Techne, a virtue to be thickened: Rethinking technical concerns in teaching and teacher education

This article brings stories of teaching and learning to teach in China into conversation with Aristotle’s intellectual virtue techne and its reinterpretations. The intent is to challenge the overwhelming trend of instrumental rationality in teaching and teacher education in both China and Canada. I explore and thicken the concept of techne, one of the Aristotelian intellectual virtues, to understand what is at stake in today’s technical approaches to teaching and to imagine alternative possibilities. Aristotelian conception of techne is often translated as technical expertise, craft or skills and could to some extent justify today’s enthusiasm around technical concerns in teaching and teacher education. However, some of its contemporary re-appropriations critique and extend the restricted understanding of techne and offer educators a richer, more ethical view of techne and technical thinking in education. An interplay of Aristotelian intellectual virtues of techne and phronesis (practical wisdom) may reconnect techne to the rough ground of experience, challenge its preoccupation with instrumental ends, and assert its moral dimension