Autonomy, Critical Thinking and the Wittgensteinian Legacy: Reflections on Christopher Winch, Education, Autonomy and Critical Thinking

In this review of Christopher Winch's new book, Education, Autonomy and Critical Thinking (2006), I discuss its main theses, supporting some and criticising others. In particular, I take issue with several of Winch's claims and arguments concerning critical thinking and rationality, and deplore his reliance on what I suggest are problematic strains of the later Wittgenstein. But these criticisms are not such as to upend Winch's powerful critique of antiperfectionism and 'strong autonomy' or his defence of 'weak autonomy'. His account of autonomy as an educational aim is important and in several respects compelling.     

The 'Neo-liberal' Critique of State Intervention in Education: A Reply to Winch

This paper challenges Christopher Winch's arguments against the neo-liberal critique of state intervention in education. First, the nature of education and its consumers are shown to imply that education can indeed be described as a commodity. Second, even if the prisoner's dilemma does model the provision of education nevertheless self-interest can bring about a co-operative, mutually agreeable solution. Third, while democratic states are unlikely to be able to ensure educational equality or equity, even in the form of adequate educational opportunities for all, the evidence and logic of markets suggest that markets will not similarly be handicapped. Thus in each case, it is argued, the neo-liberal critique of state intervention in education survives largely unscathed.     

Attitudes and expectations: do attitudes towards education mediate the relationship between social networks and parental expectations?

Previous international research has shown that educational goals are fundamental for explaining differences in the educational attainment between individuals. For a better understanding of educational inequality, it is therefore crucial to know more about the mechanisms leading to different expectations. Our paper contributes to this field of research by empirically testing how social networks affect educational expectations of mothers for their children. Furthermore, we try to disentangle the underlying mechanisms by investigating which role resources and attitudes within social networks play in influencing educational expectations. We use quantitative data gathered in three federal states in Germany. The key results indicate that network composition not only has an effect on educational expectations but also on general attitudes towards education. Both attitudes towards education and embedded resources seem to mediate the effect of social ties on educational expectations.     

What is ‘Agency’? Perspectives in Science Education Research

The contemporary interest in researching student agency in science education reflects concerns about the relevance of schooling and a shift in science education towards understanding learning in science as a complex social activity. The purpose of this article is to identify problems confronting the science education community in the development of this new research agenda and to argue that there is a need for research in science education that attends to agency as a social practice. Despite increasing interest in student agency in educational research, the term ‘agency’ has lacked explicit operationalisation and, across the varied approaches, such as critical ethnography, ethnographies of communication, discourse analysis and symbolic interactionism, there has been a lack of coherence in its research usage. There has also been argument concerning the validity of the use of the term ‘agency’ in science education research. This article attempts to structure the variety of definitions of ‘student agency’ in science education research, identifies problems in the research related to assigning intentionality to research participants and argues that agency is a kind of discursive practice. The article also draws attention to the need for researchers to be explicit in the assumptions they rely upon in their interpretations of social worlds. Drawing upon the discursive turn in the social sciences, a definition of agency is provided, that accommodates the discursive practices of both individuals and the various functional social groups from whose activities classroom practice is constituted. The article contributes to building a focused research agenda concerned with understanding and promoting student agency in science.     

Educational Justice and the Value of Knowledge

How should a liberal democratic society value knowledge and understanding, and does this valuation inform how we ought to reason about the justice of our educational institutions? In scholarly and public discourse, it is orthodox to argue that because educational institutions bring about various goods—goods of character such as wellbeing or economic goods such as social mobility – they ought to be structured by principles of political justice. In this paper, I argue that knowledge and understanding valued for its own sake should also inform judgements of educational justice.     

