This article challenges the assumption underlying most education reforms that constructivism is politically neutral and intrinsically democratic. It makes this argument by examining the curriculum reform in Spain during the 1980s and 1990s in light of the neoliberal politics that the country was experiencing at that time. This study employs the poststructuralist analytical lens of governmentality developed by Foucauldian scholars. Accordingly, it claims that, the psychological version of constructivism adopted by the official curriculum reform failed to deliver promises for democracy (...) because it was crafted within the same neoliberal political rationality that redefined the terms of government in the late 1980s, a redefinition that decontextualized the learner from his/her social context and adopted the logic of the market. (shrink)

This volume reflects the development and theoretical foundation of a new paradigm for critical thinking based on inquiry. The field of critical thinking, as manifested in the Informal Logic movement, developed primarily as a response to the inadequacies of formalism to represent actual argumentative practice and to provide useful argumentative skills to students. Because of this, the primary focus of the field has been on informal arguments rather than formal reasoning. Yet the formalist history of the field is still evident (...) in its emphasis, with respect to both theory and pedagogy, on the structure and evaluation of individual, de-contextualized arguments. It is our view that such a view of critical thinking is excessively narrow and limited, failing to provide an understanding of argumentation as largely a matter of comparative evaluation of a variety of contending positions and arguments with the goal of reaching a reasoned judgment on an issue. As a consequence, traditional critical thinking instruction is problematic in failing to provide the reasoning skills that students need in order to accomplish this goal. Instead, the goal of critical thinking instruction has been seen largely as a defensive one: of learning to not fall prey to invalid, inadequate, or fallacious arguments. (shrink)

This article seeks to demonstrate a particular application of Foucault's philosophical approach to a particular issue in education: that of personal autonomy. The paper surveys and extends the approach taken by James Marshall in his book Michel Foucault: Personal autonomy and education. After surveying Marshall's writing on the issue I extend Marshall's approach, critically analysing the work of Rob Reich and Meira Levinson, two contemporary philosophers who advocate models of personal autonomy as the basis for a liberal education.

The relevance of the chosen direction of research is that e-learning at the present stage of development of society is one of the most popular forms of organization of the educational process. This primarily applies to vocational and postgraduate education. Its main advantage is that it focuses on creating a barrier-free learning environment, ensuring the availability of quality education without separation from work and family and regardless of the place of residence. The article analyzes the features of updating the education (...) system in the postmodern era and the urgent problems of the education system that need to be addressed. Features of e-learning as a means of meeting the demand for educational services, its advantages and disadvantages are characterized. The peculiarities of functioning of open educational resources as prospects of e-learning development are analyzed. Continuation of the initiated research is to study the specific characteristics of mobile learning as one of the possible options for e-learning. (shrink)

La globalización y la era digital plantean un giro que trasciende a las realidades económica, científica, filosófica y educativa, llegando a afectar a la totalidad de la vida cotidiana. Este artículo examina en qué medida los factores históricos, culturales y sociales configuran al individuo de esta nueva era. En él se delibera sobre los condicionantes que permiten adscribirse a una era, así como aquellas circunstancias que determinan y justifican el paso de una era a la siguiente. Finalmente puede decirse que, (...) aunque con prudencia, porque es el tiempo quien debe darnos la razón, empezamos a vivir en la post-postmodernidad. (shrink)