Serpents and Sheep: The Harriman Expedition, Alaska, and the Metaphoric Reconstruction of American Wilderness

This article examines one mechanism for the radical change in public perception of wilderness. The published papers of the Harriman Expedition, a scientific expedition at the end of the nineteenth century, are used to illustrate a process that I call “metaphoric reconstruction.” I argue that conceptual metaphors are one of the tools through which texts and rhetorical contexts can be mutually transformative.     

Globalisation, identity, and nation: Australian and American undergraduates abroad

In this essay, I explore how two groups of undergraduates — Americans and Australians — participate in the reformulation of the “global imagination” through their experiences of studying abroad. Specifically, I question the assumption that the global imagination constitutes one shared, common experience that is the same across nations. In contrast, I demonstrate that though American and Australian students are certainly among the elite in global terms, their shared economic position does not necessarily correspond to a common global imagination. Instead, they have markedly different notions of both national and global identities. American students’ strong national identity often prevents them from exploring the possibilities of global affiliation. Australian students’ relatively weak national identity allows for a robust global sense of place, but is sometimes constrained by a limited tolerance for racial and ethnic diversity. In conclusion, I argue that the global imagination has not one, but numerous manifestations, which have the potential to both enable and constrain the enhancement of justice and democracy in a global context.     

Authority,Inquiry, and Education: A Response to Dewey's Critics

In this article I seek to investigate and to rebut charges that Dewey had either too authoritative a conception or use of philosophical and educational inquiry, or not enough of an authoritative use. I look specifically at two critics, one in the discipline of education and one in the discipline of history. These two are, respectively, Clarence Karier and J. P. Diggins. In the final analysis, I conclude that Dewey's talk of authority generally, and his talk of inquiry specifically, functions according to the needs and problems of the community that it take place in, and cannot, therefore, be hooked to some larger, metaphysical end or aim beyond this.     

Indoctrination,Moral Instruction,and Nonrational Beliefs: A Place for Autonomy?

The manner in which individuals hold various nonevidentiary beliefs is critical to making any evaluative claim regarding an individual's autonomy. In this essay, I argue that one may be both justified in holding nonrational beliefs of a nonevidentiary sort while also being capable of leading an autonomous life. I defend the idea that moral instruction, including that which concerns explicitly religious content, may justifiably constitute a set of commitments upon which rationality and autonomy are dependent. I situate this discussion against the backdrop of a minimalist notion of autonomy. I then consider the case for nonrational beliefs, examining the difference between those whose content is objectionable on evidentiary grounds and those that are immune to verification. Next, I consider the indoctrination/moral instruction distinction through examining the various ways in which indoctrination is defined. I also consider the role that value coherence plays in shaping our identities, paying particular attention to fundamental commitments as defined by our respective families, cultures, and communities. Finally, I argue that individual psychology is central to our ability to assess the outcome of an upbringing purported to be indoctrinatory, and I emphasize the important role that experience and agency play in enabling us to evaluate our beliefs.     

The Unity of Teaching,Learning, and Doing (November 2, 1927)

