This article examines the definitions of literacy in operation in secondary schools, and the relationship between official literacy policy and the practices of the agents responsible for implementing this policy. We trace the history of national 'policy' back to the Language Across the Curriculum movement of the 1970s as it provides an illustrative point of comparison with the first five years of the National Literacy Strategy. Drawing on empirical data which illuminate the views, perceptions and practices of key agents on (...) a number of levels, we critically review the concept of 'school literacy' promoted in government policy, defining it as 'school-centric literacy' and question its ability to facilitate participation in the practices associated with the media and technological literacies which are increasingly a feature of school life. There is evidence of some unplanned effects of the current national policy but also that levels of agency, for literacy teachers in particular, may be rapidly diminishing. (shrink)

Class discussions about ethical, social, philosophical and other controversial issues frequently result in disagreement. This leaves a problem: has there been any progress? This article introduces and analyses the concept ‘collective epistemic progress’ in order to resolve this problem. The analysis results in four main ways of understanding, guiding and judging collective epistemic progress in the face of seemingly irreconcilable differences. Although it might seem plausible to analyse and judge collective epistemic progress by the increasing vigour of the dialogue community, (...) by how long the conversation is continued, or by how close we have moved towards consensus or the truth, I argue that these fail to provide serviceable analyses or epistemic criteria. Yet, we might instead analyse, understand and judge progress using epistemic criteria such as whether we have: furthered the one distributed process of inquiry or deliberation; and reached mutual understanding; inquiry milestones; or consensus about our procedures. (shrink)

This article explains how teachers might navigate inquiry learning despite the experience of a constant tension between abandoning their students and controlling them. They do this by conceiving of themselves as guides who decide the path with students, not for them. I build on a conception of teaching as guiding from Burbules, and argue that inquiry teachers should take the particular stance of an expedition-educator (rather than the stance of either a tour-leader or an expedition-leader). They should guide students to (...) make progress during co-inquiry, rather than leading them to follow the teacher’s agenda. This stance gives a heuristic they can use to balance control and abandonment in their pedagogical practice—they judge which pedagogical actions to take, and when, according to which actions are likely to help their students to engage in autonomous inquiry and hence learn to guide themselves. Students thus can learn to inquire by participating in an inquiry which is guided, but not controlled, by their teacher. (shrink)

Although constructivist discussions in the classroom are often treated as if they were all of the same kind, in this paper I argue that there are subtle but important distinctions that need to be made. An analysis of these distinctions shows that there is a continuum of different constructivist discussions. At one extreme are teacher-directed discussions where students are led to construct the ‘correct’ understanding of a pre-decided conclusion; at the other extreme are unstructured discussions where students are free to (...) construct any understanding. While there are many positions on the continuum, the middle ground is occupied by discussions that find a balance between teacher-control and student-independence, and between having set-answers and a free-for-all. I argue that the Community of Inquiry is a useful conception of constructivist discussions in this middle ground. (shrink)

As one of the most influential commentators on the role of modern philosophy, Richard Rorty's work impacted all areas of philosophical inquiry, including business ethics. Rorty's post-foundational approach to "moral imagination" can inform how we teach business ethics in a diverse and philosophically eclectic manner. A summary of Rorty's critique of philosophy, ethics, and applied ethics will be followed by a discussion of the implications for a critical pedagogy and the pragmatic use of an expansive philosophical lexicon in a business (...) ethics course. (shrink)

Arguing against the dominant developmental theories (e.g., Piaget, 1945; Vygotsky, 1978) stating that pretend play is limited to early childhood, we illustrate that pretend play is an adaptive human activity of adulthood as well as childhood. We advance this argument on three levels. First, we offer an analysis of why the discipline of developmental psychology in the Western world considered play only as an activity of childhood by neglecting to explore whether or how pretend play exists during adulthood. Second, we (...) discuss the similarities between adult improvisational theater and children’s pretend play in illustrating our thesis that pretend continues to exist during adulthood. In this discussion, we focus on similarities in the definitions, psychological origins, social functions, and developmental consequences of pretend play and adult improvisation. Finally, we end the article with educational implications of conceptualizing pretend play as a life-span activity and offer directions for future research. (shrink)

