A Moment of Letting Go: Iris Murdoch and the Morally Transformative Process of Unselfing

Higher education as a personal, intellectual and moral cultivation is a longstanding ideal that is constantly challenged by the view that education is merely the development of specific skills for vocational and personal success. Much research argues that the latter understanding makes education a technical affair that creates an egocentric emphasis on the individual students’ ambitions and desires. This article joins in the defence of the former ideal by enquiring into the moral dimensions of education. This is done by turning to Iris Murdoch's idea of moral transformation, with a specific focus on the idea of unselfing. The main argument is that unselfing is a transformative process characterised by a growing attunement to the surrounding world, and the interconnectedness of goal and process is emphasised. Also, to gain a deeper understanding of what unselfing entails I turn to the idea of attention. It is understood as having a specific direction, outward from the egocentric, and as enabling unselfing. The article concludes by suggesting that unselfing can offer a challenge to (higher) education as it entails a moment of letting go of plans and narratives, and of surrendering to the influence of an existence that exceeds the individual. This moment is of relevance to education as it is crucial to the possibility of growing as a moral being as it cultivates a moral manner of relating to others.     

The Praxis of Art's Deschooled Practice

Art's relationship with education is often characterised by paradox. Yet art is often reified within an education system that refuses to see the pedagogical strengths of paradox. This article approaches art education from three positions. The first is that art is a construct that is neither natural nor necessary. The second is that there are no aesthetic or pedagogical imperatives, but that art education is the recognition of groundlessness where paradox facilitates learning. The third approach is to reposition art with regards to its relationship with learning, education and schooling. Here it is argued that art's only choice is to deschool learning. The latter is moved by an underlying dilemma as to whether art, considered as an autonomous human act, could ever engage with systems of learning without being turned into a tool or a thing. Unless art education is deschooled, the teaching and learning of art remains trapped between the assumptions of process and product. So the idea of art and education as shared practices within schooling remains somewhat dubious unless art's practices are recognised in parts perceived as wholes and where conclusions are marked by open‐endedness. No possibilities for art or learning could ever emerge unless a radically different set of conditions give way to a state of affairs where knowledge is a matter to be discovered but never determined, and where a fixed ground is transformed into a wide horizon.     

简论大学生创业的利与弊

大学生创业的利弊分析对于大学生掌握机遇、迎接挑战、成功创业,具有十分重要的指导意义和现实意义。大学生创业的有利条件有五个方面：一是政府大力支持;二是大学生具有顽强的拼搏精神;三是大学生富于冒险精神;四是大学生有敢为人先的创新能力和一定的操作能力;五是大学生具有良好的身体素质。大学生创业的不利之处有四个方面：一是创业资金不足;二是创业教育跟不上形势的需求;三是创业团队缺乏极强的个人凝聚力;四是创业团队领导人缺乏超众的控制能力。     

The Formulation of a Therapeutic Paradigm

ABSTRACT

This article describes the development of a therapeutic paradigm through the course of the author's career as a college psychotherapist. The paradigm that is described incorporates a variety of (sometimes disparate) theories, hut is essentially psychoanalytic. The paradigm is viewed by the author as a dynamic process that is subject to change and elaboration as the therapist's understanding of social and psychological factors grows and undergoes refinement.     

The poverty of contractarian moral education

ABSTRACT

In A Theory of Moral Education, Michael Hand claims that a directive moral education that seeks to persuade children that a particular conception of contractarian morality is justified can be undertaken without falling foul of the requirement not to indoctrinate. In this article, we set out a series of challenges to Hand’s argument. First, we argue that Hand’s focus on ‘reasonable disagreement’ regarding the status of a moral conception is a red-herring. Second, we argue that the endorsement of moral contractarianism and the prohibition on indoctrination pull in different directions: if contractarianism is sound, then teachers or governments should be less worried about indoctrination than Hand suggests. Third, we argue that moral contractarianism is mistaken; teachers should look elsewhere for guidance on the moral norms and principles towards which they should direct their pupils.     

