How to Desire Differently: Home Education as a Heterotopia

This article explores the co‐existence of, and relationship between, alternative education in the form of home education and mainstream schooling. Home education is conceptually subordinate to schooling, relying on schooling for its status as alternative, but also being tied to schooling through the dominant discourse that forms our understandings of education. Practitioners and other defenders frequently justify home education by running an implicit or explicit comparison with school; a comparison which expresses the desire to do ‘better’ than school whilst simultaneously encompassing the desire to do things differently. These twin aims, however, are not easy to reconcile, meaning that the challenge to schooling and the submission to norms and beliefs that underlie schooling are frequently inseparable. This article explores the trajectories of ‘better than’ and ‘different from’ school as representing ideas of utopia and heterotopia respectively. In particular I consider Foucault's notion of the heterotopia as a means of approaching the relationship between school and other forms of education. Whilst it will be argued that, according to Derrida's ideas of discursive deconstruction, alternative education has to be expressed through (and is therefore limited by) the dominant educational discourse, it will also be suggested that employing the idea of the heterotopia is a strategy which can help us explore the alternative in education.     

Mori Akira's Education for Self‐Awareness: Lessons from the Kyoto School for Mindful Education

What does it mean to educate for self‐awareness? How does this fit within education, with its other objectives, and other learning processes? These are key questions for more comprehensive versions of the mindful education movement. In order to provide some responses to these questions from a cohesive philosophical position, this article examines the philosophy of education of Mori Akira (1915–1976). It closely analyses his philosophy of self‐awareness (jikaku), while drawing comparisons with other Kyoto School philosophers. In order to fully understand Mori's particular conception of self‐awareness, it traces how this idea developed throughout his entire career: from his first book, The Philosophical Quest for Educational Ideals (1948), which focusses on the questing self‐awareness of the teacher, to the early–middle period (particularly The Practicality and Inwardness of Education, 1955, and Philosophical Anthropology of Education, 1961), which develops a systematic view of the self‐awareness of students, and to his final book, The Fundamental Principles of Human Formation (1977), which re‐examines generativity in light of uncertainty and death. What this trajectory shows is a view of education centred on self‐awareness and dynamically wrestling with key educational paradoxes, potentially deepening the philosophical grounding of mindful education.     

Neoliberalism and Pedagogical Practices of Alienation: A Case Study Research on the Integrated Curriculum in Greek Primary Education

In this article, we present insights from an ethnographic research that investigated the concept of citizenship in primary schools in Greece. We explored children’s experiences of citizenship in school approaching citizenship as a set of habits that prescribe what is considered ‘legitimate’ in the public sphere. We focused on structures and agents inside and outside the school classroom and the way they may interfere with pedagogical practices and relationships. This work reveals a vicious circle of asymmetrical relationships and hierarchical structures between the society and the school that entrap teachers in assessment-oriented pedagogical practices. We argue that the emergent loyalty of the educational system to traditional pedagogical approaches premised on competition fosters pupils’ incomprehension of the importance of social solidarity. It also contributes to their withdrawal from the public sphere, undermining the transformative potential of education. With the use of a diverse sample, we highlight the shortcomings of the integrated curriculum introduced in 2001, in successfully promoting critical thinking and participatory learner-centred pedagogy, and we discuss the implications for the transformative potential of education arising from the adherence to the implementation of European education policy that is discerned in the text of the newly introduced Curriculum of the ‘New School’.     

Moral Education and Education in Altruism: Two Replies to Michael Hand

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.     

Dissenting Voices: a Reply to Maskell

Duke Maskell ( Journal of Philosophy of Education , 32.2) argues that ‘our idea of education is puerile’ and that we need to rethink it. Drawing on the work of Jane Austen, he essentially reasserts the classic nineteenth‐century ideal of Liberal Education. Yet in so doing, Maskell fails to acknowledge the social and political implications of this ideal. I argue that if we wish to engage in a rigorous philosophical debate on education, we cannot afford to ignore the social and political context implied by our educational concepts. Furthermore, this debate can be enriched by an understanding of alternative, dissenting positions on education, specifically, in this context, that of early Socialist and Anarchist thinkers.     

