Nurse philosopher Sally Gadow (1999) has proposed the relational narrative between patient and nurse as a ‘postmodern turn’ for nursing ethics. She has conceptualized this moral approach as the construction by patient and nurse of a coauthored narrative describing the good they are seeking, as well as the means to achieve this good. The purpose of this article is to provide an elaboration of Gadow's seminal conceptualization of relational narrative based on her writings and those of other philosophers. The article (...) will further develop relational narrative's foundations in relationship and narrative and will explore engagement as a dimension essential to its creation and growth. The elaboration first builds on the notion of relationship as foundational to this postmodern moral perspective. Narrative then is advanced as being at the heart of the patient–nurse relationship and their relational narrative, based on an exploration of narrative's role in the moral realm as an epistemology for patient and nurse. Finally, the dialogic and embodied engagement expressed by a relational narrative is developed as a critical element of the ethic. (shrink)

Within a context of healthcare restructuring and a shift toward individualized continuing competency in Canada, this inductive, narrative inquiry explored positive learning experiences of first‐line acute care nurses. The written stories of eight self‐selected participants were collected and unstructured follow‐up interviews were conducted. The stories and interview transcripts were examined using categorical‐content and holistic‐form analysis, and analyzed in light of literature relating to adult education and professional development in nursing. Emergent themes included life‐changing learning and learning through one's own, and (...) other's, experiences. The findings highlight the need to re‐frame professional development for nurses in Canada, specifically by valuing and utilizing shared workplace experiences. (shrink)

Critical pedagogy is in crisis. To address this crisis, this paper reinvents Paulo Freire’s concept of utopia in and for our age of the Anthropocene. Understood as a system, postdigital critical ut...

Volume 52, Issue 8, July 2020, Page 827-829.

A crucial component of any education, dialogue is viewed by many social justice educators as their primary means towards rectifying social inequalities. Yet the extent to which the particular educational practices they recommend meet the needs or interests of their students who face systemic disadvantage remains unclear. This essay examines claims for and against dialogical pedagogy for increasing social justice. While conceding that dialogue is necessary for developing praxis as a student and participant in society, the essay argues that the (...) prescriptive tone of some educators committed to social justice undermines their capacity for dealing concretely with the needs and interests of those they intend to better serve. The conclusion is drawn that educators committed to increasing equality must develop pedagogical attitudes informed by various educational implications of structural injustice as well as by the specific contexts in which they serve as teachers of both particular skills and content. (shrink)

Student-centered learning has been conceived as a Western export to the East and the developing world in the last few decades. Philosophers of education often associate student-centered learning with frameworks related to meeting the needs of individual pupils: from Deweyan experiential learning, to the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ and other social justice orientations. Yet student-centered learning has also become, in the era of neoliberal education, a jingoistic advertisement for practices and ideologies which can be seen to lead to a global (...) devaluation of the educational profession, and the bolstering of the view of the student as a customer. In this article, I want to disentangle these views and explore some limitations of either model of student-centered learning. To add context, I consider education in the United Arab Emirates today, which provides an extreme example of the risks involved with prioritizing student’s self-identified needs and interests above all else, as in an idealized or exaggerated student-centered concept. I conclude with brief comments on amending the philosophical concept of student-centered learning to be useful in diverse contexts today. (shrink)

Academic freedom is often regarded as an absolute value of higher education institutions. Traditionally, its value is related to such topics as tenure, and the need for academic work to be free from undue political influence and other pressures that can challenge time-consuming research processes. However, when an analysis of student freedom begins with arguments about free research and free speech, undergirded as they generally are by liberal political philosophy, other considerations, related to broader views of freedom, can slip through (...) the cracks. In this essay, I want to take a step back from typical discussions of academic freedom, to take a broader perspective, before considering how freedom relates to student experience. The first part of this essay explores diverse elaborations and defences of freedom: How it is upheld in the liberal philosophy of Kant, the critical pedagogy of Freire, existentialism, and the capabilities approach to development. Exploring the often contrasting insights and implications of these views, I then connect relevant theoretical understandings derived from them to an exploration of the experience of freedom and of students. This essay thus considers how student freedom, and student academic freedom, are more precarious concepts than typically assumed. (shrink)

