Exploring the Impact of Prior Experiences in Non-Formal Education on My Pedagogy of Teacher Education

The purpose of this article is to use self-study methodology to analyze critically the impact of 30 years of non-formal education on my development as a teacher educator. I begin within a particular conception of self-study research and make a case for situating martial arts as non-formal education. The data for this article are presented as a series of episodes, in which I write a short paragraph about each phase in my development as a martial artist and comment on my approach to learning and teaching, where appropriate, during each episode. At the end of the article, I draw several links to self-study literature and to my own understanding of teacher education. In so doing, I demonstrate the value of examining the impact of non-formal education experiences as a teacher educator.     

Secularisation and the Securitisation of the Sacred a Response to Lewin’s Framing of the Gearon–Jackson Debate

In this article, I make a response to Lewin’s insightful and judicious contribution to the Gearon–Jackson debate. I address the central and important arguments made by Lewin in relation to three aspects of my theoretical orientations on religion in education: (1) what Lewin rightly identifies as my ‘propositional’ interpretation of religion; (2) the politicisation of religion as secularisation; and (3) the securitisation of religion in education as a ‘securitisation of the sacred’. I argue some theoretical framing for this is necessary and that an engagement with the (propositional) realities more helpful than their denial, and that precisely because religion is propositional it can be so used or directed to political and security purposes. In sum, to ensure there is no sense of equivocation in my response I greatly welcome Levin’s intervention, but defend my propositional interpretation of religion and defend too my conceptualisation of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education. Prompted by Jackson’s critique and Lewin’s subsequent intervention, this response is offered then as a bridge to facilitate further theorisation of the politicisation and securitisation of religion in education as an aspect of secularisation.     

The Oppressor Within: A Counterstory of Race, Repression, and Teacher Reflection

In this paper, I offer my own counterstory of matriculating through a teacher education program as an African American student on a predominately White campus as a reference point for thinking through how racism operates through teacher education’s dominant discourse and practice of teacher reflection. It is an important story to tell primarily because it touches on a largely unexplored dimension of teacher reflection. While the large majority of the literature has focused on how to prepare White preservice teachers to teach in a culturally and racially complex world, little qualitative attention has been given to the preparation of nonwhite students. While there are a few select and important articles that touch on some of the challenges African American students face in predominately White teacher education programs, including covert and overt racism, none focus on how teacher reflection might reproduce these dynamics. Thus what the literature on teacher reflection often suggests is that it is a racially neutral practice. In this essay, however, I suggests otherwise, by providing an intimate and critical look at my process of learning to be a reflective practitioner. The question I seek to grapple with is quite simply, “What does teacher reflection work to repress?”     

Dewey called them Utopians,I call them ancestors

Abstract

In this article, I will describe how the Utopians whom John Dewey once referenced are possibly the ancestors of Indigenous peoples, in this case, ancestors of the Diné. I will describe a Diné philosophy of education through the Kinaa?dá ceremony which was the first ceremony created by the Holy People of the Diné to ensure the survival of the people. I frame this ceremony as an educational experience that illuminates the similarities between the Diné and Utopian philosophies of education. It is through an understanding and experiencing of the Kinaa?dá that one can fully experience a real example of the ‘Utopian schools.’ It is through an upbringing within a non-acquisitive paradigm, ontologically and epistemologically, that one can fully envision this society that William Schubert explains through a compilation of various philosophers and theorists in order to make it understandable to an acquisitive society. The oral teachings from my ancestors through songs, stories and ceremonies that have been passed down to the current generations prove that the utopia once existed and that some ‘Utopians’ still exist. This explanation of a Diné philosophy of education through the Kinaa?dá ceremony is my lived example of what Dewey seemed to have dreamt or found in another dimension. I claim that the Utopians Dewey witnessed were possibly Indigenous peoples.     

Understanding Candidates’ Learning Relationships with their Cooperating Teachers: A call to Reframe my Pedagogy

Abstract

This self-study frames the influences of cooperating (or mentor) teachers on teacher candidates in my teacher education classroom as an action-at-a-distance on my pedagogy of teacher education; that is, a tacit set of influences and expectations that teacher candidates develop about my course before it even begins. Interviews with teacher candidates enabled me to develop two conceptual metaphors to think about the relationships candidates develop with cooperating teachers on practicum. The first, freedom with foundation, reflects the fact that teacher candidates hope to have considerable autonomy in their practicum placements while simultaneously having the support from their cooperating teacher to receive meaningful, regular, feedback. The second, power and performance, names the tensions teacher candidates feel in experiencing the practicum as a site of performance rather than as a site of learning. I offer some specific pedagogical ways in which I have responded to these issues before making a turn to self. I examined journal entries from my own experiences as a teacher candidate 20 years ago with a view to understanding the ways in which the two metaphors may have played a role in my own development as a teacher. This research compels me to attend explicitly to action-at-at-distance forces in my teacher education classroom, such as candidates’ relationship with cooperating teachers and my relationships with my former cooperating teachers.     