The unity of teaching, learning, and doing is our school's instructional policy. Our school's foundation stands upon this slogan, and there is no task more important than making this slogan crystal clear. But, strangely enough, I never gave a speech about this theme in my school, and my comrades never expressed serious questions about the slogan. Everyone seemingly believed this to be the daily diet at Hsiao-chuang School, and there was no point in wasting breath discussing it. But recently I ran across two things which made me feel that among our comrades there were some who really did not understand the meaning of our instructional policy. One occurred when I saw one instructor's notes. His activities were divided into three phases, called the teaching phase, the learning phase, and the doing phase. This is the separation of teaching, learning, and doing, not the unity of teaching, learning, and doing. The second occurred when I read an article by a colleague on Hsiaochuang School in Notes on Rural Education [Hsiang-chiao tzuhsün]. In it he says, "The extracurricular activities at Hsiaochuang School are the teaching, learning, and doing of agriculture." But, there is no term "extracurricular activities" in the dictionary of the school that unifies teaching, learning, and doing. "Extracurricular activities" is a declaration that life is divorced from curriculum and that teaching, learning, and doing are divorced from one another. This spring Mr. Shen Hung started an education unit for movie performers. On the enrollment announcement it said they used the "teaching," 'learning," and "doing" methods. When I saw the announcement, I felt that Mr. Hung had not completely understood the unity of teaching, learning, and doing. If he had really understood, he certainly would have written the "teaching, learning, and doing" method and certainly would not have written the "teaching," 'learning," and "doing" methods. His misunderstanding is of the same sort as the two misunderstandings mentioned above. Having experienced these two reminders in succession, I felt that unless I talked this matter over thoroughly with everyone beginning with the fundamentals, there might be a really great misunderstanding. If there is misunderstanding in thought, contradictions will inevitably arise when applying the thought. Therefore, it is imperative to discuss this matter at least once. When I came back to the country and saw that teachers here just concerned themselves with teaching and students just concerned themselves with receiving teaching, I knew for sure that there was need for reform. This situation was worse in the universities. The instructors were called professors [literally, transmitters of teaching], and everyone thought that to be called "professor" was an honor. Their methods were called pedagogy [literally, teaching transmission methods]. It was as if they were using knowledge as a rescue operation. It was at that time that I proposed replacing "teaching transmission" with "teaching and learning." At the Nanking Upper-Level Normal School discussion meeting on educational affairs, I stood at the podium for two hours but could not get it passed, and, as a result, I did not get the title Chairman of Educational Curriculum. But, in 1919, in response to an article in Shih Pao [a Shanghai newspaper] by Chiang Monlin, a leader of the new educational tide, I wrote an article on the unity of teaching and learning, advocating that teaching methods ought to be based on learning methods. At this time, the head of education in Soochow approved the use of the teaching-learning method. After the May Fourth Movement, our colleagues at Nanking Upper-Level Normal School became incomparably stronger, so I changed all of the "teaching methods" in the curriculum to "teaching-learning methods." This was the beginning of putting the unity of teaching and learning into practice. Later, when the new education system was promulgated, I went one step further and proposed that as things are done, so they are learned, and as they are learned, so they are taught. Therefore, teaching methods should be based on learning methods and learning methods on doing methods.     

Science, Worldviews, and Education

Whether science can reach conclusions with substantial worldview import, such as whether supernatural beings exist or the universe is purposeful, is a significant but unsettled aspect of science. For instance, various scientists, philosophers, and educators have explored the implications of science for a theistic worldview, with opinions spanning the spectrum from positive to neutral to negative. To delineate a mainstream perspective on science, seven key characterizations or “pillars” of science are adopted from position papers from the world’s largest scientific organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Based on those pillars and an examination of scientific method, I argue that the presuppositions and reasoning of science can and should be worldview independent, but empirical and public evidence from the sciences and humanities can support conclusions that are worldview distinctive. I also critique several problematic perspectives: asserting that science can say nothing about worldviews and the opposite extreme of insisting that science decisively supports one particular worldview; weakening science so severely that it lacks truth claims; and burdening science with unnecessary presuppositions. Worldview-distinctive conclusions based on empirical evidence are suitable for individual convictions and public discussions, but not for institutional endorsements and scientific literacy requirements.     

Children,Gender, and Language Teaching Materials

This subject was at first one of the topics selected for my assignment "Gender and Education." After the teacher told us in class about some of the gender problems that exist in teaching materials, a light seemingly lit up before our eyes: How was it that there were such problems in the language teaching materials that had commanded so much "respect"? We had never noticed or suspected such problems. At the time, the teacher did not say what direct effects these problems had on children, but examined teaching materials from the perspective of feminism supported by many theoretical backgrounds. Since I have always loved children, I like to listen to their voices, am highly interested in their ways of thinking, and am often curious about such things. On top of that, the qualitative (zhi xing) research methods I had once learned gave me confidence that I could convincingly present these interesting things; they were not absurd, and perhaps people could find value in them. Hence, I had a strong desire to know how children saw their language teaching materials. How far from or how close are the children to their textbooks? What do they see in them? Have the gender issues in the teaching materials come to the attention of children? How do these affect elementary school students? We wished to bring attention to the ways teaching materials affected children's gender concepts.     

Taking a Knee,Making a Stand: Social Justice,Trump America,and the Politics of Sport

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes the role of sport protest under the current United States presidential administration. Protest has long been a feature of sporting rituals; social unrest in this realm is not new. However, at this moment, activism in sport allows us to see larger political alliances, affinities, and solidarities in a particularly useful way. I argue that the world of sport is fostering discussion, debate, and dissent that are uncommon and largely unavailable in other spaces, which, in turn, is opening up a new counterpublic. I offer two examples of challenges athletes have made to anti-Black racism, class inequality, and sexism, with one highly visible, and one less visible. And I contend that these actions are refusals that both draw on and differ from the iconic sporting refusal of the 1960s Civil Rights era–the image of the Black athlete standing alone on the victory stand–by highlighting the role of symbolic action in prompting democratic deliberation.     

