Vocationalism and Liberal Education: exploring the tensions

Vocationalism is distinguished from vocational education and distinctions are drawn between the various senses in which vocationalism or the pursuit of vocational ‘relevance’ can be understood. The burden of the argument of the essay is that vocationalism, understood as teaching skills in virtue of their putative vocational usefulness or relevance, is misguided both on prudential and educational grounds. A basis for some reconciliation between liberal and vocational learning is found in the fact that learning for its own sake and learning for vocational purposes need not be conceived as mutually exclusive activities.     

Teaching as an Immortality Project: Positing Weakness in Response to Terror

Teaching as a profession can be read as an immortality project, a form of compensation to help resolve a certain kind of existential terror. Terror management theory can help us understand the ways teachers might compensate for their limitedness as humans by imposing prescribed attributes on their students. In response to the freighted reality of teaching as quasi‐missionary work, we suggest a new orientation, namely that the profession embrace the terror of the future that it cannot know. Through a theoretical engagement with Weak Theology in the context of Eugene Thacker's philosophical ‘doomcore’, we hope to re‐orient the educational project into one with lower stakes, a shift from immortality to more ‘goodness’. The desired result is to refocus on the relationships we develop with other humans as well as with the planet.     

Researching the views of pupils with multiple and complex needs. Is it worth doing and whose interests are served by it?

Because of what are perceived by some as potential challenges it is still commonplace for research to fail to seek the opinions of pupils with multiple and complex needs. While many such pupils do have significant communication difficulties, along with other disabilities, which are undoubtedly a constraint, it is crucial in order to be inclusive, that methods of fostering pupil voice are sought. This piece of practitioner‐based research seeks to do this by focusing on the introduction of an aided communication system, Talking Mats? , for pupils with multiple and complex needs in a mainstream secondary school setting. The study highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the introduction of Talking Mats. The notion of ‘research’ with this group of pupils is considered and the key issues of reliability, validity and ethics discussed. The paper concludes by reflecting on the findings and gives a number of practical ideas for future practitioner researchers.     

Modern Languages in the School Curriculum: a philosophical view

This article is based on an analysis of two types of argument, called utilitarian and educational respectively, which are commonly used to justify the teaching of modern/foreign languages in schools. Serious flaws are identified in the utilitarian arguments often employed to defend the teaching of modern languages and different educational arguments which might be offered as justification for their inclusion in the school curriculum are distinguished and appraised. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of the foregoing analysis for the place of modern languages in the school curriculum.     

On the Determination of Values: the case of F. R. Leavis

ABSTRACT F. R. Leavis argued that literary studies could provide an incomparable initiation into tradition and cultural continuity and a true liberal education by educating people intellectually, emotionally and morally. This paper examines Leavis's arguments regarding literary criticism's propensity to provide a test for life and values. It also examines the value system within which Leavis operates; and the relations postulated between literary studies, moral understanding and aesthetic experience. It is concluded that while Leavis's conception of literary studies is distinctive and valuable his argument is lacking philosophically and empirically, failing to provide adequate justification either for the supposed benefits of literary studies, or for charging the literary-educated with the duty of maintaining standards for society.     

‘How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance?’ Personal Concern and Sexual Desire in the Educational Relationship

Drawing on both philosophical and imaginative sources, this article explores the profile of concern and caring in the teacher–learner relationship. Following a defence of the role of narrative in educational theory, the nature of the teacher–learner relationship and the role of concern in the relationship are addressed. The main part of the essay draws on the autobiographical fiction The Pupil: A Memory of Love by Irish author Monk Gibbon to demonstrate the process whereby shared passion for literature can become—on the part of the teacher—an obsessive sexual desire for the learner. Eschewing virtue‐signalling and moral grandstanding, the third and concluding part of the essay endeavours to explain the inappropriateness of the erotic in the teacher–learner relationship.