Philosophy as Education and Education as Philosophy: Democracy and Education from Dewey to Cavell

In the contemporary culture of accountability and the 'economy' of education this generates, pragmatism, as a philosophy for ordinary practice, needs to resist the totalising force of an ideology of practice, one that distracts us from the rich qualities of daily experience. In response to this need, and in mobilising Dewey's pragmatism, this paper introduces another standpoint in American philosophy: Stanley Cavell's account of the economy of living in Thoreau's Walden. By discussing some aspects of Cavell's The Senses of Walden that suggest both apparent similarities and radical differences between Thoreau and Dewey, I shall argue that Cavell discovers rich dimensions of practice in Thoreau's American philosophy, ones that are overshadowed in Dewey's pragmatism: that he demonstrates another way of 'making a difference in practice'. Cavell, as a critical interlocutor of Dewey, from within American philosophy, offers a way of using language in resistance to the rhetoric of accountability and in service to the creation of democracy as a way of life. I shall conclude by suggesting that the enriched tradition of American philosophy from Dewey to Cavell is to be found in their promotion of philosophy as education and education as philosophy.     

Fostering Childish Tendencies in Teacher Education and Young Adult Literature: The Problem of Teaching Ideas You Love

In teaching young adult literature in a teacher education programme at the undergraduate level, I pose the question of how I can best introduce my personal theoretical stances into the formal curriculum and syllabi, without unintentionally conveying such theories to my students as necessary postures. I first outline the theoretical underpinnings that inform my own work: which include psychoanalytic theory, ideas of fantasy and loss in reading experience, the concept of adolescence as a psychic and cultural relation, and the dynamics of forgetting in teacher education. In theorizing part of the process of learning to teach as the productive activation of a person’s internal archive, I then describe the methodological choices I made while constructing my course in young adult literature, where, in reference to Lynda Barry’s One Hundred Demons, my students consider the ways to best approach their own adolescent ‘demons’.     

‘Who’s Afraid of Secularisation?’ A Response to David Lewin

This response to David Lewin states the purpose of my critique of some aspects of Liam Gearon’s work. It clarifies my position on the aims of ‘inclusive’ religious education, rejecting Gearon’s view that REDCo researchers shared a common pluralistic theology, regarding religious education as having a single political aim. It reinforces Gearon’s misrepresentation of the development of the Toledo Guiding Principles. In addressing the concern that religious education serves political ends, I acknowledge that much educational discourse has a political dimension but, in the case of ‘inclusive’ religious education, I argue that an approach based on John Rawls’ view of political liberalism can facilitate understanding of religions. I respond to Lewin’s assumption that my own view of religious language is entirely propositional and I compare the view of religious language expressed by Morimoto, quoted with approval by Lewin, with that of D. Z. Phillips, noting that its adoption implies that religious ‘insiders’ and those with no religious commitments are incapable of mutual understanding. I introduce the interpretive approach as an impartial methodology for religious education. Finally, I invite Lewin to engage with empirical research informing European policy on religious education, relevant to issues of secularity and secularism.     

Moral Education and Literature: On Cora Diamond and Eimear McBride

I argue in this paper for the rich and subtle connections between moral philosophy and literature as they are articulated and explored in the work of the contemporary American philosopher, Cora Diamond. In its significance for broader educational debates—specifically, debates regarding the value of the arts and humanities in a context of global economic collapse—Diamond's work is strikingly original. I argue that it offers much more to educators than the related work of her Anglo‐American contemporaries, among them Martha Nussbaum and Richard Rorty. In development of my position, I read Diamond's 2008 essay, The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy, withA Girl is a Half‐formed Thing, the debut novel of Irish writer Eimear McBride.     

