Teaching for Cosmopolis: Bernard Lonergan's Hopeful Vision for Education in a Globalized World

Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan offers a vision for education that promotes what he terms “cosmopolis.” For Lonergan, authentic cosmopolitanism does not impose a universal, totalizing metanarrative. Rather, it embraces the particularity of one's own cultural, religious, and intellectual traditions, while remaining radically open to dialogue with the other. By doing so, education for cosmopolis fosters both authentic appropriation and reflective critique of one's own traditions, as well as an appreciation for the authenticity of others. Teaching for cosmopolis is an invitation to dialogue which promotes mutual understanding, mutual respect, and mutual interdependence in a globalized world.     

Learning to Write: Plowing and Hoeing,Labor and Essaying

In this paper Amanda Fulford addresses the issue of student writing in the university, and explores how the increasing dominance of outcome‐driven modes of learning and assessment is changing the understanding of what it is to write, what is expected of students in their writing, and how academic writing should best be supported. The starting point is the increasing use of what are termed “technologies” of writing — “handbooks” for students that address issues of academic writing — that systematize, and smooth the work of writing in, Fulford argues, an unhelpful way. This leads to a reconsideration of what it means to write in the university, and what it is to be a student who writes. Fulford explores etymologically the concept of “writing” and suggests that it might be seen metaphorically as physical labor. Writing as physical labor is explored further through the agricultural metaphors in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and through Stanley Cavell's reading of that text. In making a distinction between writing‐as‐plowing and writing‐as‐hoeing, Fulford argues that some technologies of writing deny voice rather than facilitate it, and she concludes by offering a number of suggestions for the teaching and learning of writing in the university that emphasize the value of being lost (in one's subject and one's work) and finding one's own way out. These “lessons” are illustrated with reference to Thoreau's text Walden and to American literature and film.     

Open‐Mindedness in a “Post‐Truth” Era

In discussing open‐mindedness, virtue epistemologists emphasize revising one's cognitive standpoint by taking seriously the views of others, where this process is seen to be a reliable way of identifying one's biases and forming true beliefs. Yet in defending open‐mindedness, virtue epistemologists tend to give little attention to two areas of scholarship. First, they tend to overlook the psychoanalytic challenges of evasion and disavowal that so often operate in the enactment of and attempts at open‐mindedness. Second, they undervalue scholarship that notes the longer arc of a relation between post‐truth conditions and settler colonial structures. In other words, there appears to be an evasion of those views that associate the United States with dispossession, settler colonialism, and projects of decolonization according to postcontinental philosophies. This essay by Troy Richardson clarifies some of the critical vocabulary needed to bridge virtue epistemology committed to open‐mindedness and scholarship that has shifted the terms of analysis toward active projects for decolonization based on postcontinental philosophies.     

Open‐Mindedness: An Intellectual Virtue in the Pursuit of Knowledge and Understanding

Open‐mindedness is widely valued as an important intellectual virtue. Definitional debates about open‐mindedness have focused on whether open‐minded believers must possess a particular first‐order attitude toward their beliefs or a second‐order attitude toward themselves as believers, taking it for granted that open‐mindedness is motivated by the pursuit of propositional knowledge. In this article, Rebecca Taylor develops an alternative to knowledge‐centered accounts of open‐mindedness. Drawing on recent work in epistemology that reclaims understanding as a primary epistemic good, Taylor argues for an expanded account of open‐mindedness as an intellectual virtue motivated by the pursuit of both knowledge and understanding. Incorporating understanding allows for a more robust account of open‐mindedness that better accommodates common usage, avoids common criticisms, and better explains the widespread acceptance of open‐mindedness as an important intellectual virtue. Taylor also identifies the connections between open‐mindedness and several other intellectual virtues, including intellectual humility, intellectual courage, and intellectual diligence.     

