Relativism and the Critical Potential of Philosophy of Education

How can philosophy exert its critical function in society and in education if any appeal to independent and even relatively ‘certain’ criteria seems problematic? The epistemological doubts that foundationalist models of justification encounter unavoidably seem to raise this question. In particular, the relativist implications that seem to result from rejecting such models seem to paralyse the critical potential of philosophy of education. In order to explore the possibilities of a conception of educational critique that avoids the pitfalls of foundationalism, I analyse the epistemological dimensions of this much‐feared relativism, illustrating this with some characteristic examples. Solving the problems raised will require an interpretation of critique that leaves our daily sense of critique intact, without literally adopting its—foundationalist—basic assumptions. After systematically developing such an alternative interpretation of critical usage, a non‐relativist but still non‐foundationalist and powerful conception of philosophical critique seems possible. I illustrate results with some examples from philosophy of education.     

Participatory Action Research: issues in theory and practice

Action research is now common in educational and social practices of various kinds. The renaissance of this valuable approach to social enquiry has many virtues, but success is somewhat soured by cooption of some of the techniques occasionally used by action researchers for the technical improvement of practices, the Implicit values of which are poorly understood and timidly questioned. Naive cooption is accompanied by both traditional and new critique. Like most approaches to educational and social research, action research (or some people's impressions of it) has been subjected to critique by theorists of the so‐called post‐modern turn. These critiques have become prematurely Judgemental, and though drawing on what some see as powerful theoretical resources, are somewhat oblivious to the breadth and dynamism of action research theory and practice and dismissive of the achievements of action researchers who often work in contexts decidedly more risky than the academies which nurture and reward critique. Action research remains a diverse and thoroughly Justified and preferred mode of educational and social enquiry, continuing to address the concerns of both its practitioners and its critics.

     

The Utopianisation of Critique: the Tension between Education Conceived as a Utopian Concept and as one Grounded in Empirical Reality

Critique is a concept that is constantly used as an instrument for agreement or disagreement, for reflection and discussion. There is a difference, however, between critique as a historically grounded phenomenon and critique as a utopian conception not situated in any particular socio‐historical context. Educational theory resists reduction to empirical science partly because of its utopian character. Thus tensions that arise within it concerning its individual, social and emancipatory aims mean that it always has a double aspect of being both utopian and socially grounded at the same time. In general there is a tension within the practice of education between upbringing, on the one hand, and self‐emancipation on the other, which is reflected at the level of educational theory in the distinction between normative‐utopian and dogmatic‐empirical elements. Even a utopian critique, however, must make use of the social and historical materials available in order to function, and thus it becomes itself historically situated. This unavoidable situation is one that must be embraced by a self‐consciously utopian form of theorising. Just like other theories of society, the theory of education has two possibilities for self‐definition. It can be conceived of either as a utopian or as a factual theory. In the latter case, it follows social contingency passively, giving itself over to the ‘destiny of Being’ in order to await the ‘result’. But it can also be interested and take part in social processes, and thus contribute to the opening out of thought and culture to utopian considerations. Educational critique, even in the utopian sense, however, has to recognise its own dogmatic elements in order to function as critique. It is thus self‐evident that critique without dogmatism is not only impossible but also senseless. Similarly, educational dogmatism, although it apparently excludes critique by definition, must contain within itself the possibility of new forms of critique based on its own assumptions. Its very reliance on empirical methods to address the solution of unquestioned problems can itself subvert the dogmatic normative assumptions on which that empirical enquiry is based.     

‘To Be Is To Respond’: Realising a Dialogic Ontology For Deweyan Pragmatism

Dewey's pragmatism rejected ‘truth’ as indicative of an underlying reality, instead ascribing it to valuable connections between aims and ends. Surprisingly, his argument mirrors Bishop Berkeley's Idealism, summarised as ‘esse est percepi’ (to be is to be perceived), whose thinking is shown to be highly pragmatist—but who retained a foundationalist ontology by naming God as the guarantor of all things. I argue that while this position is unsustainable, pragmatism could nonetheless be strengthened through an ontological foundation. Koopman's charges of foundationalist ‘givenism’ in Dewey's work, and in his promotion of the scientific method, are not proven. However, Koopman's ‘genealogical pragmatism’ may develop Deweyan educational theory by addressing dilemmas around curricular study. Koopman's arguments also point towards a missing ontological piece in Dewey's theory of knowledge. In the final section of the article I offer a dialogic ontology as compatible with pragmatism. This dialogical ontology provides both an ethical foundation through interrelatedness, and a generative theory of meaning and experience, as emergent from the encounter with difference. In this framework, to be is to respond—or be responded to. I offer the metaphor of ‘realisation’ to capture the human experience implied by this ontological stance.     