英美分析教育哲学的涨落--基于分析哲学与分析教育哲学关系的探讨

20世纪50-70年代,英美教育哲学的主流是“分析教育哲学”。分析教育哲学在50年代异军突起,60年代盛极一时,70年代日渐式微。分析教育哲学与分析哲学存在“血缘”关系：分析教育哲学的特征与分析哲学在教育领域中的运用息息相关,分析教育哲学遭受诟病与分析哲学受到批评息息相关,分析教育哲学的涨落与分析哲学的兴衰势呈呼应。这种“血缘”关系是影响分析教育哲学涨落的一个重要因素。分析教育哲学之潮在教育哲学领域涌过之后,并非遗产全无。分析教育哲学或改头换面,或新瓶旧酒,对现代教育哲学产生潜移默化的影响。     

The Difference between Chinese and American Higher Education System

This paper describes the differences between the Chinese and American higher education system, and different issues behind these differences along with history and contemporary complexities, and analyzes the reason of its emergence, then how to solve these issues. I studied at Iowa Wesleyan College in America for two and a half years. In order to further understand American higher education system, I interviewed a librarian of Iowa Wesleyan College named Sherril Gibbs. And I have used a lot of data of the department of education USA government from Wikipedia and other sources in my paper. Then this paper finds that Chinese and American higher education system has their own strengths and weaknesses. Both the systems have a need to learn from each other to execute a better education system and to ensure development of all students as per their interest and abilities.     

Themes at the intersections of theory and practice in online and blended education

This is a reflexive account of my experiences teaching online and blended doctoral research methodology courses and seminars. Vacillating between skepticism and affirmation, my thoughts mirror the many issues that arise from my daily professional practice and from what I have discovered in my quest to better understand the nature and workings of online and blended education through scholarly discourse. The purpose of sharing my experiences and points of view is to test a set of my truths among the community of experts on the subject. I refer to these truths as evocative discourses – emergent themes at the intersection of theory and practice of online and blended teaching and learning.     

The Revolutions in English Philosophy and Philosophy of Education

Abstract

This article was first published in 1982 in Educational Analysis (4, 75–91) and republished in 1998 (Hirst, P. H., & White, P. (Eds.), Philosophy of education: Major themes in the analytic tradition, Vol. 1, Philosophy and education, Part 1, pp. 61–78. London: Routledge). I was then a lecturer in philosophy of education at Sheffield University teaching the subject to Master’s students on both full- and part-time programmes. My first degree was in philosophy, read under D. W. Hamlyn and David Cooper and, given their interests, inevitably emphasized the philosophy of language, in particular the work of Wittgenstein in this field. When I subsequently turned my attention to the philosophy of education it seemed obvious to me that there were serious problems with Professor Peters’ approach to language, and I had particular difficulties with his approach to criteria, meaning theory and what seemed an odd interpretation of a transcendental argument. This article thus set out to show that the then dominant form of philosophy of education seemed not to take account of developments in the philosophy of language that preceded Professor Peters’ early work by at least a decade and which cast serious doubt on the enterprise as it was then understood. As the articles in the 1998 collection indicate, I was not alone in thinking there was something amiss, although at the time I seemed to be ploughing a somewhat lonely furrow. In revisiting this early article some 30 years after it was first published I have found to my surprise that there is little I would now change, although I have been forcibly reminded of the very lively discussions Professor Peters and I had over these issues. The fact that there is little I would now add to, or subtract from, my critique is in itself a telling comment on the enduring and influential legacy of the approach to the philosophy of education that Professor Peters championed so powerfully.     

R. S. Peters and the Periphery

Abstract

Paul Hirst claimed that Richard Peters ‘revolutionised philosophy of education’. This does not accord with my experience in the Antipodean periphery. My experience of the work of Wittgenstein, Austin and Kovesi before reading Peters and Dewey, Kuhn and Toulmin subsequently meant that Peters was a major but not revolutionary figure in my understanding of philosophy of education.     

以古典姿态守护现代教育

当下教育生活面临着平庸化的危机,这意味着我们今天实际上迫切地需要以教育哲学意识的不断开启来促成教育实践者主体意识的上升。我们试图把教育哲学定义为理想教育的哲学辩护,意在保持对教育现实的必要距离,由此而激活教育想象的空间,以对理想教育的追寻来促成作为教育人的德性的生成。对于当下的教育而言,不断地探询教育实践的本与源,以古典姿态守护现时代的教育,不失为一种培育教育精神底蕴、激活教育实践可能性的必要路径。     

The Promissory Future(s) of Education: Rethinking scientific literacy in the era of biocapitalism