After Higgins and Dunne: Imagining School Teaching as a Multi‐Practice Activity

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.     

Children's spaces 1 as sites for ethical practices: a ‘School‐as‐a‐Tree’ in an economically impoverished neighbourhood 2

This paper attempts to help us to move our reflections beyond quality issues and introduces an example of an early childhood setting as a site for ethical practices. Drawing from philosophical works by Levinas and Readings and the work by feminists such as Tronto and Sevenhuijsen, it affirms an ethics of care for early childhood education and the need for ethical practices. The ‘School‐as‐a‐Tree’ in an economically impoverished neighbourhood in Lisbon, Portugal, is presented, highlighting intentionalized ethical practices: the choice of population it serves, pedagogical work rooted on ethics, a curriculum based on social concerns, the importance given to staff development and supervision, and to networking with the community. The ‘School‐as‐a‐Tree’ is a locus for ethical practices, for a variety of projects serving a very diverse population, where decision making is constantly redefined. The ‘School‐as‐a‐Tree’ is a site for children's cultures and relationships, for affirming diversity and alterity, for collective commitment, for transformative practices, and for minor politics.     

A good education: girls' extracurricular pursuits and school choice

This paper draws on the case studies of six girls between the ages of 10 and 13 and considers their transition to secondary school and involvement in extracurricular sports. Within it, I explore how the girls' understandings of ‘a good education’ affects both their academic and extracurricular/sporting choices. Despite government educational targets which seem to value ‘performative’ academic results, I argue that ideas about a ‘well‐rounded student’ continue to hold particular resonance for middle‐class parents and students. Conversely, I suggest that models of excellence and achievement within education are increasingly echoed in students' sporting participation and that this has specific consequences for working‐class and middle‐class students. I draw particular attention to the girls' experiences of these systems with a view to their ability to convert physical capital accrued in physical activity into other forms of social or cultural capital.     

Experience is Not The Whole Story: The Integral Role of the Situation in Dewey's Democracy and Education

The central objective of Dewey's Democracy and Education is to explain ‘what is needed to live a meaningful life and how can education contribute?’ While most acquainted with Dewey's educational philosophy know that ‘experience’ plays a central role, the role of ‘situations’ may be less familiar or understood. This essay explains why ‘situation’ is inseparable from ‘experience’ and deeply important to Democracy and Education’s educational methods and rationales. First, a prefatory section explores how experience is invoked and involved in pedagogical practice, especially experience insofar as it is (a) experimental, (b) direct, and (c) social‐moral in character. The second and main section on situations follows. After a brief introduction to Dewey's special philosophical use of ‘situation’, I examine how situations are implicated in (a) student interest and motivation; (b) ‘aims’ and ‘criteria’ in problem‐solving; and (c) moral education (habits, values, and judgements). What should become abundantly clear from these examinations is that there could be no such thing as meaningful education, as Dewey understood it, without educators’ conscious, intentional, and imaginative deployment of experience and situations.     

Sustainable Society and Environmental Education: future perspectives and demands for the educational system

This paper provides an overview of the OECD (CERI) programme on ‘Environment and School Initatives’ (ENSI). It describes the emergence and development of an ecologically‐driven agenda for school change, and its rationale, within a shifting policy‐context in which the environmental concerns of the public are being increasingly acknowledged. The programme can be interpreted as a policy response to public concerns. However, ENSI's agenda, the author argues, radically differs from a school improvement agenda based on economistic assumptions. The idea of ‘sustainable development’ as an education policy goal is examined in the light of these two agendas and found to carry ambiguous meanings. ENSI's agenda is concerned with transforming existing structures and processes of schooling to enable students to play an active role in shaping an ecologically sustainable social and economic order. The school improvement agenda is dominated by concerns about the economic performativity of individuals in society. It only appears to imply a ‘fine‐tuning’ of the traditional structures and processes of schooling rather than any radical transformation. The paper identifies conflicting trends within contemporary education policy contexts that carry very different conceptions of envimomental education for ‘sustainable development’. The author argues that in this situation there is a danger that the ENSI network will lose sight of its radical agenda and fail to sustain its previous momentum.     

