In this paper I ask how educational researchers can believe the subjective perceptions of qualitative participant-observers given the concern for objectivity and generalisability of experimental research in the behavioural and social sciences. I critique the most common answer to this question within the educational research community, which posits the existence of two (or more) equally legitimate epistemological paradigms—positivism and constructivism—and offer an alternative that places a priority in educational research on understanding the purposes and meanings humans attribute to educational practices. (...) Only within the context of what I call a transcendent view from somewhere—higher ideals that govern human activities—can we make sense of quantitative as well as qualitative research findings. (shrink)

Altruism and the medical profession have been linked throughout the history of medicine. Students are drawn to the calling of medicine because of altruistic values, dedication to service, and the desire to alleviate suffering and promote healing. Despite a dedication to these values, altruism in medicine is threatened by empathy erosion that develops in the clinical years of medical school and an increasing rate of medical student burnout. Currently, there are two widespread movements in medicine aimed at addressing the dual (...) loss of altruism and physician and student burnout—professionalism and wellness. Despite widespread recognition of the problems and programs aimed at improving them, there has been little headway, and even calls to abandon altruism in the modern marketplace of medicine. What is needed is not an abandonment of a fundamental, defining value of the profession, but a re-evaluation of the meaning of altruism in medicine and a framework that allows for students and physicians to provide altruistic care for a sustainable, rewarding career in the healing profession. This paper proposes the Enlightened Self-Interest in Altruism model as an ethical framework to allow medical students to synergize the interests of the self with those they serve in a mutually beneficial relationship to improve patient care and the healthcare system at large. The ESIA model acknowledges that egoism and altruism are intertwined, dynamic motivators of behavior. In the enlightened self-interest approach, the interests of the group are also the interests of the self. The physician–patient relationship is a dyad in which egoism and altruism may converge in an enlightened way that acknowledges that the interests of one are the interests of the whole. This is a paradigm shift from the historical view of egoism and altruism as opposing motivations. This paper will present the threats to altruism, explore the interface of egoism and altruism in a clinical vignette, and then present the ESIA framework as an educational approach to aligning the interests of providers and patients to prevent burnout and promote altruism. (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)

My aim in this paper is to show the relevance of an ‘effective semiotics’; that is, a field study based upon Peirce's semiotics. The general context of this investigation is educational semiotics rather than semiotics of teaching: I am concerned with a general approach of educational processes, not with skills and curricula. My paper is grounded in a field study that I carried out in a school, L'Ecole de la Neuville, implementing Institutional Pedagogy in France. I first investigate the relevance (...) of Peirce's semiotics in such a context. I then propose several definitions for the word ‘institution’, referring to the core concepts of this particular pedagogy, before describing the concept of ‘institution-sign’, which is considered a useful tool for making effective connections between several aspects of semiotics. I finally assert that an institution constitutes a tool that allows teachers to favour semiosis in educational contexts. (shrink)

Possibilities for critical social theory and Foucault’s work: a toolbox approach The benefits and constraints of philosophical frameworks using the work of Michel Foucault and critical social theorists, such as Fay, Giroux and McLaren, are examined in the light of their traditions. The reasons nurse researchers adopt these frameworks are explored, as are the tensions between the respective theories. A complementary ‘toolbox’ approach to the research process addresses some of the theoretical and methodological challenges presented by each framework. Such an (...) approach provides distinctive insights into nursing practice that the other has ignored or missed. It is argued that by converging the two frameworks into a toolbox approach, it is possible to examine or deconstruct existing practices, whilst also providing an avenue for nurses to reconstruct or change such practices. (shrink)

This article briefly considers current positions about whether the inclusion of the perspectives and interests of marginalised groups in the construction of knowledge is of epistemic value. It is then argued that applied social epistemology is the proper epistemic stance to take in evaluating this question. Theorists who have held that diversity makes an epistemic contribution are interpreted as attempting to reform social pathways to knowledge in ways that make true belief more likely. Thus, the demand for diversity challenges the (...) individualistic and a priori nature of traditional epistemology. This stance has consequences for education. It supports greater attention to helping students examine the testimonial bases for their beliefs. And it prepares students for their role as citizens in supporting policies that maintain credible inclusive institutions of public knowledge. (shrink)

Paulo Freire’s work is often characterized and used in terms that seek to produce widespread political and economic changes across societies. Peter Roberts, however, in his book Paulo Freire in the twenty-first Century, offers readers a much different way of approaching Freire’s work. Throughout his book, Roberts presents Freire as recognizing the limitations of educational initiatives, as not seeking specific macro-political objectives, and as emphasizing openness to alternative discourses. These themes weave throughout each chapter of the book, in which Roberts (...) examines a wide range of topics, from Freire and Dostoevsky to reason and emotion to political correctness to Freire and the Tao Te Ching. In this review essay, I engage a number of purposes. I elucidate and trace these three themes as they weave throughout and support the various topics that Roberts examines in his book. I illustrate how Roberts’s treatment of these themes challenges many of the interpretations of Freire’s work found within the critical literature, and, through this critique, it offers readers new ways of thinking about Freire’s thinking. Lastly, I discuss how Roberts’s thoughts suggest new ways that Freire’s work, and critical education in general, might begin to make more meaningful and practical inroads into public education and might develop new avenues of scholarship on Freire’s work. (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)

