“Make the Education of the Youths Our Own Education”: Plato's Laches,a Dialogue for Educators

Through an exegesis of the dramatic elements of Plato's Laches, Brandon Buck and Rachel Longa argue that it is an especially valuable text to read with practicing and preservice teachers. Buck and Longa show how the dialogue illustrates three essential aspects of what education means and involves. First, they show how the dialogue foregrounds the often-obscured role of philosophical inquiry in addressing educational questions. Second, they show how the depiction of aporia in the Laches underscores the importance of uncertainty for the persistence of humanistic conversation, and thus for substantial engagement with core educational questions. Finally, they interpret Socrates to suggest that participation in humanistic conversation is not merely an incidental aspect of education as a profession, but rather precisely what it means to be an educator. In sum, Buck and Longa argue that the Laches illustrates the core idea that in order to educate at all, we must be deeply involved in the very questions that characterize humanistic conversation.     

Unserious but Serious Pilgrimages: What Educational Philosophy Can Learn about Fiction and Reality from Children's Artful Play

What happens if we think of children's play as a form of great art that we turn to and return to for inspiration, for education? If we can see play as art, then what and how can we learn from children's play or from playing with them? What can philosophy, or philosophers, learn from children's play? In this essay Viktor Johansson gives examples of what and when children can teach philosophers through play or, more specifically, how children's play can teach philosophers about the relation between fiction and reality. It begins by exploring the educational relation between fiction and reality in recent revivals of literary humanism. Johansson gives examples from a preschool project of how children use fiction picture books and create new fiction in their play, and how they do so in ways that relate to previous philosophical considerations of literary fiction. To explore this, the essay enters into conversation with the work of Iris Murdoch on the playfulness of art. Through, and in contrast to, Murdoch's work, Johansson establishes that play can be great art through its nonpurposefulness and its use of skill and imagination. Moreover, turning to children's play becomes a method for attending to what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls philosophy's “natural history,” that is, a historicization of philosophical thinking that enables philosophers to learn from children. Johansson concludes by showing that encounters between fiction and play, and with children playing, can be an educational embroilment, not only between teacher and child, but between teacher, child, the visual, the material, and the philosophical in which all learn from one another.     

Representation and the Straightjacketing of Curriculum's Complicated Conversation: The pedagogy of Pontypool's minor language

Reconceptualist and post‐reconceptualist curriculum scholars have drawn upon the notion of a complicated curriculum conversation as a means to describe the imbricated, pluralist, and eclectic character of curriculum theorizing. Insofar as this curriculum conversation is accomplished via language however, it remains wed to a particular representational logic restricting what might be thought. This essay explores the question of what it means to theorize curriculum when the very idea of a complicated curriculum conversation begins to fall into cliché. Mobilizing the philosophical thought of Gilles Deleuze, this essay analyzes three representational commitments of contemporary curriculum theorizing, addressing how each are inadequate for the theorization of difference or the instantiation of the radically new. Against the implicit commitment to conformity alive in the curriculum field, this essay posits an ethics of disidentification exemplified via Bruce McDonald's horror film Pontypool. It is via such a tactic of productive disidentification, this essay claims, that thought might be unfettered from the orthodoxies of common sense, becoming in this way more adequate for opening spaces unanticipated by contemporary representational regimes.     

Bearing witness to teaching and teachers

Abstract

In this article, the author elucidates the idea of bearing witness to teaching and teachers. The orientation derives from a philosophical and field-based inquiry pivoting around the questions What does it mean to be a person in the world today? and What does it mean to be a person in the role of teacher? From 2012 to 2014, the author interacted closely with 16 teachers from 8 different state-funded schools in a large, culturally diverse US city. The endeavor included extensive classroom visits, whole-group discussion meetings, and a systematic series of individual interviews. The article shows how the orientation of bearing witness calls fresh attention to the person who occupies the role of teacher. It illuminates the easy-to-overlook truth that it is persons, rather than roles as such, who educate. The author argues that bearing witness contributes importantly to remembrance of deep educational values.     

Discourses and Subjectivities of the Gendered Teacher

In this study, the authors ask the question, 'What does it mean to wear the labels "teacher" and "female"?' Eighteen Master of Arts in Teaching students volunteered to participate in a Gender Issues Seminar at a large US public state university. Their language, recorded through audio-recordings, response journals, and autobiographical webs become the basis for analysis. Applying post-structural feminist theory, the authors identify powerful discourses determining what it means to be 'female' and 'teacher.' The study illustrates how the discourse of teaching as acceptable women's work and the discourse of patriarchy work upon the subjectivity of women as they struggle with what it means to be teacher/woman. The authors then partially deconstruct these discourses, considering implications for teacher educators.     