Paulo Freire consistently upheld humanization and mutuality as educational ideals. This article argues that conceptualizations of knowledge and how knowledge is sought and produced play a role in fostering humanization and mutuality in educational contexts. Drawing on Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, this article focuses on the two central characters who ‘ardently’ pursue knowledge at all costs. It will be argued that the text suggests two possible outcomes from the pursuit of knowledge. One is mutuality; the other is social disconnectedness.

This paper explores the issue of democracy and the role of the democratic classroom in the development of society in general, and the way in which educators understand and deal with diversity in particular. The first part of the paper explores different meanings of democracy and how they can be manifested in the classroom. We argue that the idea of a ‘democratic classroom’ is far too broad a category; democracy is defined in action and can have realist or pragmatic characteristics, (...) elitist or pluralist roots. The realist form of social education was championed by political scientist Charles Merriam, while a social educative process more dependent on pragmatic problem solving was pursued by educational philosopher John Dewey and those who followed in his theoretical wake. The history of democracy in the United States, and the battles of how to import different meanings of democracy into the classroom over the course of the 20th century is explored, suggesting that the educational establishment has a tendency to adopt more realist/elitist forms of civic education. We present five ‘democratic’ classrooms with different characteristics to illustrate the different characteristics social education can exhibit. In the second part of the paper we discuss the relationship between different types of democratic classrooms and issues of race/ethnicity/culture. (shrink)

This paper explores possible important relationships and sympathies between Amartya Sen’s Capabilities Approach framework for understanding the human condition and the educational ideas of John Dewey and Paolo Freire. All three focus on the importance of democratic values in a fair, well-functioning society, while Sen and Freire especially explore the difficulties and possibilities of oppressed populations. Sen suggests that all humans have a right to choice in determining their life trajectories and should be provided with the tools that allow them (...) to flourish. Both education and democratic values play important roles in creating the types of context that allow individuals and communities to recognize a wide array of human capabilities. We suggest here that the theories of Dewey and Freire offer avenues through educational processes for developing these contexts for expanded human capability. Dewey suggests an educational approach that stresses democratic values and the ability and willingness of individuals to reach out towards new possibilities. Freire stresses the idea of praxis playing a central role in education—a focus on the cycle of everyday action, reflection, and re-creation of action that leads to productive changes in life trajectories. We argue that Sen, Dewey, and Freire together help to offer a new way of understanding education in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

During my (Hafiz) childhood in Bangladesh, I experienced the negative impact of the educational system. My experiences initiated a process of conscientization leading to values-driven activism through the establishment of Education for Development and Sustainability (EDS), a child-friendly community of practice, with Trine and Alamin. In encounters with Erling and Sigrid, we became aware that our activities were in accordance with action research based on cooperative inquiry (Heron & Reason, 2008). From that point of departure, we developed our own collaborative (...) living theory. In this paper, we explore the research question “How did we become action researchers and what is our driving force?” by using Stoller’s (1989) autobiographical narrative method to analyse selected, lived experiences. Sharing lived experiences and engaging in activism with each other and the EDS children became the base for our conscientization, radical empiricism and contemplating involvement in EDS. Value based activism can create empathic relations and emotions through shared engagement for social justice and the realization that we create a shared reality. Hence, conducting action research with children/youth is in our experience a key to sustainable development. However, to increase the transparency and validity of our research, we needed to explore how our experiences and actions have influenced our values, emotions and decisions to conduct research, our research topic and the research in itself. Therefore, we have engaged co-researchers and participants to critically question the research practice and made it open for discussion and comments in order to see alternative ways of interpreting situations and processes. (shrink)