The article conceptualizes the term Pedagogy of Fear as the master narrative of educational systems around the world. Pedagogy of Fear stunts the active and vital educational growth of the young person, making him/her passive and dependent upon external disciplinary sources. It is motivated by fear that prevents young students—as well as teachers—from dealing with the great existential questions that relate to the essence of human beings. One of the techniques of the Pedagogy of Fear is the internalization of the (...) view that without evaluation and assessment we cannot know a child’s level or “worth”—and therefore are unable to help him/her if he is “slow in learning.” In contrast, Philosophy for/with Children offers a space for addressing existential questions, some of which deal with urgent social issues. The willingness to make philosophy inquiry an alternative already from an early age seeks to allow the child to challenge him/herself with new and fresh questions. Philosophy for/with Children does not regard children as a “space of lack” (experience, knowledge, values, etc.) The new and fresh philosophical perspective of children demands the presence of a willingness to engage in dialogue and rejection of the fear of the innocent and deep questions of philosophy. Shaking free of the Pedagogy of Fear and restoring honor to children’s questions demands a fundamental conceptual change within education. The replacement of existential certainty as it is depicted by adults in the existing education system with an existential question is a heavy intellectual task that in most cases is viewed as subversive—primarily on the part of the adult. It demands a return to starting points and a willingness to allow children a free and safe educational space in which to ground preliminary and fertile questions about themselves, their lives, their environment, and, most of all, the changing world they discover with the form of originality that is right for them. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy given problems with accounts grounded in critical social theory, rational liberalism and pragmatic esthetic theory. I offer instead an alternative account of criticism for education in open, pluralistic, liberal, democratic societies called 'pedagogy of difference' that is grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. In our current condition in which there is no agreement as to the proper criteria (...) for assessing attitudes and actions, for a critical attitude to gain a foothold one must learn to evaluate proposed beliefs and behaviour-based standards within a particular tradition as well as those drawn from another viewpoint. To know oneself, one must engage others who are different. But to engage others in a meaningful way one must be immersed in a tradition to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of political correctness from a Freirean point of view. An identification of the range of areas to which the label ‘political correctness’ has been applied reveals a confusingly multifaceted term. The author concentrates on the key characteristics of intolerance, conformity, the impeding of questioning and criticism, the stifling of debate, and the denial of alternatives. Thus defined, ‘political correctness’ has no place in Freirean education.

In this essay I critique two influential accounts of rational autonomy in common schooling that conceive liberalism as an ideal form of life, and I offer an alternative approach to democratic education that views liberal theory as concerned with coexistence among rival ways of living. This view places moral agency, not rational autonomy, at the heart of schooling in liberal societies—a moral agency grounded in initiation into dynamic traditions that enable self-definition and are accompanied by exposure to life-paths other than (...) one’s own. This alternative challenges the tendency in large diverse democracies (such as those of the US and the UK) to prefer common to particularistic schools, thereby placing many types of faith and secular schools on a more equal footing and providing moral justification for education in the national cultures of small liberal republics (such as Denmark, Israel and Lithuania) that maintain special relationships to particular groups while acknowledging the rights of all citizens. I call this approach the pedagogy of difference. (shrink)

Ovaj tekst, kao nastavak našega promišljanja o dispozicijama za pedagogično djelovanje, kritička je refleksija vlastite profesionalne svakodnevice u kojoj detektiramo brojne dileme vezane za svrhu pedagoške profesije. Točke prijepora, poput – biti neutralna ili angažirana, graditi distanciran ili prisan pedagoški odnos, prioritizirati vlastitu ili tuđu dobrobit, odbijati ili prihvaćati sukob kao potencijalni agens promjene – izmještamo iz hodnika, predavaonica i učionica u kojima bivamo te, izlazeći time iz komforne zone nepromišljanja o njima, apostrofiramo ambivalentnu pojavnost dihotomije javno–privatno u skrivenome kurikulumu (...) tih prostora. Promatrajući dispozicije kao za autonomno pedagogično pedagoško djelovanje prediktivna uvjerenja i osobine razvijajućega karaktera, u radu zagovaramo napuštanje shvaćanja pedagoginja kao neutralnih profesionalki apstrahiranih od osobnih uvjerenja, kvaliteta i ograničenja te u fokus stavljamo etičnost, refleksivnost i autentičnost kao temeljne dispozicije za pedagogično djelovanje usmjereno k podupiranju mogućega i transformativnoga u pedagoškome odnosu. Rad zaključujemo promišljanjem odgovornosti studijā pedagogije i samih pedagoginja za kultiviranje opisanih dispozicija. This text, as a continuation of our reflections on dispositions for pedagogical practice, is a critical reflection on our everyday working life, in which we detect numerous dilemmas related to the goal of the pedagogical profession. We move points of contention – such as being neutral or engaged, building a distanced or close pedagogical relationship, prioritising one’s own benefit or that of others, rejecting or accepting conflict as a potential agent of change – out of the halls and classrooms in which we spend time and, breaching the comfort zone of not thinking about them, accent the apparently ambivalent dichotomy of public and private in the hidden curriculum of these spaces. By conceptualizing dispositions as evolving predictive beliefs and personal traits, the paper advocates abandoning the view of pedagogues as neutral professionals devoid of personal beliefs, qualities, and limitations, instead focusing on ethics, reflexivity, and authenticness as the basic dispositions for pedagogical practice directed towards supporting the possible and transformative in the pedagogical relationship. The paper concludes with a consideration of the responsibility of pedagogy programmes and pedagogues themselves in cultivating the aforementioned dispositions. (shrink)