Geography,History, and the Aims of Education: The Possibility of Multiculturalism in Democracy and Education

In this essay, Scott Pratt develops the tension at work in Democracy and Education between conceptions of multiculturalism that emerge from Dewey's commitment to progress as a process of civilization and from his contrasting commitment to a vision of progress as a localized process that requires respect for boundaries and limits. The first is related to what Patrick Wolfe has called “settler colonialism.” The second conception of multiculturalism, framed by the aims of education and the conception of growth, avoids the problems of the first and provides a foundation for a practical, decolonial multiculturalism in the context of twenty‐first‐century education.     

Teaching for Open‐Mindedness: A Justice‐Oriented Approach

This article explores the pedagogical virtue of open‐mindedness in practice and its relationship to epistemic justice through analysis of a fictional, narrative case. The case focuses on a young white woman who attempts to implement a pedagogy of open‐mindedness as she teaches a unit on the civil rights movement. After presenting the case scenario, Tadashi Dozono and Rebecca Taylor examine three tensions that arise for teachers as they seek to enact a pedagogy of open‐mindedness. First, what form of open‐mindedness should guide them? Second, how should they respond to limits in their own knowledge and understanding? And finally, how should teachers exercise authority within a pedagogy of open‐mindedness? Their analysis confronts the tension between the teacher's own open‐mindedness, on the one hand, and the teacher's subject position, on the other. Through this exploration of open‐mindedness, Dozono and Taylor argue that, in practice, teachers must counteract legacies of epistemic injustice as a necessary part of cultivating their own and their students' access to open‐mindedness.     

The Arts and Open‐Mindedness

Open‐mindedness is typically considered an intellectual virtue that brings humans into (closer) contact with reality and its complexities. In this essay, Susan Verducci expands the ways we typically think of cultivating open‐mindedness in classrooms to include the practice of engagement with the visual and performing arts. Working with the arts allows students and teachers to perceive and embody realities they would not normally experience. Specifically, the arts enable the drawing forth and exploration of multiple and subjective interpretations; the arts can therefore be uniquely productive in opening minds by helping one negotiate human perceptual constraints, by providing opportunities to enter standpoints other than one's own, and by encouraging the practice of living with uncertainty and ambiguity.     

Discerning Pedagogical Quality in Preschool

A well‐developed and researched conceptual framework exists for identifying undergraduate students' conceptions of learning. In addition, research has been reported on teachers' conceptions of teaching as they relate to their conceptions of learning. The research reported in this paper takes the existing framework into a new area, postgraduate supervisors' conceptions of “research”. It is hypothesized that the development of a conceptual framework that identifies postgraduate students' conceptions of “research”, and how these articulate with the conceptions of research held by their research supervisors, will enable support mechanisms to be developed and used to assist students early in their candidature. In addition, supervisory practice will benefit from being aware of, and sensitive to, the variety and potential effect of these conceptions. While it is recognized that there are strong cultural influences on conceptions of research, this project has focused initially on the conceptions of research generally adopted by Western academic institutions. However, the students involved in the study were not necessarily of a Western educational background. This paper outlines the results of research undertaken to date in identifying supervisors' conceptions. In addition, it discusses supervisors' views on: the purpose of research and what characterizes “good” research and good researchers. Various strategies reported by supervisors to assist their students to develop more comprehensive and sophisticated conceptions of research are also discussed.     

Weekday Religious Education in Connection with the Public School

In sympathizing with a program of “release time” for religious education, I am perhaps opening myself to a torrent of attack. I shall take it, because what 1 state here is my own personal opinion

May I indulge the hope, however, that the discussions which this article may arouse, concern themselves with a realistic and logical treatment of what I have to say, rather than rhetorical invectives. The world has changed profoundly in the spiritual realm during the past quarter century. The cry goes up from our pulpits and pews for a new appreciation of religion. Yet in so many places, there is no recognition of the new demands in terms of an adjustment of positions which, formerly sound and tenable, now are quite the opposite

This statement is submitted in an open‐minded manner in the hope of stimulating frank discussion on one of today's most important problems     

Putting Faith Into Action: A Model for the North American Middle Class

Pluralism presents faith communities with the challenge of continuity and discontinuity in relation to the community's tradition. The educational question becomes: How do we initiate persons into the tradition of the faith community so that they will function as agents who can extend the tradition in creative ways in changing contexts? Play is one area of human activity that is concerned with what is and what might be. This paper explores the nature of the pretend play of young children, especially its “as‐if'” and “what‐if” dimensions. It suggests possibilities for using play in the education of children and adults.     