Mindfulness In,As and Of Education: Three Roles of Mindfulness in Education

Following the exponential rise in publications on mindfulness in education and the emergence of some critical perspectives on this field, this paper articulates three roles of mindfulness practice in education: Mindfulness in, as and of education. The three are developed based on an examination of the practice as it is shaped by two different socio‐historical narratives, which in turn manifest in different modalities of implementation and aims in the contemporary educational field. While much of the field is governed by ‘mindfulness in education’ within economic‐therapeutic interventions, equal attention is given to ‘mindfulness as education’ as reflected in a whole school approach and to ‘mindfulness of education’ in which the practice radicalises the ethos of critical pedagogy. Describing these three roles, the paper introduces readers to the practice itself, offers a framework for understanding its associations with a variety of educational aims, and critically discusses these associations as well as the diverse pedagogical possibilities that this practice brings to contemporary and future education.     

Teaching and Learning with Wittgenstein and Turing: Sailing the Seas of Social Media

Results of the Boston University Mellon Sawyer seminar 2016–2019 ( www.mellophilemerge.com ) reveal that social and philosophical drives are increasingly central to our uses of technology, including AI. This raises critical challenges for democracy, especially in a hyper‐connected world where social media shapes human conduct in ways we are only beginning to appreciate. A history of the mutual impact of Turing and Wittgenstein on one another points to the contemporary foundational significance of our artful capacity to embed everyday words in forms of life. Wittgenstein's mature focus on forms of life, interlocutory drift, and rule‐following, with its play between the ‘I’ and the ‘we’, was an informed critical response to Turing's idea of a ‘Turing machine’, his analysis of the very idea of taking a ‘step’ in a formal system. Wittgenstein's characterisations of our drive to evade a responsibility in speech, especially by appealing to ‘machines’ or ‘algorithms’ as pure mathematical objects, are invaluable warnings for us. The enduring importance of mutually‐attuned ‘phraseology’ to education may be formulated as a humanistic challenge to the very ideas of ‘computational foundations’ and ‘Big Data’ in our hyper‐connected world.     

Inklusion – Interdisziplinäre Kritik und Perspektiven von Begriff und Gegenstand

The term and schope ‘inclusion’ features prominently in public, political and pedagogical discussion. However, from an academic point in view there is neither a clear understanding of the term, nor it is clarified how the partially contradictory ideas of inclussion as a social principle and inclusion in its realisation in the field of education are related to one another. The article clarifies the term of inclusion by an interdisciplinary academic reflection of the normative settings and single patterns of logic. Therefore, the relationship between ideal and the reality is elaborated by referring to an ethical and philosophical body of thought. Then educational theory is used to reconsider how inclusive principle of the school system can be understood. Finally, implementation measures of the inclusive principle and the aporia linked with them are discussed, amongst others referring to discourses in sociology, school pedagogy and school psychology. Academic perspectives and profession-related implications are discussed using the example of teacher education.     

The Significance of Myth for Environmental Education

Philosophers of education have argued that in order for Environmental Education's goals to succeed, students must form bonds and place attachments with nature. Some argue that immersive experiences in nature will be sufficient to form such attachments. However, this may not be enough, requiring other means of motivating them for environmental stewardship. Here, I explore the role the imagination could play for helping (re)enchant students’ perception of themselves‐in‐relationship‐with nature which could support the work these educators are already doing. I explore philosophical, psychological, and pedagogical domains to begin developing a holistic vision of what imagination could contribute for human‐environmental flourishing. Philosophically, I build from Martha Nussbaum's work that stories imaginatively shape our understanding of ourselves and the world, arguing that story—namely, myth—may have a unique power to enchant student's moral and ethical imaginations. I attempt to synthesise Michael Bonnett's rich ‘primordial’ phenomenology with what some mythologists identify as ‘implicit myth’—both of which are drawing attention to the human‐environmental interrelationship. Psychologically, I posit that if myth of this kind can develop a human‐environmental imagination in students, it may serve to create conditions to motivate students to act for environmental stewardship. Pedagogically, I close by identifying authors who seem to embody this primordial and mythic way of being in the world, arguing that studying their writings may help educators and students cultivate this human‐environmental imagination. I draw particular attention to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poetry for exemplary inspiration and guidance.     