Higher Education, Pedagogy and the 'Customerisation' of Teaching and Learning

It is well documented that the application of business models to the higher education sector has precipitated a managerialistic approach to organisational structures ( Preston, 2001 ). Less well documented is the impact of this business ideal on the student-teacher encounter. It is argued that this age-old relation is now being configured (conceptually and organisationally) in terms peculiar to the business sector: as a customer-product relation. It is the applicability and suitability of such a configuration that specifically concerns this contribution. The paper maintains that the move to describe the student-teacher relation in these terms is indeed inappropriately reductive, but not straightforwardly so. The problem arises in that we remain unsure of the contemporary purpose of education. We lack any firm educational ideals that, in themselves, cannot be encompassed by the business paradigm. Indeed, the pedagogical critique of education (broadly, that education is only of use in as much as it is of use to society) extends further than has yet been intimated and prevents one securing any educational ideal that does not immediately succumb to critique. This pedagogical logic is unassailable in any linear way but, when pressed, precipitates an aporetic moment that prevents it from assuming any totalising hold over education. We draw on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida to consider whether one might yet imagine an educational 'quasi-ideal' that will enable practitioners and institutions to counter the effects of customerisation.     

Normalizing catastrophe: an educational response

Processes of normalizing assumptions and values have been the subjects of theoretical framing and critique for several decades now. Critique has often been tied to issues of environmental sustainability and social justice. Now, in an era of global warming, there is a rising concern that the results of normalizing of present values could be catastrophic. Often, when such concerns arise, education is invoked as a remedial tool, a solution to a crisis and a way of imposing change. However, education is a much-used, yet complicated and sometimes paradoxical, term. Appropriate educational responses to ‘catastrophes’ are contentious, messy and inherently interdisciplinary. This paper will explore intersections of educational philosophy, environmental ethics and social theory to provide some considerations for framing educational responses to the ‘normalizing of catastrophe’.     

How to Conceive of Critical Educational Theory Today?

This paper starts from a brief sketch of the ‘classical’ figure of critical educational theory or science (Kritische Erziehungswissenshaft). ‘Critical educational theory’ presents itself as the privileged guardian of the critical principle of education (Bildung) and its emancipatory promise. It involves the possibility of saying ‘I’ in order to speak and think in one's own name, to be critical, self‐reflective and independent, to determine dependence from the present power relations and existing social order. Actual social and educational reality and relations are approached as a limitation, threat, alienation, re/oppression or negation of ultimate human principles or potential. The task of critical educational theory becomes one of enabling an autonomous, critical, self‐reflective life. While ‘critique’ and ‘autonomy’ have meanwhile become commonplace, and ‘critique’ and ‘autonomy’ are reclaimed and required from everybody, we should also consider the question of the relation between an institutional or ideological framework as that which claims to question this frame and to constitute its opposite. The trivialisation of critique is taken as occasion to recall Michel Foucault's analysis of power relations and especially his thesis according to which the ‘government of individualisation’ is the actual figure of power. Starting from the framework offered by Foucault, it can be made clear that the autonomous, critical, self‐reflective life does not represent an ultimate principle but refers to a very specific form of subjectification operating as a transmission belt for power. The autonomous, critical, self‐reflective person appears as an historical model of self‐conduct whereby power operates precisely through the intensification of reflectiveness and critique rather than through their repression, alienation or negation. This brings us back then to the question of how to conceive of the task of a critical educational theory at a time in which critique, autonomy and self‐determination have become an essential modus operandi of the existing order.     

Why the Computer is not Dominating Schools: a failure of policy or a failure of practice?

