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Journal of Philosophy of Education

Impact factor: 0.446 5-Year impact factor: 0.526 Print ISSN: 0309-8249 Online ISSN: 1467-9752 Publisher: Wiley Blackwell (Blackwell Publishing)

Subjects: Education & Educational Research, History Of Social Sciences

Most recent papers:

  • Mastering as an Inferentialist Alternative to the Acquisition and Participation Metaphors for Learning.
    Samuel D. Taylor, Ruben Noorloos, Arthur Bakker.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. October 15, 2017
    A tension has been identified between the acquisition and participation metaphors for learning, and it is generally agreed that this tension has still not been adequately resolved. In this paper, we offer an alternative to the acquisition and participation metaphors for learning: the metaphor of mastering. Our claim is that the mastering metaphor, as grounded in inferentialism, allows one to treat both the acquisition and participation dimensions of learning as complementary and mutually constitutive. Inferentialism is a semantic theory which explains concept formation in terms of the inferences individuals make in the context of an intersubjective practice of acknowledging, attributing, and challenging one another's commitments. We first introduce the key concepts of inferentialism and consider the perspective on learning that inferentialism inspires. Then, we condense the lessons of the inferentialist concepts into a single mastering metaphor for learning and argue that learning consists in the process by which learners come to master concepts and practices. We conclude by discussing how the mastering metaphor could be put to work in a theoretical reconciliation of the cognitive and sociocultural dimensions of learning.
    October 15, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12264   open full text
  • Virtue through Challenge: Moral Development and Self‐transformation.
    Alistair Miller.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. October 11, 2017
    In this article, I argue that although the Aristotelian ideal of leading a virtuous life for its own sake is admirable, conventional Aristotelian and neo‐Aristotelian accounts of how it might be realised are empirically inadequate: Habituation is unlikely to produce ‘a love of virtue’, practical experience cannot then produce practical judgement or phronesis, and Aristotle's conception of a virtuous life excludes all but an idealised elite. Instead, I argue that two conceptually distinct aspects of moral development can be identified: the ‘Aristotelian’ and the ‘Humean’. In the former, the desire to lead a virtuous life for its own sake is produced through certain forms of challenging experience which, by disturbing and decentring the egoistic self, evoke a personal moral transformation. In the latter, the capacity to act well in specific social situations is the outcome of a process of socialisation, first in upbringing and later through initiation into the practices of adult life. Both aspects should be promoted in moral education for together they produce something akin to full virtue in the Aristotelian sense: Practical wisdom and practical judgement—or phronesis. Moreover, ‘the good life’ is best conceived as encompassing a variety of transcendent goods. To live a virtuous life for its own sake constitutes one good or form of human flourishing; but it is not the only one.
    October 11, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12266   open full text
  • Assessing Concept Possession as an Explicit and Social Practice.
    Alessia Marabini, Luca Moretti.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. September 20, 2017
    We focus on issues of learning assessment from the point of view of an investigation of philosophical elements in teaching. We contend that assessment of concept possession at school based on ordinary multiple‐choice tests might be ineffective because it overlooks aspects of human rationality illuminated by Robert Brandom's inferentialism—the view that conceptual content largely coincides with the inferential role of linguistic expressions used in public discourse. More particularly, we argue that multiple‐choice tests at schools might fail to accurately assess the possession of a concept or the lack of it, for they only check the written outputs of the pupils who take them, without detecting the inferences actually endorsed or used by them. We suggest that school tests would acquire reliability if they enabled pupils to make the reasons of their answers or the inferences they use explicit, so as to contribute to what Brandom calls the game of giving and asking for reasons. We explore the possibility of putting this suggestion into practice by deploying two‐tier multiple‐choice tests.
    September 20, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12265   open full text
  • Philosophy across the Curriculum and the Question of Teacher Capacity; Or, What Is Philosophy and Who Can Teach It?
    Lauren Bialystok.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. September 05, 2017
    Pre‐college philosophy has proliferated greatly over the last few decades, including in the form of ‘philosophy across the curriculum’. However, there has been very little sustained examination of the nature of philosophy as a subject relative to other standard pre‐college subjects and the kinds of expertise an effective philosophy teacher at this level should possess. At face value, the minimal academic preparation expected for competence in secondary philosophy instruction, compared to the high standards for teaching other subjects, raises questions and concerns. In this paper I make some provisional observations about the subject of philosophy and how it is taught from p4c through to the post‐secondary level. I begin by examining the concept of ‘philosophy across the curriculum’ and offer a working analysis of the main features of philosophy's form and content that enable us to determine its relevance to, and difference from, other subjects. Next, I examine and critique what I term the ‘populist’ conception of philosophy, which correlates to lower expectations of teacher training, and use my own experience of teaching philosophy across the curriculum to shed doubt on the viability of this approach. In the third section I consider what I term the ‘autonomous’ conception of philosophy, which correlates to more stringent expectations of teacher capacity, and explain why it is preferable to the populist conception with some qualifications. I conclude by reflecting on how philosophy compares to other subjects that are advanced cross‐curricularly and argue for more training of high school philosophy teachers.
    September 05, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12258   open full text
  • Professional Knowledge, Expertise and Perceptual Ability.
    Christopher Winch.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 29, 2017
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    August 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12257   open full text
  • Making Sense of Knowing‐How and Knowing‐That.
    Gerard Lum.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 29, 2017
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    August 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12256   open full text
  • Two Social Dimensions of Expertise.
    Ben Kotzee, Jp Smit.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 29, 2017
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    August 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12255   open full text
  • Drawing on a Sculpted Space of Actions: Educating for Expertise while Avoiding a Cognitive Monster.
    Machiel Keestra.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 29, 2017
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    August 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12254   open full text
  • Three Views on Expertise: Philosophical Implications for Rationality, Knowledge, Intuition and Education.
    Fernand Gobet.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 29, 2017
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    August 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12253   open full text
  • The Role of ‘Autonomy’ in Teaching Expertise.
    Irene Bucelli.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 29, 2017
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    August 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12252   open full text
  • Activity Concepts and Expertise.
    Mark Addis.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 29, 2017
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    August 29, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12251   open full text
  • Jean‐Jacques Rousseau, the Mechanised Clock and Children's Time.
    Amy Shuffelton.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 06, 2017
    This article explores a perplexing line from Rousseau's Emile: his suggestion that the ‘most important rule’ for the educator is ‘not to gain time but to lose it’. An analysis of what Rousseau meant by this line, the article argues, shows that Rousseau provides the philosophical groundwork for a radical critique of the contemporary cultural framework that supports homework, standardised testing, and the competitive extracurricular activities that consume children's time. He offers important insights to contemporary parents and educators wishing to reimagine an educational system that is currently fuelled more by familial and international amour propre than by children's interests and needs. Not the least of these is his recognition that to reimagine children's education would require a new configuration of the very terms of modern life. Problematically, however, Rousseau's alternative to mechanised clock‐time depends on the labour of Sophie, whose time is also reconfigured. For the next generation of children to be educated according to natural time, Sophie's labour needs to be off the clock too, which is just as much a linchpin of her removal from the public sphere of citizenship and the paid workforce as it is of Emile's education for public life, or so the final section of this paper argues.
    August 06, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12246   open full text
  • ‘Where are You?’ Giving Voice to the Teacher by Reclaiming the Private/Public Distinction.
    Lovisa Bergdahl, Elisabet Langmann.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 31, 2017
    In a time of cultural pluralism and legitimation crisis (Habermas), there is an increasing uncertainty among teachers in Sweden about with what right they are fostering other people's children. What does it mean to teach ‘common values’ to the coming generation? How do teachers find legitimacy and authority for this endeavour, not as family members or as politicians, but as teachers? To respond to this uncertainty, the paper takes the public/private distinction as a starting‐point for rethinking the place of the school. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt and of Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons, it argues that the school is an in‐between place—a place that transforms values into ‘common goods’ and turns fostering into a teaching matter. The overall purpose of the paper is to sketch out the consequences of this ‘in‐betweenness’ for what it means to find one's voice as a teacher in fostering the coming generation.
    May 31, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12244   open full text
  • Knowing ‘Wh’ and Knowing How: Constructing Professional Curricula and Integrating Epistemic Fields.
    Christopher Winch.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 18, 2017
    Much of the debate on the nature of knowing how has been concerned with whether it is to be conceived of as an ability (know‐how or KH) or as the possession of propositional knowledge (KT), perhaps in a practical form. Comparatively little has been written about knowing wh (KWh) constructions and the ways in which they do or do not fit into this debate. Do such debates have any bearing on the practical concerns of the educators of professionals? This paper considers the case of Knowing Wh constructions and their epistemic status with reference to their use in professional contexts. The argument to be developed is that KT and KH are distinct but closely related epistemic abilities and that in assessing professional capacity we often find them together as part of an overall professional competence. The use of KWh constructions in professional settings supports this contention, as they can occur as cases of both KT and KH, depending on context. The claim is illustrated by examining and interpreting KWh constructions in professional qualifications and interpreting them in the context of what is required to make sense of them as elements of qualifications.
    May 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12245   open full text
  • Political and Aesthetic Equality in the Work of Jacques Rancière: Applying his Writing to Debates in Education and the Arts.
    Jane Mcdonnell.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 27, 2017
    This paper draws on insights from Jacques Rancière's writing on politics and aesthetics to offer new perspectives on debates in education and the arts. The paper addresses three debates in turn; the place of contemporary art in schools and gallery education, the role of art in democratic education and the blurring of boundaries between participatory art and community education. I argue that Rancière's work helps to illuminate some essentialist assumptions behind dichotomous arguments about contemporary art in the classroom—both over‐hyped claims about its value, and exaggerated fears about its threat to educational values alike. On democratic education I argue that his work highlights the importance of the aesthetic dimensions of democratic learning and, on art and community education, I issue caution against readings of Rancière's work that frame his contribution as a ‘rehabilitation‘ of the aesthetic. Although each debate is tackled discretely, the paper advances the overall argument that attention to equality in Rancière's work—both aesthetic and political—is vital when applying his philosophy to debates that occupy the boundaries of education, politics and art.
    April 27, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12241   open full text
  • The Exilic Classroom: Spaces of Subversion.
    Andrew J. Brogan.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 19, 2017
    This paper explores the possibility of the classroom as an exilic space of subversion in which we can pursue anarchist notions of personal transformation, relationships and society. Classroom environments in higher education institutions in Britain, particularly following the introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework in September 2016, are premised upon relationships shaped by specific external standards: Employability, the instrumental pursuit of degrees, provider/consumer exchange, among others. Any notions of personal transformation are economic, and the broader goal is the pursuit of economic gain for individual, company and country. In an act of subversion of these external standards, I propose theorising the classroom as an exilic space: a temporally and spatially bracketed space in which participants and their relationships are not beholden to these various external referents. Instead, I put forward the exilic classroom as an anarchic space in which the interactions of the participants are not pre‐defined but are formed in the process of the interactions themselves. In theorising the exilic classroom I draw on the work of Obika Gray, and push his notion of exilic space further by integrating the works of Michel de Certeau, Jamie Heckert and Gustav Landauer to help propose a classroom defined as a positive subversive everyday space that is not bound by its opposition to wider structures. The creation of such an exilic classroom assists the participants in stepping out of their expected roles as ‘provider’ and ‘consumer’, or ‘teacher’ and ‘student’, and allows the creation of a space of possibilities for our relationships
    April 19, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12243   open full text
  • The Archaeology of Heroes: Carlyle, Foucault and the Pedagogy of Interdisciplinary Narrative Discourse.
    Louise Campbell.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 17, 2017
    This paper argues in favour of the beneficial currency of Thomas Carlyle's ‘On Heroes, Hero‐worship and the Heroic in History’ in three ways, each of which finds the basis of its critique in aspects of Foucault's theories of discursive practice, as explored in Foucault's theories of historical discourse; 1) that Carlyle's terminology connects with his discursive practice in an ambiguous manner, as his concept of worship is more akin to study than devotion, if we take the text of his lectures as evidence of his perception; 2) the sources of enlightenment Carlyle offers us, based on these studies of heroic individuals, may provide an exemplar for interdisciplinary scholarship centred around biographies of notable individuals, and finally; 3) we challenge the notion that heroes such as those Carlyle offers us can be manifest in the present and argue that the depth of insight Carlyle demonstrates into his subjects is only possible by means of a lengthy temporal transition: the historicity of these narratives, and the narratives of social codification, cultural development and long‐term impact witnessed and described over generations, is what makes them feasible at all.
    April 17, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12239   open full text
  • On the Meeting of the Moral and the Aesthetic in Literary Education.
    Andrés Mejía, Silvia Eugenia Montoya.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 10, 2017
    For millennia it has been discussed whether literature appropriately can or should be used in education for a moral purpose. Taking as a premise that it can actually be educative and not merely moralising, we tackle the case made against such use, based on the claim that it would be perverting the aesthetic nature of literature as a form of art, as it would be instrumentalised. Given that this claim is based on a dichotomy between an aesthetically educative approach and a morally educative approach to literature, we examine how warranted such a formulation of this dichotomy is. We argue that, at least on some occasions, those two educative approaches to literature—the aesthetic and the moral—can actually be mutually reinforcing in such a way that aesthetic appreciation will suffer if the moral is not deeply examined with both mind and heart, and vice versa. This does not mean, however, that this relation of mutual contribution will always obtain in a neat way. It may actually be the case that just in a few cases, and only if carried out in a pedagogically appropriate manner, it will be correct to use literature with a morally educative purpose.
    April 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12237   open full text
  • Minima Pedagogica: Education, Thinking and Experience in Adorno.
    Itay Snir.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 10, 2017
    This article attempts to think of thinking as the essence of critical education. While contemporary education tends to stress the conveying of knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the present‐day information society, the present article turns to the work of Theodor W. Adorno to develop alternative thinking about education, thinking and the political significance of education for thinking. Adorno touched upon educational questions throughout his writings, with growing interest in the last ten years of his life. Education, he argues following Kant, must enable students to think for themselves and to break free of the authority of teachers, parents and other adults. Nevertheless, in his discussions of education Adorno says little about the nature of thinking, and the secondary literature on his educational theory addresses this question only cursorily. Important claims on the nature of thinking do appear elsewhere in Adorno's work. From his early writings up to Negative Dialectics, Adorno is preoccupied with thinking, sketching the outlines of critical‐dialectical thought. Still, these reflections rarely touch upon educational questions, and the Adorno scholarship has yet to establish this link. Unlike studies which read Adorno's educational thought against the backdrop of the history of education and the German Bildung tradition, or in relation to art and aesthetics, the present article brings together Adorno's ideas on education and thinking in an attempt to contribute both to the Adorno scholarship and to the growing field of education for thinking.
    April 10, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12238   open full text
  • For Example? A Philosophical Case Study of Some Problems When Abstract Educational Theory Ignores Concrete Practice.
    Clinton Golding.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 16, 2017
    In Philosophy of Education we frequently argue for or against different educational theories. Yet, as I illustrate in this analysis of two articles, in order to maintain the abstract theoretical distinctions, we are liable to ignore the concrete details of practice, caricature the theories we reject and make false distinctions. The two articles that I analyse, one from Golding and one from Boghossian, grapple with the pedagogical theories of transmission teaching, constructivism, pragmatism and Socratic pedagogy, in the context of dialogical philosophy teaching. As a result of my analysis, I first present three examples where the authors have rejected abstract theories based on arguments that I show to be strawmen: These theories would not or could not be adopted in practice. Then, I present two examples where the authors attempt to make distinctions between educational theories which seem sound in the abstract, but which turn out to be false distinctions if we consider the details of concrete practice. My conclusion is that, in these two articles, abstract educational theory is prone to problems when it ignores concrete practice. Although I am presenting a case study, and do not argue that my conclusion is generalisable, I do suggest some reasons why this conclusion might apply more widely to Philosophy of Education. My recommendation is that we be more discerning in our treatment of educational theories and more mindful of the educational practices that they entail. We should acknowledge the practical similarities between different abstract theories rather than forcing caricatured distinctions.
    February 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12236   open full text
  • The Educational Importance of Deep Wonder.
