Pedagogical virtues from the situationist insight: virtuous scaffolding and sensitivity to non-epistemic situational factors to learning

Abstract This article explores two pedagogical virtues (intellectual virtues of a teacher) that arise from the insight that non-epistemic situational factors can affect students’ epistemic judgements and behaviour. First, a virtuous teacher must be sensitive enough to these factors in order to take advantage of how they boost student learning. However, while cultivating a situationally and epistemically favourable environment for learning sounds sensible, teachers should not spoil their students by making them too dependent on these beneficial external factors. The virtuous teacher must also realize that these are only scaffolds; they do help students initially, but must eventually be removed to promote the students’ intellectual autonomy. This characterizes a second pedagogical virtue: the competence to facilitate students’ growth so that they become more capable in future opportunities for knowledge acquisition.