Understanding and enabling marketplace literacy in subsistence contexts: The development of a consumer and entrepreneurial literacy educational program in South India

To function in the economic realm, two important resources that individuals need are finances and know-how. Whereas there has been considerable attention on microfinancing, we describe an educational program that focuses on enabling generic skills about the marketplace and complements these important efforts. We conducted research aimed at understanding lives and marketplaces in subsistence contexts in urban and rural parts of a state in South India. We used the research as a basis for developing a consumer and entrepreneurial literacy educational program. This program uses the “know-why”, or an understanding of marketplaces, as a basis for the know-how of being an informed buyer or seller. Despite the difficulties with abstract thinking that low-literate individuals experience, we enable deeper understanding of marketplaces by leveraging the social skills that participants bring to the program and relating educational content back to their lived experiences. Such understanding can enable individuals to place themselves on a path to lifelong learning. Implications of this work for research and practice in non-formal education are discussed.     

网络民族志:“互联网+”时代教育研究的新路径

在“互联网+教育”时代,教育信息化的发展和普及不仅带来了教育方式的变革,更重构了教育空间、教育情境和教育关系,形成了独特的网络教育文化。网络民族志以网络环境作为主要的研究背景和环境,利用网络媒体平台和互动工具来收集数据资料,以探究和阐释互联网及相关社会文化现象。作为伴随网络文化现象而产生的研究方法,网络民族志对于探究互联网环境下的教育文化具有一定的借鉴作用,通过浸润体验、对话互动、情境追踪和多维分析等具体方法,实现对网络教育现象的整体性认知、共情化理解和过程性透视。文章指出了网络民族志在教育研究中可能面临的问题,为“互联网+”时代教育研究提供了新的路径参考。     

Human Research and Complexity Theory

The disavowal of positivist science by many educational researchers has resulted in a deepening polarization of research agendas and an epistemological divide that appears increasingly difficult to span. Despite a turning away from science altogether by some, and thus toward various forms of poststructuralist inquiry, this has not held back the renewed entrenchment of more narrow definitions by policy elites of what constitutes scientific educational research. The new sciences of complexity signal the emergence of a new scientific paradigm that challenges some of the core assumptions of positivism, while offering the potential to develop a new kind of social science that demands both rigour and imagination in coming to understand the emergence and behaviours of social systems and the subsystems that comprise them. The language, concepts and principles of complexity are central to the development of a new science of qualities to complement the science of quantities that has shaped our understanding of the physical and social worlds. Accomplishing this task promises to 1) open up new investigations that have thus far been beyond the purview of scientific study, 2) allow the study of social phenomena as fully embodied, or at least as more robust models than those represented in the abstracted empiricism upon which the sciences of quantities are predicated, and 3) allow for more coarse‐grained explanations and predictions of social phenomena to be legitimated as scientific. Both educational research and educational practice stand to gain from this expansion of the scientific repertoire to include rigorous and imaginative investigations of phenomena characterized by change and transformation.     

Designing Social Infrastructure: Critical Issues in Creating Learning Environments With Technology

If design research involving technology-based tools is going to impact educational settings, the design process must be extended beyond the tool itself to encompass a broader range of factors such as the classroom social structures (e.g., beliefs about learning and knowledge, learning activities and participant structures, configurations of both physical space and cyberspace). Although prior research has underscored the importance of classroom social structures in technology integration, it has failed to specify the critical design variables that must be taken into account. Only by understanding the critical variables involved is it possible to develop a deep understanding of how and why things work. The Social Infrastructure Framework systematically frames the critical design elements in terms of 4 dimensions: (a) cultural beliefs, (b) practices, (c) socio-techno-spatial relations, and (d) interaction with the "outside world." This article details the design issues associated with each dimension based on examples drawn from a range of educational technologies. This article also describes how the framework can serve to advance the methodology of design research by serving as a tool for both design and analysis.     

If Not Absolute Objectivity,Then What? A Reply to Kauffman and Sasso

Because researchers cannot achieve theory-free observation, it is therefore impossible to attain absolute objectivity. This realization has led to issues of major consequence concerning our understanding of educational research and of ourselves as educational researchers. Specifically, serious questions have been raised about the nature of knowledge, truth, reality, and relativism. In my response to Kauffman and Sasso (2006, this issue), I discuss these issues and make the case that the questions confronting us must be engaged directly if we hope to resolve disagreements about the worthiness of various educational practices.     