A SYSTEMATIC CLASSIFICATION OF PUBLICATIONS RELATIVE TO THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION

“The accent in cultural history is on close examin‐ ation — of texts, of pictures, and of actions — and an open‐mindedness to what those examinations will reveal, rather than on elaboration of new master narratives.”

Lynn Hunt (Ed.), The New Cultural History (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), p. 22.

“[Films] are a legitimate way ... of representing, interpreting, thinking about and making meaning from the traces of the past ... that seriously deals with the relationship of past and present.”

Robert A. Rosenstone (Ed.), Revisioning History (Princeton, N.J., 1995), p. 3.

One of postmodernism's major lines of development collapses the boundaries and hierarchical distinctions between elite or academic culture and popular culture, giving us new opportunities to cross boundaries separating history from literature and the arts, the “academic” from the “popular”, the archival from the imaginative. I embrace the freedom that postmodernism offers to entertain new ideas, play different kinds of language games, challenge established “ways of seeing”.

I propose here that we extend the range of what we regard as historical “source” to include film, and that film be accepted by historians of education as a legitimate form of textual representation and important evidentiary “source” for our exploration and interpre‐ tation of culture and of education. What follows is an attempt at integrating film into the historiography of education. For illustrative purposes, I've chosen Peter Weir's “Dead Poets Society” ("DPS”, 1989) for my text. I don't presume to give “the” meaning of “DPS” for understanding recent American educational history, but to suggest some of its possible meanings, which, given the problematic nature of “meaning” in our postmodern epoch, is about all we can hope for, but which may be enough to continue the conversation about movies after the movie is over.     

The Whole PIE: A roadmap to comprehensive excellence

Responding to the alarming numbers of dissatisfied members of the U.S. workforce, this article introduces a workable plan of action titled “The Whole PIE,” which is useful for members of the workforce at all levels, to enhance their internal locus of control and enhance the quality of life at work for themselves and others. Starting with actions geared toward personal (“P”) performance enhancement, and subsequently graduating to actions at the interactive (“I”) and external (“E”) level, the text leads the reader toward a comprehensive perspective (The Whole “PIE”) in which short‐term and long‐term actors and factors are considered in one's workplace performance.     

Students' understanding of the greenhouse effect,the societal consequences of reducing CO2 emissions and the problem of ozone layer depletion

This study is an attempt to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about students' conceptions and views concerning environmental and natural resource issues. Answers have been sought to the following questions: “How do Swedish students in grade 9 (15–16 years old) and grade 12 (18–19 years old) explain the greenhouse effect?”, “How do they think reduction of CO₂ emission would affect society?” and “How do they explain that the depletion of the ozone layer is a problem?” The method chosen to answer these questions was to give students written tasks of the open‐ended type. Five models of the greenhouse effect appear among the answers, all more or less incomplete, but nevertheless with potential for development. The students' responses also indicate that they do not fully understand what fundamental societal changes would occur as a result of a drastic reduction in CO₂ emission. On the other hand, they are rather well informed about how injurious depletion of the ozone layer is to humans. The findings are discussed, including implications for teaching. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 1096–1111, 2000     

Students' Conceptions of Research. 2: An exploration of contrasting patterns of variation

This study explores variation in postgraduate students' and supervisors' conceptions of research. Based on earlier work, a Conceptions of Research Inventory (CoRI) was trialled on a mixed sample of postgraduate students and supervisors (n = 251). Exploratory factor analyses of resultant data yields a five‐dimensional empirical model, the composition of which is consistent with earlier work by the present authors. Four of these five dimensions distinguish between (variation in) conceptions of research such as “truth”, “problem‐solving”, “re‐search”, and “an insightful process”. The fifth dimension captures variation in terms of what are interpreted as “misconceptions”. The discrete conceptual dimensions suggested within the factor model are further explored via k‐means cluster analyses in terms of partitioning of the dataset, as limited by sample sizes, according to postgraduate status and supervisor designation. These analyses provide further insights into variation, across the various clusters in each case, as expressed in the profiles of cluster mean scores. Such differences as are evidenced highlight contrasting patterns of variation between, for example, experienced and novice researchers. There is also evidence of dissonance in some of the cluster solutions and it is further demonstrated via analysis of variance that dissonant cluster membership is associated with a generally lower level of self‐estimated performance. The implications of these findings are finally considered in relation to postgraduate training and supervision.     

