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> I would take it back to Socrates - no, don't do that... 'Socrates' (ie the character used as a mouthpiece by Plato, Xenophon etc) talked about educating the young largely as a political issue from the perspective of what was good for the state. I'm not sure that's what we are doing (though it's an interesting conversation). His contemporaries, the Sophists, taught something closer to what we do when we think about 'transferable skills', 'employment' and so on (and Socrates was their fierce opponent). Plato does talk about something we could consider 'self-actualisation' in his middle career but by the bitter end of his life (don't read the Republic, read The Laws...) had returned to his favourite issue of the well-governed state, by whatever means necessary. Not very 'student-centred', I'm afraid. I'm rather puzzled by why people reliably talk in this field about Socrates without ever giving a reference... is there anyone else who would get that treatment? it could be because he didn't write anything, of course...;) Socrates seems historically to have insisted on his own ignorance (and everyone else's). He is actually an odd choice as the adopted legendary character in the field of education...! And he certainly wasn't a benign thoughtful and kind character if the texts we have are anything to go by. If we're going to look for a date for pedagogical research, we need to define what we mean by it: there are some really interesting ideas all the way from Parmenides, but it depends what counts as research...