Although an author is defined as someone who has made substantial contributions to a research study, sometimes power relations in student-supervisor collaborations play a more determining role in attribution of authorship. This article reflects the ideas of eight Iranian postgraduate Teaching English as a Foreign Language students about authorship policies and practices at their universities. The interview data indicate that the participants were not involved in authorship decisions and authorship credits were given based on their supervisors’ positions and seniority rather (...) than their contribution to students’ research. The participants also described unfair authorship experiences affecting their motivation, interest in academia, self-confidence, etc. It is recommended that faculty members and policy-makers in TEFL programs in Iran engage in ongoing open discussions about authorship policies and decision-making with students to avoid creating negative feelings and unpleasant experiences for students which might lead to a legacy of unfair authorship practices. (shrink)

The knowledge production of researchers interested in improving the health‐care of young clients through the employment of emancipatory research methodologies may be limited by the complexity that working with young children presents to the research process. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether emancipatory research methodologies have application within the context of research with children. Critical examination of the challenges inherent in emancipatory research with children reveals that the application of aspects of these approaches presents possibilities for contributing (...) significantly to our knowledge development for the nursing of children. (shrink)

This essay explores the original political significance of the posters of May ’68 as a critique of capitalism, as well as extending this approach to a critique of contemporary capitalism in 2020. The slogans of ’68 are deceptively simple and we look to the importance of the political ideas expressed aesthetically as having immediate impact in the late 1960s, but also the underlying Situationist philosophy which influenced them.We also explore the contemporary significance of Situationist theory, especially in the context of (...) the renewal of Marxist thought in the 21st century. This renewed Leftist critique of capitalism emerges as articulated through newer social and political movements of the current times, particularly through the political philosophy of Slavoj Žižek and his auto-critique of the former Yugoslavia. (shrink)

The origins of philosophy of education as a discipline are relatively late, and can be traced in the Anglo-American academic world from the 1960s and a specific emphasis on conceptual problems deriving from the analytical tradition of philosophy. In more recent years, however, there has been a notable ‘Continentalist’ turn in the discipline, leading to a re-evaluation of key texts and philosophers from the French and German traditions and their relation to the discourse of education. One paradigmatic example here is (...) the work of the French postmodernist thinker Jean-Francois Lyotard. In this essay, I explore how Lyotard’s powerful critique of education in his early work, especially with regard to his influence on the May ‘68 events at Nanterre University, can be seen as crucially important, now again, to a current crisis in educational philosophy in the Western world. Moreover, Lyotard’s post-’68 work, with his paradigmatic The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge as especially important, can be seen as providing a very challenging riposte to both ‘managerialist’ and instrumentalist philosophies on the one side but also to overly simplistic ‘liberatory’ educational critiques on the other side. (shrink)

Water values serve as an entry point into the intricacies of public policies and management approaches. Values are contingent assessments that emerge out of socio-ecological relations and reflect particular demands, legacies and opportunities. The concept of value positionality is introduced as the synthesis of multiple expressions of worthiness cherished by a social group. Positionality is a metaphor that connects the phenomenological understanding of water value with the politics of everyday life and the broader politico-institutional framework. It entails a cluster of (...) meanings expressed through territorialised interactions across time, locations and scales. Positionalities converge or depart according to value praxis, that is, the clash of competing valuation approaches seeking legitimisation. (shrink)

Intersecting authority-language-and-symbolic power, this article tells the story of a group of continental Francophone African youth who find themselves in an urban French-language high school in southwestern Ontario, Canada. Through their narrative, one is confronted by the trauma of one's own language being declared an illegitimate child, hence becoming a ‘deceptive fluency’ in the ‘eyes of power’ thanks to race and post-coloniality. They are fully consciousness of this situation and their ‘linguistic return’, thus gazing back at the eyes of power (...) and declaring themselves ‘subjects’ capable of love and desire. I briefly address questions of hospitality and language ownership and conclude by addressing the need to re-think the connection between race, power and language. (shrink)