The teacher-student relationship has long been of primary concern to educators and the focus of much educational research. While various theoretical understandings of this relationship exist, ontological understandings of the lived experiences of this relationship are not so prevalent, and there is thus a call for phenomenological studies aimed at uncovering the essential and ontological meanings of this taken for granted phenomenon. This paper reports on such a project and, in particular, some of the challenges encountered in the process of (...) phenomenologically researching the relationship which arises in the context of teacher education between the lecturer and the student teacher. The challenges of phenomenological research are both numerous and complex. These challenges relate to the intensity of the lived experience of the research itself, the meditative attunement of the researcher to the focal phenomenon, and the process of walking in a research process that is mindful of one's own historicity (Gadamer, 1960/1995). While the primary focus of this paper is on the challenges of researching the lecturer-student teacher relationship in a phenomenological way, it nevertheless reflects the unique capacity of a phenomenological approach to respect the centrality and humanity of relationship and to open understanding that affirms this. (shrink)

This article sheds new light on Karl Marx’s theoretical legacy to promote educational philosophy and theory in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) education. Accordingly, this article selects Marxian thought as an exemplar case to elaborate critical pedagogy and aesthetics and culminate with an overview of the Marxian approach to the theoretical underpinnings of STEAM education. Hence, the article critically reviews Marx’s original works and earlier Marxian scholars’ contributions to extending critical pedagogy and its applications to the STEAM paradigm (...) and informational and communication technology (ICT) development. This article critiques notable structural problems of STEAM education that produce power differentials such as educational gaps and digital divides in the current age of digital capitalism. Given the context, this article refines art and communication theories through the lens of his biography and writings. Additionally, this article incorporates the Marxian viewpoints about reproduction and aesthetic literacy into STEAM education. Overall, this article reviews the theoretical legacy of Marx and his essential critical and pedagogical theory, calling on scholars to pay close attention to re-orienting STEAM pedagogy as an emerging multidisciplinary field. (shrink)

This paper is premised on the understanding that racism is deeply and widely entrenched in our culture and the ethical claim that we operate within complex networks of habituated practices. Within this framework, we ask how do we disrupt these calcified, complex, and racist ways of being? Specifically, we explore how teachers are habituated into particular ways of seeing and acting. We argue generally that conscious cultivation can promote greater equity and specifically that changing teacher talk is a necessary part (...) of this cultivation if racist norms are to be disrupted and replaced with more equitable ways of seeing in schools. In making this argument, we draw on a practice, Descriptive Inquiry, to cultivate more equitable talk and describe how it led to changes in four urban public schools. (shrink)

The article draws on critiques in political theory and morality to argue that womanism, a worldview rooted in Black women's lives and history, provides an alternative conceptual framework to prevailing Eurocentric thinking, for promoting socially just institutions of higher education. Presupposing a positioned, encultured, and embodied account of identity, womanism’s social change perspective holds transformative promise. It foregrounds Black women’s penchant for reaching solutions that promote communal balance, affirm one’s humanity and attend to the spiritual dimension (Phillips, 2006 Phillips, L. (...) (Ed.). (2006). The womanist reader. Routledge.[Crossref], [Google Scholar]). Directed first towards scholars of color, fostering inclusivity, communalist values and acknowledged intersectionality offers an ethic of the embodied self. As a corollary, it argues for a universal that recommends at least two guiding principles for a pedagogical philosophy. It is, first oriented towards a love of self and second towards placing all disciplines within a cultural-historical context. In the first claim, there is potential for nothing less than suspending the symbolic and ontological violence to one’s sense of belonging in academia. In the second claim, such an understanding can position scholars of color to actively re-narrate their fields. As illustrations, we focus on three academic fields of education, theology in higher education, and criminal justice. (shrink)

What kind of equality should we value and why? Current debate centres around whether distributive equality is valuable. However, it is not the only (potentially) morally significant form of equality. David Miller and T. M. Scanlon have emphasised the importance of social equality—a strongly egalitarian notion distinct from distributive equality, and which cannot be reduced to a concern for overall welfare or the welfare of the worst-off. However, as debate tends to focus on distribution, social equality has been neglected and (...) we do not have a clear understanding of what it is and why it might be valuable. This paper aims to address this gap. (shrink)

