The role of examples, current designs and ideas for a cosmopolitan design of education

Abstract

This paper discusses the value and importance of examples in Kantian terms, and how students can cultivate their moral disposition through the use of examples in education. It is argued that students should not just copy or imitate examples automatically, nor appraise them unreflectively and uncritically. They should instead be enabled to think for themselves in the position of the other and consistently, through the use of examples. This paper also discusses the extent to which students in teacher education programmes in Sweden were enabled to cultivate a moral disposition through the use of literature which unveils a design of education in national, European and cosmopolitan terms. However, since it seems that they lacked such opportunities it is argued that they were not enabled to cultivate their moral disposition through the use of the above-mentioned literature.