    Anders Schinkel.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 16, 2017
    That wonder is educationally important will strike many people as obvious. And in a way it is obvious, because being capable of experiencing wonder implies an openness to (novel) experience and seems naturally allied to intrinsic educational motivation, an eagerness to inquire, a desire to understand, and also to a willingness to suspend judgement and bracket existing—potentially limiting—ways of thinking, seeing, and categorising. Yet wonder is not a single thing, and it is important to distinguish at least two kinds of wonder: active wonder(ing), which entails a drive to explore, to find out, to explain; and deep or contemplative wonder, which is not inherently inquisitive like active wonder and, as a response to mystery, may leave us lost for words. Claims for wonder's importance to education and science often do not distinguish between the two, but whereas for active wonder that importance seems obvious, this is much less so for deep wonder, which by its very nature rather seems to be anti‐educational. Yet in this paper I explore exactly the educational importance of deep wonder. This importance is found to lie, not just in its motivational effects—real though they are—but in making us attend to the world for its own sake, and making us aware of the limits of our understanding.
    February 16, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12233   open full text
  • Levelling and Misarchism: A Nietzschean Perspective on the Future of Democratic Educational Institutions.
    Tadej Pirc.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. January 22, 2017
    In his early lectures, published as On the Future of Our Educational Institutions, Nietzsche attempts to expose contemporary education as overly extensive and being weakened, and as such, failing to turn pupils and students into men of culture. The aim of my paper is to present a comprehensive consideration of the present condition of democratic educational institutions through Nietzsche's clairvoyantly pessimistic assessment. I enter the discussion through two Nietzschean concepts, levelling and misarchism, which, although not found in the mentioned text explicitly, resonate throughout Nietzsche's 1872 lectures and were to become increasingly important with each subsequent publication. Regardless of the common trend in the so‐called Nietzsche studies to analytically strive for and determine the true or the correct interpretation of his works, ideas and concepts, my paper presupposes the inevitable evasiveness of his philosophy, and focuses rather on the very insight of his that can be of great use in seeking answers to the crucial question of the present democratic society: what can be expected of our educational institutions?
    January 22, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12235   open full text
  • Education, Learning and Freedom.
    Geoffrey Hinchliffe.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. January 18, 2017
    This paper takes as its starting point Kant's analysis of freedom in the Critique of Pure Reason. From this analysis, two different types of freedom are discerned, formative and instrumental freedom. The paper suggests that much of what passes for the pedagogy of learning in UK universities takes the form of an instrumental freedom. This, however, involves the neglect of formative freedom—the power to put learning to question. An emancipatory concept of education requires that formative freedom lies at the heart of the educative endeavour, to which learning must be seen as secondary. The proposal of the two types of freedom is based on a relatively detailed consideration of Kant's Critique—this is necessary in order to ensure that the concepts of instrumental and formative freedom have a credible philosophical basis.
    January 18, 2017   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12234   open full text
  • A Confucian Conception of Critical Thinking.
    Charlene Tan.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 21, 2016
    This article proposes a Confucian conception of critical thinking by focussing on the notion of judgement. It is argued that the attainment of the Confucian ideal of li (normative behaviours) necessitates and promotes critical thinking in at least two ways. First, the observance of li requires the individual to exercise judgement by applying the generalised knowledge, norms and procedures in dao (Way) to particular action‐situations insightfully and flexibly. Secondly, the individual's judgement, to qualify as an instance of li, should be underpinned and motivated by the ethical quality of ren (humanity) that testifies to one's moral character. Two educational implications arising from a Confucian conception of critical thinking are highlighted. First, the Confucian interpretation presented in this essay challenges the perception that critical thinking is absent from or culturally incompatible with Chinese traditions. Secondly, such a conception advocates viewing critical thinking as a form of judgement that is action‐oriented, spiritual, ethical and interpersonal.
    December 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12228   open full text
  • Can ‘Philosophy for Children’ Improve Primary School Attainment?
    Stephen Gorard, Nadia Siddiqui, Beng Huat See.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 21, 2016
    There are tensions within formal education between imparting knowledge and the development of skills for handling that knowledge. In the primary school sector, the latter can also be squeezed out of the curriculum by a focus on basic skills such as literacy and numeracy. What happens when an explicit attempt is made to develop young children's reasoning—both in terms of their apparent cognitive abilities and their basic skills? This paper reports an independent evaluation of an in‐class intervention called ‘Philosophy for Children’ (P4C), after just over one year of schooling. The intervention aims to help children become more willing and able to question, reason, construct arguments and collaborate with others. A group of 48 volunteer schools were randomised to receive P4C (22 schools) or act as a control for one year (26). This paper reports the CAT results for all pupils in years 4 and 5 initially, and the Key Stage 2 attainment in English and Maths for those starting in year 5. There was no school dropout. Individual attrition from a total of 3,159 pupils was around 11 percent—roughly equal between groups. There were small positive ‘effect’ sizes in favour of the P4C group in progress in reading (+0.12) and maths (+0.10), and even smaller perhaps negligible improvements in CAT scores (+0.07) and writing (+0.03). The results for the most disadvantaged (free school eligible) pupils were larger for attainment (+0.29 in reading, +0.17 writing and +0.20 maths), but not for CATs (–0.02). Observations and interviews suggest that the intervention was generally enjoyable and thought to be beneficial for pupil confidence. Our conclusion is that, for those wishing to improve attainment outcomes in the short term, an emphasis on developing reasoning is promising, especially for the poorest students, but perhaps not the most effective way forward. However, for those who value reasoning for its own sake, this evaluation demonstrates that using curriculum time in this way does not damage attainment (and may well enhance it and reduce the poverty gradient in attainment), and so suggests that something like P4C is an appropriate educational approach.
    December 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12227   open full text
  • Epistemology in Excess? A Response to Williams.
    Harvey Siegel.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 20, 2016
    Emma Williams’ ‘In Excess of Epistemology’ admirably endeavours to open the way to an account of critical thinking that goes beyond the one I have defended ad nauseum in recent decades by developing, via the work of Charles Taylor and Martin Heidegger, ‘a radically different conception of thinking and the human being who thinks’, one that ‘does more justice to receptive and responsible conditions of human thought.’ In this response I hope to show that much of Williams’ alternative approach is compatible with my own; that, where incompatible, the alternative is problematic; and, finally, that there is a risk of talking past one another, talking at cross‐purposes, that all sides must work to overcome.
    December 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12229   open full text
  • Military Education Reconsidered: A Postmodern Update.
    Anders Mcdonald Sookermany.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 01, 2016
    It is commonly accepted that the nature of military operations is one of such character that no matter how well you prepare there will still be an expectation of having to deal with the unknown and unforeseen. Accordingly, there seem to be reasons for arguing that preparations for the unpredictable should play a critical role in military education. Yet, military education as we know it seems to be characterized by a rather classic modernist view on education, which promotes an environment of learning that embraces uniformity and enhances scenario based pre‐planned drills as ways of conducting military operations. In this paper I will argue an alternative perspective, one that embraces difference rather than uniformity as a means of developing military units and their soldiers. In doing so I will ground my argument in the academic discourse on postmodern education. It is my understanding that educational practices prone to postmodern thinking are embedded in narratives sensitive to constructivism, complexity and contextualism, and thus use emancipation, deconstruction, vocabulary, dialogue, diversity and aesthetics as pedagogical strategies in their creation of ‘new’ meaning. A discussion of these strategies in relation to the topic of ‘the unpredictable’ constitutes the main body of this paper.
    December 01, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12224   open full text
  • Towards a Transformative Epistemology of Technology Education.
    David Morrison‐Love.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. November 28, 2016
    Technology Education offers an authentic and invaluable range of skills, knowledge, capabilities, contexts and ways of thinking for learners in the 21st century. However, it is recognised that it occupies a comparatively less defined and more fragile curricular position than associated, but longer established, subjects such as Mathematics and Science. While recognising that no single factor lies behind such a condition, this paper draws upon thinking in the philosophy of technology, technology education and the ontology of artefacts to argue that transformation may be considered as an epistemic source for technology in a similar way to ‘proof’ within Mathematics and ‘interpretation’ within Science. Encapsulating technology's intimate relationship with materials, it is ultimately argued that the transformation of a technical artefact from an ill‐defined into a well‐defined ontological state constitutes a prime source of technological knowledge for pupils. Moreover, it provides an alternative route into further consideration about the nature of the domain, epistemology and curricular identity of the subject.
    November 28, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12226   open full text
  • Levinas: Ethics or Mystification?
    Alistair Miller.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. November 23, 2016
    The metaphysical ethics of Levinas appeals to many philosophers of education because it seems to promise ethics and social justice without recourse to moral norms, ‘totalising’ political systems or religious belief. However, the notion that the subject can be detached from its worldly being—that one can posit a primordial metaphysical pre‐conscious pre‐phenomenal self which stands in ethical relation to a primordial metaphysical pre‐conscious pre‐phenomenal Other—is highly questionable. From an empirical perspective, our experience of the world and of ourselves can only be conceived in social, cultural and linguistic terms; the self‐referential lexicon Levinas employs to depict the relation between the transcendental subject and the Other ‘in his alterity’ renders his metaphysical assertions impossible to evaluate or give determinate form. From a transcendental perspective, Levinas's metaphysical abstractions simply do not have the power to motivate people to behave ethically. Instead of contributing toward the transformation of education and society envisaged by many philosophers of education, the ‘ethics of the Other’ merely generates an esoteric discourse.
    November 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12225   open full text
  • ‘What Makes My Image of Him into an Image of Him?’: Philosophers on Film and the Question of Educational Meaning.
    Alexis Gibbs.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. November 09, 2016
    This paper proceeds from the premise that film can be educational in a broader sense than its current use in classrooms for illustrative purposes, and explores the idea that film might function as a form of education in itself. To investigate the phenomenon of film as education, it is necessary to first address a number of assumptions about film, the most important of which is its objective character under study. The objective study of film holds that the meaning of film awaits its correct interpretation according to an informed viewer. I suggest that theoretical modes of interpretation in this vein really amount to attempts to control meaning via a particular lens, rather than allowing films to present meaning in necessarily ambiguous, and thus sometimes unsettling, ways. Situating film as the object of study in this way continues a tradition of empiricism or naturalism in thought that both Maurice Merleau‐Ponty and Ludwig Wittgenstein sought to critique as psychologism. Whilst no claim is made for reconceiving of Wittgenstein as phenomenologist, a dialogue between the Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology and the Phenomenology of Perception reveals sympathies in attempts made by both to overcome a metaphysics of the perceived or experienced object, thereby broadening the educational reach of film.
    November 09, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12223   open full text
  • Pedagogical Pleasures: Augustine in the Feminist Classroom.
    Maggie A. Labinski.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. November 09, 2016
    Many feminist philosophers of education have argued that the teacher's pleasure plays an important role in the classroom. However, accessing such pleasure is often easier said than done. Given our current academic climate, how might teachers develop pedagogical practices that cultivate these delights? This article investigates the (rather surprising) response to this question offered in Augustine's De catechizandis rudibus. Despite his reputation as a pleasure‐hater, Augustine spends the majority of his text defending the delights of teaching. In particular, Augustine argues that if teachers wish to find pleasure in teaching, they would do well to study the pleasures of mothers. To this end, I analyse the nature of Augustine's maternal appeal. What insight does Augustine find in the experiences of mothers? In what way does he hope his colleagues will allow these experiences to shape their pedagogies? I conclude by exploring the benefits and the risks of Augustine's claim for those who teach in the contemporary feminist classroom. Augustine's defence of pedagogical pleasure suggests that he shares a common interest with feminist philosophers. But, the social/political limits of his account highlight the value of submitting such pleasures to the terms of feminist critique.
    November 09, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12222   open full text
  • Dewey and Culture: Responding to ‘Extreme Views’.
    Ruth Heilbronn.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. November 09, 2016
    Dewey famously believed that we learn through experience, through which we build up habits. Education should be about developing good habits. Experience for Dewey, is not an individual possession but grows out of social interaction, which always takes place in a given culture. Dewey's views on culture are significant in relation to a current issue in education in England, namely the legal requirement for teachers to report students who express ‘extreme views’, under the Prevent Strategy. The article first gives the current context in recent policy implementation in England and discusses how it raises ethical dilemmas which profoundly affect what it means to be a teacher. This is then illustrated through a vignette, a narrative of a newly qualified teacher living a dilemma raised by the policy. Consequences for the development of democratic education and education for democracy emerge from considering Dewey's views on experience and culture in relation to the teacher's dilemma. The conclusion suggests some ways forward in the face of the difficulties raised by the Prevent strategy reporting requirement.
    November 09, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12217   open full text
  • Education, Despair and Morality: A Reply to Roberts.
    Christopher Cowley.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. November 09, 2016
    In a recent thought‐provoking piece, Peter Roberts argues against the central role of happiness as a guiding concept in education, and argues for more attention to be paid to despair. This does not mean cultivating despair in young people, but allowing them to make sense of their own natural occasional despair, as well as the despair of others. I agree with Roberts about happiness, and about the need for more attention to despair, but I argue that focusing too much on despair is dangerous without paying simultaneous attention to goodness. Roberts argues that students must be helped to face the despair born of the realisation that (i) we can never be sure of the moral grounds on which our actions are based, (ii) we can never fully know ourselves, and that (iii) education should make us more appreciative of what we don't know. I argue against all three claims: (i) there are some moral truths that we can know; (ii) we can know enough of ourselves in certain contexts; (iii) education should not only teach intellectual humility, it should also give us confidence in appreciating the sources of meaning that are ordinarily available, e.g. personal relationships. The paper concludes with a response to the objection (perhaps by Roberts, as well as by liberals) that my position is little more than old‐fashioned moralism and conservatism.
    November 09, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12216   open full text
  • A Janus‐faced Approach to Learning. A Critical Discussion of Habermas' Pragmatic Approach.
    Salvatore Italia.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. September 21, 2016
    A realist approach to learning is what I propose here. This is based on a non‐epistemic dimension whose presence is a necessary assumption for a concept of learning of a life‐world as complementary to learning within a life‐world. I develop my approach in opposition to Jürgen Habermas' pragmatic approach, which seems to lack of something from a realist point of view.
    September 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12212   open full text
  • The Process Matters: Moral Constraints on Cosmopolitan Education.
    Matthew J. Hayden.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 18, 2016
    Cosmopolitan education aims to transmit cosmopolitan forms of life in order to participate morally in the world community. The primary characteristics of this cosmopolitan education are its acceptance of the shared humanity of all persons as a fact of human existence and as a motivating guide for human interaction, and the requirement of democratic inclusion in deliberations of the governance of those interactions, including morality. Such an education in cosmopolitan morality requires means that befit its core components. This paper contrasts the concepts of strict and moderate cosmopolitanism, empirical and deliberative morality, and structural and dispositional cosmopolitanism to show that the moderate, inclusive and deliberative processes of deliberative dispositional cosmopolitanism are more suited to cosmopolitan education in morality than strong, empirical‐focused structural cosmopolitan efforts. Though strong, structural and empirically based forms may be more likely to guarantee preferred outcomes in the learning of specific morals or the implementation of institutional norms, they are also more likely to run afoul of the core components of cosmopolitanism because they will privilege outcomes over processes, and are thus more likely to be less inclusive and more coercive. In contrast, and even though they are less certain to guarantee preferred moral outcomes or actions, moderate, deliberative dispositional forms of cosmopolitan education embody the morality they seek to inform, and are more likely to find sustained internalised support over time.
    July 18, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12210   open full text
  • Environmental Education as a Lived‐Body Practice? A Contemplative Pedagogy Perspective.