A Genealogy of Grit: Education in the New Gilded Age

Recently, due in part to the research of Angela Duckworth, the cultivation of dispositions in education, grit in particular, has gained the attention of educational policymakers and the educational research community. While much of the research has focused on how to detect grit, there has been little discussion regarding how grit came to be valued as a noncognitive disposition and what its recent prominence might tell us about current social conditions. In this essay, Ariana Gonzalez Stokas attempts to illuminate grit as a concept that has undergone a number of conceptual transformations in American culture. She seeks to show how grit developed as a way to justify social and economic inequality and how this history is bound up in its conceptual structure. Through conducting a genealogical excavation, Stokas reveals the relationship of grit to a cluster of cultural events that occurred at the turn of the twentieth century in the confluence of boxing, cowboys, and Theodore Roosevelt, and aims to illuminate how grit has served as a tool for convincing society that achievement occurs through heroic individual effort despite inadequate social supports. This historical understanding of grit, Stokas concludes, may help us to recognize that the energy and resources currently spent on cultivating grit in children would be better spent on ameliorating the problems of social and economic inequality.     

Facebook: a potentially valuable educational tool?

This paper is concerned with the educational value of Facebook and specifically how it can be used in formal educational settings. As such, it provides a review of existing literature of how Facebook is used in higher education paying emphasis on the scope of its use and the outcomes achieved. As evident in existing literature, Facebook has been used mainly for social networking purposes through the establishment and collaboration of social groups in educational settings. However, a set of recent studies has exemplified how Facebook can provide an empowering means for achieving educational goals and supporting students develop crucial skills (e.g., writing, networking, collaborating) by serving as members in various learning communities. Concluding, we argue that Facebook can provide a valuable pedagogical tool that enhances student learning. Hence, future research towards further exploring Facebook’s use in educational settings is warranted for the purpose of producing scientific evidence about the ways in which Facebook could be utilized to enhance learning.     

Preparing Teachers for Anti‐oppressive Education: International movements

While theories and recommendations continue to proliferate in the educational research literature on what it means to teach towards social justice and to prepare teachers for such teaching, so do concerns that these theories and recommendations fail to account for the ways that the contexts of teaching—cultural contexts, national contexts, political contexts—always affect teaching in idiosyncratic, unpredictable and even contradictory ways. Given that much educational research fails to trouble the US‐centric nature of prevailing conceptions of social justice and teacher education, it is important to learn about the unique as well as shared challenges facing teacher educators around the globe. In this article, teacher educators from Asia, Africa, North America and South America offer a sampling of initiatives in anti‐oppressive teacher education; that is, initiatives to prepare teachers to teach various subject matters to various age groups, addressing various forms of oppression in various cultural and community contexts.     

关于人生观与性格关系的研究

我国长期以来在人生观教育理论和实践方面存在普遍而深刻的问题,解决问题的有效方法是运用心理学性格理论揭示人生观的奥秘:性格的态度特征就是人生观真实而具体的体现。这一认识及其应用,不仅能明显地提高人生观教育的效果,而且对人们的各种社会生活实践都具有重要意义。     

比较教育研究价值实现的社会条件与教育基础

价值实现是比较教育研究的落脚点和最终目的,但比较教育研究的价值实现从来就不是一个自然和自发的过程,它需要一定的社会条件与教育基础。从理论上看,研究该问题有助于揭示比较教育价值实现的内在机理,也有助于构建比较教育价值论;从实践来看,研究该问题有助于充分发挥比较教育研究的实用性功能。全球化、国际化和一体化的国际背景为比较教育研究提供了新的社会基础和条件,也为其价值实现提供了新的更大可能性。一定社会的需求构成了比较教育学科产生和发展的动力源,并且社会需求的大小及强弱还在很大程度上制约与决定了比较教育研究价值实现的程度等。比较教育研究的价值是在比较教育的开放性与教育结构体系的开放性相契合的过程中实现的。同时,教育发展水平的差异性、认识和把握本国教育与比较对象国的教育、教育决策和教育政策制定过程中的科学化和民主化、对教育认识的提高及其优先发展战略地位的确立等也构成了比较教育研究价值充分实现的重要教育基础。     