Workplace bullying is a significant issue confronting the nursing profession. Bullying in nursing is frequently described in terms of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour or ‘horizontal violence’. It is proposed that the use of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour theory has fostered only a partial understanding of the phenomenon in nursing. It is suggested that the continued use of ‘oppressed group’ behaviour as the major means for understanding bullying in nursing places a flawed emphasis on bullying as a phenomenon that exists only among nurses, (...) rather than considering it within the broader organisational context. The work of Foucault and the ‘circuits of power’ model proposed by Clegg are used to provide an alternative understanding of the operation of power within organisations and therefore another way to conceive bullying in the nursing workforce. (shrink)

As contemporary universities become increasingly deregulated and neoliberalised structures, how is grassroots student political organising to adapt? What role could student organisers, working in coalition with academics, unions and communities, play in shaping the Future University? We argue that student organising has an even more crucial place in the site of the neoliberal university, working against both the corporatisation of the contemporary university, as well as rising neoliberal conditions in the broader communities within which tertiary education is embedded. These conditions, (...) without doubt, have the potential to stultify student movements by burdening students with ever-increasing debt, and packaging degrees as a commodity with a market-determined value. However, we argue, the neoliberalisation of education also engenders an opportunity for students in shaping the Future University, through grassroots advocacy for staff working conditions, and for critical pedagogies that enable the integration of transformative social justice movements with academic theory. For us, the Future University is a space that nourishes critical and creative thinking, and produces students that are able to integrate theory with radical praxis. However, for this to be realised, the ideological function of the university, in justifying and naturalising hegemonic power structures, and the very meaning of public education, must be exposed and critiqued from the ground up. (shrink)

This article describes a study that examined the experiences of 27 individuals who frequented an Open Access homeless shelter in Toronto, Canada. The overarching aim of this study was to map the social organisation of health care in Toronto, with particular regards to the ways in which literacy, or the lack of literacy, mediates the experiences of homeless individuals attempting to gain access to health care. While terms such as “literate” or “illiterate” might be seen to reflect an individual’s level (...) of acquired education or competence, critical social theorists argue that such terms instead more accurately reflect an individual’s relative class or position within the social hierarchy. Individuals who possess literacy are able to read into texts for their implicit understandings, directives, and power structures. Furthermore, they are able to translate and decode texts as potential pretexts for coordination or control. This study draws on a Freirean critical standpoint, which acknowledges that knowledge and power are inextricably interconnected. This study asked: How does literacy, or the lack of literacy, facilitate or impede access to health care for homeless individuals? What are the social consequences of illiteracy? (shrink)

This article seeks to address the contemporary politics and ethics at work in the teaching of ethics in higher education. It will do so by addressing the stakes inherent in the translation of certain ?urgent reformulations? of teaching ethics in a contemporary Asian university, in light of a ?demise of politics? due to corporatisation. Using Derrida's reading of Levinas? ideas on ethics, the article claims that the debate on teaching ethics engenders an acceleration of the ?aporia of hospitality?. The article (...) concludes that, since the corporate-managerial reformulation of the university as well as the call for reviving ?real? critical thought both labour under the mark of a growing sense of moral urgency, they are both also violent. This points to the instability of the academic institution, making the Asian university's complicity in colonialism and neo-liberalisation precisely the moment where the promise of philosophy gets intensified, thus allowing students in that Asian university to ex-propriate the European idea of justice. (shrink)

Nursing as normative praxisThe purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it introduces a variety of concepts of ‘praxis’, and argues in support of those which reflect the normative dimension of the critical social perspective. This begins with the Aristotelian concept, and moves through a variety of sources, including Hannah Arendt and Paulo Freire, but focuses primarily, and uniquely in the nursing literature, upon the work of the Yugoslavian ‘praxis Marxists’. Second, specific ways of conceiving nursing as praxis are outlined, (...) including political, aesthetic and ethical forms which have immediate import for nurses. The paper concludes with brief suggestions as to how these ways of conceiving praxis may be used by nurses to develop a more intimate and productive understanding of their own practices. (shrink)

