(CZ) Vzdělání a způsoby jeho zkoumání
(EN) Education and Ways of Investigating It

The questions of education are being given great attention up to present. The term »education«, however, is not univocally defined in pedagogical theory. Some mean by it the result of all processes and activities aimed at the formation of man, others consider as »education« only what man knows or can do. Didactic research proceeding from the concept of education as a certain state of the individual in the process of his development, which is going on as a result of purposeful educational influence on man and man’s own active educational pursuits, cannot disregard spontaneous formative influences and neither can it ignore those qualities of the personality which the narrower concept of education places beyond the scope of education. The problem of scientific approaches to education is very topical at present. What is being considered is the detailist approach, philosophical approach and system approach. The article mentions the possibilities and limits of these different scientific approaches and an account is given of the results of an inquiry into education, in which the elements of the philosophical approach were applied. In conclusion information is given about a research into education which is just being initiated by the Comenius Pedagogical Institute of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, and which is to verify the possibilities of the system approach based on the general theory of systems.