Critical Management Studies (CMS) has become an accepted part of mainstream management research. Yet, as CMS research advances, it is our position that CMS's ethical potential is not being realized. Drawing on one of CMS's theoretical sources, Critical Theory (CT), we suggest that CMS has well embraced the CT element of critique, but it has not adequately achieved the element of praxis, thereby truncating CMS's emancipation project. This paper seeks to address this trend and recover the ethical promise of CMS (...) by proposing that CMS expand its conception of praxis beyond its current focus on critical pedagogy and participatory research. To do so we elaborate on a process model that utilizes both critique and praxis to bring about the practical change of existing structures of domination. (shrink)

In this paper, we describe how critical data designers have created projects that ‘push back’ against the eclipse of environmental problems by dominant orders: the pioneering pollution database Scorecard, released by the US NGO Environmental Defense Fund in 1997; the US Environmental Protection Agency’s EnviroAtlas that brings together numerous data sets and provides tools for valuing ecosystem services; and the Houston Clean Air Network’s maps of real-time ozone levels in Houston. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews, we analyse how critical (...) data designers turn scientific data and findings into claims and visualisations that are meaningful in contemporary political terms. The skills of critical data designers cross scales and domains; they must identify problems calling for public consideration, and then locate, access, link, and create visualisations of data relevant to the problem. We conclude by describing hazards ahead in work to leverage Big Data to understand and address environmental problems. Critical data designers need to understand what counts as a societal problem in a particular context, what doesn’t, what is seen as connected and not, what is seen as ethically charged, and what is exonerated and discounted. Such recognition is produced through interpretive, ‘close reading’ of the historical moment in which they operate. (shrink)

In this article I bring Giorgio Agamben’s notion of ‘whatever singularity’ into critical pedagogy. I take as my starting point the role of identity within critical pedagogy. I call upon Butler to sketch the debates around the mobilization of identity for political purposes and, conceding the contingent necessity of identity, then suggest that whatever singularity can be helpful in moving critical pedagogy from an emancipatory to a liberatory project. To articulate whatever singularity I situate the concept within the work in (...) which it appears, and then take a detour into Agamben’s general philosophical project. I propose that, for critical pedagogy to take whatever singularity seriously, it must uphold a respect for the ineffability of being, which entails in part the suspension of dialogue. To help flesh out what I mean by this proposal, I turn to a fragment of Lyotard’s philosophy and his critique of democracy. I conclude by addressing a pressing ontological critique of Agamben, which leads me to argue for a materialist appropriation of the figure of whatever singularity, one that is held in tension with ontological concerns of identity. (shrink)

The legacy of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research has been a powerful force for critically understanding social reality. Erich Fromm was one of the early and best known members of the Institute. Fromm emphasised the centrality of culture and interpersonal relations in the contruction of the psyche. The unconscious was not only the location for buried repressed matter but also for the imaginative potential of the human person. He is a forgotten and neglected contributor to the story of the (...) Institute having been written out of this history. This retrospective of his ideas explores his work in the light of the recent work of Jürgen Habermas who is also an active but less controversial engager with the psychoanalytic tradition. The implications for adult education will be addressed. The paper outlines Fromm’s radical reinterpretation of psychoanalysis emphasising the importance of social existence as distinct from the impact of instincts; key concepts of the market, commodity fetishism and automaton conformity; The implications for adult education in the tradition of radical (Freire) and transformative learning theory (Mezirow) and addressed and make connections between Habermas and Fromm that further the project of critical theory. Both attempted in different times to identify and realise the potential of (though neither used the term) of lifelong learning as part of the process of bringing about a more just and caring society and a shared attention to the importance of having free conversations about how the emancipated life might be created and sustained. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore ways in which pre-college pedagogical resources – particularly Critical Race Pedagogy developed for high school students, as well as Philosophy for Children – can be helpfully employed by college level instructors who wish to dialogue with students about the nature of race and racial oppression. More specifically, we wish to explore how P4C can both learn from, and be put to the service of, CRP, and how this provides a useful framework for philosophical conversations about (...) race at the college and pre-college levels. Our arguments are interwoven with narratives of our personal experiences utilising these pre-college pedagogical resources in conversations about race, so as to illustrate and provide context for our claims. We ultimately contend that these resources can help pedagogues in both higher and lower education work toward unmuting the voices of undervalued and underserved students in the United States. (shrink)