Academics and practitioners: nurses as intellectuals In the author's experience, nurse educators working in universities generally accept that they are ‘academics’, but dismiss suggestions that they are ‘intellectuals’ because they see it as a pretentious description referring to a small number of academics and aesthetes who inhabit a conceptual world beyond the imaginative capacity of most other people. This paper suggests that the concept of the ‘intellectual’, if not the word itself, be admitted into nursing discourse through the adoption of (...) a non‐élitist Gramscian understanding, similar to the more recently formulated conception of the reflective practitioner. According to the Italian Marxist scholar Antonio Gramsci, intellectuals are those people who develop ways in which to construct the conditions of their own existence, a possibility he believed was open to all. It is suggested that, from a Gramscian perspective, all nurses are intellectuals to varying degrees, and nurse educators should not only be nurturing their own intellectualism but also the potential for intellectualism as it exists within each individual. The ways in which this project are related to Habermasian critical theory are also briefly outlined. (shrink)

Education as a practice in its own right (or sui generis practice) invokes quite a different set of ethical considerations than does education understood as a subordinate activity ? i.e. prescribed and controlled in its essentials by the current powers-that-be in a society. But the idea of education as a vehicle for the ?values? of a particular group or party is so commonplace, from history's legacy as well as from ongoing waves of educational reforms, as to appear a quite natural (...) one. So much is this case that the idea of education as a sui generis practice may seem a bit eccentric at first sight. Some preliminary work is called for then to render intelligible the claim that education is indeed a practice in its own right, and to illustrate the original starting point this gives for an exploration of educational ethics. In undertaking this preliminary work, central themes from two major sources are explored and reviewed: Richard Peters? well-known study Ethics and education and MacIntyre's After virtue. The suggestive merits of both works for advancing a sui generis understanding of education and its conduct are identified. But crucial occlusions are also highlighted in the arguments of both authors, the recognition of which might have enabled their thinking on educational matters to venture onto a different plane. The kind of thinking that emerges from these investigations as most promising for educational ethics is seen to differ in its key features from what the various branches of academic philosophy have to offer by way of ethical theory. (shrink)

This essay proposes a pedagogical ethic of love based on the four brahma-viharas -- also called the divine abodes-- of Theravada Buddhism. Witnessing, Kelly Oliver’s theory of mutual subjectivity, finds practical expression in the brahma-viharas, a comprehensive way to train the mind and heart to sustain an ethic of love in all of our relationships. Together, witnessing and the brahma-viharas offer an approach whereby we may choose to love students and to cultivate more open, responsive and egalitarian relations with them, (...) in spite of academic asymmetries of power. In perplexing or vexing interactions with students, I draw strength from three of the four divine abodes: metta (lovingkindness), karuna (compassion), and upekkha (equanimity). Consistently applying the contemplative practices associated with these states begins to disentangle the threads of complicated social relations. (shrink)

Growing concern about a shrinking cultural consensus on values, coupled with religious pluralisation and the realisation that schooling is not, and cannot be, value-neutral,have led to proposals to teach ethics in schools, interpreted as a contribution of the discipline of philosophy to the common curriculum. To the extent that this approach is seen to hinge on the alleged autonomy of ethics, it has the potential to indoctrinate the contestable view that rationality is the prime motivator of moral commitment. A case (...) is made for regarding philosophical ethics and religious studies not as alternative avenues to values education but each as a core curriculum priority, different but complementary to the other in its content. (shrink)

This paper argues that the MBA, probably the most successful academic program of the last 50 years, negatively affects the theory and practice of management with regard to ethics through its pedagogy, structure, and its underlying epistemic assumptions. In particular I seek to demonstrate how the syllabus, the pedagogy and the epistemological assumptions of MBA programs together make managers/leaders unable and unwilling to deal with ethics. I also argue that while the what and the how play a very important role, (...) it was only the emergence of a radical philosophical underpinning that has put management education on a negative trajectory. The paper thus examines MBA education from a meta-level perspective, connecting the pedagogical model with epistemological beliefs. (shrink)

As national development programs flounder and new theories of communication for developing countries emerge, there are questions about ethical consideration of policies, programs, and models used to project successful development. I examine equity, participation, and technology for their ethical implications as programs evolve and development theories are applied in the field.