Despite the hyperbole that has continually surrounded the area of educational computing, for the last 20 years the computer has noticeably failed to permeate the school setting. This has traditionally been attributed to a failure of educational practice to adapt to, and provide for, the educational ‘IT revolution’. However, this article argues that a wider critique of educational computing should be adopted if‐we are to really understand the apparent failure of computers to be integrated into the compulsory educational setting. By examining how educational computing has been, and continues to be, constructed in both educational policy and discourse, the article considers how this ‘writing’ of educational computing is fundamentally at odds with the structure of the school organisation it is meant to merge with     

Limitless provocations of the ‘safe’, ‘secure’ and ‘healthy’ child

This paper arose amongst the making and showing of a film and questions whether there are possibilities for interrupting powerful discursive frames that work at producing ‘the normal child’. Traditionally there has been a lack of interest in the use and critique of visual culture in educational research. Perhaps this lack of interest provides fertile opportunities to know something of the structure of education as a discipline, the rules that structure it and its deep grammar; it may also open up opportunities for disciplinary boundary-crossings where fields that embrace visual culture, such as photography and filmmaking, can bring their playfulness across binaries, including notions of certainty/ambivalence, to qualitative research in education. By turning to art theory, our aims are to interfere with our utopian longings that steadfastly cling to educational notions of the child.     

The Labours of Hercules: Ethical Embodiment and an Erasmian Justification for Higher Education

In the early 1990s, a popular American dorm-room poster luminously asserted crass materialism as ‘JUSTIFICATION FOR HIGHER EDUCATION’. Self-consciously premised on the paradoxical success of my failure or failure of my success as a professor of Renaissance literature and culture, this essay draws on Erasmus’s educational theory of embodiment to critique the poster’s – and by extension our society’s – popular but ethically bankrupt definition of educational success. Specifically, in contrast to the absence or implied presence of any(body) in the poster, it is the presence of the body as a site of ethical evaluation in Erasmian educational theory that carries precisely the transformative potential to steer our society in a more just direction – a direction which should be – must be – the justification for higher education.     

ON THE POVERTY OF PHILOSOPHY: THE METAPHYSICS OF MCLAREN'S "REVOLUTIONARY CRITICAL PEDAGOGY"

In this essay, Scott Ellison examines a line of critical thought in educational theory that has unapologetically sought transcendence in the face contemporary social and political conditions. Under the banner of critical pedagogy, Peter McLaren sees this current period of globalization as representing a worldwide historical crisis requiring a revolutionary struggle that, in turn, is dependent upon a revitalization of critical pedagogy as the necessary tool for overcoming global relations of domination. Armed with Marxist theory and politics, McLaren seeks to use classrooms as social locations for fostering class struggle and global revolution. However, seeking to transcend today's globalized social processes and structures presents unique challenges that McLaren fails to overcome. He is a victim of the utopic turn. In this essay, Ellison offers a sympathetic reading and critique of McLaren's most recent theoretical work; undertakes a modest and preliminary recovery of Marxian theory and method; and concludes by briefly exploring the applicability and utility of this recovery for educational practices in this historical moment.     

Unseen roots and unfolding flowers? Prison learning,equality and the education of socially excluded groups

The objective of this theoretical article is to critique the notion that adult education, in its current marketised formations, might serve the purpose of rehabilitating learners. To date there has been no detailed interrogation by educationalists of the desirability of rehabilitation as an overarching aim for prison education, or to consider the existing educational philosophies that notions of rehabilitation might cohere with. This article begins to address this gap by engaging with the idea of rehabilitation from a critical adult education perspective. The conceptual framework informing the analysis is critical adult education theory, drawing tangentially on the work of Raymond Williams. The overarching assumption is that education might be understood as the practice of equality, which I employ alongside conceptualisations of empowering adult literacies learning as drawn from writings in the field of New Literacies Studies (NLS). These approaches enable the critique of criminological theory associated with prison learning, alongside the critique of assumptions traceable to NLS. The analysis focuses more specifically on Scotland’s prison system, where the criminological theory of ‘desistance’ currently holds some sway. I observe that whilst perspectives of criminologists and educationists draw upon similar sociological assumptions and underpinnings, different conclusions are inferred about the purpose and practice of adult learning. Here criminologists' conceptualisations tend to neglect power contexts, instead inferring educational practices associated typically with early years education. I also demonstrate the importance of equality in the context of adult education, if educators are to take responsibility for the judgements they make in relation to the education of socially excluded groups.     