This study explored over 100 Year 6 children's feelings towards, and behaviour within, literacy lessons across an academic year. This study revealed that the majority of dissatisfied children concealed their feelings from their teacher, defined within this article as 'dissatisfaction behind a veil of compliance'. Through progressive sampling, where children were observed in a range of subjects, the effort placed in this concealment is explored, together with the role of the teacher and external forces in potentially encouraging it. The article (...) concludes by discussing the possibility of applying the implications of the findings to practice, especially in terms of providing a more open environment, where teachers and pupils can express their views, openly and constructively. (shrink)

Central tenets of Freirean philosophy and pedagogy are explored and applied to the emerging field of older adults’ learning, a sub-field of adult education. I argue that many of Freire’s concepts and principles have direct applicability to the tasks of adult educators working alongside marginalized older adults. In particular, Freire’s ideas fit comfortably within a critical educational gerontology approach as they challenge prevailing orthodoxies and provide a robust analytical framework from which radical adult educators can work effectively in promoting social (...) transformation. (shrink)

In this essay I explore the potential that ethnographic methods hold for philosophy of education as a form of critical pragmatism. An aim of critical pragmatism is to help to analyze the roadblocks to fruitful communication, coordination and liberation. It does so by identifying their sources and opportunities for repair. As I have argued elsewhere :222–240, 2012) an important aim of critical pragmatism is to redirect expert knowledge so it takes seriously local understanding. In this essay I do two things. (...) First I look at the other side of critical pragmatism showing how, by adopting ethnographic methods, critical pragmatism can be used to refine and expand local, common sense understanding. Second I show how philosophers can draw on ethnography to understand the ways in which normative issues are felt, defined and creatively resolved on the local level, and how they can in turn use that understanding to provide some general guidelines for addressing educational problems. I show how critical pragmatism can aid education by displaying and thematizing the innovative solutions that people, caught between different normative imperatives, devise to maintain an inclusive, educationally meaningful environment. In this part I draw on my work in a Catholic school to illustrate how ethnography can be used by philosophy to capture innovative resolutions to conflicts of value and I show how philosophy can then serve to thematize these resolutions by appropriating more general categories for addressing similar educational concerns. (shrink)

This article will present my autobiographical journey: from communism to capitalism, from the banking system and the pedagogy of the oppressed to problem-posing education. My personal experiences are seen as a way of emigrating internally and as part of the struggle through the process of self-actualisation and self-understanding. In effect, the practice of intellectual freedom shifts from a personal to a civic perspective. My wish for social justice, especially for children from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds living in a global (...) society, will be considered, with reference to the voluntary work in the Romanian community. Thus, from a postmodern perspective, the autobiographical process is not just about self, but also about the Other. (shrink)

According to relational views of autonomy, some social relations or forms of dependence are necessary for autonomous agency. Recent relational theorists have primarily focused on autonomy of action or practical autonomy, and the result has been a shift away from individualistic conceptions of autonomy in the practical realm. Despite these trends, individualistic conceptions are still the default when it comes to autonomy of belief or intellectual autonomy. In this paper, I argue for a relational account of intellectual autonomy. Specifically, I (...) claim that intellectual autonomy requires a sense of one’s standing as an equal member of the epistemic community. (shrink)

Knowledge-based development is education writ large. Therefore this paper approaches the idea of a knowledge-based development institution ("Knowledge Bank") from the viewpoint of philosophy of education, educational psychology, and pedagogical theory applied to the problems of development.