The ethical claim of partiality: practical reasoning,the discipline,and teacher education

Practical reasoning refers to a teacher's capacity to discern particulars and make wise judgements about how to act in pedagogical situations. But how do teachers know what is right? How are teachers' preferences to be grounded and their choices justified? I explore the disciplines as one source of moral perception. Assuming that narrative unities underscore the coherence and continuity of an individual's experience, I generated data in the context of a 2‐year teacher education programme. The case study of an aspiring teacher of secondary school language arts illustrates how the intellectual virtues of a discipline can influence a student teacher's practical reasoning. I conclude that teacher educators must attend to the complex ways in which a prospective teacher's prior discipline may influence aspiring teachers' orientations to experience, their consideration of educational ends, and, finally, their characters.     

Constructing Academic Community: Power, Relationality, Hospitality, and Conversation

Academic community can be considered from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Exploring it from a philosophical point of view can incorporate other perspectives and identify basic common agencies that enable or diminish community. Using a philosophical organic perspective, I explore the four common agencies of power, relationality, hospitality, and conversation. I have primarily in mind the academic community that faculty create.Power can be used unilaterally or relationally. The former emphasizes control and yields a thin concept of community as an aggregation or collection of individuals. Relational power emphasizes connectivity and the common good, yielding a balanced concept of community as individuals in relationship. Emphasizing radical openness to the other, hospitality becomes a cardinal academic virtue in the framework of relational power. Hospitable academic communities are created and sustained through conversation, as Michael Oakeshott helps us to see.Although the concept of academic community advanced here is a rigorous one, it can serve as a regulative idea of what we are at our best. That is, it is both a standard against which to measure ourselves and a lure that can draw us out of ourselves.     

Derrida,Friendship and Responsible Teaching in Contrast to Effective Teaching

Educational theorists working within the tradition of Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas’s thought, posit teaching to be a site of implied ethics, that is, a realm in which non-violent or less violent relations to the other are possible. Derrida links ethics to the realm of friendship, enabling one to understand teaching as a site of the ethics of friendship. I clarify how friendship, as a re-metaphorization of differance, opens us up to a conception of teaching that provides a counterpoint to the current discourse of ‘effective’ teaching. I draw out the implications of the Derridean conception of friendship for the educator in his or her philosophical orientation towards teaching and attempt to show that friendship points the educator towards an orientation that enables a ‘fine tuning’ and opening up of one’s sense of obligation and responsibility to one’s students in ways that cannot be circumscribed to current or institutionally sanctioned ways of understanding the activity of teaching, especially as it is often envisioned in American public education.     

Rethinking critical mathematics: a comparative analysis of critical, reform, and traditional geometry instructional texts

This paper presents findings from a comparative analysis of three similar secondary geometry texts, one critical unit, one standards-based reform unit, and one specialist chapter. I developed the critical unit as I took the tenets of critical mathematics (CM) and substantiated them in printed curricular materials in which to teach as part of a larger study. The reform and specialist texts were both sections from commercially available textbooks. The primary goal of the textual analysis was to examine how the incorporation of critical or political themes into the required secondary mathematics curriculum transformed this curriculum. Key findings were that the CM text exchanged political for mathematical content and sent class-based messages about students’ academic potential. I conclude by arguing that the CM agenda proposed by advocates in the USA is problematic in terms of promoting equity in mathematics education.     

Community and Learning: contradictions,dilemmas and prospects

In this article I reflect on learning and community and their joint deployment. ‘Community’ evokes images and feelings of security and comfort (‘us’ and ‘ours’), while ‘learning’ evokes a sense of progress and confidence in overcoming obstacles—a lifelong and somewhat breathless journey these days. We learn every day, but what is worthwhile learning? What types of communities are worth learning towards? Such crucial considerations can remain unexamined because these words are so beguiling—every one can agree that learning communities are worthwhile. Together these terms have provided a powerful contemporary discourse for different educational reform agendas. Recent proponents of ‘learning communi ties’ have drawn upon sociocultural theorising of learning initiated by Vygotsky and others in the early 20th century. I suggest that this recent deployment of sociocultural learning theory is opportunistic and reflects an effort to resolve certain endemic pedagogical dilemmas related to how inclusion/exclusion is negotiated, how diversity/uniformity is reconciled, and how membership of a learning community is managed over time. I suggest that our role as learning and/or community theorists is principally to critically reflect on what types of learning and communities are worth striving towards.     