Existential approaches to action research

The existential approach to action research is derived from research that suggests that teachers' actions, intentions, and beliefs are manifestations of their ways of being teachers. A teacher's ‘way of being’ in an educational situation is defined and informed by what was and is for the teacher, and his or her intentions for what could be. It is essentially the way that that person is a teacher – where ‘teacher’ is one of the many ways that that person is and can be. The existential approach to action research extends the way of being perspective by examining three aspects of personhood – situation, existence precedes essence and freedom – and combines them with critical reflection and action. The result is that existential action research happens when people work together to research their own ways of being a teacher to increase their capacity to choose freely, and to act responsibly for themselves and those they care for     

The Emotional Readiness of Greek Cypriot Teachers for Peaceful Co-existence

In this article, we: (1) offer a conceptualisation of what it means for Greek Cypriot teachers to be ‘reconciled’ with the ‘other side’ (i.e. Turkish Cypriots) in Cyprus; (2) examine Greek Cypriot teachers' emotional responses to the new educational objective of cultivating peaceful coexistence in schools; and (3) investigate how Greek Cypriot teachers' perceptions of reconciliation and emotional responses to the new educational objective of cultivating peaceful coexistence are entangled, and what implications these entanglements may have for educational reform efforts. This investigation is based on data collected in a national survey of Greek Cypriot primary and secondary teachers. The study is important not only for the Greek Cypriot educational system, but also for educational reform efforts in other conflict-ridden areas in Europe because it addresses a fundamental issue in relation to reconciliation: Can teachers, who may still carry traumatic experiences from a conflict and thus be (potentially) emotionally unready to engage in reconciliation, be convinced to put the past behind and promote peaceful coexistence in schools? The findings highlight the teachers' multiple ambivalences, yet they also identify openings for promoting reconciliation and peaceful coexistence in schools. The implications are discussed in terms of educational policymaking, curriculum development, and teacher training.     

Is it Possible to Live a Philosophical,Educational Life in Education,Nowadays?

I consider if and how far it is possible to live an educational philosophical life, in the fast‐changing, globalised world of Higher Education. I begin with Socrates’ account of a philosophical life in the Apology. I examine some tensions within different conceptions of what it is to do philosophy. I then go on to focus more closely on what it might be to live a philosophical, educational life in which educational processes and outcomes are influenced by philosophy, using examples taken from published sources and from conversational interviews with philosophers carried out by myself with Kenneth Wain, Bas Levering and Richard Pring. I then outline the directions of current European policy for Higher Education. Finally I discuss how far current policies and trends leave room for doing philosophy of education, concluding that it is possible, but only for individuals who are very much in sympathy with current policy trends or who are creative in constructing smoke screens.     

Franz Rosenzweig and the Elementary School Teacher: A Midrashic Re-Viewing of an Experiment in Adult Education

This article proposes to read events of the educational past not as history but as midrash. It juxtaposes an historical account of a watershed experiment in adult education (Franz Rosenzweig's Freie Judisches Lehrhaus) with an ethnographic account of a presently practicing elementary school teacher. These accounts are generically different and historically distant from one other, but, through association and conversation, there emerges from them some challenging suggestions about how knowledge is born of speech, how learning includes teaching, and how teaching is predicated on desire. Viewing the Lehrhaus project from a “midrashic” stance, invites an enlarged reading of it as an educational experiment and poses questions about the interpretative potential in the intersections between narrative research genres.     

Advancing Education's Autonomy through Looking Educationally at Philosophy

This article offers a general framework for considering education's autonomy and its implications for the relationship between education and philosophy. In it, Doron Yosef-Hassidim examines an initiative in Israel that calls for an autonomous secular public education and uses it as a context to clarify what education's autonomy means and to identify its major characteristics. To enhance the idea of education's autonomy, he further argues that education should not be subordinate to philosophy and that the question about being human must be kept open and educational. In particular, education's autonomy requires resisting the temptation of applying a philosophical framework about being human to education, even if the particular philosopher of education agrees with the philosophical framework. Finally, Yosef-Hassidim proposes a strategy for treating the question about being human as one that involves both the work of philosophers of education and practitioners in the classroom.     

Acknowledging Ambivalence in Teaching about Art and Aesthetics

In this article Daniel Brodén explores the ambivalence in teaching about art and aesthetics in the humanities. By comparing and contrasting Gert J. J. Biesta's educational theory and Jacques Rancière's writing on aesthetics, he hopes to bring some of the particularities of aesthetic experiences into focus and to discuss a tension in educational situations that concern students' interpretation of aesthetic texts: how the teacher, on the one hand, will serve as a representative for a formal system of education — or what Rancière calls a system of inequality — and, on the other hand, should respect the autonomy of the aesthetic experience. Brodén argues, however, that more interesting than the ambivalence itself is the question of how we can acknowledge this tension in productive ways. Thus, his aim here is to show how the teacher can contribute to the verification of an interpretive approach to art, with Rancière's axiom of equality in mind. Drawing on Biesta's writings, Brodén also highlights how the teacher can provide students with possibilities to pursue a subject-ness and how the risks involved call for a deconstructive approach to the enactment of teacher power. The article concludes by suggesting that we would do better not to view the ambivalence in focus as a problem, but instead to see it as something that calls for continuous engagement and critical reflection.     