This article explores the interface between public deliberation and interest politics. It empirically examines how and when actors with vested interests support and oppose processes of direct citizen deliberation, such as citizens’ juries. An analysis of four cases finds that interest groups and activists respond to citizen deliberation in a variety of ways from cooperative engagement to disruptive disengagement. The research suggests that partisan actors are most likely to support citizens’ forums when the ideational and political context offers instrumental reasons (...) to go public. The article explores what this strategic approach to public deliberation implies for the practice and theory of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Ethnographic fieldwork is subject to a number of tensions regarding the position of the researcher. Traditionally, these are discussed from a methodological perspective, and draw attention to issues such as ‘objectivity’ of the research and the supposed need for ‘distance’ in the process of knowledge-building. Approaching the issue from a different angle, this article provides a reflection on the positionality of the researcher through an autoethnographical account based on fieldwork with socially excluded groups. Rather than reflecting on the (dis)advantages of (...) proximity for the research process, it explores from a personal stance how this role interacts with other roles in the researcher's life (e.g. being a volunteer, a citizen, an advocate, a moral being). Increased awareness about this intrinsic positionality of the researcher calls for a situated conceptualisation of professionalism and science. The author furthermore explores how an autoethnographical approach relates to educational research and su.. (shrink)

It is generally acknowledged that much contemporary education takes place within a dominant audit culture, in which accountability becomes a powerful driver of educational practices. In this culture, both pupils and teachers risk being configured as a means to an assessment and target-driven end: pupils are schooled within a particular paradigm of education. The article discusses some ethical issues raised by such schooling, particularly the tensions arising for teachers, and by implication, teacher educators who prepare and support teachers for work (...) in situations where vocational aims and beliefs may be in conflict with instrumental aims. The article offers De Certeau's concept of la perruque to suggest an opening to playful engagement for human ends in education, as a way of contending with and managing the tensions generated. I use the concept to recover an idea of solidarity for teacher educators and teachers to enable ethical teaching in difficult times. (shrink)

Discourses of recovery and resilience have risen to positions of dominance in the mental health field. Models of recovery and resilience enjoy purchase, in both policy and practice, across a range of settings from self-described psychiatric survivors through to mental health charities through to statutory mental health service providers. Despite this ubiquity, there is confusion about what recovery means. In this article we problematize notions of recovery and resilience, and consider what, if anything, should be recovered from these concepts. We (...) focus on three key issues, i) individualization, ii) the persistence of a deficit model, and iii) collective approaches to recovery. Through documentary analysis we consider these issues across third sector organizations, and public and mental health policy. Firstly, definitional debates about recovery reflect wider ideological debates about the nature of mental health. The vagueness of these concepts and implicit assumptions inherent in dominant recovery and resilience discourses render them problematic because they individualize what are social problems. Secondly, these discourses, despite being seen as inherently liberatory are conceptually dependent on a notion of deficit in that talk of “positives” and “strengths” requires the existence of “negatives” and “weaknesses” for these concepts to make sense. We argue that this does little to substantially transform dominant understandings of psychological distress. Thirdly, these issues combine to impact upon the progressive potential of recovery. It comes to be seen as an individualistic experiential narrative accompaniment to medical understandings where the structural causes of distress are obscured. This in turn impacts upon the potential for recovery to be used to explore more collective, political aspects of emotional distress. Drawing on the work of Fraser, we use this critique to characterize “recovery” as a “struggle for recognition,” founded on a model of identity politics which displaces and marginalizes the need for social, political and economic redistribution to address many of the underlying causes of emotional distress. We conclude by stating that it is only when the collective, structural experiences of inequality and injustice are explicitly linked to processes of emotional distress that recovery will be possible. (shrink)

