Session Information
13 SES 08 A, Educational Benefits and Educational Research
Paper Session
Contribution
The practice of assigning a lesser value to benefits the further they are into the future, or, in economic terms, discounting, has long played a significant role shaping public policy. Recently, due to the growing influence of economic modes of thinking on the educational realm, the practice of discounting future benefits is gradually also finding its way into educational policymaking. While in other fields, such as health and environmental protection, much has been written about discounting and its far-reaching policy implications, little attention has been given to the subject in the educational domain. The purpose of this article is to critically discuss the role that discounting should play in education. The article provides a normative stance on the issue by examining the various justifications for discounting and assessing them in light of education's special characteristics. It concludes that in education discounting should be selectively used and that, in many cases, a conception of how time effects value which better fits the educational domain should be employed.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Churchill, Paul R. (1992). Public and Private Choice: A Philosophical Analysis. In J. M. Gillroy & M. Wade (Eds.), The Moral Dimension of Public Policy Choice - Beyond the Market Paradigm (pp. 341-351). Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Halpin, David. (2008). In Praise of Wasting Time in Education: some lessons from the Romantics. Forum, (50, 3). Symposium Journals. Levin, Henry M., & McEwan Patrick, J. (2001). Cost-Effectivness Analysis (2 ed.). Thousand Oaks: Sage. LØvlie, Lars. (2002). Rousseau's Insight. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 21(4-5), 335-341. Tinghög, Gustav. (2012). Discounting, Preferences, and Paternalism in Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. Health Care Analysis, 20(3), 297-318. White, John (2011). Exploring well-being in schools - a guide to making children's lives more fulfilling. London: Routledge.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.