    Jani Pulkki, Bo Dahlin, Veli‐Matti Värri.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 07, 2016
    Environmental education usually appeals to the students’ knowledge and rational understanding. Even though this is needed, there is a neglected aspect of learning ecologically fruitful action; that of the lived‐body. This paper introduces the lived‐body as an important site for learning ecological action. An argument is made for the need of a biophilia revolution, in which refined experience of the body and enhanced capabilities for sensing are seen as important ways of complementing the more common, knowledge‐based environmental education. Alienation from the physical environment is seen as one key element in producing environmental devastation. Consequently, human alienation from nature is seen as closely related to alienation from one's body. It is claimed that through overcoming the (Cartesian) dualist alienation of human consciousness from its lived body, we can decrease the alienation of human beings from their environment. Methods of contemplative pedagogy are introduced for addressing alienation. By getting in touch with the tangible lived‐body in yoga or mindfulness meditation we reconnect to the material world of nature. Contemplative pedagogy cultivates the body and its senses for learning intrinsic valuation and caring for the environment. Lived‐body experience is challenging to conceptualise; we use Maurice Merleau‐Ponty's concept of the flesh in our attempt to do so. Finally, this paper suggests some contemplative practices of the lived‐body for environmental education. Experiencing the flesh of oneself and the world as one and the same is an environmentally conducive experience that gives value and meaning to the flourishing of all life, human and non‐human.
    July 07, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12209   open full text
  • Study Time: Heidegger and the Temporality of Education.
    Tyson E. Lewis.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 07, 2016
    In this article, the author argues that the question of educational time is absolutely essential in contemporary debates concerning the fate of the university. In order to examine the nature of educational time, this article first outlines Heidegger's distinction between temporality and Temporality. Second, the author makes a clarification between inauthentic and authentic learning as two forms of educational temporality. Here the article turns to the work of Hubert Dreyfus and Stuart Dreyfus on expert skill building versus standardised or generic forms of learning. When inauthentic and authentic forms of temporality are brought to light through this distinction, new ways of understanding the convergence and divergence of learning modes open up for critical reflection. Third, the article suggests that while differentiations internal to learning are critical in the struggle to define the nature of education, education cannot be reduced to its temporalising forms. At this point, the work of one of Heidegger's late students, Giorgio Agamben, becomes important for grounding the educational experience in Temporality through study (as distinct from learning). At stake here is carving out a time in education for enpresencing (the Temporality of the potential for something to appear) versus self‐projection through action (the authentic temporality of expert skill building). And finally, the article turns back to Hediegger in order to see the ethical limitations of too quickly collapsing education into learning—even if that learning is authentic.
    July 07, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12208   open full text
  • Finding Educational Insights in Psychoanalytic Theory with Marcuse and Adorno.
    Hanna‐Maija Huhtala.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 04, 2016
    This article seeks to clarify the potential that Herbert Marcuse's and Theodor W. Adorno's psychoanalytic accounts may have with respect to the philosophy of education today. Marcuse and Adorno both share the view that psychoanalytic theory enables a deeper understanding of the social and biological dynamics of consciousness. For both thinkers, psychoanalytic theory provides conceptual tools for thinking through contradictions between the needs of an individual and those of the governing entity. In fleshing this out, I first explore Marcuse's radical account of sublimation which seeks to demonstrate how the revision of instinctual energy makes it possible to establish a subjectivity which utilises the human potentiality to its fullest. I then turn to Adorno who emphasises the importance of understanding that exterior conditions transform our instinctual energies. After recapitulating Adorno's conception of natural, instinctual impulses and his use of psychoanalytic theory, I will explore the possibility of a critical rationality through a critique of rationality's current mode. From the perspective of Adorno's and Marcuse's theories, both rationality and sensuous desire play their respective roles in enabling critical rationality. In conclusion, the article reflects the different advantage points of Marcuse's and Adorno's accounts from the perspective of philosophy of education. Thus, education should provide individuals with the ability to recognise the subtle and invisible ways through which the calculating mode of rationality operates in late‐capitalist society. Regarding education, Adorno's conception of non‐identity could be developed in the direction of promoting ways of experiencing non‐conformity within such a society.
    July 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12194   open full text
  • Transhuman Education? Sloterdijk's Reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism.
    Fiachra Long.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 04, 2016
    Peter Sloterdijk presented a reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism at a conference held at Elmau in 1999. Reinterpreting the meaning of humanism in the light of Heidegger's Letter, Sloterdijk focused his presentation on the need to redefine education as a form of genetic ‘taming’ and proposed what seemed to be support for positive eugenics. Although Sloterdijk claimed that he only wanted to open a debate on the issue, he could not have been surprised at the level of opposition this suggestion aroused. In the weeks following, he blamed Habermas for raising this opposition and for refusing to engage with him openly. Although Luis Arenas has chronicled the aftermath of Sloterdijk's paper, it may be of interest to educators to examine how Heidegger's text is presented. What is this new humanism? If Heidegger's new humanism was based on a mystical attitude towards Being, so Sloterdijk's new humanism was to be based on the materialist principles of a biotechnological age. Unlike Heidegger who rejected technology as yet one further example of the forgetfulness of Being, Sloterdijk seems to embrace technology and the enhancement of the human body and mind as the next great step forward in educational theory. Could he possibly be right? Is education in these times a partner or an opponent of the technological enhancement of the human being? This article tries to identify Sloterdijk's disagreements with Heidegger on the question of the human.
    July 04, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12192   open full text
  • Thomas Piketty and the Justice of Education.
    Steinar Bøyum.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty‐First Century is best known for its documentation of increasing social inequality, but it also has a notable normative aspect. Although Piketty is far less clear on the normative level than on the empirical, his view of justice can be summarised as meritocratic luck egalitarianism. This leads him to condemn as unjust the fact that inheritance is once again becoming more important than education for determining social position. In this paper, I discuss whether Piketty's normative conception can justify this condemnation. My main thesis will be that Piketty ends up in a dilemma that he cannot resolve with the normative resources he has at his disposal. The horns of this dilemma are defined by whether or not we accept what Susan Hurley calls ‘the regression requirement’, and in both cases the normative distinction between inheritance and education as ways to achieve social positions disappears. Toward the end, I shall suggest an alternative justification for the moral superiority of education over inheritance, which makes use of one of Piketty's key empirical arguments.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12196   open full text
  • Testimony, Holocaust Education and Making the Unthinkable Thinkable.
    Judith Suissa.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    A great deal of philosophical work has explored the complex conceptual intersection between ethics and epistemology in the context of issues of testimony and belief, and much of this work has significant educational implications. In this paper, I discuss a troubling example of a case of testimony that seems to pose a problem for some established ways of thinking about these issues and that, in turn, suggests some equally troubling educational conclusions.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12207   open full text
  • The Virtues of Unknowing.
    Richard Smith.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    Traditional epistemology is often said to have reached an impasse, and recent interest in virtue epistemology supposedly marks a turn away from philosophers’ traditional focus on problems of knowledge and truth. Yet that focus re‐emerges, especially among ‘reliabilist’ virtue epistemologists. I argue for a more ‘responsibilist’ approach and for the importance of some of the quieter and gentler epistemic virtues, by contrast with the tough‐minded ones that are currently popular in education. In particular I make a case for what I here call ‘unknowing’: a positive state that is not the same as ignorance. I acknowledge the mystical connotations of the term, and suggest that there is a strong interest in unknowing in writers such as Plato, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. In their style of philosophising they also address the paradox of being knowing about unknowingness itself.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12206   open full text
  • Which Love of Country? Tensions, Questions and Contexts for Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism in Education.
    Claudia Schumann.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    The paper considers Martha Nussbaum's motivation for departing from her earlier cosmopolitan position in favour of now promoting a globally sensitive patriotism. Her reasons for endorsing patriotism will be shown as exemplary for related argumentations by other authors, especially insofar as love of country as a motivating force for civic duty is understood as in tension or even as incompatible with cosmopolitan aspirations. The motivation for turning to patriotism as articulated by Nussbaum and others will be demonstrated to rely on misleading understandings of love of country as a possessive emotion. Relying on Alice Crary's (2007) critique, it will be argued that sound moral judgement with regard to the patria as well as from a cosmopolitan stance is equally tied to our sensitivities and equally requires their education. Furthermore, I will discuss Axel Honneth's notion of solidarity, a form of love inflected by justice, as a possible alternative for conceptualising the social bonding patriotic attachment is supposed to provide. However, a critical patriotism ultimately needs to transgress this inward‐directed focus and take into account how a country is seen by non‐citizens, the historical relationships and the obligations that arise in terms of historical justice in relation to other countries. If we take patriotism in this outward‐looking perspective seriously, we also come to understand why it would be a mistake to skip patriotism altogether. Rather than constructing cosmopolitanism and patriotism as mutually exclusive opposites, critical cosmopolitanism and critical patriotism can be shown to have different but complementary and mutually corrective functions.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12205   open full text
  • Aristotle's homo mimeticus as an Educational Paradigm for Human Coexistence.
    Gilberto Scaramuzzo.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    In the Poetics of Aristotle there is a definition of the human being that perhaps has not yet been well considered in educational theory and practice. This definition calls into question a dynamism that according to Plato was unavoidable for an appropriate understanding of the educational process that turns a human being into a beautiful, good and just citizen: mimesis. The paper's intent is to reconsider the definition of the human being, centred on mimesis, presented by Aristotle in the Poetics (4. 1448 b5–9) to demonstrate if, and how, it might establish new paradigms for human coexistence. Aristotle's anthropological statement is included in a much wider discourse concerning philosophy of art; but if isolated from the context, it is an essential definition of human beings that can be synthesised as follows: human beings are the mimetic animal par excellence, and their process of understanding (that distinguishes them from other animals) has a fundamental connection with such excellence. Ignorance and/or negligence of how relevant mimesis might be in the educational process may have decisively contributed to separate human beings from this core aspect of their humanity and therefore produced painful consequences in human coexistence. As long as education does not pay attention to the pedagogical implications of the definition taken from the Poetics, how can human flourishing be safeguarded? I argue that recognition of the centrality of mimesis in the educational process allows human edification to proceed devoid of ideological basis, be it secular or confessional; and overcomes the risk of relativism. Mimesis, formerly recognised by Plato as a link between what is expressed and what really is, is masterfully reinterpreted by Aristotle. Aristotle recognised its positive pedagogic value in the Poetics, and nowadays we can recognise how it offers existential dynamics that restore the vital human relationship between self and other (be it another human or other than a human being). The sense of this proposal lies in giving mimesis the role it deserves in education, by raising the significance of how coexistence might benefit from a vast human dimension, capable of recognising our humanity beyond our rational capacity.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12204   open full text
  • My Way to You: How to Make Room for Transformative Communication in Intercultural Education.
    Elisabet Langmann.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    As populations around the globe become increasingly culturally diverse, just inter‐personal relations seem dependent on our ability to find new ways of communicating with people from other cultures whose values and linguistic strategies may vary from our own cultural practices. Hence, in the increasing body of literature on intercultural education, intercultural education means helping students to acquire the right language and communication skills for enabling mutual understanding and transformation between cultures. However, several post‐colonial scholars have pointed out that there is a tendency to homogenise differences and neglect relations of power and the culturally untranslatable in the Western conception of language. This paper explores some implications of the post‐colonial critique of intercultural education by following Luce Irigaray's writings on language and communication. Taking as its point of departure the Western ‘common sense’ conception of language as an instrument for communication and transfer of information, the paper first elaborates on the importance of exploring new ways of relating to language if we want to speak and listen to the other as other. It then offers a close reading of Martin Heidegger's existential analysis of the nature of language as Saying‐Sowing and of Irigaray's response as she develops it in two of her later works. By way of conclusion the paper discusses how a more poetic and attentive listening could open up for a transformative and non‐hierarchical communication in difference, and considers what implications this has for the promotion of social justice and pluralism in intercultural education.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12203   open full text
  • Learning How.
    Ben Kotzee.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    In this paper, I consider intellectualist and anti‐intellectualist approaches to knowledge‐how and propose a third solution: a virtue‐based account of knowledge‐how. I sketch the advantages of a virtue‐based account of knowledge‐how and consider whether we should prefer a reliabilist or a responsibilist virtue‐account of knowledge‐how. I argue that only a responsibilist account will maintain the crucial distinction between knowing how to do something and merely being able to do it. Such an account, I hold, must incorporate ‘learning how to do something’ as an essential part. Drawing on an argument by Craig, I hold that the function of the concept of knowing how is to mark out practical experts whom one can trust either to (1) perform an action on one's behalf, or (2) to teach one how to perform that action oneself. The best way to identify practical experts, I hold, is to discover what they have learned about performing the action in question. In arguing for the importance of the concept ‘learning’ to the field of knowledge‐how, I argue for a new connection between the philosophy of education and virtue epistemology.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12202   open full text
  • Plato's Anti‐Kohlbergian Program for Moral Education.
    Mark E. Jonas.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    Following Lawrence Kohlberg it has been commonplace to regard Plato's moral theory as ‘intellectualist’, where Plato supposedly believes that becoming virtuous requires nothing other than ‘philosophical knowledge or intuition of the ideal form of the good’. This is a radical misunderstanding of Plato's educational programme, however. While Plato claims that knowledge is extremely important in the initial stages of the moral development of young adults, he also claims that knowledge must be followed by a rigorous process of imitation and habituation. Like Aristotle, Plato believes that it is not possible to become virtuous if one does not practice the virtues under the guidance of virtuous role models. This paper seeks to illuminate this little recognised aspect of Plato's educational programme. When properly understood, Plato's theory offers educators important insights into how best to encourage the moral development of young adults.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12201   open full text
  • The Hermit and The Poet.
    Naomi Hodgson, Amanda Fulford.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    The notions of literacy and citizenship have become technologised through the demands for measurable learning outcomes and the reduction of these aspects of education to sets of skills and competencies. Technologisation is understood here as the systematisation of an art, rather than as intending to understand technology itself in negative terms or to comment on the way technology is used in teaching and learning for literacy and citizenship. Technologisation is approached here in terms of the understanding of literacy and citizenship as things (qualities, sets of skills) that one has. Drawing on the phenomenology of Gabriel Marcel the understanding of literacy and citizenship in terms of having is problematised, as is the distinction between having and being. This opens the way for a richer understanding of being literate and being a citizen explored through the figures of the Hermit and the Poet in Thoreau's Walden. Being literate and being a citizen are brought together here in order to consider the implications of their technologisation for academic writing in the university. The question of what we write in the name of in the university is considered in the light of this and of a particular notion of the public.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12200   open full text
  • Philosophy of Education: Becoming Less Western, More African?
    Penny Enslin, Kai Horsthemke.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    Posing the question ‘How diverse is philosophy of education in the West?’ this paper responds to two recent defences of African philosophy of education which endorse its communitarianism and oppose individualism in Western philosophy of education. After outlining Thaddeus Metz's argument that Western philosophy of education should become more African by being more communitarian, and Yusef Waghid's defence of communitarianism in African philosophy of education, we develop a qualified defence of aspects of individualism in education. Our reservations about some aspects of communitarianism lead us to argue for a role for some forms of individualism in African as well as Western education. Finally, reflecting on what is at stake in this kind of comparative philosophy of education, we argue that an over‐emphasis on cultural differences can distract philosophers of education from the attention they should pay to the common dangers posed across continents by the influence of global capitalism on education.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12199   open full text
  • Dialogic Teaching and Moral Learning: Self‐critique, Narrativity, Community and ‘Blind Spots’.
    Andrea R. English.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    In the current climate of high‐stakes testing and performance‐based accountability measures, there is a pressing need to reconsider the nature of teaching and what capacities one must develop to be a good teacher. Educational policy experts around the world have pointed out that policies focused disproportionately on student test outcomes can promote teaching practices that are reified and mechanical, and which lead to students developing mere memorisation skills, rather than critical thinking and conceptual understanding. Philosophers of dialogue and dialogic teaching offer a different view of teaching, one that counters mechanical, transmissive or ‘monologic’ teaching. In this paper, I seek to extend the notion of dialogic teaching as a method of supporting social and moral learning processes. Specifically, my focus is on answering the question: What capacities must a teacher have to engage students dialogically? Drawing on Paulo Freire and other contemporary philosophers, I examine dialogic interaction as involving a way of ‘being with learners’ and put forth three teacher capacities necessary for dialogic teaching: self‐critique, narrativity and building community. I then examine further what is concretely entailed in the practice of dialogic teaching using research in educational psychology. I aim to highlight how dialogic teaching, unlike monologic teaching, involves the teacher's active ability to support learners’ identification and exploration of their own blind spots—that is, the limits of knowledge and ability—and those of others. Following this, I consider implications of my discussion for international policy on teacher assessment. I close the paper with considerations for future research on teacher capacity and teacher evaluation. This paper contributes to our understanding of teacher capacity and the nature and aims of good teaching.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12198   open full text
  • The Cruel Optimism of Education and Education's Implication with ‘Passing‐on’.
