Construction." Sometimes a legitimate change shows a flaw in a seemingly unrelated area. It's amazing how these things get linked together. JonHarder 16:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Your objective is clear (eliminate loops) but not your (or anyone else's) purpose (justification). It's stated in Cycles should usually be avoided:
 * Although the MediaWiki software does not prevent cycles (loops), these should usually be avoided. Here is an example existing in early November 2005: Category:Academic disciplines - Category:Interdisciplinary fields - Category:Social sciences - Category:Education - Category:Academic disciplines - Category:Interdisciplinary fields ....
 * No rational is given for not using the Mediawiki software's capability to use loops. In the real world, these also are known as self-referencing systems, in this case, education about education.  Other examples include meta-evaluation (evaluating evaluation), meta-ethics (the ethics of ethics), and the history of history.  The unfortunate and hopefully unintended consequence of this "no loops at all costs" approach is that the classification of education has been reduced to... Fundamental: Systems: Society: Culture: Education; and Fundamental: Systems: Education.  Not only has education been removed from Applied sciences, It's been removed from Social sciences and Interdisciplinary fields as well.  In effect, the message is "education is not science."  Removing Academia from Education simply shifts the problem without addressing it.  We could just as easily "solve" the loops problem by eliminating Science from Academic disciplines.  From the Education classification perspective, that would be less disruptive.
 * My main point is that eliminating loops in and of itself does not address the classification issue for Education. Clearly, leaving it out of the sphere of any type of science, as well as not acknowledging its self-referencing properties, are problematic.  I hope we can keep working toward a solution that addressed all of our key issues. :-) Rfrisbietalk 16:31, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Brilliant response, Rfrisbie. Now we are getting to the core of things. I think the goal of categorization is ultimately to conform with user expectations (and to some extent shape them) so that users can intuitively navigate through WP. I am tempted to view the category mechanism as associative linkage that must be conservatively applied, rather than a hierarchical or lattice type structure. This would allow circularity. On the other hand, most users probably expect categories to actually operate as a hierarchy such that clicking on subcategories always leads to more specific, less general content. I suggest we do two things: (1) investigate more about categories on wikipedia to understand better how they are supposed to work, (2) heavily borrow from the ERIC category system because ERIC has already worked out this problem for education. Nesbit 17:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks Nesbit. Is that the same as a smart-a** response? ;-) I like your suggestions on how to proceed.  Working on the "classification" of education, rather than just "categories" seems to be the way to go.  For the Academic disciplines, I would look at the CIP codes noted above, in addition to the ERIC descriptors. Rfrisbietalk 17:51, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

The classification of education and loops
The current classification of education is as follows:

Classification: Fundamental: Systems: Society: Culture: Education also: Fundamental: Systems: Education

Apparently, this is the result of an effort to eliminate category "loops." See the above discussion. An unfortunate side-effect of this effort is that education has been eliminated from categories such as category:Applied sciences and category:Social sciences. This directly contradicts education's place in the articles, List of academic disciplines and Social sciences. I'm going to place the following comment on the category page as a compromise, at least until something better comes along. Rfrisbietalk 17:26, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

To avoid loops, the following classifications are not included in the education category structure.

Classification: Academic disciplines: Applied sciences: Education also: Academic disciplines: Social sciences: Education See also: List of academic disciplines, Social sciences

After a lengthy discussion at Wikipedia talk:Categorization and other places, the Education:..Academic disciplines: Social sciences: / Applied sciences: loops were restored. Rfrisbietalk 18:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Fields of Study
Would creating a Category:Field of Study make sense for the following type of articles: Engineering technology, Industrial technology etc. Dbiel (Talk) 02:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems good to me. Twenty Years 15:04, 12 March 2008 (UTC)