Professor Ben Kotzee

Dr Ben Kotzee

School of Education
Professor of Philosophy of Education
Deputy Director (Training) Midlands Graduate School ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership

Contact details

Email
h.b.kotzee@bham.ac.uk
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Address
School of Education
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Ben Kotzee is a Professor of Philosophy of Education at the University of Birmingham. He works on topics in the philosophy of education and focuses on applying insights from contemporary epistemology to questions regarding intellectual development. He also has research interests in professional ethics and in professional education. Ben Kotzee is the editor of the journal Theory and Research in Education (SAGE). He holds a PhD in philosophy from King’s College London and was previously lecturer at Birkbeck, University of London.

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Qualifications

  • PhD (Philosophy) (London)
  • MA (Philosophy) (Stellenbosch)
  • Grad Cert (Social Research) (London)
  • BA Hons (Philosophy) (Stellenbosch)

Biography

Ben Kotzee studied philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa before completing his PhD in the same subject at King's College London, where he was a Commonwealth Scholar.

Following his PhD he was National Research Foundation postdoctoral fellow in the department of philosophy at the University of Cape Town.

Before coming to Birmingham, Ben Kotzee was lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, History and Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. 

Teaching

  • BA Education, Year 1: Philosophy of Education
  • MA: Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science

Postgraduate supervision

Ben is happy to accept PhD proposals in the fields of: 

  • philosophy of education
  • the epistemology of education
  • the intellectual virtues and critical thinking
  • ethics in education
  • professional education

Research

Ben Kotzee researches topics in the philosophy of education, with a specific focus on:

  • the epistemology of education
  • the nature of professional expertise

He holds the following grants:

As co-investigator: Phronesis and the Medical Community, Arts and Humanities Research Council (principal investigator Mervyn Conroy, HSMC)

As principal investigator: Moral Virtue, Intellectual Virtue and Education, The Spencer Foundation

Other activities

Ben Kotzee is secretary of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

Publications

Recent publications

Article

Kotzee, B & Sato, K 2023, 'Testimonial Justice and the Voluntarism Problem: the virtue of just acceptance', Journal of Philosophy of Education. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopedu/qhad063

Kotzee, B 2023, 'The economic and epistemic division of labour: on Philip Kitcher’s The Main Enterprise of the World', Journal of Philosophy of Education, vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 400-408. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopedu/qhad029

Kotzee, B 2023, 'The Philosophical Dimensions of Teachers' Research Literacy', Professions & Professionalism, vol. 13, no. 2, e5346. https://doi.org/10.7577/pp.5346

Matthews, A & Kotzee, B 2022, 'Bundled or unbundled? A multi‐text corpus‐assisted discourse analysis of the relationship between teaching and research in UK universities', British Educational Research Journal, vol. 48, no. 3, pp. 578-597. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3783

Paton, A & Kotzee, B 2021, 'The fundamental role of storytelling and practical wisdom in facilitating the ethics education of junior doctors', Health, vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 417-433. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459319889102

Matthews, A & Kotzee, B 2021, 'The rhetoric of the UK higher education Teaching Excellence Framework: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of TEF2 provider statements', Educational Review, vol. 73, no. 5, pp. 523-543. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2019.1666796

Kotzee, B & Palermos, SO 2021, 'The teacher bandwidth problem: MOOCs, connectivism, and collaborative knowledge', Educational Theory, vol. 71, no. 4, pp. 497-518. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12495

Matthews, A & Kotzee, B 2020, 'UK university part-time higher education: a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of undergraduate prospectuses', Higher Education Research and Development, vol. 39, no. 6, pp. 1186-1201. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2020.1713730

Kotzee, B, Carter, JA & Siegel, H 2019, 'Educating for intellectual virtue: a critique from action guidance', Episteme. https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2019.10

Kotzee, B 2019, 'Intellectual perfectionism about schooling', Journal of Applied Philosophy, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 436-456. https://doi.org/10.1111/japp.12332

Chapter

Kotzee, B & Baehr, J 2024, Intellectual Virtues. in MD Matthews & RM Lerner (eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Character Development, Volume I. 1st edn, vol. 1, Routledge, pp. 512-532. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003251248-28

Kotzee, B 2023, The Epistocratic Challenge to Democratic Education. in The Cambridge Handbook of Democratic Education. Cambridge Handbooks in Education, Cambridge University Press, pp. 550 - 573. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009071536.037

Kotzee, B 2022, The Formation of Expertise. in R Curren (ed.), Handbook of Philosophy of Education. 1 edn, Routledge. <https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003172246-15/formation-expertise-ben-kotzee>

Kotzee, B 2019, Bullshit Assertion. in SG (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Assertion. Oxford University Press.

Kotzee, H 2018, Applied Epistemology of Education. in D Coady & J Chase (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Applied Epistemology. Routledge Handbooks in Philosophy , Routledge.

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