In recent years, reflection on pedagogical tact has made a comeback in the international debate. Tact is a fundamental disposition of the educator, albeit one that is scarcely addressed in the training of teachers and educators. The question is whether it is possible to treat this pedagogical propensity as a teachable habit, and to what extent. Here we propose that tact can be understood as a teachable frame of mind of the educator by analysing tactlessness. In other words, in order (...) to become a tactful teacher, one has to pass through situations in which tact is not enacted, because the absence of tact – as Adorno proposes in his dialectical-negative perspective – becomes a condition for soliciting doubts about one’s educational action, metareflexive rethinking and finally tactful responses. (shrink)

Michel De Certeau’s scholars have rarely explored the pedagogical potential of the French thinker’s thought. This paper aims at reconstructing the question of the teaching practice in De Certeau’s works and, building on such reconstruction, it proposes a possible ‘heterological’ comprehension of teaching. Moving from an early writing dealing specifically with the teacher’s identity, the paper shows how the famous dyad of strategies and tactics exposed in The practice of everyday life can be usefully applied to teaching and studying and (...) helps further elaborate the question of teaching. From this analysis, the teacher will emerge as the owner of a strategic knowledge that, if he wants to teach, needs to be altered by the uncanny and tactical presence of the student. Teaching will finally be shown as the practice of alteration of knowledge operated by the other of such knowledge, namely, the student. In such alteration of knowledge lies the potential of a heterological comprehension of teaching. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article invites us to consider the task of education as we face the end of the world as we have known it. The first part of the article gives an overview of global and educational challenges, drawing attention to how formal education has been complicit in the reproduction of historical and systemic violence, as well as unsustainability. This section also offers a distinction between educational approaches that focus on personal empowerment and the mastery of knowledge and skills, and (...) educational approaches that see the role of education in association with the non-coercive re-arrangement of desires and with responsibility before will. The second part of the paper presents a psychoanalytic experiment that attempts to create a space and the dispositions necessary for difficult conversations about the role of education in preparing us all to confront the potential for social and ecological collapse in our lifetime. (shrink)

In this essay, which is a response to five papers on Heidegger and education but can also be read independently, I argue that it is only when we introduce the German distinction between ‘Bildung’ and ‘Erziehung’ that it becomes possible to discuss in sufficient detail the possibilities and limitations of a Heideggerian account of and engagement with ‘education’. Central to my argument is the suggestion that whereas Heidegger provides a radical critique of the humanistic foundations of ‘Bildung’, he nonetheless remains (...) caught in the ‘logic’ of ‘Bildung’ by assuming that education ultimately has to do with the becoming of the self. The difference Heidegger seeks to make is that this becoming of the self does not take place through an engagement with the world of beings—the world of things about which we can have positive knowledge—but rather takes place in the encounter with the Being of beings—an encounter in which Being shows itself to us, and we are receivers and custodians of Being. Against this background I show that what is absent in this configuration is an altogether different possibility, not one where we are listening, but one where we are being addressed or, in other educational terms, where we are being taught. Whereas several authors of the papers under discussion seem to have a certain fear of teaching on the assumption that teaching can only appear as an act of power that limits rather than that it enhances freedom, I explore the opposite option—one where the act of teaching and the experience of being taught are precisely aimed at my freedom, albeit that this freedom is not understood as sovereignty but in terms of authority, that is, in relation to working through the difficult challenge as to what legitimately should have power over me. This altogether different educational possibility brings us from the logic of ‘Bildung’ to the logic of ‘Erziehung’. Whereas Heidegger and some of the authors of the papers under discussion did try to ‘move’ education understood as ‘Bildung’ from beings to Being, the shift from ‘Bildung’ to ‘Erziehung’ seems not to have been considered explicitly, although it is addressed and in a sense enacted by some of the essays. I conclude by arguing that it is only when we are able to overcome our fear of teaching that the humanism that troubles ‘Bildung’ can really be addressed. (shrink)

The practice of teaching links long-standing philosophical questions about the building blocks of a good life to daily judgments in the classroom; in the journey to becoming a person who teaches, we must seek different ways of understanding what “good” means in the context of different social practices and communities. This doctoral thesis examines the educational innovation known as Philosophy for Children as a platform for teachers and students to address such questions within a community of philosophical inquiry. Advocates of (...) PFC seek to promote radical change in our understanding of growth, teaching and the relationships formed in educational contexts. In addressing these issues, this thesis contributes to the ongoing conversation about the teacher’s role within the PFC movement. The thesis comprises four interrelated studies that examine the possibilities and limits of PFC ideas by considering them in the light of general educational theorising about pedagogical action. In addition to the PFC literature, the study’s main sources are 1) the Continental tradition of European educational discourse, especially in German-speaking regions, and 2) the writings of the contemporary educational thinker Gert Biesta. The former offers an opposing view to the idea of a symmetrical, communal emergent system that seems to inform second-generation understandings of philosophical dialogue in an educational context. Gert Biesta’s ideas, especially in relation to the purpose and aims of education, help in envisioning CPI as a structuring element in teaching as a whole and all aspects of classroom life. The four studies focus on pedagogical action, the nature and role of authority in CPI and teacher agency. The thesis contends that teaching and, in particular, building a community of classroom inquiry, requires a vision of teaching as a reflective practice, informed by subject-specific and educational judgments as key dimensions of teacher reflection and wisdom. (shrink)

