‘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.     

Intentionality and Thinking as ‘Hearing’. A Response to Biesta’s Agenda

In his 2012 article Philosophy of Education for the Public Good: Five Challenges and an Agenda, Gert Biesta identifies five substantial issues about the future of education and the work required to address these issues. This article employs a Heideggerian reading of education to evaluate ‘Biesta’s truth’. I argue that Biesta’s point of view (a) underestimates knowledge’s predominance and relativism; (b) frames intentionality in pre-Heideggerian terms, which—although not a problem in itself because an individual is free to choose a particular perspective on the concept—raises the issue of consistency in Biesta’s theoretical framework; and (c) a final criticism concerns Biesta’s choice of tools for engaging with the identified challenges: The primary tools Biesta uses are intrinsic to the perspective he challenges. The use of a ‘first person perspective’ to frame pedagogy that focuses on the subject and ‘subjectification’ reaffirms the fundamental Western gesture that makes human beings subjects who ‘stand-over-and-against’ the world. I argue that it is possible to penetrate Plato’s ‘theoretical gaze’ and find a ‘weak’ alternative to an all-encompassing point of view of education through a Heideggerian approach that regards intentionality and thinking as ‘hearing’.     

Response to Grace’s reflections on Allen and West’s paper

Since the 1970s, school effectiveness research has looked for process-variables filling the black box between mainly structural school features and cognitive outcomes in students. Two concepts came to the fore: school climate and school culture. Both concepts are currently used interchangeably, although it is open to debate whether both are actually the same thing. Because of the way culture and climate are defined and subsequently measured, we propose school culture is a better frame from which to study school effectiveness. This article goes through the premises of perceptual measurement usually overlooked in climate research, and we demonstrate empirically by means of very basic and simple methods and techniques that perceptual measurement and measurement based on assumptions are different approaches and might yield totally different results on an aggregated level. We conclude by demonstrating how culture can be probed and integrated in the models traditionally used in school effectiveness research in an advantageous and theoretically sound way.     

Beyond ‘export education’: aspiring to put students at the heart of a university’s internationalisation strategy

For many universities around the world, internationalisation means the recruitment of fee-paying international students (so-called export education) for primarily commercial reasons. For UK universities, international (non-European Union) students account for approximately 13% of their annual revenues, making them highly dependent on international student recruitment. This paper discusses the attempt by one UK university to change direction and develop a new approach to internationalisation which puts an international learning experience for all students at the heart of its new strategic plan. It discusses the obstacles to changing direction in this way and shares some of the lessons learned about how to roll out an alternative university-wide internationalisation strategy.     

A Teacher's Response to ‘Reflection‐in‐action’

A teacher‐researcher questions whether Schon's Reflective Practitioner is an appropriate text for ensuring change in teaching practices. It is argued that teachers’ perspectives prompt a particular interpretation of ‘reflection‐in‐action’ that justifies individualistic, immediate and limited change strategies. Schon's rhetorical appeals can be interpreted as offering tacit approval for the existing craft culture; for the inhibiting effects of this craft culture to be effectively challenged, individual teachers need the supportive insights which collaboration can provide.     

James Baldwin’s ‘Everybody’s Protest Novel’: Educating our responses to racism

Abstract

The aim of this article is to establish—and explore—James Baldwin’s significance for educational theory. Through a close reading of ‘Everybody’s Protest Novel’, I show that Baldwin’s thinking is an important (if unrecognized) precursor to the work of Stanley Cavell and Cora Diamond, and is relevant to a number of problems that are educationally significant, in particular problems of race and racism.     

‘Coherence at Last’: Percival Gurrey’s Contribution to English

Reacting to incoherent English teaching in the 1930s, Percival Gurrey probed the psychological processes involved in literary appreciation. He sought ways of teaching poetry that avoided lifeless tasks such as labelling ‘poetic devices’. Later, in the 1950s, he wrote about the processes involved in learning to write. At a time when psychology dominated educational discourse, he was in touch with new developments in both literary criticism and linguistics, and he evolved a bridging theory of language, learning and development that spanned philosophy, psychology and literary theory. I connect Gurrey’s sense of wholeness of response to his reading in Coleridge. By returning to debates surrounding Coleridge I show how a new appreciation of what language accomplishes emerged. Gurrey discovered that writing has a central place in children’s development as a whole. From such hard-won discoveries a unified theory of development in talking, reading and writing duly emerged.     

‘Twilight or Middlemarch?’ A Teacher’s Refusal to Choose

What should children and young adolescents read? Recent changes in the English curriculum have once again shifted the focus towards more canonical texts, but does featuring such texts on the course necessarily equate to rigorous teaching and in-depth learning? Through a self-examination of her own reading history, the author argues for a dialogic approach to reading and text selection instead, so that students may negotiate better understandings of themselves and their own socio-cultural contexts.     

Pupils’ Learning,Identity and Social Context: the case of Mary∗

ABSTRACT

This paper provides an analysis of social factors which influence the sense of identity and approach to learning of young children. The analysis is set in the context of a critique of national education policies which fail to appreciate the importance of the engagement of learners in learning processes. However, it focuses at a more detailed level on the social dynamics between children and parents, siblings, peers and teachers and the ways in which these evolve over time and influence identity. A model of key factors and processes is presented which draws on both symbolic interactionism and social constructivism and its use is illustrated through a detailed case study of the learning of one child over a three‐year period.

     

Identity and Community in Toni Morrison’s Sula

Toni Morrison’s Sula was published in 1973.It portrays a black woman who quests for self under the strick doctrines of black community.The novel puts forward a complexed contradiction of identity and black community in the historical context of black community and protagonist Sula’s change,rejection,awareness of self and death.The overall challenges of Sula pays her life as a price.Morrison,through this piece of work,reveals the conflicts between Sula’s self and black community.Sula’s tragic ending voices an unchanged fact that self must be developed within the black community.