    Mario Di Paolantonio.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 16, 2016
    In this article I draw on Lauren Berlant's notion of ‘cruel optimism’ to identify and untangle how the prevailing sense of ‘optimism’ in education works against our common hope or collective striving for what is educational in education. In particular, I discuss how the ‘cruel optimism’ that invites individuals to constantly innovate and improve themselves through ever more learning leads ultimately to a sense of ‘presentism’, ‘privation’ and ‘loneliness’, which comes to threaten the role that education plays (or should play) in sustaining and forging a common world. Proposing that education is where the concern with ‘passing‐on’ (in all senses of the word) properly takes place, I discuss how education can tend to and pine towards something larger and more durable (the world) than the individual acquisition of knowledge and skills that serve immediate transient interests. As an exemplar of a place of ‘passing‐on’, I ask us to consider how education invites us to affirm the ‘living‐on’ of the question of what it might mean to live together after all: to forge, sustain and pledge something of significance in common (and across generations) amidst what is constantly passing away. In this sense, I seek to gesture to the possibility of hope (as opposed to a mere optimism) within education: a sensibility and affirmation for ‘passing‐on’ and ‘sur‐vivance’. Such a hope might help to address the cruel depravity and isolation affecting our time that is caught up in the ‘learnification of education’.
    June 16, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12197   open full text
  • Does Critical Thinking and Logic Education Have a Western Bias? The Case of the Nyāya School of Classical Indian Philosophy.
    Anand Jayprakash Vaidya.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 14, 2016
    In this paper I develop a cross‐cultural critique of contemporary critical thinking education in the United States, the United Kingdom, and those educational systems that adopt critical thinking education from the standard model used in the US and UK. The cross‐cultural critique rests on the idea that contemporary critical thinking textbooks completely ignore contributions from non‐western sources, such as those found in the African, Arabic, Buddhist, Jain, Mohist and Nyāya philosophical traditions. The exclusion of these traditions leads to the conclusion that critical thinking educators, by using standard textbooks are implicitly sending the message to their students that there are no important contributions to the study of logic and argumentation that derive from non‐western sources. As a case study I offer a sustained analysis of the so‐called Hindu Syllogism that derives from the Nyāya School of classical Indian philosophy. I close with a discussion of why contributions from non‐western sources, such as the Hindu Syllogism, belong in a Critical Thinking course as opposed to an area studies course, such as Asian Philosophy.
    June 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12189   open full text
  • Freedoms and Perils: Academy Schools in England.
    Ruth Heilbronn.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 14, 2016
    Can Dewey's Moral Principles in Education throw light on a contemporary policy issue in education, namely the privatisation of education through the establishment of academy schools in England? The article first considers what the policy entails, in terms of its conception of education as a market commodity. The next section suggests an alternative conception, drawing particularly on Deweyan claims for the fundamentally normative and relational nature of teaching, through his definition of democracy as ‘a form of associated living’ and the school as a place for such association. The third section relates the two conceptions of education and in their light considers tensions and conflicts in the academisation policy concerning inclusion, equity and social cohesion. The article concludes that the establishment of academy schools compromises these values and constitutes a danger to the commons, that is, to socially consensual and equitable ways of being together.
    June 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12188   open full text
  • After Friendship.
    Mary Healy.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 14, 2016
    The loss of friendship can be a frequent occurrence for children as they explore their social worlds and navigate their way through the demands of particular relationships. Given that friendship is a relationship of special regard, and associated with a particular partiality to our friends, the ending of friendship and the subsequent interactions between former friends, can be difficult areas for schools to deal with. Whilst there has been considerable research on the formation and maintenance of friendship, a consideration of what happens after friendship has had surprisingly limited attention. Much of our current understanding of issues on moral behaviour fails to fully address the positioning of former friends in our moral thinking particularly as regards matters arising from the priority of attachment. Recent empirical research seems to indicate that the memory of prior encounters has a far greater influence on future reciprocal exchanges (such as those found in friendship) than previously accepted. This paper considers suggests that this view of memory can be played out in two contrasting ways. First, a prudential view suggests that as our former friends were previously given access to our intimate secrets and confidences, self‐interest would seem to indicate that we treat them well. Secondly, a residual duties view suggests that some obligations remain after the friendship has ended based on the history of the relationship. Finally, I then draw out some of the implications this may have for schools and the education of children.
    June 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12191   open full text
  • Emotional Speech Acts and the Educational Perlocutions of Speech.
    Renia Gasparatou.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 14, 2016
    Over the past decades, there has been an ongoing debate about whether education should aim at the cultivation of emotional wellbeing of self‐esteeming personalities or whether it should prioritise literacy and the cognitive development of students. However, it might be the case that the two are not easily distinguished in educational contexts. In this paper I use J.L. Austin's original work on speech acts to (a) emphasise the interconnection between the cognitive and emotional aspects of our utterances, and (b) illustrate how emotional force affects communication in the classroom.
    June 14, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12193   open full text
  • Confronting the Dark Side of Higher Education.
    Søren Bengtsen, Ronald Barnett.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 30, 2016
    In this paper we philosophically explore the notion of darkness within higher education teaching and learning. Within the present‐day discourse of how to make visible and to explicate teaching and learning strategies through alignment procedures and evidence‐based intellectual leadership, we argue that dark spots and blind angles grow too. As we struggle to make visible and to evaluate, assess, manage and organise higher education, the darkness of the institution actually expands. We use the term ‘dark’ to comprehend challenges, situations, reactions, aims and goals, which cannot easily be understood and solved by agendas of quality assurance and professionalisation of higher education. We need to understand better why gender issues or ethnic conflicts emerge, and why students take up arms, within an institution which is thought to be inclusive, inviting and open to all kinds of people and cultures. And we need to study the educational potential of days of boredom or isolation, caught up in daily routines of teaching or studying which do not lead anywhere or give way to any productive work. These matters have not been sufficiently researched and conceptualised as meaningful in themselves. We aim here to open a space for insights through the concept of darkness presented in this paper. In order to make educational darkness palpable we draw on the philosophies of darkness found in the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and Emmanuel Levinas. Through those philosophies we argue that the growing darkness within higher education is not a symptom we should fear and avoid. Having the ability and courage to face these darker educational aspects of everyday higher education practice will enable students and teachers to find renewed hope in the university as an institution for personal as well as professional imagination and growth.
    May 30, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12190   open full text
  • The Essential Uncertainty of Thinking: Education and Subject in John Dewey.
    Vasco D'agnese.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 05, 2016
    In this paper, I analyse the Deweyan account of thinking and subject and discuss the educational consequences that follow from such an account. I argue that despite the grouping of thinking and reflective thought that has largely appeared in the interpretation of Deweyan work, Dewey discloses an inescapable uncertainty at the core of human thinking. This move is even more challenging given Dewey's firm faith in the power of intelligent action, and in education as the means by which human beings grow and create meaningful existence. I argue that throughout his work, Dewey dismantled the understanding of the subject as a detached and self‐assured centre of agency. In Deweyan understanding, on one hand, the subject is empowered to reflect on experience and to use this reflection to evolve new ways of acting, thus pushing experience forward. On the other hand, by acting, the subject can create new points of interaction within experience. This understanding of thinking and subject has far‐reaching consequences for education, which must be conceived not so much as the attempt to master and control experience but as the means to create new, unpredictable experience by putting new points of interactions into our relationship with the environment, changing our being‐embedded‐in‐the‐world. Dewey repositions educational, intentional agency away from control and mastery and in the direction of growth and openness.
    May 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12187   open full text
  • Moral Education and Literature: On Cora Diamond and Eimear McBride.
    áine Mahon.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 05, 2016
    I argue in this paper for the rich and subtle connections between moral philosophy and literature as they are articulated and explored in the work of the contemporary American philosopher, Cora Diamond. In its significance for broader educational debates—specifically, debates regarding the value of the arts and humanities in a context of global economic collapse—Diamond's work is strikingly original. I argue that it offers much more to educators than the related work of her Anglo‐American contemporaries, among them Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty. In development of my position, I read Diamond's 2008 essay, The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy, withA Girl is a Half‐formed Thing, the debut novel of Irish writer Eimear McBride.
    May 05, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12183   open full text
  • Aims of Education: How to Resist the Temptation of Technocratic Models.
    Atli Harðarson.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. March 21, 2016
    A technocratic model of curriculum design that has been highly influential since the middle of last century assumes that the aims of education can be, and should be: 1. Causally brought about by administering educational experiences; 2. Specified as objectives that can be attained, reached or completed; 3. Changes in students that are described in advance. Richard S. Peters argued against the first of these three tenets by making a distinction between aims that are causally brought about by the means and aims that are constituted by the means. I argue that further distinctions between ways in which ends and means can be related throw doubt on the remaining two tenets. My argument against the second one rests on a distinction between open aims that cannot be completed and closed aims that can be reached. I use a third distinction, between aims as principles of design and aims as principles of reform, to show that the third tenet of the technocratic model is also suspect. I conclude that a realistic view of educational aims must take into account that they are more multifarious than envisaged by the technocratic model of curriculum design.
    March 21, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12182   open full text
  • The Basis of Correctness in the Religious Studies Classroom.
    Craig Bourne, Emily Caddick Bourne, Clare Jarmy.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. March 20, 2016
    What is it that makes a student's answer correct or incorrect in Religious Studies? In practice, the standards of correctness in the Religious Studies classroom are generally applied with relative ease by teachers and students. Nevertheless, they are problematic. We shall argue that correctness does not come from either the students or the teacher believing that what has been said is true. This raises the question: what is correctness, if it does not come down to truth? We propose, and examine, three rival solutions, each of which, to an extent, rationalises a fairly natural response to the problem. The first, the elliptical approach, says that correct contributions have some tacit content: they are elliptical for true sentences about beliefs (e.g. a sentence of the form ‘Christians believe that …’). The second, the imaginative approach, seeks to replace appeals to truth and belief with an appeal to imagination, treating Religious Studies as a ‘game of make‐believe’ in which teachers and students imaginatively engage with certain worldviews. The third, the institutional approach, locates the root of correctness in the practices of the Religious Studies institution, which include making endorsements of some judgements and not others. We show that the first of our proposed approaches encounters a number of significant objections. We find the second of our proposed approaches to be better, but the third is the most attractive, providing a direct, intuitive and comprehensive route through the problem of correctness.
    March 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12166   open full text
  • Justifying Private Schools.
    John White.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. March 20, 2016
    The paper looks at arguments for and against private schools, first in general and then, at greater length, in their British form. Here it looks first at defences against the charge that private schooling is unfair, discussing on the way problems with equality as an intrinsic value and with instrumental appeals to greater equality, especially in access to university and better jobs. It turns next to charges of social exclusiveness, before looking in more detail at claims about the dangers private schools pose for democratic government. It then examines complications arising from shifts in the notion of ‘private’ education since the 1980s, before concluding, in the light of recent articles in JOPE about criteria for admission to university, with a discussion of Brighouse's proposal for the reform of private schooling. There are also shorter discussions of other suggestions for such reform.
    March 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12179   open full text
  • Role of Methodology in Action Research.
    Kubilay Kaptan.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. March 20, 2016
    The aim of this paper is to examine the role of methodology in action research. It begins by showing how action research is nothing other than a modern 20th century manifestation of the pre‐modern tradition of practical philosophy. It then gives an explanation of Aristotelian Tradition and draws on Gadamer's powerful vindication in order to show how action research functions to sustain a distorted understanding of what practice is. The paper concludes by outlining a non‐methodological view of action research whose chief task is to promote the kind of historical self‐consciousness that the development of practice presupposes and requires.
    March 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12181   open full text
  • Indoctrination and Social Context: A System‐based Approach to Identifying the Threat of Indoctrination and the Responsibilities of Educators.
    Rebecca M. Taylor.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. March 20, 2016
    Debates about indoctrination raise fundamental questions about the ethics of teaching. This paper presents a philosophical analysis of indoctrination, including 1) an account of what indoctrination is and why it is harmful, and 2) a framework for understanding the responsibilities of teachers and other educational actors to avoid its negative outcomes. I respond to prominent outcomes‐based accounts of indoctrination, which I argue share two limiting features—a narrow focus on the threat indoctrination poses to knowledge and on the dyadic relationship between indoctrinator and indoctrinated person. I propose a system‐based account of indoctrination in which actors with authority contribute to the production or reinforcement of closed‐mindedness, which threatens both knowledge and understanding. By taking a system‐based approach, my account is better equipped to identify the implications of indoctrination for educational policy and practice.
    March 20, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12180   open full text
  • From Disembodied Intellect to Cultivated Rationality.
    Jan Derry.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12177   open full text
  • The Disenchantment of Education and the Re‐enchantment of the World.
    Paul Standish.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12176   open full text
  • Education and Autonomy.
    Sebastian Rödl.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12175   open full text
  • Introduction: Exploring the Formation of Reason.
    David Bakhurst.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12174   open full text
  • Neurophilia: Guiding Educational Research and the Educational Field?
    Paul Smeyers.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    For a decade or so there has been a new ‘hype’ in educational research: it is called educational neuroscience or even neuroeducation (and neuroethics)—there are numerous publications, special journals, and an abundance of research projects together with the advertisement of many positions at renowned research centres worldwide. After a brief introduction of what is going on in the ‘emerging sub‐discipline’, a number of characterisations are offered of what is envisaged by authors working in this field. In the discussion that follows various problems are listed: the assumption that ‘visual proof’ of brain activity is supposedly given; the correlational nature of this kind of research; the nature of the concepts that are used; the lack of addressing and possibly influencing the neurological mechanism; and finally the need for other insights in educational contexts. Following Bakhurst and others, a number of crucially relevant philosophical issues are highlighted. It is argued that though there are cases where neuroscience insights may be helpful, these are scarce. In general, it is concluded, not a lot may be expected from this discipline for education and educational research. A reminder is offered that the promise of neurophilia may be just another neuromyth, which needs to be addressed by philosophy and education.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12173   open full text
  • A Creative Education for the Day after Tomorrow.
    Ian Munday.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    This paper considers the claims representatives of the ‘creativity movement’ make in regards to change and the future. This will particularly focus on the role that the arts are supposed to play in responding to industrial imperatives for the 21st century. It is argued that the compressed vision of the future (and past) offered by creativity experts succumbs to the nihilism so often described by Nietzsche. The second part of the paper draws on Stanley Cavell's chapter ‘Philosophy the Day After Tomorrow’ (from a book with the same name) to consider a future oriented arts education that may not fall victim to nihilism.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12172   open full text
  • The Researcher and the Studier: On Stress, Tiredness and Homelessness in the University.
    Naomi Hodgson.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    Recent European policy has seen a shift from a concern with lifelong learning in the Lisbon Strategy to research and innovation in the Horizon 2020 programme. Accordingly, there has been an increased policy focus on the researcher who, like the lifelong learner must be entrepreneurial, adaptable, mobile, but who must also find new ways in which to develop and deploy her skills and competences and smart solutions to current problems in order to ensure sustainability. The subject position of the researcher, therefore, is not a figure distinctive to the university today, but rather one required of us all. For the excellent researcher in the university, resources exist to enable her to identify those aspects of herself that are in need of development in order to keep all aspects of her personal and professional well‐being in balance, often drawn from the field of psychology. Here, rather than analysing directly the ways in which the researcher is addressed by such devices, we focus on the common experience of being in the university today. In everyday conversation, we do not describe ourselves as entrepreneurial, innovative, leading, etc., but more often as tired, stressed and not feeling at home there. Rather than taking these as impediments to productivity and aspects of ourselves requiring psychological strategies, the educational aspects of these are explored in relation to the figure of the studier, as developed from Giorgio Agamben by Tyson Lewis. The shift of discourse from lifelong learning to innovation and research in recent policy is seen to effect a further desubjectivation, a division of ourselves from ourselves.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12171   open full text
  • An Affair to Remember: America's Brief Fling with the University as a Public Good.