This theoretical paper elucidates the nature of educational technology and, in the process, sheds light on a number of phenomena in educational systems, from the no-significant-difference phenomenon to the singular lack of replication in studies of educational technologies. Its central thesis is that we are not just users of technologies but coparticipants in them. Our participant roles may range from pressing power switches to designing digital learning systems to performing calculations in our heads. Some technologies may demand our participation only (...) to enact fixed, predesigned orchestrations correctly. Other technologies leave gaps that we can or must fill with novel orchestrations, which we may perform more or less well. Most are a mix of the two, and the mix varies according to context, participant, and use. This participative orchestration is highly distributed: in educational systems, coparticipants include the learner, the teacher, and many others, from textbook authors to LMS programmers, as well as the tools and methods they use and create. From this perspective, all learners and teachers are educational technologists. The technologies of education are seen to be deeply, fundamentally, and irreducibly human, complex, situated and social in their constitution, their form, and their purpose, and as ungeneralizable in their effects as the choice of paintbrush is to the production of great art. (shrink)

For the past half-century, critical pedagogy has represented perhaps the most influential response to traditional ‘banking’ models of education and the political obedience and social conformity they are purported to engender. Precisely because of its lasting impact, however, it has tended to overshadow other possible visions of the critical political potential of education. In this article, I trace the origins and development of a distinctive yet under-discussed concept in Michel Foucault’s late ethical work – psychagogy – to pursue an alternative (...) depiction of education as a critical political practice. Attending to the origins and meaning of psychagogy in Foucault’s work is valuable, I argue, for two reasons. On the one hand, the concept offers a vision of political education that avoids reproducing problematic juridical binaries – truth and ideology, rationality and irrationality, absolved and condemned – that Foucault believed inhered in Enlightenment-era conceptions of emancipation. On the other hand, it demonstrates how political problems of our present might be rendered workable not only through recourse to the authoritative discourses of experts or collective demands of revolutionaries, but also through exercises in subjectivity formation that are rather more quotidian, experiential, and conditional in nature. (shrink)

In this paper, we document the counter-data action and data activism of a grassroots affordable housing advocacy group in Atlanta. Our observation and insight into these data activities and strategies are achieved through ethnographic and engaged research and participatory design. We find that counter-data action through community-collected data is rooted in a legacy of Atlanta’s black activism and black scholarship; that this data activism enabled resource mobilization and critical conscious making; and that design and media production are essential post counter-data (...) action activities in data activism. Based on these findings, we urge the field of open government data to broaden their concept of social impact of data to include the use data to mobilize resources within oppressed communities not to influence policy and government but to build capacities within community in order to transform, not join, political structures. We also advocate that scholars within the fields of open government data, critical data studies, and data activism recognize the legacy and historic practice of data activism by black communities working towards social change. (shrink)

The enactive approach provides a perspective on human bodies in their organic, sensorimotor, social, and linguistic dimensions, but many fundamental issues still remain unaddressed. A crucial desideratum for a theory of human bodies is that it be able to account for concrete human becoming. In this article I show that enactive theory possesses resources to achieve this goal. Being an existential structure, human becoming is best approached by a series of progressive formal indications. I discuss three standpoints on human becoming (...) as open, indeterminate, and therefore historical using the voices of Pico della Mirandola, Gordon W. Allport, and Paulo Freire. Drawing on Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation we move from an existential to an ontological register in looking at modes of embodied becoming. His scheme of interpretation of the relation between modes of individuation allows us to understand human becoming in terms of a tendency to neotenization. I compare this ontology with an enactive theoretical account of the dimensions of embodiment, finding several compatibilities and complementarities. Various forms of bodily unfinishedness in enaction fit the Simondonian ontology and the existential analysis, where transindividuality corresponds to participatory sense-making and Freire’s joint becoming of individuals and communities correlates with the open tensions in linguistic bodies between incorporation and incarnation of linguistic acts. I test some of this ideas by considering the plausibility of artificial bodies and personal becoming from an enactive perspective, using the case of replicants in the film Blade Runner. The conclusion is that any kind of personhood, replicants included, requires living through an actual history of concrete becoming. (shrink)