‘Ahead of all Beaten Tracks’: Ryle,Heidegger and the Ways of Thinking

The purpose of this article is to examine two philosophical accounts of thinking—yet examine them anew by considering what I take to be their under‐examined relationship. These are the accounts of Gilbert Ryle and Martin Heidegger. It is often supposed that these two philosophers belong to differing, even conflicting, philosophical traditions. However, this article will seek to demonstrate that an unrecognised affinity exists between them on account of their shared endeavour to venture ahead of the ‘beaten tracks’ of Modern Philosophy. In this way, I will seek to challenge a number of preconceptions that inform the way these thinkers are interpreted and utilised by philosophers of education—particularly preconceptions about Ryle that appear to be active in much ‘thinking skills’ literature. Through exploring certain under‐attended‐to aspects of Ryle's work (including his early essays on phenomenology and his later reflections on the nature of thinking) this article will seek to offer a renewed investigation into these two philosophical accounts of thinking, in terms of both their limitations and the ways of thinking they open.     

Mathematics in Education and Industry

ABSTRACT

The view that education has a role to play in resolving the conflict in Northern Ireland is examined, first by looking at the notions of reconstructionism and cultural pluralism. The religiously segregated school systems are then examined, and the various attempts at intervention are described under the headings, ‘Curriculum change’, ‘Integration’, and ‘Inter‐school co‐operation’. Finally a new research and development project called Inter‐school links is described.     

Educational Value and Models-Based Practice in Physical Education

Abstract

A models-based approach has been advocated as a means of overcoming the serious limitations of the traditional approach to physical education. One of the difficulties with this approach is that physical educators have sought to use it to achieve diverse and sometimes competing educational benefits, and these wide-ranging aspirations are rarely if ever achieved. Models-based practice offers a possible resolution to these problems by limiting the range of learning outcomes, subject matter and teaching strategies appropriate to each pedagogical model and thus the arguments that can be used for educational value. In this article, two examples are provided to support a case for educational value. This case is built on an examination of one established pedagogical model, Sport Education, which is informed by a perspective on ethics. Next, I consider Physical Literacy which, I suggest, is an existentialist philosophical perspective that could form the basis of a new pedagogical model. It is argued, in conclusion, that a models-based approach along with a reconstructed notion of educational value may offer a possible future for physical education that is well grounded in various philosophical arguments and the means to facilitate a wide range of diverse individual and social educational ‘goods’.     

Climate Education: Empowering Today's Youth to Meet Tomorrow's Challenges

This paper provides an introduction to the concept of pedagogical link‐making in the context of teaching and learning scientific conceptual knowledge. Pedagogical link‐making is concerned with the ways in which teachers and students make connections between ideas in the ongoing meaning‐making interactions of classroom teaching and learning. First of all we draw upon socio‐cultural perspectives to outline why we think that ‘link‐making’ is fundamental to science learning and consequently to science teaching and then we identify three main forms of pedagogical link‐making. The related research literature is then used to specify pedagogical link‐making approaches associated with each of the three main forms. Finally, the resultant framework of link‐making forms and approaches is applied in analysing a teaching sequence taken from a UK secondary school science classroom. Part of this analysis involves identifying specific pedagogical tools/strategies that might be employed in the classroom to support link‐making.     

From Meritocracy to Aristocracy: Towards a Just Society for the ‘Great Man’

In the practice of education and educational reforms today ‘meritocracy’ is a prevalent mode of thinking and discourse. Behind political and economic debates over the just distribution of education benefits, other kinds of philosophical issues, concerning the question of democracy, await to be addressed. As a means of evoking a language more subtle than what is offered by political and economic solutions, I shall discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson's idea of perfectionism, particularly his ideas of the ‘gleam of light’ and ‘genius’, as an alternative mode of thinking of human power. Through this Emersonian lens, a provocative shift will be made from meritocracy and ‘mediocracy’ to aristocracy. Emersonian aristocracy destabilizes balanced measures and prevailing discourse about fairness and justice, and makes us reconsider how to achieve a just society in democracy. As an educational implication, I shall propose the idea of citizenship without inclusion—a vision of education for a democratic society in which we learn to live as and with the Great Man.