Resistance as method: unhappiness,group feeling,and the limits of participation in a digital storytelling workshop

This paper offers a narrative case study of Mirabel, one participant in a digital storytelling workshop for women who were newcomers to Canada, whose experience compelled me to rethink conceptualizations of participation in social justice-oriented, community-based participatory media projects. Drawing on the work of Sara Ahmed, I consider how Mirabel’s resistance to the ‘promise of happiness’ offered by the group was interpreted by others as a failure to participate. Conversely, I suggest that Mirabel’s experience and her digital story are generative for thinking about resistance as a method of participation and a political resource for the group. I argue that conceptualizations of participation should be complicated to include the kinds of agency demonstrated by participants like Mirabel who resist the norms of the digital storytelling workshop and group culture.     

Courage,Uncertainty and Imagination in Deweyan Work: Challenging the Neo‐Liberal Educational Agenda

In my paper, I attempt to accomplish a twofold task: first, to argue that in order to understand important features of Deweyan work, a thorough analysis of the roles that uncertainty, courage and imagination play in Deweyan thought is required. Second, based on such an analysis, I try to show that such features are essential for education to happen. Moreover, courage, imagination and uncertainty taken together work to frame an understanding of education and learning as challenging and even risky enterprises. I develop my analysis against the current, ‘official’ picture of education promoted worldwide, one in which courage, imagination and uncertainty are exactly the features that come to be eclipsed by the neo‐liberal educational agenda. Thus, I claim that education with its roots in imagination and courage is directed toward ‘unattained possibilities’ as its own, proper aim.     

Changing Subjectivities,New Learning

In this article I argue that today's social transformations are of such depth and significance that they demand a fundamental rethinking of the nature of pedagogy. I address 3 closely interwoven facets of change: the nature of subjectivity, where as citizens, workers, and cultural beings, we are more and more required to be users and players rather than spectators or delegates; the growing intensity and significance of lifeworld diversity in which the local is more multifarious and the global more proximate; and the changing means of production of meaning where the semantic web is increasingly ubiquitous and its meanings multimodal. The response of a New Learning must be multifaceted and holistic. More than reactive, the New Learning must be creative, itself an agent of change rather than merely reflective of change. The transformations wrought by the New Learning must be systemic, rhetorical, and evident in the everyday practices of teaching and learning. In the article I highlight just one of a number of possible pathways, and that is the shift from a psychological/cognitivist view of learning to an epistemological one.     

On Language, Meaning, and Validity: Philosophy of Education and the Universal Pragmatics of Habermas

A theory of language may prove conducive to many important and complex issues in philosophy of education. After grouping these issues into four main categories, I explore the possibility and need to back up the categories with a comprehensive theory of language or a cluster of theories of compatible assumptions. I argue that Habermas's universal pragmatics can be presented as one such theory and explain why by reference to its conceptions of meaning and validity, while associating them with specific educational concerns and dilemmas. I suggest that, by breaking with representationalism and expressivism, universal pragmatics can help educational theory keep distances from positivism, performativity, and relativism.     

Rules of Engagement: Boys, Young Men and the Challenge of Effective Sex and Relationships Education

Over the last decade, the relationship between boys, young men and sex and relationships education (SRE) is one that has been characterised by a history of problematising. One of the main difficulties lies with young men's engagement with the subject, and in this article I make a retrospective examination of recent classroom experience with young people and training with professionals who deliver SRE. In the exploration of how best to engage this client group, I argue that masculinity and sexuality are potent issues in their lives and an understanding of these helps explain patterns in young men's behaviour, sexual health and attitudes towards SRE. Autoethnography is used as a method of enquiry to produce short vignettes in which I evaluate my successes and failures with four different boys and young men in terms of engagement. From these primary data, I have distilled four key domains in the form of a framework that I offer as a springboard for researchers, policy-makers and practitioners to consider more positive implications for future practice.     

Education,Illusions and Valuable Fictions

Saul Smilansky's Illusionism suggests that some false beliefs are important enough to warrant the indefinite perpetuation of illusions in order to protect the larger moral community from breaking down. In this article I suggest that this position actualises an old educational paradox where education is expected to protect the common moral community (even if this means maintaining some illusions), and at the same time promote the pursuit of truth. Taking Smilansky's position of Illusionism as a starting point, I argue that while Illusionism highlights and addresses an important problem—that sometimes false beliefs can function to maintain social stability where the truth threatens to unsettle it—relying on indefinite illusions is problematic from an educational point of view. It is difficult to justify that education, being at least in part motivated by truth-seeking, should (or even could) be grounded in illusion. Taking seriously the fact that a dimension of education concerns maintaining social stability, I suggest that Spinoza's notion of fiction can complement Smilansky's view in that it can be conceived in terms of an instrument for maintaining social stability and promoting truth-seeking without assuming that one end is pursued at the expense of the other.