    David F. Labaree.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    American higher education rose to fame and fortune during the Cold War, when both student enrollments and funded research shot upward. Prior to World War II, the federal government showed little interest in universities and provided little support. The war spurred a large investment in defence‐based scientific research in universities, and the emergence of the Cold War expanded federal investment exponentially. Unlike a hot war, the Cold War offered an extended period of federally funded research public subsidy for expanding student enrollments. The result was the golden age of the American university. The good times continued for about 30 years and then began to go bad. The decline was triggered by the combination of a decline in the perceived Soviet threat and a taxpayer revolt against high public spending; both trends culminating with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With no money and no enemy, the Cold War university fell as quickly as it arose. Instead of seeing the Cold War university as the norm, we need to think of it as the exception. What we are experiencing now in American higher education is a regression to the mean, in which, over the long haul, Americans have understood higher education to be a distinctly private good.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12170   open full text
  • Metamorphosis and the Management of Change.
    Richard Smith.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    Talk of educational reform and of the importance of ‘the management of change’ in education and elsewhere is still in vogue. However it often seems concerned to persuade us that if we engage fully with change rather than resisting it we will find our lives more meaningful, thus omitting the important matter of the goal of the change in question. Change here is in any case invariably a euphemism for the impoverishment of education and the annihilation of its ideals, together with the deprofessionalisation of teachers and other educators. Recent writers about educational change tend to be less concerned with an ever‐changing, labile world than with how to make the transition—and make others make the transition—from one stable condition of things to another. Different ways of thinking about change, drawing on different literature, might help us see beyond the ways in which we are currently being asked to respond to educational change and reform.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12169   open full text
  • Introduction: Educational Research: Discourses of Change and Changes of Discourse.
    Paul Smeyers, Marc Depaepe.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 23, 2016
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    February 23, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12168   open full text
  • Naturalness as an Educational Value.
    Sune Frølund.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 11, 2016
    Existentialism and postmodernism have both abandoned the idea of a human nature. Also, the idea of naturalness as a value for education has been targeted as a blind for conservative ideology. There are, however, good reasons to re‐establish a sound concept of human naturalness. First of all, the concept does not seem to have disappeared from common usage, despite all criticism. Secondly, the idea of naturalness seems essential to our sense of ourselves and for the formation of our identities. And finally, the idea is the inevitable basis for the possibility of a radical criticism of society and culture. This paper presents two suggestions for a rehabilitation of the concept of naturalness: Gernot Böhme's phenomenology of body and nature, and Christoph Menke's ‘genealogical reflexion’.
    February 11, 2016   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12167   open full text
  • Should Eudaimonia Structure Professional Virtue?
    Andreas Eriksen.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 17, 2015
    This article develops a eudaimonistic account of professional virtue. Using the case of teaching, the article argues that professional virtue requires that role holders care about the ends of their work. Care is understood in terms of an investment of the self. Virtuous role holders are invested in their practice in a way that makes professional excellence part of their own good. Failure to care about the ends of professional practice reveals a lack of appreciation of the value of professional work. This ‘investment view’ is contrasted with the currently popular ‘key goods view’, which claims that professional virtues require a profession‐specific teleological structure. Unlike ordinary virtues, which are governed by eudaimonia or human flourishing, professional virtues are allegedly derived from professional ends, like health or education. The article argues that this delivers an unconvincing criterion for determining the merits of character traits.
    December 17, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12162   open full text
  • The Role of Feelings in Kant's Account of Moral Education.
    Alix Cohen.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 17, 2015
    In line with familiar portrayals of Kant's ethics, interpreters of his philosophy of education focus essentially on its intellectual dimension: the notions of moral catechism, ethical gymnastics and ethical ascetics, to name but a few. By doing so, they usually emphasise Kant's negative stance towards the role of feelings in moral education. Yet there seem to be noteworthy exceptions: Kant writes that the inclinations to be honoured and loved are to be preserved as far as possible. This statement is not only at odds with Kant's general claim that education should not encourage feelings, but more importantly, it encourages a feeling that is in many ways paradigmatically un‐Kantian. How are we to understand the fact that of all feelings, the love of honour should be preserved? To answer this question, I begin by clarifying the reasons behind Kant's negative stance towards feelings in moral education. I then turn to his account of the feeling of love of honour. After distinguishing between its good and its bad forms, I consider two ways of making sense of the positive role Kant assigns to it. The first, modest reading will suggest that the feeling of love of honour is morally useful because it has two functions: an epistemic one, and a motivational one. The second, more ambitious reading will suggest that the feeling of love of honour enables the child to experience her inner worth as bearer of value.
    December 17, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12161   open full text
  • Ethics Responsibility Dialogue The Meaning of Dialogue in Lévinas's Philosophy.
    Hanoch Ben‐Pazi.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 17, 2015
    This article examines the concept of dialogue in the philosophy of Emmanuel Lévinas, with a focus on the context of education. Its aim is to create a conversation between the Lévinasian theory and the theories of other philosophers, especially Martin Buber, in an effort to highlight the ethical significance that Lévinas assigns to the act of dialogue itself. As a philosopher whose essential interest was trained on the infinite ethical responsibility of the human subject, Lévinas places major emphasis on the ethical meaning of dialogue. On a more fundamental level, he considers the ethics that precede dialogue and enable it to exist, as well as the individual's acceptance of responsibility during dialogue stemming from his recognition of the alterity of the Other.
    December 17, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12160   open full text
  • Education and Empty Relationality: Thoughts on Education and the Kyoto School of Philosophy.
    Anton Luis Sevilla.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 17, 2015
    This article builds on the growing literature on the Kyoto School of Philosophy and its influences on the field of Education. First, I argue that the influence of the Kyoto School of Philosophy is historically significant in Japan, and that the connection between this philosophical school and the philosophy of education is by no means superficial. Second, I suggest that this school contributes a unique view of ‘negative education’ founded in the philosophical idea of ‘nothingness’. I examine how this negative education is manifest both in religious cultivation and in more general views of education, and I develop these ideas through the models of self‐negation proposed by Nishitani Keiji and Hisamatsu Shin'ichi. Third, taking up the Herbartian idea of ‘pedagogical tact’, I analyse the characteristics of the I‐Thou relationship, in the vector of nothingness, implicit in the above‐mentioned view of education. I examine two approaches to this relationship—one of ‘sharing in nothingness’ as found in Nishitani and Hisamatsu, and one that goes beyond the idea of ‘sharing’ and accommodates alterity, as found in Nishida Kitarô and Nishihira Tadashi. By threshing out these three points, I hope to highlight the continued pedagogical relevance of the philosophical ideas of the Kyoto School.
    December 17, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12159   open full text
  • Hypothetical Insurance and Higher Education.
    Ben Colburn, Hugh Lazenby.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 17, 2015
    What level of government subsidy of higher education is justified, in what form, and for what reasons? We answer these questions by applying the hypothetical insurance approach, originally developed by Ronald Dworkin in his work on distributive justice. On this approach, when asking how to fund and deliver public services in a particular domain, we should seek to model what would be the outcome of a hypothetical insurance market: we stipulate that participants lack knowledge about their specific resources and risks, and ask what insurance contracts they would take out to secure different types of benefit and protection in the domain in question. The great benefit of the hypothetical insurance approach is that it allows us to take apparently intractable questions about interpersonal distribution and transform them into questions about intrapersonal distributions: that is, questions about how an individual would choose to distribute risks and resources across the various lives that they might end up living, in light of their individual ambitions and preferences. Applying this approach to higher education, we argue that the UK model of higher education funding in which the costs of an individual's higher education are shared between general taxation and the individual herself, with the latter element to be paid retrospectively through an income‐contingent state‐backed loan, is vindicated as just. In particular, we argue that it is more just than alternatives such as a graduate tax, full funding through general taxation, and full privatisation.
    December 17, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12163   open full text
  • A Philosophy of Seeing: The Work of the Eye/‘I’ in Early Years Educational Practice.
    E. Jayne White.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. October 13, 2015
    The work of the eye has a powerful influence across culture and philosophy—not least in Goethe's approach to understanding. Aligned to aesthetic appreciation, seeing has the potential to offer an authorial gift of ‘other‐ness’ when brought to bear on evaluative relationships. Yet this penetrating gaze might also be seen as limiting when put to work in the services of ‘other’. From the subtle sideways glance, to the lingering gaze of lovers, a look can mean many things. But the eye does not work alone—what can be seen is directly impacted by the ideologies that influence interpretation, the time and space of its origin, and the genre of its capture. But it is only later, through post‐modern eyes, that the image finally falls victim to its subjective (and discursive) stance and can be thus rendered obsolete. As such, the work of the eye far exceeds literal notions of visuality. These same tensions are evident in the work of the early Bakhtin Circle (1917–1923) through their engagement with neo‐Kantism, Russian formalism, phenomenology and Russian Avant‐Gardes. In this article the art of seeing is reconciled in educational practice for the early years as a relational event through Goethian‐inspired interpretations of visual surplus and aesthetics. Through this lens seeing is brought to life as an encounter of authorship—implicating the ‘I’—as a potential relationship of meaning and accountability at the centre of visuality.
    October 13, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12158   open full text
  • Can Certainties Be Acquired at Will? Implications for Children's Assimilation of a World‐picture.
    José María Ariso.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. October 13, 2015
    After describing Wittgenstein's notion of ‘certainty’, in this article I provide four arguments to demonstrate that no certainty can be acquired at will. Specifically, I argue that, in order to assimilate a certainty, it is irrelevant whether the individual concerned (1) has found a ground that seemingly justifies that certainty; (2) has a given mental state; (3) is willing to accept the certainty on the proposal of a persuader; or (4) tries to act according to the certainty involved. Lastly, I analyse how each of these arguments is reflected in the way children acquire certainties.
    October 13, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12157   open full text
  • Community of Infancy: Suspending the Sovereignty of the Teacher's Voice.
    Igor Jasinski, Tyson E. Lewis.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. September 20, 2015
    While some argue that the only way to make a place for Philosophy for Children (P4C) in today's strict, standardised classroom is to measure its efficacy in promoting reasoning, we believe that this must be avoided in order to safeguard what is truly unique in P4C dialogue. When P4C acquiesces to the very same quantitative measures that define the rest of learning, then the philosophical dimension drops out and P4C becomes yet another progressive curriculum and pedagogy for enhancing argumentation skills that can easily be appropriated by any content area. What we want to offer in this article is a reevaluation of P4C that remains faithful to a radical kernel that we find when we do philosophy with children and young adults. To theorise the potential for P4C, we draw heavily on Agamben's work, and in particular his reflections on speech and infancy. We propose that the redemption of P4C necessitates a shift from a community of inquiry (as the dialogic pedagogical model underlying P4C) to a community of infancy. Such a community is not a community that operates according to predefined rules or standardised assessment protocols but rather is an inoperative community that is defined by letting ends idle. On our account, a community of infancy is an example of dialogic studious play that is neither ritual nor just play, thus avoiding the extreme polarities of the ritualised classrooms of high‐stakes testing and the ‘ludic’ postmodern classroom of free play. What is at stake here is to preserve the last vestige of freedom within the school.
    September 20, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12154   open full text
  • Assessing Professional Know‐How.
    Christopher Winch.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. September 20, 2015
    This article considers how professional knowledge should be assessed. It is maintained that the assessment of professional know‐how raises distinctive issues from the assessment of know‐how more generally. Intellectualist arguments which suggest that someone's giving an account of how to F should suffice for attributing to them knowledge of how to F are set out. The arguments fail to show that there is no necessary distinction between two kinds of know‐how, namely the ability to F and knowing that w is a way to F, such that the latter is more fundamental. The consequences of this failure for our understanding of professional assessment are then considered. The issue of the assessment of tacit knowledge is then addressed. It is concluded that there is no context‐dependent codifiable or articulable propositional knowledge of how to F which could be substituted for being able to F and that therefore tacit knowledge can only be assessed in performance. The parallel with Gettier cases is reviewed and it is concluded that the provenance of accounts of and justifications for the attribution of know‐how are not matters of indifference to its assessment. Finally, the question of evaluability or what Ryle would have called the applicability of intelligence epithets is discussed in relation to its relevance to our procedures for assessing practical knowledge. Once again, it is concluded that excellent performance is necessary to attribute excellence in know‐how. However, the ability to give an account of how and why an agent would do something in hypothetical circumstances is also very important for the assessment of professional knowledge.
    September 20, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12153   open full text
  • MacIntyre's Revolutionary Aristotelian Philosophy and his Idea of an Educated Public Revisited.
    James Macallister.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 22, 2015
    In this article I revisit MacIntyre's lecture on the idea of an educated public. I argue that the full significance of MacIntyre's views on the underlying purposes of universities only become clear when his lecture on the educated public is situated in the context of his wider ‘revolutionary Aristotelian’ philosophical project. I claim that for MacIntyre educational institutions should both support students to learn how to think for themselves and act for the common good. After considering criticisms from Putnam, Wain and Harris I conclude that MacIntyre's later work points towards an idea of educated ‘community’ that is more outward looking and open to difference than his earlier articulated idea of an educated ‘public’.
    August 22, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12151   open full text
  • Higher Education, Collaboration and a New Economics.
    Amanda Fulford.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. August 22, 2015
    In this article I take as my starting point the economist, Jeremy Rifkin's, claims about the rise of what he calls the ‘collaborative commons’. For Rifkin, this is nothing less than the emergence of a new economic paradigm where traditional consumers exploit the possibilities of technology, and position themselves as ‘pro‐sumers’. This emphasises their role in production rather than consumption alone, and shows how they aim to bypass a range of capitalist markets, from publishing to the music industry. In asking how education is situated in relation to the collaborative commons, I consider the growth in technology‐driven, cost‐negative services as a response to the current market in higher education. This raises the issue of what we mean by ‘collaboration’ in the university, and how this might be different from, for example, cooperation or teamwork. In seeking to provide a richer conception of collaboration in higher education, I look to Martin Buber's concept of the relational act and the life of dialogue, and to some of the seminal work of Ronald Barnett on the philosophy and economics of higher education. The article suggests that these concepts afford a new perspective on collaboration that amount to a new economics for education. Such economics require a radical shift in how we perceive the role of responsibility, reciprocity and the educative possibilities of conversation.
    August 22, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12152   open full text
  • The Eros of Counter Education.
    Pinhas Luzon.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 14, 2015
    Erotic Counter Education (ECE) is the educational position of the late Ilan Gur‐ Ze'ev. In ECE Gur‐Ze'ev combines two opposing positions in the philosophy of education, one teleological and anti‐utopian, the other teleological and utopian. In light of this unique combination, I ask what mediates between these two poles and suggest that the answer lies in the concept of eros. Following a preliminary presentation of the concept of eros in ECE, I define it as a form of transcendental cognition that distinguishes between ‘what is to be perceived’, conceptual and human, and ‘what is not to be perceived’, divine and absolute. I subsequently show how the ‘nature’ of this conception of eros permits the establishment of a normative meta‐theory of education that gains its strength from critical theory and counter education.
    July 14, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12147   open full text
  • On the Spiritual Dimension of Education: Finding a Common Ground.
    Eric Dayton.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 14, 2015
    Questions about the place of spirituality in publicly funded schools are made difficult in a multicultural secular society. I discuss the work of Paulus Geheeb and Rabindranath Tagore, two great 20th century educational innovators, to offer, by way of an argument from analogy with the social importance of moral education, a common ground for spiritual education.
    July 14, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12149   open full text
  • Moral Education and Education in Altruism: Two Replies to Michael Hand.
    John White.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 14, 2015
    This article is a critical discussion of two recent papers by Michael Hand on moral education. The first is his ‘Towards a Theory of Moral Education’, published in the Journal of Philosophy of Education in 2014 (Volume 48, Issue 4). The second is a chapter called ‘Beyond Moral Education?’ in an edited book of new perspectives on my own work in philosophy and history of education, published in the same year. His two papers are linked in that he applies the theory outlined in the former to a critique in the latter of my views on education in altruism in a 1990 publication. I introduce this article by outlining the tradition of recent philosophical thought about moral education, beginning with that of Richard Peters, in which Hand is working.