This study investigated how young Italian people experienced the period of peak spread of COVID-19 in their country by probing their emotions, thoughts, events, and actions related to interpersonal and community bonds. This approach to the pandemic will highlight social dimensions that characterized contextual interactions from the specific perspective of Community Psychology. The aim was to investigate young people's experiences because they are the most fragile group due to their difficulty staying home and apart from their peers and because they (...) are, at the same time, the most potentially dangerous people due to their urge to gather in groups. The research involved 568 university students, 475 females, and 93 males, with an average age of 21.82 years. The collected data were analyzed with the Grounded Theory Methodology, using the Atlas 8.0 software. From the textual data, representative codes were defined and grouped into 10 categories, which reflect the individuals' prosocial attitudes, behaviors, and values. These categories formed three macro-categories, called: “Collective Dimensions,” which includes Connectedness, Solidarity, Italian-ness, Social Problems, and Collective Mourning; “Prosocial Orientation,” which includes Trust and Hope; and “Collective Values,” which includes Values of Freedom, Respect of Social Rules, and Civic-Mindedness. All these macro-categories are indicative of the shared feelings experienced by Italians during the first time of the pandemic. Further practical implications of these results will be discussed, including a consideration of the risk of developing distress and improving well-being, as well as promoting preventive behaviors. (shrink)

El ensayo rememora las raíces fenomenológicas que comparten las obras Filosofía para hacer las paces de Vicent Martínez Guzmán, La paz imperfecta de Francisco Muñoz y la filosofía de las paces transracionales en la que se enfoca la escuela de Estudios de Paz de la Universidad de Innsbruck. Sobre esta base me refiero después a la aplicación pedagógica y didáctica de dichas raíces en la educación académica para la paz. Este trabajo hace referencia a las experiencias metodológicas del aprendizaje académico (...) en grupos, y sus consecuencias para el desarrollo del currículo de los Estudios de Paz, entendiendo estos como una formación en la construcción estratégica de capacidades y relaciones. Finalmente resalto las etapas del aprendizaje, en el sentido de ‘pelar la cebolla del Ego’ y de proveer el marco para el desarrollo libre de los grupos y los temas.This essay retraces the shared phenomenological root of Vicent Martínez Guzmán’s Filosofía para Hacer las Paces, Francisco Muñoz La Paz Imperfecta and the Innsbruck School’s Transracional Peace Philosophy. From there it forges ahead to the pedagogical and didactical application of these roots in academic peace education. It refers to the methodological experiences of academic learning in T-groups and its consequence for curricula development if Peace Studies is understood as Strategic Capacity and Rela-tionship Training. Finally, it highlights the stages of learning in the sense of `Peeling the Ego’s Onion´ and providing the frame for the team’s and the theme’s free development. (shrink)

Theoretically, this study is framed within the semiotic tradition of communication theory, which theorizes communication as the intersubjective mediation by signs. Methodologically, this study is guided by Peirce’s semiotic ideas, especially his writing about the commens and commind, or the sign and the object, and the power of a community as the final interpretant performing the process of sensemaking. Results showed how the survivors of a natural calamity symbolically interacted with such calamity, and how this led to a reformation of (...) the way they view themselves and the world. The survivors’ symbolic images captured in narratives, in sketches and drawings, and in poetry helped them to reframe their sense of self and their worldview by believing in common sense and intuition, and by valuing the power of courage, initiative, preparedness, hope, and resilience. An unfortunate irony emerged in their symbolic interaction with the disaster such that their sinning and self-inflicted blame made them think they were worthy of punishment. Nonetheless, this unfortunate irony will change if the survivors continue to reflect on their civic roles, interrogate their environmental and political contexts, and expand their awareness and social consciousness. As these unfold, the survivors will be able to accomplish empowerment, emancipation, and an independent mind. (shrink)