Following the first significant research into Indigenous methods of learning, it was argued that Indigenous students could learn western knowledge using Indigenous ways of learning. Subsequent research contradicted this finding to take the position that Indigenous students must learn western knowledge using western methods and so this set the scene for the development of a pedagogy where Indigenous students could learn how to learn. Theorists in Indigenous education began to search for a metalanguage. Crosscultural theorists have perceived this metalanguage in (...) terms of an explicit and transparent pedagogy while critical theorists want Indigenous students to develop their own ways of speaking and writing and to be conscious of how they do this. However, I take the position in this paper that there is already a metalanguage at work in‐between the student and the teacher in the classroom although it is often obscured from consciousness in the effort to articulate valid, quantifiable outcomes. (shrink)

Following the first significant research into Indigenous methods of learning, it was argued that Indigenous students could learn western knowledge using Indigenous ways of learning. Subsequent research contradicted this finding to take the position that Indigenous students must learn western knowledge using western methods and so this set the scene for the development of a pedagogy where Indigenous students could learn how to learn. Theorists in Indigenous education began to search for a metalanguage. Crosscultural theorists have perceived this metalanguage in (...) terms of an explicit and transparent pedagogy while critical theorists want Indigenous students to develop their own ways of speaking and writing and to be conscious of how they do this. However, I take the position in this paper that there is already a metalanguage at work in‐between the student and the teacher in the classroom although it is often obscured from consciousness in the effort to articulate valid, quantifiable outcomes. (shrink)

The conventional proper scientific self has an ethical obligation to strive to see everywhere in the universe from no particular location in that universe: he is to produce the view from nowhere. What different conceptions of the proper scientific self are created by the distinctive assumptions and research practices of social justice movements, such as feminism, anti-racism, and post-colonialism? Three such new ideals are: the multiple and conflicted knowing self; the researcher strategically located inside her research world; and the community (...) that knows. (shrink)

Theologians speak of the silence of churches' prophetic voice in the 'new' South Africa, whilst the country features amongst the socio-economically most unequal countries in the world, and the urban areas in particular continue to be characterised by segregation. In this context I ask: where is liberation theology? I spell out my reading of some of the recent voices in the liberationist discourse. In dialogue with these scholars I, firstly, argue for the faith community to be made a conscious centre (...) of liberationist debates and praxis. Secondly, I do this by suggesting two theoretical building blocks for local faith communities that wish to grow in a liberationist fashion. (shrink)

This article explores an aspect of Karl Marx’s concept, praxis. Praxis is meaningful work, through which we fulfil ourselves by fulfilling others. The discussion draws on the author’s work with postgraduate student teachers, where both students and author were researching their own practice. Reflecting Marx’s conception of praxis as subjective fulfilment in the objective world, this activity was intended to trouble and complicate the categories ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’, whilst enabling students to become both more autonomous and other-oriented. The intention behind (...) this article is to develop the theoretical vocabulary of praxis available to educational researchers and practitioners. Some ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis are introduced, followed by extensive discussion of Slavoj Žižek’s concepts, ‘act’ and ‘event’. The key argument is that in a nascent educative praxis, ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ perspectives can be understood not as fixed points of reference, but as dual orientations on a flow of signification. These ideas are developed alongside detailed examination of two university-based research sessions with student teachers. With reference to session activities, a rationale is provided for an emerging educative praxis, in which students explore creative tensions between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ perspectives on school-based practice. (shrink)

Despite the severe social, health, political and economic impacts of the outbreak of Covid-19 on Palestinians, we contend that one positive aspect of this pandemic is that it has revealed the perils and shortcomings of the teacher-centered, traditional education which colonizes students’ minds, compromises their analytical abilities and, paradoxically, places them in a system of oppression which audits their ideas, limits their freedoms, and curtails their creativity. While Israeli occupation has proven to be an obstacle in the face of the (...) Palestinian government’s attempt to combat and contain the Corona crisis, on-line education, the sole arena that escapes this colonial system, has forced many instructors to give up their domination over the process of education and to create a more collaborative atmosphere of education that is based on dialogue, research and flexibility of the curriculum content. This study is designed to gauge English literature students’ responses to this mode of digital learning. We interviewed a hundred students from six English literature programs between March and August, 2020. Thus, through critically examining students’ answers, and by drawing on Freire’s concepts of banking education, consciousness and dialogue, we propose that online education is an important step towards the decolonization of education and a call for a paradigm shift on the account that the existing paradigm of traditional education is stifling students’ creativity and critical thinking. (shrink)