    July 14, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12150   open full text
  • Foucault and Human Rights: Seeking the Renewal of Human Rights Education.
    Michalinos Zembylas.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 30, 2015
    This article takes up Foucault's politics of human rights and suggests that it may constitute a point of departure for the renewal of HRE, not only because it rejects the moral superiority of humanism—the grounding for the dominant liberal framework of international human rights—but also because it makes visible the complexities of human rights as illimitable and as strategic tools for new political struggles. Enriching human rights critiques has important implications for HRE, precisely because these critiques prevent the dominance of unreflexive and unproductive forms of HRE that lead toward a declarationalist, conservative and uncritical approach. It is argued that Foucault's critical affirmation of human rights—that is, an approach which is neither a full embrace nor a total rejection—provides a critique that can be disruptive to the conventional HRE approach and creates openings that might renew HRE, both politically and pedagogically.
    June 30, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12148   open full text
  • Education and Life's Meaning.
    Anders Schinkel, Doret J. De Ruyter, Aharon Aviram.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 30, 2015
    There are deep connections between education and the question of life's meaning, which derive, ultimately, from the fact that, for human beings, how to live—and therefore, how to raise one's children—is not a given but a question. One might see the meaning of life as constitutive of the meaning of education, and answers to the question of life's meaning might be seen as justifying (a particular form of) education. Our focus, however, lies on the contributory relation: our primary purpose is to investigate whether and how education might contribute to children's ability to find meaning in life or at least deal with the question. This issue is not only theoretically interesting (though relatively neglected)—it also has practical urgency. For people have a need for meaning that, if unfulfilled, leads to personal and potentially social crises—a need that often expresses itself first and strongly in adolescence; and there are reasons to have doubts about the contribution of today's traditional formal education system to the meaningfulness of children's (and future adults’) lives. We argue for the importance of frameworks of values, as well as for a greater emphasis on the affective dimension of meaning, though we reject pure subjectivism. The underlying purpose of this article, however, is not to argue for a particular comprehensive position, but to persuade philosophers of education of the importance of the issue of life's meaning in thinking about education today.
    June 30, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12146   open full text
  • Teachers and the Academic Disciplines.
    Michael Fordham.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 30, 2015
    Alasdair MacIntyre's argument, that teaching is not a social practice, has been extensively criticised, and indeed teaching is normally understood more generally to be a form of generic activity that is a practice in its own right. His associated proposition, that teachers are practitioners of the discipline they teach, has, however, received considerably less attention. MacIntyre himself recognised that for teachers to be understood as being part of the discipline they teach, a broader definition of what is meant by ‘discipline’ would be required. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to make a distinction between a ‘discipline’ and a ‘profession’ and not to conflate the practice of the discipline with the practice of professional academics. Such a distinction makes it possible to argue that teachers are engaged in the practice of the discipline they teach. As recent developments in social epistemology and the sociology of knowledge have suggested, it is indeed not just possible, but arguably necessary, to understand teachers in these terms. In seeking to understand what it means to be a teacher, there is thus much to be gained from further reflection as to the relationship between a teacher and his or her academic discipline. The reconsideration of this relationship might well cause us to challenge the idea that teaching is a form of generic activity.
    June 30, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12145   open full text
  • Making Room for Children's Autonomy: Maria Montessori's Case for Seeing Children's Incapacity for Autonomy as an External Failing.
    Patrick R. Frierson.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 23, 2015
    This article draws on Martha Nussbaum's distinction between basic, internal, and external (or combined) capacities to better specify possible locations for children's ‘incapacity’ for autonomy. I then examine Maria Montessori's work on what she calls ‘normalization’, which involves a release of children's capacities for autonomy and self‐governance made possible by being provided with the right kind of environment. Using Montessori, I argue that, in contrast to many ordinary and philosophical assumptions, children's incapacities for autonomy are best understood as consequences of an absence of external conditions necessary for children to exercise capacities they already have internally, rather than intrinsic limitations based on their stage of life. In a closing section, I show how Montessori proposes a model wherein both children and adults have autonomy, power, and responsibility, but over different spheres, and suggest implications of these differences for who has responsibility for establishing the conditions under which children can flourish.
    April 23, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12134   open full text
  • Should Students Have to Borrow? Autonomy, Wellbeing and Student Debt.
    Christopher Martin.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 23, 2015
    The orthodox view on higher education financing is that students should bear some of the costs of attending and, where necessary, meet that cost through debt financing. New economic realties, including protracted economic slowdown and increasing austerity of the state with respect to the public funding of goods and services has meant that the same generation who have to borrow the most in order to attend face significantly fewer employment prospects upon graduation. In this context, is the current approach of shifting the costs of post‐secondary education from the general public to individual students justified? Most debate on the issue has focused on the demands of distributive justice within the modern higher education system and on the whole accepts the idea that students ought to pay. I argue that distributive arguments alone are insufficient because they tacitly endorse the provision of higher education as being much like a consumer's choice. As an alternative, I explore the place and importance of higher education in supporting personal autonomy as a central liberal democratic value. I then argue that debt financing of higher education places unreasonable constraints on student's choices with respect to the kind of democratic citizens that they would otherwise aspire to be. This constraint has negative implications for the wellbeing of individual students and the larger society.
    April 23, 2015   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12133   open full text
  • The Semiotics of Learning New Words.
    Winfried Nöth.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    In several of his papers, Charles S. Peirce illustrates processes of interpreting and understanding signs by examples from second language vocabulary teaching and learning. The insights conveyed by means of these little pedagogical scenarios are not meant as contributions to the psychology of second language learning, but they aim at elucidating fundamental semiotic implications of knowledge acquisition in general. Peirce's semiotic premise that a well‐understood sign is one that represents an object and creates an interpretant is essential to the understanding of how new words and signs in general can be taught and learned. The article argues that Peirce's theory of the object of the sign, especially of the necessity of collateral experience of the object of a sign, can help to understand the riddle posed by of the Meno paradox of the impossibility of learning what we do not yet know. It examines the semiotic implications of the didactic methods of teaching and learning through translation, ostension, mental and real images, as well as metacognition, and it shows how icons, indices, and symbols are essential to learning new words.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12076   open full text
  • The Semiosic Evolution of Education.
    Alin Olteanu.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    The recent development of biosemiotics has revealed the achievement of knowledge and the development of science to be the results of the semiosis of all life forms, including those commonly regarded as cultural constructs. Education is thus a semiosic structure to which evolution itself has adapted, while learning is the semiotic phenomenon that determines the renewal of life itself. Historically, it was a semiotic paradigm that determined the emergence of institutions such as universities and that underpinned the development of liberal education. The present article considers the history of education in terms of sign emergence and evolution, regarding education as currently being conceived and practised as a stage in the general evolutionary action of signs. This approach differs from the prevailing modern approaches to education, which are mostly applied psychology and sociology.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12077   open full text
  • Teachers' Educational Gestures and Habits of Practical Action: Edusemiotics as a Framework for Teachers' Education.
    Sebastien Pesce.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    When trying to help teachers cope with the critical situations they face in classrooms, public policies are mainly concerned with improving initial teacher training. I claim in this article that the role of lifelong learning should no longer be undermined and that the design of teachers' training should be supported by a thorough examination of the cognitive processes involved. A faulty view of cognition may explain both our emphasis on initial training and most of the difficulties faced in designing teachers' training. Searching existing alternative metaphors of cognition and investigating new ones constitutes a way of coping with these problems: first to design new forms of training, second to understand the processes involved in innovative training methods that have already been implemented. My focus in this article is precisely the ‘metaphor of cognition’ that underlies innovative teacher training methods. This metaphor is based on Peirce's pragmaticism, and it describes teachers' training as a process of taking and changing habits. This article mainly investigates the links between Peirce's later semiotics, Merleau‐Ponty's Phenomenology of Perception and Varela's theory of enaction, in order to propose a threefold definition of ‘habit’ and define the notion of ‘educational gesture’, which constitutes a translation of the concept of habit in the field of education and training.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12078   open full text
  • Deixis and Desire: Transitional Notation and Semiotic Philosophy of Education.
    Derek Pigrum.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    The philosophical underpinnings of this article are the Peircian notion of the triadic nature of the sign as iconic, linguistic and indexical, and the use of the sign as a ‘Zeug’ or thing as a means of pointing to or deixis in the context of creative activity in the classroom. This involves Lyotard's conception of desire as the generation of a space where the pupil can be affected by what the world donates. Both deixis and desire take on added value in relation to the psychoanalytic theories of Winnicott in terms of the role of transitional object use in the generation of ‘potential space’, and Nussbaum's notion of tyche or being on the lookout for what the world has to offer. In terms of education, the central section of the article looks at the way these notions can be applied to teaching and learning in the secondary art classroom. This involves the use of what I have termed transitional notation, combining all three Peircian sign modes on a surface of inscription that is ‘ready‐to‐hand and that operates as what the anthropologist Alfred Gell termed an ‘index of agency’.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12079   open full text
  • Competence as a Key Concept of Educational Theory: A Semiotic Point of View.
    Eetu Pikkarainen.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    In this article, the concept of competence is studied from the point of view of the semiotics of education. It will be claimed that it is a central key concept when we are trying to analyse the meaning of education. Educational action can be reasonably understood as an insecure and complicatedly mediated trial to affect another person's competence. First, the recent discussion about the concept of competence and its relatives is shortly reviewed. Then, competence is analysed and defined according to Greimassian semiotic theory as a basic determining character of an acting subject. At the same time as competence is indispensably central for understanding the subjects of action, it is problematically empirically ineffable. This ineffability has a special meaning in education, where we must try to both plan our own educative action and evaluate the learning of the student according to these invisible features. It is proposed that in the recent discourse of education, the very popular use of the concept of competence is misguided and problematically mixed with its conceptual counterpart performance. From this viewpoint, the concept of competence should rather be connected to the ontological concept of disposition. The problem of multi‐dimensionality of competence is considered with the help of the Greimassian conception of modalities to create a richer and more detailed picture of the role of competence in action, and especially in education.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12080   open full text
  • A Rhetoric of Turns: Signs and Symbols in Education.
    Kris Rutten, Ronald Soetaert.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    In our research and teaching we explore the value and the place of rhetoric in education. From a theoretical perspective we situate our work in different disciplines, inspired by major ‘turns’: linguistic, cultural, anthropological/ethnographic, interpretive, semiotic, narrative, literary, rhetorical etc. In this article we engage in the discussion about what all these turns might entail for education by elaborating on what it implies to read the world as a ‘text'—as is central in a semiotic approach—and by introducing new rhetoric in general, and the work of the literary critic and rhetorician Kenneth Burke in particular, as a possible theoretical and methodological resource. We illustrate its application in the analysis of a fictional narrative. Our aim is to explore how an understanding of education as rhetoric can be integrated into the teacher education curriculum.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12081   open full text
  • Taking the Edusemiotic Turn: A Body∼mind Approach to Education.
    Inna Semetsky.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    Educational philosophy in English‐speaking countries tends to be informed mainly by analytic philosophy common to Western thinking. A welcome alternative is provided by pragmatism in the tradition of Peirce, James and Dewey. Still, the habit of the so‐called linguistic turn has a firm grip in terms of analytic philosophy based on the logic of non‐contradiction as the excluded middle. A body∼mind approach pertains to the edusemiotic turn that this article elucidates. Importantly, semiotics is not illogical but is informed by the paradoxical logic of the included middle. The process of reasoning is however indirect or mediated; it involves active interpretation (in a variety of forms) versus direct representation; it is analogical and connects what are otherwise doomed to remain isolated substances of body versus mind with a separation of knowledge and action. Analysing and synthesising the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and Gilles Deleuze, together with a brief excursion into the cutting‐edge science of coordination dynamics, this article will demonstrate how the body∼mind assemblage is created in practice, and what may be the implications of such a stance for educational philosophy and pedagogical practice.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12082   open full text
  • Peirce and Rationalism: Is Peirce a Fully Semiotic Philosopher?
    Andrew Stables.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    While Peirce is a seminal figure for contemporary semiotic philosophers, it is axiomatic of a fully semiotic perspective that no philosopher or philosophy (semiotics included) can provide any final answer, as signs are always interpreted and the context of interpretation always varies. Semiosis is evolutionary: it may or may not be construed as progressive but it cannot be static. While Peirce offers a way out of the mind‐body divide that both permeates and separates classical rationalism and empiricism, he himself is read in this article as closer to the rationalist tradition exemplified by Kant and Hegel that he critiques than to either thoroughgoing empiricism or post‐Nietzschean relativism. From a contemporary perspective, Peirce thus falls short of qualifying as a fully semiotic thinker, notwithstanding his key role in the development of semiotic philosophy.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12083   open full text
  • ‘Experience is Our Great and Only Teacher’: A Peircean Reading of Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire.
    Torill Strand.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 12, 2014
    Wim Wenders' film Wings of Desire tells the story of an angel who wishes to become mortal in order to know the simple joy of human life. Told from the angel's point of view, the film is shot in black and white. But at the very instant the angel perceives the realities of human experience, the film blossoms into colour. In this article, I use this film to illustrate and explore Peirce's notion of experience and his claim that ‘experience is our great and only teacher’. In his 1903 Harvard lectures, Peirce placed phenomenology at the heart of his philosophy, while outlining a notion of ‘experience’ that clearly integrates his semiotics, phenomenology and pragmatism. To Peirce, experience is a ‘brutally produced conscious effect’ that comes ‘out of practice’ and is a ‘forcible modification of our ways of thinking’. But as this modification is generated by the actions and flows of signs, it is pertinent to read Peirce's notion of experience in relation to his notion of semiosis. Consequently, a Peircean reading of Wings of Desire not only helps to explore how experience teaches, but also the ways in which the rudeness of experience cannot be fully understood without considering the sign's action.
    May 12, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12084   open full text
  • The Non‐theoretical View on Educational Theory: Scientific, Epistemological and Methodological Assumptions.
    José Penalva.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 17, 2014
    This article examines the underlying problems of one particular perspective in educational theory that has recently gained momentum: the Wilfred Carr approach, which puts forward the premise that there is no theory in educational research and, consequently, it is a form of practice. The article highlights the scientific, epistemological and methodological assumptions inherent in such a view. The argument is developed as follows: first, it expounds what Carr understands by the methodology of action research and educational theory, setting out his distinctive view. Secondly, it explains that both Carr's underlying methodology, as well as his theoretical alternative, are based on a particular perspective on Social Science. Thirdly, it reveals Carr's epistemological assumptions and the resultant educational consequences.
    April 17, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12087   open full text
  • Educational Relationships: Rousseau, Wollstonecraft and Social Justice.
    Morwenna Griffiths.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    I consider educational relationships as found in Rousseau's Émile (and elsewhere in his writing) and the critique of his views in Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Wollstonecraft's critique is a significant one, precisely because of her partial agreement with Rousseau. Like Rousseau, her concern is less to do with particular pedagogical techniques or even approaches, more to do with the full complexity of educational relationships. The educational relationships they consider include those between human beings now and in the future, between teacher and student(s), between students, and between human beings and the rest of the natural world, the more‐than‐human. Both Rousseau and Wollstonecraft wanted education to produce social justice in the future as well as being a benefit to young people in the present, but while he specified that future, she wanted to create the conditions in which future generations could construct it for themselves, when sex equality was put into practice. Gender relations are key to understanding their differences, as I discuss, with particular emphasis on Wollstonecraft's understanding of our human relationship to the rest of the natural world, the more‐than‐human. These relationships are seldom recognised as contributing to a more socially just education, so I consider them at a little more length, drawing from observations by Kathleen Jamie and using an example from outdoor education to suggest possible implications for educational practices.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12068   open full text
  • Guattari's Ecosophy and Implications for Pedagogy.