教育制度道德性的依据及其价值

教育制度的道德性问题是关于教育制度的道德蕴涵和伦理价值取向的思考,在我国社会转型的进程中,这是一个必须正视的理论问题和实践课题。对教育制度道德性问题的关注,并非是道德作为一种社会价值导向功能的“越位”,它有其历史渊源及理论依据。研究教育制度的道德性问题,对于我国教育法律法规的发展与完善具有十分重要的意义。     

Metaphysics and methods in moral enquiry and education: Some old philosophical wine for new theoretical bottles

If we reject sentimentalist accounts of the nature of moral motivation and education, then we may regard some form of reason as intrinsic to any genuine moral response. The large question for moral education is therefore that of the nature of such reason—perhaps more especially of its status as knowledge. In this regard, there is evidence of some recent drift in both ethics and theory of moral educational theory towards more instrumental pro-social skill acquisition conceptions of moral reason as more methodologically amenable to the empirical research methods of contemporary social science. This article sets out to show that the work of three great philosophers—all of whom have continued to exercise significant influence on modern and contemporary moral educational theorising and research—points in various ways to more epistemically robust conceptions of moral reason as meaningful personally formative knowledge that is not so readily amenable to natural or social scientific understanding and explanation.     

社会教育与其他教育关系之争的历史考察

社会教育与学校教育、家庭教育的关系以及与其相近、相关的各种教育关系之争,是近代教育现代化进程中的一次教育大讨论,引起众多教育家以及教育学者的关注,留下了大量的富有启发性的言论和教育观点。社会教育与各种教育关系之争,源起于国外各种教育思潮的影响以及学习外国教育的失望,肇始于国内教育对象的复杂性与多样性,具有深刻的教育思想渊源与教育制度探索的背景。这些争论“话语”具有丰富的教育学价值与教育史价值,为探索适应国情的,具有中国特色与中国价值的教育学思想体系、话语体系以及制度体系,为书写中国近代国民教育史,留下了宝贵的本土经验。     

Education,Social Capital and the Accordion Effect

The ‘accordion effect’ is an effect of language which allows us to describe one and the same thing more or less narrowly. Social capital has been conceived in terms of our access to institutional resources, but also in terms that extend to the levels of trust and related resources found in the social networks we are embedded in. The former conception is narrower, favoured for its specificity and analytical utility. The latter conception is broader, favoured for its acknowledgement of context, including the qualitative features of relations between individuals and within communities. These conceptions appear incompatible, but both have numerous adherents in educational research, and it is unclear whether either can be eliminated without some threat to the intelligibility and explanatory promise of social capital theory in an educational context. This raises hard questions about the domains, questions and methods that the social capital concept is best applied to. Should the concept prove resistant to any defensible specification, this will require a significant revision to the stock of conceptual resources available for understanding and explaining educational progress.     

家庭功能的变迁与教育机会的发展——以社会性别理论为视角

随着现代社会经济的发展和科学技术的进步,人类社会的家庭及其社会功能发生了巨大改变,其中家庭社会实践活动的功能经历了重大变革,特别是家庭的教育功能在家庭与社会发展变革的联系和作用中发挥着重要功效,以不断满足人们生存和社会适应的各种需要以及适应和改变社会环境的需要。在家庭社会功能发展与变迁的过程中,人们依然在不断地追求美好的理想,即接受均等的教育,尽管人们对"教育机会均等"问题的认识和努力存在着一定的文化、传统、观念上的差异,但是追求和实现教育机会的均等仍是社会各级各类教育所要达到的教育目的之一。以女性主义的社会性别理论为依据来反思和分析传统家庭社会功能发展中所充斥着的男性中心思想和意识,可以重新审视家庭社会功能变迁对教育机会发展的影响,不断思考并解决家庭社会功能发展和教育机会发展的关系问题,努力促进社会教育机会平等发展。