This paper argues for a decolonial praxis in critical peace education. Drawing on an integrative review method, the paper synthesises approaches, practices, and theories from peace and peace education literature with special attention paid to the concepts of critical peace education, cosmopolitanism, postcolonial thought, and decolonial action. The paper particularly explores the philosophical contributions of postcolonial and decolonial thought and how each could help toward decolonising approaches for critical peace education. The concept of ‘structural violence’ is critiqued as obfuscating individual (...) responsibility. Insights are drawn here from the closely related field of global citizenship education that argues for a focus less on empathy and more on causal responsibility. Before concluding, the paper discusses a ‘pedagogy for the privileged’ and ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ that both might better support a decolonial praxis for critical peace education in theory and practice. (shrink)

One issue that is often ignored in political theory is the problem of means and modes of communication affecting dialogue between parties. In this age of hyper communication, this is something particularly relevant. The point here is that, despite the ease with which we have access to both means and modes of communication, there remains the problem of truly communicating and truly dialoguing with the Other. Michel Serres’ work Le Parasite is a seminal work on this issue. According to him, (...) in means and modes of communication, the parasite is an unwanted entity that interferes with what would otherwise be a clear connection between a sender and a receiver. But messages must pass through means and modes of communication, and this necessarily interferes with the message. The noise is therefore a constitutive feature of any form of communication. In this article, I assess the implications of Serres’ theory for Buber’s views on dialogue and for conflict resolution between individuals and communities in conflict. My discussion will be centred on informal education and will make reference to concrete instances of Anti-Semitism in the Middle-Eastern media, and how it affects relations between communities in the region. (shrink)

‘Language death’ is an undeniable phenomenon of our modern times as languages have started to disappear at an alarming rate. This has led linguists, anthropologists, philosophers and educationists to engage with this issue at various levels in an attempt to try to understand the decline in this rich area of human communication and culture. In this article I refer to some interesting and innovative educational projects in the Amazon region of Brazil, which are revitalizing local languages, cultures and communities. I (...) analyse these projects in the light of some of Paulo Freire’s ideas, particularly his views on conscientization, praxis and contextualization, and will argue that these educational ventures might be viewed as useful templates for other countries and peoples seeking to reverse or avoid ‘language-culture’ death. (shrink)

A defining aspect of our modern age is our tenacious belief in technology in all walks of life, not least in education. It could be argued that this infatuation with technology or ‘techno-philia’ in education has had a deep impact in the classroom changing the relationship between teacher and student, as well as between students; that is, these relations have become increasingly more I–It than I–Thou based because the capacity to form bonds, the level of connectedness between teacher and students, (...) and between students has either decreased or become impaired by the increasing technologisation of education. Running parallel to this and perhaps exacerbating the problem is the so-called process of ‘learnification’, which understands that teachers are mere facilitators of the learning process, rather than someone with an expertise who has something to teach others. In this article, I first assess the current technologisation of education and the impact it has had in relations within the classroom; second, I characterise Buber’s I–It and I–Thou relations and its implications for education; finally, I investigate through a thought experiment if the development of AI could 1 day successfully replace human teachers in the classroom. (shrink)

This article explores the 'second chance' myth that surrounds the role of adult education in society. This myth apparently offers all citizens an equal chance to access educational opportunities to improve their life chances. I argue that recent developments in educational policy-making are increasingly shaped by neoliberal discourses that adapt adult education principles, such as lifelong learning and emancipation, for its own economic and political logic. This has important implications for adult education, especially equality of opportunity and social inclusion.