The so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ is often presented as a counterproductive element in education, and many scholars argue that it should be eliminated, by being made explicit, in education in general and specifically in higher education. The problem of the HC has not been solved by the transition from a teacher-centered education to a student-centered educational model that takes the student’s experience as the starting point of learning. In this article we turn to several philosophers of education to propose that HC (...) can be made explicit in HE when the teacher recognizes and lives his/her teaching as a personal issue, not merely a technical one; and that the students’ experience of the learning process is not merely individual but emerges through their interpersonal relationship with the teacher. We suggest ways in which this interpersonal relationship can be strengthened despite current challenges in HE. (shrink)

The broad success of the 2018–2019 #RedforEd movement in achieving more equitable outcomes for not only teachers but also other constituents in the community has generated interest in the role of teacher strikes in defending the common good. My article contributes to this conversation by interpreting the demands made by teachers and paraprofessionals and school-related personnel in the 2019 Chicago Public Schools strike through an ethics of care. Enlisting the notions of caring-for, completion, and competence from care ethics, this analysis (...) elucidates the strike demands–namely, smaller class sizes, more bilingual education teachers and special education teachers, and adequate staffing of PSRPs providing wraparound services for high-needs students–as aiming at securing conditions for CPS faculty to provide better care for their students. This article also brings to light the varied and complex requirements placed on CPS faculty in their caring work in schools and as such, proposes an educator’s ethical commitment to care for students as one plausible reason for some educators to leave the classroom for the picket line. I suggest, further, that educators, by striking, are enacting a political form of caring termed caring-with alongside fellow citizens and advocating collective responsibility in caring for all persons as care receivers and care givers. The 2019 CPS strike can therefore be seen as a response not only to disinvestment in public schools and teachers, but to the broader crisis of care deficit and democratic deficit in society. (shrink)

The so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ is often presented as a counterproductive element in education, and many scholars argue that it should be eliminated, by being made explicit, in education in general and specifically in higher education. The problem of the HC has not been solved by the transition from a teacher-centered education to a student-centered educational model that takes the student’s experience as the starting point of learning. In this article we turn to several philosophers of education to propose that HC (...) can be made explicit in HE when the teacher recognizes and lives his/her teaching as a personal issue, not merely a technical one; and that the students’ experience of the learning process is not merely individual but emerges through their interpersonal relationship with the teacher. We suggest ways in which this interpersonal relationship can be strengthened despite current challenges in HE. (shrink)

Higher education as a personal, intellectual and moral cultivation is a longstanding ideal that is constantly challenged by the view that education is merely the development of specific skills for vocational and personal success. Much research argues that the latter understanding makes education a technical affair that creates an egocentric emphasis on the individual students’ ambitions and desires. This article joins in the defence of the former ideal by enquiring into the moral dimensions of education. This is done by turning (...) to Iris Murdoch's idea of moral transformation, with a specific focus on the idea of unselfing. The main argument is that unselfing is a transformative process characterised by a growing attunement to the surrounding world, and the interconnectedness of goal and process is emphasised. Also, to gain a deeper understanding of what unselfing entails I turn to the idea of attention. It is understood as having a specific direction, outward from the egocentric, and as enabling unselfing. The article concludes by suggesting that unselfing can offer a challenge to education as it entails a moment of letting go of plans and narratives, and of surrendering to the influence of an existence that exceeds the individual. This moment is of relevance to education as it is crucial to the possibility of growing as a moral being as it cultivates a moral manner of relating to others. (shrink)

Many great cultures of the world have recognised the impossibility of teaching. Governments in various colonial countries continue to spend huge sums of money on ‘closing the gap’ in Indigenous education, yet national assessment figures would support the claim that teaching is indeed an impossibility. This paper draws on some of Biesta’s recent theorisation to highlight the double impossibility of teaching in Indigenous education. While representation and miscommunication surely make teaching an impossible profession, I nevertheless return to the question, what (...) is possible in education? I apply the more recent work of Butler to highlight how vulnerability can allow us to hear the story of others. Vulnerability allows us into the lives of others, and to recognise that they are already implicated in ours, noting that certain bonds are actually shaped through the reversibility of the story. I examine a presentation to teacher education students on the Stolen Generations as a means of understanding how the role of power in constituting body vulnerability can be leveraged in the curriculum beyond the discourse of independent and self-motivated learning. (shrink)