The Labouring Sleepwalker: Evocation and expression as modes of qualitative educational research

This paper deals with the highly personal way an individual makes sense of the world in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the so‐called private language. For Wittgenstein following a rule can never mean just following another rule, though we do follow rules blindly. His idea of the ‘form of life’ elicits that ‘what we do’ refers to what we have learnt, to the way in which we have learnt it and to how we have grown to find it self‐evident. But the reference to the ‘bedrock’, to what was originally learnt, is the only kind of situation for which it makes sense to ask whether the meaning of a concept is correctly stated. Dialogue, conversation, and exchange of ideas are the right ways to characterize all the other situations. The challenge of Wittgensteinian philosophy is therefore that of a balance of the individual and the community, of language and the world. His insistence on the third person (or the intersubjective level) is countered by the importance he gives to each individual's personal stance: persons must speak for themselves and do what they can do. Given the growing interest for the kind of educational research where the ‘personal’ is focused on, I will try to take up the challenge to see how here as elsewhere ‘language’ works. By making clear what it does for us, it will gradually become clear how this kind of research may itself have to be reinterpreted.     

Intertextual content analysis: an approach for analysing text-related discussions with regard to movability in reading and how text content is handled

Reading and discussing texts as a means for learning subject content are regular features within educational contexts. This paper presents an approach for intertextual content analysis (ICA) of such text-related discussions revealing what the participants make of the text. Thus, in contrast to many other approaches for analysing conversation that focus essentially on the interaction per se, ICA takes the text as its starting point. Drawing on the concept of text movability and systemic-functional cohesion analyses, the approach combines a reader’s perspective and a text perspective to show the participants’ reception of the text, and also what and how text content is brought into the conversation and how it is handled. In the paper, ICA is described with regard to its theoretical underpinnings, usage and utility. It is suggested that the approach provides educational researchers with an analytical tool that allows detailed ICAs of text-related classroom discussion. Findings may ultimately lead to pedagogical implications with a bearing on classroom practice.     

The ethical claim of partiality: practical reasoning,the discipline,and teacher education

Practical reasoning refers to a teacher's capacity to discern particulars and make wise judgements about how to act in pedagogical situations. But how do teachers know what is right? How are teachers' preferences to be grounded and their choices justified? I explore the disciplines as one source of moral perception. Assuming that narrative unities underscore the coherence and continuity of an individual's experience, I generated data in the context of a 2‐year teacher education programme. The case study of an aspiring teacher of secondary school language arts illustrates how the intellectual virtues of a discipline can influence a student teacher's practical reasoning. I conclude that teacher educators must attend to the complex ways in which a prospective teacher's prior discipline may influence aspiring teachers' orientations to experience, their consideration of educational ends, and, finally, their characters.     

National Cultural Values and Their Role in Learning: A comparative ethnographic study of state primary schooling in England and France

This ethnographic study attempts to define English and French cultural and educational values in primary school. It is maintained that pupil attitudes to education are derived from pupils' sociocultural backgrounds and that pupil attitudes predispose pupils to learning. Pupils interpret both what and how they learn through the medium of the culture to which they belong. English and French educational values are identified through classroom observation, teacher discourse and pupil perceptions. The comparative approach allows the contrastive characteristics inherent in each country's culture to emerge. It is argued that pupil understanding of such educational values as authority, thought or 'la pensee', control over learning and educational goals and how to achieve them are related to national culture and that they have an effect on pupil motivation. The paper is both an example of and an exploration into how culture may affect learning. It suggests that cultural values are more significant for learning than pedagogical styles as it argues that underlying educational values give meaning to styles of pedagogy.     

哲学解释学教育学三题

笛卡尔认识论把理解当作心理和智力过程,哲学解释学理解观认为理解是人类存在本身的基本规定,二者的分野是哲学解释学教育学得以推论的依据。哲学解释学教育学涉及教育目的、教育对话、权威-反思-解放、学习和教育理论-实践关系等范畴。哲学解释学的“居间”精神对讨论如何为哲学解释学教育学定住问题具有一定的指导意义。     

Hope,Utopianism and Educational Management

Research reports the extent to which teachers are less content at work than any other professional group. Although human resource management (HRM) in schools is not directly concerned with fostering contentment among teachers, it is designed to help them to perform at an optimal level and maintain a high commitment to the educational project, both of which arguably contribute significantly to their job satisfaction. Another way of looking at this is to view HRM in schools as one means through which senior managers can sensitively address teachers' professional fears and, simultaneously, nurture their educational hopes. This paper explores analytically what both concepts, but in particular hope, might entail and how HRM could better help to foster it among teachers. It also suggests how applications of the utopian imagination may assist in developing increased levels of teacher and institutional optimism.