    Heather Greenhalgh‐Spencer.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    Guattari's ecosophy has implications for many types of pedagogy practiced in the school. While Guattari never explicitly advocated the educational use of ecosophy, I explore in this article how it can be used as a lens to ‘read’ pedagogy in nuanced ways, highlighting oppressive premises and practices. I first discuss Guattari's ecosophy, defining key terms and advocating ecosophy as a philosophy that calls attention to the interactions and ‘parts’ of assemblages of existence—a philosophy radical and encompassing enough to make intelligible the dynamic connections between various fields of existence, trajectories into the new, and trajectories more destructive in nature. I then offer a ‘reading’ of two different pedagogical strategies that have achieved a wide following in the last few decades: direct instruction, and critical pedagogy. Reading these pedagogies through ecosophy allows us to name more fully the troubling assumptions and lacunae to be found within them.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12060   open full text
  • Happiness Rich and Poor: Lessons From Philosophy and Literature.
    Ruth Cigman.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    Happiness is a large idea. It looms enticingly before us when we are young, delivers verdicts on our lives when we are old, and seems to inform a responsible engagement with children. The question is raised: do we want this idea? I explore a distinction between rich and poor conceptions of happiness, suggesting that many sceptical arguments are directed against the latter. If happiness is to receive its teleological due, recognised in rather the way Aristotle saw it, as a final end that crucially lacks specificity, it must be richly conceived without denying the significance of unhappiness or despair. I suggest that Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics is ‘completed’ in a distinctively Aristotelian sense by authors like George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. Substantial excerpts are discussed to show how ideas like ‘making others happy’ may be richly conceived. By treating literary examples (poetically articulated, sensually received) as ineliminable reference points in our thinking, we open up a new way of imagining relationships in education. We attend communally, conversationally and often argumentatively to the dramas of human life. This, I argue, is how we grapple with large ideas and bring about ethical learning.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12072   open full text
  • Re‐Thinking Relations in Human Rights Education: The Politics of Narratives.
    Rebecca Adami.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    Human Rights Education (HRE) has traditionally been articulated in terms of cultivating better citizens or world citizens. The main preoccupation in this strand of HRE has been that of bridging a gap between universal notions of a human rights subject and the actual locality and particular narratives in which students are enmeshed. This preoccupation has focused on ‘learning about the other’ in order to improve relations between plural ‘others’ and ‘us’ and reflects educational aims of national identity politics in citizenship education. The article explores the learning of human rights through narratives in relations, drawing on Hannah Arendt and Sharon Todd. For this re‐thinking of relations in learning human rights, the article argues that HRE needs to address both competing historical narratives on the drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) as well as unique life narratives of learners.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12063   open full text
  • Curriculum Knowledge, Justice, Relations: The Schools White Paper (2010) in England.
    Christine Winter.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    In this article I begin by discussing the persistent problem of relations between educational inequality and the attainment gap in schools. Because benefits accruing from an education are substantial, the ‘gap’ leads to large disparities in the quality of life many young people can expect to experience in the future. Curriculum knowledge has been a focus for debate in England in relation to educational equality for over 40 years. Given the contestation surrounding views about curriculum knowledge and equality I consider the thinking of two philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, and their work on justice, to trouble the curriculum framework and discourse of knowledge promoted through the policy text of The Importance of Teaching: The Schools White Paper (2010) and later associated policy reforms to the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) curriculum in England. The Schools White Paper aims to make the curriculum more challenging to students by introducing tight controls in terms of the assessment framework and curriculum knowledge. I argue that, when considered through Derrida's perspective on language and meaning and Levinas' view on the ethical responsibility for the other, the reforms present obstacles to the search for a just curriculum. I look to the work of Sharon Todd and Paul Standish for a re‐imagination of curriculum as or through relations in the light of Derrida's and Levinas' philosophies.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12061   open full text
  • Another Relationship to Failure: Reflections on Beckett and Education.
    Aislinn O'Donnell.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    Failure is seen as a problem in education. From failing schools, to failing students to rankings of universities, literacy or numeracy, the perception that one has failed to compete or to compare favourably with others has led to a series of policy initiatives internationally designed to ensure ‘success for all’. But when success is measured in comparison with others or against benchmarks or standards, then it is impossible to see how all could be successful given the parameters laid down. What are the implications of a culture that values success and achievement? How difficult is it to become the kind of individual who is flourishing, autonomous and becomes ‘all she can be’, in particular under the precarious conditions of contemporary capitalism? Samuel Beckett was sceptical of the quest for progress, production and prestige. His philosophy invites another way of thinking about failure, not as something one is, but rather as something one does: the pain and fear of inadequacy that can mark educational relations and experiences is alleviated by a more renunciative, gentle philosophy of education. There are two interwoven strands in this article. One questions the emphasis on competition and achievement in contemporary education and explores its implications for our relationship to failure. The second, strongly influenced by Beckett, explores ways of reimagining our relationship to failure in such a way that allows us to reflect on what matters in life.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12064   open full text
  • ‘You Have to Give of Yourself’: Care and Love in Pedagogical Relations.
    Marit Honerød Hoveid, Arnhild Finne.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    In this article we explore a notion of relationship which exists between humans. This notion of relationship takes as a point of departure that differences in human relations and interaction have to be safeguarded. Starting with the Irigarayan notion of ‘two’ as a gendered difference, opposed to an understanding of humans as one and same (gender), we elaborate an understanding of otherness which opens a space where both self and other are welcomed. This relational space cannot be appropriated by either one for it to exist. We continue by drawing from Harry G. Frankfurt's discussion of care in order to understand human (inter)actions in this space. Through an elaboration of how love as a special form of care represents a motivational drive, a way in which a person's will is formed, we try to show how this attentiveness towards the other is possible. Our point of departure is two statements by female head teachers that prompted these theoretical inquiries into other possibilities for interpreting human (inter)action in leadership in education.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12069   open full text
  • Between Body and Spirit: The Liminality of Pedagogical Relationships.
    Sharon Todd.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    This article explores the pedagogical, transformative aspects of education as a relation, viewing such transformation as occurring in the liminal space between body and spirit. In order to explore this liminal space more thoroughly, the article first outlines a case for why liminality is of educational and not only of pedagogical concern, building on James Conroy's notion of the liminal imagination and his emphasis on the importance of metaphor for calling our attention to the ontological spaces that make up educational practice. I then use this metaphor both substantively and methodologically, offering a reading of Clarice Lispector's novel The Stream of Life as a performance of the liminal imagination in its attempt to put into focus the embodied and transcendent aspects of becoming, both of which I see as central to defining what is pedagogical about human existence. The article then turns to developing how different metaphors may be mobilised to signify the particularly relational quality of becoming, drawing on Luce Irigaray's work to explore more closely the corporeal and spiritual aspects of becoming in relation. I then turn my attention to a more fulsome discussion of the significance of approaching pedagogical relationships in education in this way and what this signifies for the teacher‐student encounter in particular.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12065   open full text
  • ‘New Fatherhood’ and the Politics of Dependency.
    Amy Shuffelton.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    Although ‘new fatherhood’ promises a reconstruction of the domesticity paradigm that positions fathers as breadwinners and mothers as caretakers, it maintains the notion that families are self‐supporting entities and thereby neglects the extensive interdependence involved in raising children. As a result, it cannot successfully overturn this paradigm and hampers our ability to reimagine relationships along lines that would better serve parents' and children's wellbeing. This article raises these issues through an exploration of ‘daddy‐daughter dances’, which manifest new fatherhood discourse as expressed in public schooling. Although the dances are in some ways peculiarly American, they exemplify tensions and inconsistencies around father's involvement in child‐raising that nag most contemporary Western societies. These tensions, the article contends, concern the distribution of public resources among families as well as within them. Drawing on Kittay's theorization of dependence and interdependence, the article argues that contemporary social reconfigurations demand a new reimagination of relationships that starts with the recognition of interdependencies
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12062   open full text
  • Towards a Thinking and Practice of Sexual Difference: Putting the Practice of Relationship at the Centre.
    Caroline Wilson.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    This article seeks to open up a discussion of issues relating to the significance of sexual difference, the thinking and politics emerging from it and how it might affect educational philosophy. It briefly examines the initial work of Luce Irigaray, which has become quite influential in parts of the English speaking world, particularly focussing on the idea that there are implications for our educational objectives if gender equality were to be put in question as one of the underlying paradigms with which to measure children's performance. It then looks at the work of some groups of Italian philosophers and educationalists who have not been translated into English and are consequently less well known. Their work has been devoted to exploring Irigaray's challenge to re‐think the world from the perspective of sexual difference. In particular, in tune with the theme of this special issue, this article shows how this work puts forward the practice and philosophy of relationship for consideration at different stages of the educational process, focussing particularly on Luisa Muraro's philosophical ‘invention’ of the symbolic order of the mother as a way to bring into the shared world the erased sexual difference that Irigaray had articulated. Muraro's work considers the meaning of the first relationship between mother and infant and suggests that the mother, or the one doing her work, is in fact the first and ongoing educator and transmitter of philosophy, a fact that is only partially recognised in our formal educational structures. The article introduces, finally, the idea that as the historical patterns of mainly women teaching younger children and men teaching older children are shifting, to understand the need for and argue for a more sexuate world, with both sexes participating in the educational process at all stages would allow for the possibility of a new discussion of concepts that are already central to educationalists such as equality, freedom, autonomy, authority, flourishing and the relationship with parents.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12067   open full text
  • Re‐reading Diotima: Resources for a Relational Pedagogy.
    Rachel Jones.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 14, 2014
    This article considers a range of responses to Plato's Symposium, paying particular attention to Diotima's speech on eros and philosophy. It argues that Diotima's teachings contain resources for a relational pedagogy, but that these resources come more sharply into focus when Plato's text is read through the lens of contemporary (20th and 21st century) thinkers. The article therefore draws on the work of David Halperin, Hannah Arendt, Jean‐François Lyotard and Luce Irigaray to argue that Diotima points us towards the value of educative encounters as reciprocal and unpredictable events of initiation and becoming. Diotima's rhetorical emphasis on birth is shown to be especially important for refiguring pedagogical relations in terms of natality, understood as a capacity for new beginnings, and hence for reclaiming education as a potentially generative encounter, rather than one governed by the logic of reproduction. The final section of the article turns to work by Christine Battersby, bell hooks, Richard Smith and Morwenna Griffiths to resituate the discussion in relation to questions of autonomy. As a corrective to the modern bias towards the value of the autonomous individual, it argues that dependencies and unequal power relations can be a constitutive and enabling aspect of the educative process. Attention to such relations should thus form a key part of a relational pedagogy.
    April 14, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12066   open full text
  • Behold: Silence and Attention in Education.
    David Lewin.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 10, 2014
    Educators continually ask about the best means to engage students and how best to capture attention. These concerns often make the problematic assumption that students can directly govern their own attention. In order to address the role and limits of attention in education, some theorists have sought to recover the significance of silence or mindfulness in schools, but I argue that these approaches are too simplistic. A more fundamental examination of our conceptions of identity and agency reveals a Cartesian and Kantian foundationalism. This assumed subjectivity establishes too simplistic a conception of the agency of students in directing attention. I critically engage with these conceptions by drawing on a range of diverse sources, primarily modern Continental philosophy and Christian mystical theology.
    April 10, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12074   open full text
  • Public Reason and Child Rearing: What's a Liberal Parent to Do?
    Dennis Arjo.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 10, 2014
    The ways in we raise and educate children can appear to be at odds with basic liberal values. Relationships between parents and children are unequal, parents routinely control children's behaviour in various ways, and they use their authority to shape children's beliefs and values. Whether and how such practices can be made to accord with liberal values presents a significant puzzle. In what follows I will look at a recent and sophisticated attempt to resolve these tensions offered by Matthew Clayton in his book Justice m Child Rearing in the context of general account of the proper limits of parental authority. I argue that Clayton is unsuccessful in ways that point to fundamental and pervasive questions about the place of liberal values in child rearing and education that remain unanswered.
    April 10, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12075   open full text
  • Education, Freedom, and Temporality: A Response to Biesta and Säfström's Manifesto.
    Suninn Yun.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. April 10, 2014
    Since it was first published in 2011, ‘A Manifesto for Education’ by Gert Biesta and Karl Anders Säfström has received numerous enthusiastic reviews and been hailed as providing ‘an alternative vision for education’. Such enthusiasm, however, is perhaps not purely attributable to the substance of the text but also to the form that it adopts. In this regard, I attempt to explore what the authors refer to as the ironic usage of this genre of writing in relation to its message. The authors diagnose a problem in education related to the modern understanding of time, and they suggest an alternative ‘non‐temporality’ in which we ‘stay in the tension between “what is” and “what is not” ’. While I appreciate the Manifesto's attempt to offer criticism based on the link between freedom and temporality in education, I take issue with aspects of their analysis. I discuss temporality and freedom through a reading of Martin Heidegger in which the concept of time in education is understood in terms of human freedom as possibility.
    April 10, 2014   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12086   open full text
  • Lockean Social Epistemology.
    Lisa McNulty.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 30, 2013
    Locke's reputation as a sceptic regarding testimony, and the resultant mockery by epistemologists with social inclinations, is well known. In particular Michael Welbourne, in his article ‘The Community of Knowledge’ (1981), depicts Lockean epistemology as fundamentally opposed to a social conception of knowledge, claiming that he ‘could not even conceive of the possibility of a community of knowledge’. This interpretation of Locke is flawed. Whilst Locke does not grant the honorific ‘knowledge’ to anything short of certainty, he nonetheless held what we would call ‘testimonial knowledge’ in appropriate esteem. This can be shown by his careful distinction between testimony and mere received opinion. Furthermore, this distinction is dependent upon a knowledge community which enables hearers of testimony to access alternative accounts. In view of this, we can consider Locke's Conduct of the Understanding in a new light. Dedicated to the autodidact adult, The Conduct directs the learner to reason clearly and well. One goal is to render adult students capable of assessing testimony. The advice given is social in nature. The student must not limit his study to ‘one sort of men or one sort of books’. Otherwise, he faces the sort of cognitive isolation which would render him a mere receiver of opinion. The picture of Locke that emerges is not that of a dyed‐in‐the‐wool sceptic regarding testimonial knowledge, but of a philosopher who formed an embryonic social epistemology embedded within a programme of adult education.
    July 30, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12035   open full text
  • Wittgenstein, Social Views and Intransitive Learning.
    Steinar Bøyum.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. July 11, 2013
    Wittgenstein often refers to matters of learning, and there have been efforts to extract a social conception of learning from his writings. In the first half of this article, I look at three such efforts, those of Meredith Williams, Christopher Winch, and David Bakhurst, and I say why I think these efforts fail. As I go on to argue, though, there is a fairly trivial sense in which learning is a social rather than a psychological phenomenon: ordinarily, there are public criteria for whether someone has learned something. Yet, in the second half of the article, I point to an exception to this general rule. Taking a cue from Wittgenstein, I call this ‘intransitive learning’, as it refers to learning experiences where we cannot say what we have learned or where there simply isn't anything in particular that we have learned. This is a use that is not easily accommodated by received definitions of learning. It also represents a genuinely psychological use of the word ‘learn’. In contrast to ordinary cases of learning, claims about intransitive learning function like expressions and are marked by first‐person authority.
    July 11, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12036   open full text
  • Knowledge from Testimony: Benefits and Dangers.
    Seán Moran.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 24, 2013
    Testimony is an important source of knowledge in many contexts, including that of education, but the notion of the teacher as testifier is not often discussed. Since much that is believed by individuals has come to them not from direct experience but by accepting the accounts of others, the trustworthiness of their interlocutors' testimonies, whether these be spoken, textual or electronic in form, is an important factor in determining whether or not they acquire true, justified beliefs. Testimonial trustworthiness is a combination of competence and sincerity, both of which tend to be high when a teacher testifies in her area of expertise. But in the world beyond the classroom there are situations in which the competence or sincerity of the testifier is low, so it is important that the learner acquires an epistemically‐virtuous, well‐attuned disposition towards testimony.
    May 24, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12001   open full text
  • Making Sense of the Legacy of Epistemology in Education and Educational Research.
