Bernard Lonergan devoted much of his life's work to developing a generalized method of inquiry, an integrated view which would overcome the fragmentation of knowledge in our time. In Topics in Education Lonergan adapts that concern to the practical needs of educators.

Traditionalist and modernist notions of education are both criticized. Lonergan attempts to work out, in the context of the human good and the 'new learning,' the rudiments of a philosophy of education based on his well-known discovery of norms in the unfolding of intelligent, reasonable, and responsible consciousness. He explores how the scientific revolution has changed ways of understanding reality, and examines the implications of this revolution for education.

Topics in Education, the first publication of his 1959 lectures, follows Lonergan on his early explorations of human development, studies the theories of Jean Piaget and others, and concludes with his own original ideas in the realms of ethics, art, and history.