This paper provides an overview of corporate social responsibility in Brazil, a country of vast regional and economic differences. Despite abundant natural resources and centers of advanced technology, large numbers of Brazilians live in poverty. Historical factors, which to some extent explain Brazil’s social and economic inequalities – a long period of colonialism, followed by populist reform, repressive military measures, foreign debt, unfair trade agreements, and problems of corruption – have persisted into the current period of democratic reform, marked by (...) economic and political trends toward democratization and corporate social responsibility. This paper considers the civic and business organizations that have been developing strategies to encourage social responsibility and government policies aimed at alleviating poverty. Despite progress, the complexity of the Brazilian context presents challenges for social and economic equality. (shrink)

Deliberative democracy, it is claimed, is essential for the legitimisation of public policy and law. It is built upon an assumption that citizens will be capable of constructing and defending reasons for their moral and political beliefs. However, critics of deliberative democracy suggest that citizens’ emotions are not properly considered in this process and, if left unconsidered, present a serious problem for this political framework. In response to this, deliberative theorists have increasingly begun to incorporate the emotions into their accounts. (...) However, these accounts have tended to focus only upon the inclusion of emotions in the external-collective exchange of reason between citizens. Little work has been done on how the individual will actually cope with emotions internally within their own minds. There has been no consideration of the capacities that citizens will need to perceive, understand and regulate emotions as they formulate reasons both by themselves and with others. Moreover, there has been little consideration of how these capacities might be educated in children so that emotionally competent deliberative citizens can be created. In this paper, emotional intelligence is presented as an essential capacity that can fulfil this role for the deliberative citizen and deliberative democracy more generally. The ‘deliberative school’ is suggested as a potential site for this transformation that can progress from generation to generation, cultivating citizens that are increasingly better equipped to handle emotionally-laden deliberative engagement. (shrink)

This paper explores the interplay of control and trust in a cross-national and cross-cultural professional development course. It examines the differing expectations of the overseas high-ranked education officials who were the students and of the course teachers, particularly in terms of: approaches to control of content and of interpersonal interactions; the cultural contexts in which the attitudes were shaped; the effect of the participants’ professional roles, particularly of their perceptions of accountability and power; the complex, continuing and yet shifting, interplays (...) of control and trust and the ways these interplays impacted learning within the course. It proposes the concept of operational trust as a way to consider the relationship that developed. While the situation examined is situated within a particular context and reflective of the participants involved and therefore non-iterative, the discussion highlights patterns of interaction and gives rise to tentative theorisations with implications for other cross-cultural or cross-national teacher development projects. (shrink)

Guattari's ecosophy has implications for many types of pedagogy practiced in the school. While Guattari never explicitly advocated the educational use of ecosophy, I explore in this article how it can be used as a lens to ‘read’ pedagogy in nuanced ways, highlighting oppressive premises and practices. I first discuss Guattari's ecosophy, defining key terms and advocating ecosophy as a philosophy that calls attention to the interactions and ‘parts’ of assemblages of existence—a philosophy radical and encompassing enough to make intelligible (...) the dynamic connections between various fields of existence, trajectories into the new, and trajectories more destructive in nature. I then offer a ‘reading’ of two different pedagogical strategies that have achieved a wide following in the last few decades: direct instruction, and critical pedagogy. Reading these pedagogies through ecosophy allows us to name more fully the troubling assumptions and lacunae to be found within them. (shrink)

This article takes up the educational challenge of the framers of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Specifically, the author explores the question of: how can we talk about a universal conception of human rights in a way that both respects the need for cultural pluralism and the necessity to protect those rights and freedoms that all people—regardless of differences such as race, class, culture, or religion—are entitled to? What metaphor or metaphors can be useful for us to speak clearly (...) and coherently about the issue of universal human rights in a diverse world? The author examines a prevailing yet problematic metaphor, which Makau Mutua critiques in his well-known essay ‘Savages, Victims and Saviors: The Metaphor of Human Rights.’ He then attempts to articulate some common values that can serve as a foundation for an alternative conception of human rights. Next, he proposes an alternative metaphor—the Buddhist notion of equalizing and exchanging self and other—that more aptly captures the complexity and contradictions of talking about universal human rights. Finally, he turns to the role of education in helping people become familiar with and respect this alternative metaphor. (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)