Educational change in Singapore and its ‘tinkering’ around the edges: A critical realist perspective

This article re-examines the contents of Singapore’s Thinking Schools Learning Nation (TSLN) and Teach Less Learn More (TLLM) educational initiatives, introduced and implemented to promote change and to prepare Singaporeans for a twenty-first century knowledge-based economy. Adopting a critical realist perspective that enables investigations into complex social systems, the paper highlights the concepts, change process and possible outcomes of change proposed by realist social theory. An explanatory critique responding to the question, ‘What social structural changes were implemented by the TSLN and TLLM initiatives, and why?’ is developed, tracing the programmes of change in TSLN and TLLM. Findings reported in 2013, by a local large-scale research project, has made claims about the ineffectiveness of the initiatives in bringing about desired changes in classroom instructional practices. The critique questions—given Singapore’s recent and consistent successful performances in international benchmarking tests—whether it is only in the classroom that educational change that matters, counts. It suggests that despite making strong statements about the limited effectiveness of the TSLN and TLLM initiatives, many programs introduced and adopted by primary, secondary and post-secondary institutions, especially under TLLM, were left unexamined by the research project. The explanatory critique theorises that two kinds of changes have taken place—the reorientation of pedagogical practices in post-secondary institutions and extensions of what already exists in the primary and secondary sections. The paper concludes by highlighting some implications the explanatory critique have for research into educational change in general, and for educational change in Singapore.     

Educational Studies and the Domestication of Utopia

This paper offers a critique of educational real utopias. Real Utopias are experimental forms of thought and practice intended to harness the transgressive force of traditional utopianism while avoiding its associated dangers. The concept has been embraced by the field of educational studies and applied to the study of various educational settings, institutions and processes. This paper does four things. Firstly, it outlines the concept of utopian realism and highlights those aspects that are said to differentiate it from the utopia that supposedly played a role in the human catastrophes of the twentieth century. It then evaluates a selection of educational real utopias to assess whether they can, in fact, be said to have succeeded in the task of harnessing the intellectual force while overcoming the dangers of traditional utopianism. Thirdly, the paper offers a critique of utopian realism, arguing that the concept of utopia has become thoroughly domesticated. Finally, the paper defends the expansive and holistic concept of utopia that utopian realism rejects. The argument here is that only when utopia is understood as a holistic system is it able to produce its most potent pedagogical effects.     

After Managerialism: Towards a Conception of the School as an Educational Community

Managerialism has changed the nature of the curriculum and imposed upon us new conceptions of the teacher and teaching. In this paper a brief outline and critique of it are provided and its reductionist effects noted. Against this managerialism a conception of the school as an educational community is developed, based on Oakeshott's work. From within this conception a critique of planned or utopian change is mounted and a concept of incremental change outlined. At the same time a concept of teacher autonomy is elaborated which is in contrast to rational autonomy but which restores a voluntaristic role to teachers.     

No science today—the demise of primary science

In this second article on the theory of ‘ground rules for talk’ I extend a debate between myself and Professor Neil Mercer over the introduction of ‘ground rules’ into classrooms. I critique ground rules through the use of sociological theory and argue that advocates of the ground rules perspective need to recognise the ideological nature of their theoretical position. In making this article a clear extension of my previous argument I introduce the work of Bernstein and Fairclough to support my new arguments. I use Bernstein's theory of pedagogy as cultural relay and Fairclough's appropriateness model of language variation to critique ‘ground rules perspectives’. In doing so, I draw out the political nature of educational theory and curriculum within the context of a specific socio-economic society.     

Kritik der evidenzbasierten Pädagogik

Evidence-based education aims at improving the effectiveness of educational interventions and programs through knowledge on the basis of rigorous scientific research. However, evidence-based education should not be equated with empirical educational research; nor should it be understood as an independent paradigm of educational science, because of its focus on educational practice. The specific notion of how science and practice relate to each other, which is fundamental to evidence-based education, is exposed to a threefold critique, namely concerning the technological conception of educational practice, the supposed abstinence from theory as frame for educational research, and the disregard of communication as medium of educational effectiveness. The last paragraph of the paper presents a reminiscent sketch of an alternative conception of the relation between science and practice as it can be found with some representatives of educational psychology.     

Clark’s “learning from media”: A critique

In the Winter 1983 issue ofReview of Educational Research, Richard Clark published the article “Reconsidering Research on Learning From Media.” This article presented a particular point of view on media research that is of interest to educational technologists and has aroused some debate. In their critique of Clark’s article, Petkovich and Tennyson take issue with some of Clark’s points. Clark’s reply to this critique follows immediately after it.