In search of our highest capacities, cognitive scientists aim to explain things like mathematics, language, and planning. But are these really our most sophisticated forms of knowing? In this paper, I point to a different pinnacle of cognition. Our most sophisticated human knowing, I think, lies in how we engage with each other, in our relating. Cognitive science and philosophy of mind have largely ignored the ways of knowing at play here. At the same time, the emphasis on discrete, rational (...) knowing to the detriment of engaged, human knowing pervades societal practices and institutions, often with harmful effects on people and their relations. There are many reasons why we need a new, engaged—or even engaging—epistemology of human knowing. The enactive theory of participatory sense-making takes steps towards this, but it needs deepening. Kym Maclaren’s idea of letting be invites such a deepening. Characterizing knowing as a relationship of letting be provides a nuanced way to deal with the tensions between the knower’s being and the being of the known, as they meet in the process of knowing-and-being-known. This meeting of knower and known is not easy to understand. However, there is a mode of relating in which we know it well, and that is: in loving relationships. I propose to look at human knowing through the lens of loving. We then see that both knowing and loving are existential, dialectic ways in which concrete and particular beings engage with each other. (shrink)

The narrative of Plato’s cave story is loaded with ‘some of the most suggestive opposites in the repertoire, namely the contrasts between down and up, darkness and light, chains and freedom’ (Hrach...

Community of philosophical inquiry (CPI) is a way of practicing philosophy in a group that is characterized by conversation; that creates its discussion agenda from questions posed by the conversants as a response to some stimulus (whether text or some other media); and that includes discussion of specific philosophers or philosophical traditions, if at all, only in order to develop its own ideas about the concepts under discussion. The epistemological conviction of community of philosophical inquiry is that communal dialogue, facilitated (...) by a philosophically educated person, recapitulates and reconstructs the major elements—and even the positions or claims—of the tradition, in one form or another, through the distributed thinking characteristic of dialogical discourse. The pedagogical locus of control of CPI is the group as a whole, which is understood as potentially self‐regulating through a process of ongoing dialectical transformation. The role of the facilitator is to act, among other things, from the Socratic “position of ignorance” as a bridge between concepts and arguments and as a trigger for conceptual system transformation. (shrink)

As educators, writers and public intellectuals, many of us share a sense of responsibility for reflecting on the worlds in which we live, with a view to transforming them for the common good, towar...

Although social justice is an integral component of medical professionalism, there is little discussion in medical education about how to teach it to future physicians. Using adult learning theory and the work of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, medical educators can teach a socially-conscious professionalism through educational content and teaching strategies. Such teaching can model non-hierarchical relationships to learners, which can translate to their clinical interactions with patients. Freirian teaching can additionally foster professionalism in both teachers and learners by ensuring that (...) they are involved citizens in their local, national and international communities. (shrink)

In the past 20, years the impact of progressive educational theories have become influential in nurse education particularly in relation to partnership and empowerment between lecturers and students and the development of student autonomy. The introduction of these progressive theories was in response to the criticisms that nurse education was characterized by hierarchical and asymmetrical power relationships between lecturers and students that encouraged rote learning and stifled student autonomy. This article explores how the work of Michel Foucault can be mobilized (...) to think about autonomy in three different yet overlapping ways: as a historical event; as a discursive practice; and as part of an overall strategy to produce a specific student subject position. The implications for educational practice are that, rather than a site where students are empowered, nurse education is both a factory and a laboratory where new subjectivities are continually being constructed. This suggests that empowering practices and disciplinary practices uneasily co‐exist. Critical reflection needs to be directed not only at structural dimensions of power but also on ourselves as students and lecturers by asking a Foucauldian question: How are you interested in autonomy? (shrink)

For centuries, philosophy has been considered as an intellectual activity requiring complex cognitive skills and predispositions related to complex (or critical) thinking. The Philosophy for Children (P4C) approach aims at the development of critical thinking in pupils through philosophical dialogue. Some contest the introduction of P4C in the classroom, suggesting that the discussions it fosters are not philosophical in essence. In this text, we argue that P4C is philosophy.