    Paul Smeyers.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    Ruitenberg and Phillips maintain that the conventional meanings of ‘epistemology’ have been misused and that this obscures the discussion. They accept that talking about ‘knowledge’ itself is part of a particular social practice (in the natural as well as the social sciences) and that the epistemic agent is always connected with others. This review questions whether the embeddedness of a particular social practice should not be conceived more radically, i.e. by considering the implications of playing the game of ‘epistemology’ conceived as embracing and accepting that human reality is much more complex and should be studied as such in educational research at large. Taking this seriously demands situating what is offered at the level of a dialogue between all those involved; it necessitates that we give way to meta‐criteria, conceding that ‘we are playing the same game’, and situating what is offered in such a way that combines elements from ‘the view from nowhere’ with a thoroughly characterized ‘local’ discussion. This moreover points to ‘knowing how to go on’, which is different from what one normally understands by ‘knowledge’.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12028   open full text
  • The Epistemic Value of Diversity.
    Emily Robertson.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    This article briefly considers current positions about whether the inclusion of the perspectives and interests of marginalised groups in the construction of knowledge is of epistemic value. It is then argued that applied social epistemology is the proper epistemic stance to take in evaluating this question. Theorists who have held that diversity makes an epistemic contribution are interpreted as attempting to reform social pathways to knowledge in ways that make true belief more likely. Thus, the demand for diversity challenges the individualistic and a priori nature of traditional epistemology. This stance has consequences for education. It supports greater attention to helping students examine the testimonial bases for their beliefs. And it prepares students for their role as citizens in supporting policies that maintain credible inclusive institutions of public knowledge.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12026   open full text
  • Three Different Conceptions of Know‐How and their Relevance to Professional and Vocational Education.
    Christopher Winch.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    This article discusses three related aspects of know‐how: skill, transversal abilities and project management abilities, which are often not distinguished within either the educational or the philosophical literature. Skill or the ability to perform tasks is distinguished from possession of technique which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for possession of a skill. The exercise of skill, contrary to much opinion, usually involves character aspects of agency. Skills usually have a social dimension and are subject to normative appraisal. Transversal abilities rely on but are not reducible to the exercise of skill, but require a further degree of attention and seriousness in their exercise. Transversal abilities can be displayed in different ways using different skills, depending on context. They include: planning, communicating, evaluating—all important features of successful professional action. Project management or the putting into effect of relatively long‐term sequences of action involves the articulation of different transversal abilities. It is a form of agency which is considered to be important in some European vocational and professional education systems and usually involves a strong social dimension. The article concludes with a discussion of the educational implications of these distinctions and of their interrelationships.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12025   open full text
  • Detecting Epistemic Vice in Higher Education Policy: Epistemic Insensibility in the Seven Solutions and the REF.
    Heather Battaly.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    This article argues that the Seven Solutions in the US, and the Research Excellence Framework in the UK, manifest the vice of epistemic insensibility. Section I provides an overview of Aristotle's analysis of moral vice in people. Section II applies Aristotle's analysis to epistemic vice, developing an account of epistemic insensibility. In so doing, it contributes a new epistemic vice to the field of virtue epistemology. Section III argues that the (US) Seven Breakthrough Solutions and, to a lesser extent, the (UK) Research Excellence Framework manifest two key features of the vice of epistemic insensibility. First, they promote a failure to desire, consume, and enjoy some knowledge that it is appropriate to desire, consume, and enjoy. Second, they do so because they wrongly assume that such knowledge is not epistemically good. The Solutions wrongly assume that any research that lacks ‘impact’, in the form of funding, thereby lacks epistemic value. The REF wrongly assumes of otherwise comparable bodies of research, that the research that lacks ‘impact’ has less epistemic value.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12024   open full text
  • Educating for Intellectual Virtues: From Theory to Practice.
    Jason Baehr.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    After a brief overview of what intellectual virtues are, I offer three arguments for the claim that education should aim at fostering ‘intellectual character virtues’ like curiosity, open‐mindedness, intellectual courage, and intellectual honesty. I then go on to discuss several pedagogical and related strategies for achieving this aim.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12023   open full text
  • Epistemic Virtue and the Epistemology of Education.
    Duncan Pritchard.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    A certain conception of the relevance of virtue epistemology to the philosophy of education is set out. On this conception, while the epistemic goal of education might initially be promoting the pupil's cognitive success, it should ultimately move on to the development of the pupil's cognitive agency. A continuum of cognitive agency is described, on which it is ultimately cognitive achievement, and thus understanding, which is the epistemic goal of education. This is contrasted with a view on which knowledge is the epistemic goal.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12022   open full text
  • Can Inferentialism Contribute to Social Epistemology?
    Jan Derry.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    This article argues that Robert Brandom's work can be used to develop ideas in the area of social epistemology. It suggests that this work, precisely because it was influenced by Hegel, can make a significant contribution with philosophical anthropology at its centre. The argument is developed using illustrations from education: the first, from the now classic replication of Piaget's ‘three mountains task’ by Margaret Donaldson and her colleagues; the second, from contemporary debates about the questions of knowledge and epistemic access. This leads to a series of questions concerning the relation of concepts to each other and to objects of knowledge and to the social dimension of epistemology as it is involved in the development of human capacities.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12032   open full text
  • Anscombe's ‘Teachers’.
    Jeremy Wanderer.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    This article is an investigation into G. E. M. Anscombe's suggestion that there can be cases where belief takes a personal object, through an examination of the role that the activity of teaching plays in Anscombe's discussion. By contrasting various kinds of ‘teachers’ that feature in her discussion, it is argued that the best way of understanding the idea of believing someone personally is to situate the relevant encounter within the social, conversational framework of ‘engaged reasoning’. Key features of this framework are highlighted, and are used to characterise the distinctive kind of teaching and learning germane to Anscombe's suggestion.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12021   open full text
  • Learning from Others.
    David Bakhurst.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    John McDowell begins his essay ‘Knowledge by Hearsay’ (1993) by describing two ways language matters to epistemology. The first is that, by understanding and accepting someone else's utterance, a person can acquire knowledge. This is what philosophers call ‘knowledge by testimony’. The second is that children acquire knowledge in the course of learning their first language—in acquiring language, a child inherits a conception of the world. In The Formation of Reason (2011), and my writings on Russian socio‐historical philosophy and psychology, I address issues bearing on the second of these topics, questions about the child's development through initiation into language and other forms of social being. In this article, I focus on the first: the epistemology of testimony. After expounding a view of testimony inspired by McDowell, and supplemented by ideas from Sebastian Rödl, I consider how such an account illuminates two issues in philosophy of education: the extent of an individual's epistemic dependence upon others, and the nature of teaching.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12020   open full text
  • Epistemic Dependence in Testimonial Belief, in the Classroom and Beyond.
    Sanford Goldberg.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 16, 2013
    The process of education, and in particular that involving very young children, often involves students' taking their teachers' word on a good many things. At the same time, good education at every level ought to inculcate, develop, and support students' ability to think for themselves. While these two features of education need not be regarded as contradictory, it is not clear how they relate to one another, nor is it clear how (when taken together) these features ought to bear on educational practice itself. This article, which is largely programmatic, aims to provide tentative answers to these questions.
    May 16, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12019   open full text
  • Pedagogy and Passages: The Performativity of Margaret Cavendish's Utopian Fiction.
    Zelia Gregoriou.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 15, 2013
    This article explores the pedagogical significance of non‐static and hybrid utopian readings and writings by focusing on Margaret Cavendish's educationally‐philosophically neglected female utopia The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World. It questions the exaggerated, inflated and exclusivist emphasis on the pedagogical benefits of homologous spatial signifiers of entry into utopia and return to home and draws examples of utopian passages across genres, texts, minds and worlds from the writing of Cavendish. Such passages can be read as performative ways of hybridising and reinventing both the utopian topos and the traveller's identity. New space is thus opened for learning as imitation and re‐writing rather than as a return to, or manifestation of, an original self. Finally, new performative means for fashioning pedagogical authorship, nurturing the other's learning, and fashioning intellectual growth are promoted. Such means comprise mutuality of pedagogical initiatives, improvisation through imitation and supplementarity of cooperative writing.
    May 15, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12029   open full text
  • After Higgins and Dunne: Imagining School Teaching as a Multi‐Practice Activity.
    Richard Davies.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 15, 2013
    There remains a concern in philosophy of education circles to assert that teaching is a social practice. Its initiation occurs in a conversation between Alasdair MacIntyre and Joe Dunne which inspired a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education. This has been recently utilised in a further Special Issue by Chris Higgins. In this article I consider two points of conflict between MacIntyre and Dunne and seek to resolve both with a more nuanced understanding of the implications of applying the concept ‘social practice’ to teaching. I critique both Dunne's and Higgins' focus on schools and school teaching. It is their focus on school teaching, rather than a broader account of teaching, that leads them astray. The result is that Dunne and Higgins have not shown that teaching is a social practice. School teaching is not a complex activity, but a complex set of different activities co‐located in one place and engaged in by the same agents. In a final section I offer an account of ‘school teaching’ as a multi‐practice activity which is consistent with MacIntyre's approach, and argue that schoolteachers have both an institutional and an educative role.
    May 15, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12030   open full text
  • Buddhism and Autonomy‐Facilitating Education.
    Jeffrey Morgan.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. May 15, 2013
    This article argues that Buddhists can consistently support autonomy as an educational ideal. The article defines autonomy as a matter of thinking and acting according to principles that one has oneself endorsed, showing the relationship between this ideal and the possession of an enduring self. Three central Buddhist doctrines of conditioned arising, impermanence and anatman are examined, showing a prima facie conflict between autonomy and Buddhist philosophy. Drawing on the ‘two truths’ theory of Nagarjuna, it is then shown that the prima facie conflict can be defused by noting that the self has reality at one level, but is a fiction at another level. This approach allows us a new way of seeing autonomy as an extrinsic value—as a step in the journey towards nirvana, but of no value once one has achieved nirvana.
    May 15, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12031   open full text
  • Parenting Support and the Role of Society in Parental Self‐Understanding: Furedi's Paranoid Parenting Revisited.
    Luc Van den Berge.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 25, 2013
    The publication of Frank Furedi's Paranoid Parenting in 2001 was trend‐setting in the sense that it addresses parents directly in a way that is intended to be both critical and supportive, by helping parents to look through a sociological lens at their alleged predicament. Furedi's hope is that this will lead to the restoration of parental self‐confidence, which he claims to be sorely lacking in contemporary (Western?) society. I argue that such a project would be more likely to succeed if one were to hold a less dim view of the way both parents and other individuals are connected with their own society. By introducing a cultural‐hermeneutical perspective on human agency, based on a specific reading of Heidegger and Taylor, I suggest a more constructive way to reconnect parents with the ongoing conversations in their communities and to conceptualise parenting support.
    February 25, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12008   open full text
  • Feyerabend on Science and Education.
    Ian James Kidd.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 25, 2013
    This article offers a sympathetic interpretation of Paul Feyerabend's remarks on science and education. I present a formative episode in the development of his educational ideas—the ‘Berkeley experience'—and describe how it affected his views on the place of science within modern education. It emerges that Feyerabend arrived at a conception of education closely related to that of Michael Oakeshott and Martin Heidegger—that of education as ‘releasement’. Each of those three figures argued that the purpose of education was not to induct students into prevailing norms and convictions, but rather to initiate them into the ‘civilized inheritance of mankind’. I conclude that interpreting Feyerabend's educational ideas within this conception of education as releasement lends a new coherence to his remarks on science and education, in a way that renders certain of his political proposals—such as the ‘separation of science and the state'—both more coherent and more compelling.
    February 25, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12009   open full text
  • The Value of the Arts.
    Nigel Tubbs.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 25, 2013
    The value of the arts is often measured in terms of human creativity against instrumental rationality, while art for art's sake defends against a utility of art. Such critiques of the technical and formulaic are themselves formulaic, repeating the dualism of the head and the heart. How should we account for this formula? We should do so by investigating its determination within metaphysical and social relations, ancient and modern, and by comprehending the notion of freedom carried therein. This opens up the value of the arts to a modern metaphysics and modern notion of freedom. This value, and this freedom, find currency in a notion of philosophical and political education, and especially in a modern conception of liberal arts education, where freedom is to learn.
    February 25, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12018   open full text
  • We Made Progress: Collective Epistemic Progress in Dialogue without Consensus.
    Clinton Golding.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. February 18, 2013
    Class discussions about ethical, social, philosophical and other controversial issues frequently result in disagreement. This leaves a problem: has there been any progress? This article introduces and analyses the concept ‘collective epistemic progress’ in order to resolve this problem. The analysis results in four main ways of understanding, guiding and judging collective epistemic progress in the face of seemingly irreconcilable differences. Although it might seem plausible to analyse and judge collective epistemic progress by the increasing vigour of the dialogue community, by how long the conversation is continued, or by how close we have moved towards consensus or the truth, I argue that these fail to provide serviceable analyses or epistemic criteria. Yet, we might instead analyse, understand and judge progress using epistemic criteria such as whether we have: furthered the one distributed process of inquiry or deliberation; and reached mutual understanding; inquiry milestones; or consensus about our procedures.
    February 18, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12010   open full text
  • Towards a Foucauldian Methodology in the Study of Autism: Issues of Archaeology, Genealogy, and Subjectification.
    Eva Vakirtzi, Phil Bayliss.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. January 14, 2013
    The remarkable increase in diagnoses of autism has paralleled an increase in scientific research and turned the syndrome into a kind of a new ‘trend’ within psychiatric and developmental conditions of childhood. At the same time, discursive technologies, such as DSM‐IV, autobiographies, movies, fiction, etc., together with ‘educational’ interventions, such as TEACCH, PECS, Makaton, etc., seem to anticipate a form of an apparatus built around the condition named autism. Starting from this premise, the article proposes a new approach within autism studies, which treats the condition in Foucauldian terms and focuses on the emergence of the autistic subjectivity following Foucault's methodology of archaeology, genealogy, and modes of subjectification.
    January 14, 2013   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12004   open full text
  • Liberal Education and the Teleological Question; or Why Should a Dentist Read Chaucer?
    Kenneth B. Mcintyre.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 13, 2012
    This essay consists of an examination of the work of three thinkers who conceive of liberal education primarily in teleological terms, and, implicitly if not explicitly, attempt to offer some answer to the question: what does it mean to be fully human? John Henry Newman, T. S. Eliot, and Josef Pieper developed their understanding of liberal education from their own intellectual and religious experience, which was informed by a specifically Christian conception of the place of education in a fully developed human life. I suggest that the strength of their understanding of liberal education derives from its connection to the various small cohesive religious communities to which they were connected. Nonetheless, this insularity was also the primary weakness because each writer ended universalising what was in fact a particular and unique cultural and religious experience instead of providing convincing proof of a single human nature with a single telos. I will contrast this teleological conception of liberal education with that of Michael Oakeshott and his student Kenneth Minogue, both of whom wrote about education in a post‐religious era in which the earlier consensus had completely broken down. They both celebrated the variety of practices which human beings have invented for themselves over the past several centuries (and past several millennia), and did not appear to suffer from the lack of any unifying single human telos. I will suggest that their understanding of practice insulated them from the need for a single unifying telos.
    December 13, 2012   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12003   open full text
  • The Agora.
    Don Berkich.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. December 13, 2012
    Student Learning Outcomes are increasingly de rigueur in US higher education. Usually defined as statements of what students will be able to measurably demonstrate upon completing a course or program, proponents argue that they are essential to objective assessment and quality assurance. Critics contend that Student Learning Outcomes are a misguided attempt to apply corporate quality enhancement schemes to higher education. It is not clear whether faculty should embrace or reject Student Learning Outcomes. With sincere apologies to Plato, this dialogue explores arguments for and against their use.
    December 13, 2012   doi: 10.1111/1467-9752.12005   open full text
  • An Overview.
    Naomi Hodgson.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 29, 2009
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    June 29, 2009   doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9752.2009.00710.x   open full text
  • Introduction.
    Naomi Hodgson.
    Journal of Philosophy of Education. June 29, 2009
    There is no abstract available for this paper.
    June 29, 2009   doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9752.2009.00709.x   open full text