Educational undertakings are subject to disjunctures at three separate stages: in the creation of curricular programmes, in the implementation of these curricula in practice and in their effects on students. These disjunctures are the result of complex ‘leaps’ between ends and means, and between ideal and real. This article proposes a response in the form of ‘seamless enactment’, applied here to citizenship education. Seamless enactment involves, first, the harmonisation of the principles underlying the different stages in the passage of the (...) curriculum, avoiding problematic tensions between, for example, democratic aims and undemocratic teaching practices. Second, it requires the involvement of teachers and students in the design and development of the educational initiative, as well as in its implementation. Taken to its fullest extent, seamless enactment involves a unification of the separate stages, leading to the collapsing of the curricular transposition framework onto a single point. Finally, some possible justifications for and potential objections to the notion are considered. (shrink)

Educational undertakings are subject to disjunctures at three separate stages: in the creation of curricular programmes, in the implementation of these curricula in practice and in their effects on students. These disjunctures are the result of complex ‘leaps’ between ends and means, and between ideal and real. This article proposes a response in the form of ‘seamless enactment’, applied here to citizenship education. Seamless enactment involves, first, the harmonisation of the principles underlying the different stages in the passage of the (...) curriculum, avoiding problematic tensions between, for example, democratic aims and undemocratic teaching practices. Second, it requires the involvement of teachers and students in the design and development of the educational initiative, as well as in its implementation. Taken to its fullest extent, seamless enactment involves a unification of the separate stages, leading to the collapsing of the curricular transposition framework onto a single point. Finally, some possible justifications for and potential objections to the notion are considered. (shrink)

In this article I discuss the philosophy of John MacMurray, and in particular, his little-examined writings on discipline and emotion education. It is argued that discipline is a vital element in the emotion education MacMurray thought central to learning to be human, because for him it takes concerted effort to overcome the human tendency toward egocentricity. It is maintained that MacMurray's philosophy of education is of contemporary significance for at least two reasons. On the one hand it suggests an alternative (...) vision for humanistic education. While liberal educationists such as Oakeshott and Peters stressed that the pursuit of knowledge and understanding was the main way in which persons could develop their humanity MacMurray instead emphasised that persons can only learn to become human by pursuing other-centred relationships. On the other hand his philosophy can also reveal the limitations in much contemporary debate in emotion education which critics (such as Ecclestone and Clack) suggest increasingly aims at little more than helping pupils feel better about themselves. According to MacMurray a genuine emotion education can enlarge humanity by supporting persons to feel and act for the sake of others rather than think about themselves. Despite sympathy for MacMurray's account of the purposes of education it is nonetheless concluded that the pursuit of knowledge as an end in itself does not necessarily constitute a negative expression of human agency (as MacMurray asserts)—but rather that the disciplined pursuit of knowledge may also form part of any education concerned to enrich human life. (shrink)