An Objectivist Critique of Relativism in Mathematics Education

Many constructivists tag as `absolutist' references to mathematics as an abstract body of knowledge, and stake-out the moral high-ground with the argument that mathematics is not only utilised oppressively but that mathematics is, in-itself, oppressive. With much reference to Ernest's (1991) Philosophy of Mathematics Education this tag has been justified on the grounds that if mathematics is a social-cultural creation that is mutable and fallible then it must be social acceptance that confers the objectivity of mathematics. This paper argues that mathematics, albeit a social-cultural creation that is mutable and fallible, is a body of knowledge the objectivity of which is independent of origin or social acceptance. Recently, Ernest (1998) has attempted to express social constructivism as a philosophy of mathematics and has included the category of logical necessity in his elaboration of the objectivity of mathematics. We argue that this inclusion of logical necessity not only represents a U-turn, but that the way in which Ernest has included this category is an attempt to maintain his earlier position that it is social acceptance that confers the objectivity of mathematics.     

The Limits of Aesthetic Separatism: literary education and Michael Oakeshott's philosophy of art

Abstract

The belief that literature can teach us something about life is intuitively plausible but there is a view of literary education that would preclude a teacher from making a direct link between imaginative literature and life. A comprehensive epistemological position that supports this view is to be found in the work of Michael Oakeshott. In challenging this theory of literary education and the philosophy of knowledge that informs it, the article discloses in Oakeshott's work evidence of a more nuanced and defensible view of the role of literature in education.

     

试论语文学科研究性学习特征

语文学科研究性学习是在语文教师指导下，学生从语文学习和社会现实生活中选择并确定自己感兴趣的研究问题，以自主性和探究性学习为基础，通过个人与他人合作的方式从事学习的全新模式。合作性是其提倡的方式；开放性是其外部环境；问题性是其基本方法；综合性是其重要桥梁：实践性是其有效途径；过程性和成果性是其评价目标。从而构成了语文学科研究性学习的基本特征。     

The Task of the Teacher and the Notion of Responsibility: a Moral and a Sociological Issue

Abstract

The article suggests that the teacher's professional responsibility is both a moral and a social concept but that it has been little examined. It is suggested that the concept has suffered from too narrow an interpretation under role theories. One source of philosophical ideas (from Richard Niebuhr) for re‐interpreting and broadening the concept of responsibility is examined. Finally a proposal is made for a new use of the concept particularly associated with a positive assumption of responsibility by the professional teacher.     

The Notion of Proof in the Context of Elementary School Mathematics

Despite increased appreciation of the role of proof in students’ mathematical experiences across all grades, little research has focused on the issue of understanding and characterizing the notion of proof at the elementary school level. This paper takes a step toward addressing this limitation, by examining the characteristics of four major features of any given argument – foundation, formulation, representation, and social dimension – so that the argument could count as proof at the elementary school level. My examination is situated in an episode from a third-grade class, which presents a student’s argument that could potentially count as proof. In order to examine the extent to which this argument could count as proof (given its four major elements), I develop and use a theoretical framework that is comprised of two principles for conceptualizing the notion of proof in school mathematics: (1) The intellectual-honesty principle, which states that the notion of proof in school mathematics should be conceptualized so that it is, at once, honest to mathematics as a discipline and honoring of students as mathematical learners; and (2) The continuum principle, which states that there should be continuity in how the notion of proof is conceptualized in different grade levels so that students’ experiences with proof in school have coherence. The two principles offer the basis for certain judgments about whether the particular argument in the episode could count as proof. Also, they support more broadly ideas for a possible conceptualization of the notion of proof in the elementary grades.     

Target setting in the induction of newly qualified teachers: emerging colleagueship in a context of performance management

This paper draws upon a series of linked projects that focused on the induction of new teachers. Newly qualified teachers' (NQTs) experiences of induction are drawn upon to explore the potential implications of new regulations that are currently being implemented in England. It is argued that policy, as it has developed since the mid-1990s, has increasingly emphasized a discourse of 'performance management'. Attention is also drawn, however, to the way that NQTs and their mentors may be influenced by a discourse that emphasizes staff membership, 'belonging' and NQTs' capacity to contribute to development of their schools. It is suggested that the new regulations may be only one strand of induction that is woven into a complex pattern of relationships in which NQTs must locate themselves.     

The Experience of Disseminating the Results of Doctoral Research

Postgraduate study is something of growth industry with, worldwide, a substantial increase in the number of courses offered and students enrolled (Kerlin, 1995). A substantial part of the requirements for the successful completion of a research degree is that the research conducted should be in some way original and also make a worthwhile contribution to knowledge. Given these requirements it would be expected that the dissemination of the results of the research should be a routine part of the process of postgraduate study and its aftermath. However, it would seem that this is not the case and that the progression from completed dissertation to publication is not the universal experience. Certainly, those publications which deal with 'how to' get a research degree rarely if ever specifically address the issue of dissemination at any length. One would assume that supervisors of postgraduate research would see advice about the matter as one of their duties but it is not at all obvious whether this is the case. This article reports the results of two international studies of the experience of 'doing the degree' conducted with samples of 139 and 53 doctoral holders. Specifically, it concentrates on the participants' experiences of disseminating, or otherwise, the results of their research.     