This article investigates the biopolitical dimensions that have grown out of the union between biocapitalism and current science education reform in the US. Drawing on science and technology study theorists, I utilize the analytics of promissory valuation and salvationary discourses to understand how scientific literacy in the neo‐Sputnik era has deeply involved educational life in biocapitalist circuits of exchange and production. I lay out this emerging terrain of ‘futuricity’ through a biopolitical analysis of the National Academies highly influential policy recommendation on science education, Rising Above the Gathering Storm as well as the Association of American Universities' National Defense Education and Innovation Initiative. Here it is argued that the educational subject usually seen as a site of human capital investment can better be understood as a ‘biovalue’ in at least two senses: the educational subject's body as a site of investment and as an extractable source of value directly related to the larger globally competitive regime of the rapidly growing bioeconomy. I conclude my analysis of the vital politics at play in the biocapitalist articulation of science education with an alternative model of scientific literacy that is based in what I call biodemocratic practices. I explore such a rereading of scientific literacy through the example of the GrowHaus—a sustainable urban farm situated in a marginalized community in a major US city. The GrowHaus offers a model of scientific literacy that rejects extractive ethics associated with biocapitalist production and instead promotes a sustainable and socially just practice of science.     

The knowledge gap: examining the rhetoric and implementation of peer education for HIV prevention in Myanmar

In this paper, I report on an examination of the rhetoric and implementation of peer education in Myanmar. I demonstrate that while there was widespread consistency on interviewees' views of what peer education should involve, there was a significant gap between this rhetoric and the ways in which peer education was implemented, particularly in relation to the training of peer educators. It is my argument that this gap occurred because of failure to utilise, or even recognise, a particular form of knowledge: knowledge as phronesis, which is most commonly translated as ‘practical wisdom’ and incorporates factual, emotional and experiential knowledge. Instead, as I show, the pedagogic processes in use in peer education practice in Myanmar drew on an (unexpressed) understanding of knowledge as episteme: a form of knowledge that is facts-based, technical and presumed objective.     

The Strict Analysis and the Open Discussion

A crucial challenge in terms of research methods in philosophy of education is that of combining philosophical ways of analyzing and arguing, with the dialogical and pluralist way of thinking needed in educational research. In this article I describe how I dealt with this challenge in my research project focusing on educational implications of the positions defended in the debate on constructivism and realism between Israel Scheffler and Nelson Goodman. The key to my methodological approach is an emphasis on the role of a thoroughgoing process of analysis and synthesis. I see this process as the prerequisite for profound philosophical dialogue on education.     

Adapting the boundaries in primary physical education: an account of my learning,my educational influence and improved practice

In this paper I explore how I have come to theorise my work as a critical emancipatory practice as a lecturer in primary physical education (PE). I give an account of what I understand to be the epistemological foundations and practices of practitioner research and my potential educational influence in my own and other practitioner-researchers’ learning. I explain how I have generated my living educational theory of practice and discuss the changes in my learning from a propositional approach towards a dynamic epistemology of practice that is grounded in inclusional and dialogical ways of knowing. Within my paper I position myself as a professional educator and researcher, and share the exciting and transformational experiences of teaching and learning in evolving action research cycles of practice. I view my learning to date as an active act, working with the novice teachers I support to offer improvement and change in our future practice. I celebrate my reconceptualised view of education as a learner from within my practice and explain my move from knowledge transfer to knowledge co-creation. I make an original contribution to educational knowledge by explaining how I try to inspire others to research their practice and contribute to a new scholarship of educational enquiry.     

Taking a Return to School: Using Self-Study to Learn about Teacher Educator Practice

The work of teacher educators is complex and multifaceted and requires knowledge of pedagogy and practice in both schools and teacher education institutions. This complexity, combined with calls for teacher educators to work in close partnership with schools, sees some in teacher education working in hybrid roles and across the boundaries of schools and universities. Drawing on a self-study conducted over a one-year return to teaching, I explore my return home to teach in a secondary school and I examine the continuing impact of this experience on my practice as a teacher educator. Using the concept of tensions as a conceptual framework to analyse the data I explore three tensions in this article: (1) teacher as technician versus teacher as pedagogue; (2) challenging versus being responsive to other’s views of learning; and (3) teacher versus teacher educator identity. I explore how a return to teaching in school and the tensions I experienced enabled me to develop my practice and understandings as a teacher educator. I argue that rich professional learning can result from using self-study to examine teacher educator practice, particularly for teacher educators working in hybrid roles and partnership contexts.