Instruction or pedagogy? The need for a transformative conception of education

Greater governmental control over the curriculum and an increasing emphasis on education as instruction towards pre-determined outcomes have generated new interest in the question whether schools should only instruct or also have a pedagogical task. In this paper, it is argued that schools do have a pedagogical task but that this task should not be understood as the teaching of norms and values. A transformative conception of education is presented in order to argue that the pedagogical task, conceived as a concern for the whole person of the student, is the proper and all-encompassing task of education. © 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.