Educational Plasticity: Catherine Malabou and ‘the feeling of a new responsibility’

Abstract

This paper attempts to reintegrate the concept of plasticity into educational philosophy. Although John Dewey used the concept in Democracy and Education (1916) it has not generated much of a critical or practical legacy in educational thought. French philosopher, Catherine Malabou, is the first to think plasticity rigorously and seriously in a contemporary philosophical context and this paper outlines her thinking on it as well as considering its applicability to education. My argument is that her definition not only successfully reintroduces the concept in a way which is generative for contemporary educational philosophy and practice but that it also significantly extends the remit of educational plasticity as previously conceived by Dewey. This paper will examine the concept of educational plasticity as providing an opportunity as well as ‘the feeling of a new responsibility’ towards the plastic subject in philosophical approaches to education.     

Chinese international students in the United States: demographic trends,motivations, acculturation features and adjustment challenges

Asia Pacific Education Review - To date, few studies have focused solely upon understanding the unique characteristics of Chinese international students in the United States. This inquiry examines...     

‘Chasing the Elusive Pill’: YMCA Men,the Paris Baseball League and Making Baseball French, 1919–1925

American Baseball was introduced in France in the late nineteenth century, to little appeal. During the First World War, American soldiers immediately began playing the sport for recreation in France, but it was YMCA men in the new Foyers du Soldat, rest and relaxation huts, who truly re-introduced baseball to the French. After the war, Americans in Paris created an amateur league that perpetuated baseball, but the sport still did not resonate with but a minority ofthe French, despite great efforts. It was only in 1924, in the wake of the Olympics, that the French took organisational control of baseball, winning government recognition and establishing firm roots for the sport by making baseball nominally French.