Influence of capitalisation and presence of an article in noun phrase recognition in German: Evidence from eye-tracking

Background

German is exceptional in its use of noun capitalisation. It has been suggested that sentence-internal capitalisation as in German may benefit processing by specifically marking a noun and thus a noun phrase (NP). However, other cues, such as a determiner, can also indicate an NP. The influence of capitalisation on processing may thus be context-dependent, that is, dependent on other cues. Precisely this context dependency is investigated in the current study: Is there an effect of capitalisation on reading and is this affected by the presence of other cues such as a determiner (specifically, an article)?

Methods

We ran an eye-tracking study with 30 German-speaking adults, measuring fixations during sentence reading. Critical NPs either contained correctly capitalised nouns or not and were presented either with or without a determiner.

Results

The results show that both the presence of capitalisation on the noun and the presence of a determiner led to faster reading. When no determiner was present to signal the NP, the presence of noun capitalisation aided reading most.

Conclusions

From these results, we conclude that the influence of capitalisation is indeed context dependent: Capitalisation aids processing most when no other cue is present. Thus, different cues play a role in NP recognition. Based on these findings, we argue that noun capitalisation should not be studied in isolation. We argue that a better understanding of capitalisation as a reading aid is relevant for teaching reading strategies.     

Field of study and partner choice

There is strong assortative mating by field of study. To examine to which extent this is due to self selection or to a causal effect of access to specific ”marriage markets”, we use data from participants in admission lotteries of four oversubscribed studies in the Netherlands. For each of the four studies, we find that the winning compliers of an admission lottery are significantly more likely than the losing compliers to have a partner from the lottery study, whereas losing compliers are only marginally more likely to have a partner from the lottery study than would occur under random matching. These results indicate that assortative mating by field of study is largely due to marriage market access and that self selection plays a minor role. $JEL$-codes: I26, J12, J13.     

The Measurement of Progress and the Role of Education

Some talk of well-being, others of sustainable development, and some of progress. They may differ in their terminology, but those who preach these ideas are part of a growing global consensus — a consensus that believes societies need to look beyond Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to develop a more holistic view of the directions in which they are heading. The strength of the consensus is evidenced by the thousands of initiatives worldwide that seek to measure societal progress. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is advocating and supporting this work through its Global Project on Measuring the Progress of Societies. The article focuses on two areas.

• • Global views on measuring progress and well-being. Why do increasingly many people consider that measuring progress and well-being is important? What are they trying to achieve and is any agreement emerging around what ‘well-being’ is and how it can be measured?
• • Education and well-being. Do, and should, measures of ‘education’ play a role in any set of key indicators that seek to assess societal well-being? And what are the links between how educated a society is and how, indeed whether, it is progressing against other key economic, social and environmental concerns?

     

On Martyn Hammersley's Critique of Bassey's Concept of the Fuzzy Generalisation

This article is a further contribution to a critique of Michael Bassey's concept of 'fuzzy generalisations' as a form of dissemination of educational research. Martyn Hammersley has questioned both the uniqueness, and validity, of 'fuzzy' generalisation; the former in terms of a misunderstanding about the nature of generalisation as a whole, and the latter in relation to the potential for circumventing the research community's role in validation. It is argued here that, whilst in agreement with the first of these criticisms, the second depends upon the perspective taken, and that, from the perspective of the practitioner--as opposed to the researcher--(external) validity is a question of 'usefulness' within a particular context rather than generalisability across contexts. Furthermore, generalisations which state what will happen to a practitioner may fail to take account of the fact that he or she is far from being a passive recipient of the research.     

The limits of science

The present discussion is not put forward with the usual pride of the scientist who feels that he can make an addition, however small, to a problem which has aroused his and his colleagues’ interest. Rather, it is a speculation of a kind which all of us feel a great reluctance to undertake: much like the speculation on the ultimate fate of somebody who is very dear to us. It is a speculation on the future of science itself, whether it will share, at some very distant future, the fate of “Alles was entsteht ist Wert dass es zu Grunde geht”*. Naturally, in such a speculation one wishes to assume the best of conditions for one’s subject and disregard the danger of an accident that may befall it, however real that danger may be.