What We Learned about Using Metaphors in College Teaching: Methods and Meanings

The field of education is rich with metaphors that reveal one's perspective on the nature of teaching and learning—ideas are “covered,” students “absorb” information, teachers offer writing “clinics.” Each of these metaphors indicate nuanced ideas about what schooling is and is for—to be checked off? Taken in unquestioningly? For those who are sick? Two teacher educators in the field of early childhood education share insights from their own experiences in considering novice teachers' metaphors in their preparatory experiences, particularly wondering what these unveil about heretofore unanalyzed beliefs and what instructors can learn so as to form further instruction. Methods are shared and reflection led educators to find important instructional and relationship-building implications for working with novice teachers.     

Disinterested,disengaged, useless: Conservative or progressive idea of the university?

There is evidence aplenty of academics' increasing incorporation into the life and fate of their university's brand, just as it is clear that university structures and incentives generally are dependent upon increasingly competitive resource capture under tightened managerial ideologies of institutional commitment (albeit by way of innumerable “consultation” and “responsibilisation” mechanisms). In that context, it becomes important to re‐think and re‐imagine the very “idea of the university”, especially now that images and imperatives around the Engaged University are a) omnipresent and b) convene a whole range of entirely disparate activities, governed by very different intellectual rationales. While hardly wishing to be “against” university involvement in the “wider world”, this article critically questions the new metaphysic of Engagement, and the discursive framings and traps that sustain it. In an age when perhaps only paradox and counter‐intuitive gesturing seem to work as prompts towards thinking otherwise, I make the case that some “traditionalist” ideas of higher education can be part of a reasserted “progressivist” social ethics.     

PEDAGOGICAL DESIRE AND THE CRISIS OF KNOWLEDGE

Every voice speaks to particular ways of knowing as it positions the speaker within an epistemological community. Each of our images of what constitutes knowing, and hence knowledge, is part of what structures one's subjectivity: what is valued as truth or discarded as fiction... Views of knowing tell individuals which accounts count and likewise which accounts do not count. Knowledge then, is not so much about immutable truths as it is about “historical products of certain practices.” (Britzman, 1991, p.23‐23)     

文学概论课程教改中实践性教学方法实施路径探析

新时期以来,以增强学生的理论实践性为目的的教学改革,成为文学概论课程教改的一个重要方向。文学概论课程的实践性教学包含了学生理论认知实践和理论应用实践两个方面,无论哪个方面的改革努力,都必须强化"以学生为中心"的教学理念,力求以一种开放、民主、多元、对话的态势,切实调动学生自觉学习、能动学习的积极性,从而增强学生的理论理解能力和文学批评实践能力。     

TOLERANCE,EMPATHY, OR INCLUSION? INSIGHTS FROM MARTIN BUBER

Given the reality of diversity, particularly religious diversity, in the contemporary world, Marion Larson and Sara Shady explore how educators can help students (and ourselves) consider the following question: How do I balance my own belief commitments with my responsibility to be genuinely open to and challenged by the other's perspective? Larson and Shady describe and evaluate three possible models: (1) tolerance, a neutral openness to the other's position; (2) empathy, a complete absorption of the other's position; and (3) inclusion, genuine dialogue about one's own position and the other's. Using the writings of Martin Buber as a basis, Larson and Shady advocate inclusion and apply this model to classroom teaching, arguing that this model of education promotes a shared reality where all partners in the dialogue come to understand each other's position, even if they do not entirely agree with it.