Little of the work in critical and hermeneutical psychology has been linked to instructional technology. This article provides a discussion in order to fill the gap in this direction. The article presents a brief genealogy of American IT in relation to the influence of psychology. It also provides a critical and hermeneutical framework for psychology. It then discusses some problems of psychologism focusing on positivism, metaphysics, cultural ecology, and power. The narrow psychologism in IT produces a kind of systematic blindness (...) regarding cultural, political, and other issues. IT professionals are encouraged to engage reflectively with the power‐relations and ethical issues in which they are involved. The article points out a need for looking at psychology more comprehensively. (shrink)

In this postformal co-autoethnographic research, the authors explore the changing landscape of American research universities from their respective locations as mid-career, post-tenure critical ped...

The search for the best strategy in literacy education is a lingering phenomenon. From time to time one strategy is claimed to work best, only to be critically challenged and replaced by another. There is always debate about what the best strategy is. The belief that there is supposed to be only one best strategy is not consistent with the fact that there are diverse views on what it should be. This paper argues that the search for the best strategy (...) is not looking for the best among various practices. Instead, it calls for a critical examination of our underlying philosophical beliefs about it. Hence, the discussion of the best strategy is divided into three philosophical phases: objectivist, deconstructivist, and praxis. The search is argued to be taking a journey of philosophical investigations rather than finding a certain practice superior to all others. (shrink)

This paper highlights the voices and experiences of individuals who objected to animal dissection in their high school science and biology classes. The data were collected via online surveys , and 8 of these participants took part in more in-depth telephone interviews. Participants were former students from Ontario, Canada, who discussed their experiences with animal dissection in general, and objection to dissection in particular, if applicable. The findings reveal that students who expressed objection to dissection experienced a range of teacher (...) responses, including pressure to participate, the request to join another group of students and watch, the choice to use a dissection alternative, warnings of compromised grades, and other responses. The study points to the importance of choice policies to ensure that dissection alternatives are available in classrooms. In this way, students can select among different options of how they would like to learn, and teachers can be prepared to accommodate those who choose not to dissect. (shrink)

What happens to education when the potential it helps realizing in the individual works against the formal purposes of the curriculum? What happens when education becomes a vehicle for its own subversion? As a subject-forming state apparatus working on ideological speciesism, formal education is engaged in both human and animal stratification in service of the capitalist knowledge economy. This seemingly stable condition is however insecured by the animal rights activist as undercover learner and—worker, who enters education and research laboratories under (...) false premises in order to extract the knowledge necessary to dismantle the logic of animal utility on which the scientific-educational apparatus rests. The present article is based on a semi-structured interview with an undercover worker. It draws on a synthesis of critical education and posthumanist theories to configure knowledge creation and subjectification processes in the “negative spaces” of education. The techne of undercover work includes mnemotechnical and prosthetic devices, calculation of risk, and mimetic labor. The article argues that the agenda of the undercover worker generates a multi-strained mimetic complex that composes a parasitic educational subject-assemblage redirecting scientific knowledge away from the animal stratification logic of the knowledge economy into different viral circuits; different lines of flight. It invites a rearticulation of the formal education state apparatus in more indeterminate directions, provoking scientific-educational knowledge-practices to become a catalytic impulse for their own disintegration. (shrink)

Post‐Marxist critical sociology of education has influenced the development of indigenous (‘kaupapa’) Maori educational theory and research. Its effects are examined in four claims made for Maori education by indigenous theorists. The claims are: indigenous kaupapa Maori education is a revolutionary initiative; it is a cultural solution to Maori educational under‐achievement; it has reversed the decline of the Maori language; it provides a valid educational alternative for an ethnically and culturally distinctive population. The analysis suggests that the indigenous theory approach (...) is representative of the position‐taking strategy that characterises post‐Marxist critical sociology of education, concluding that claims made in kaupapa Maori voice discourse are not supported by the empirical evidence which indicates a more complex social reality. (shrink)

In the educational psychology literature, self-regulated learning is associated with empowerment, agency, and democratic participation. Therefore, researchers are dedicated to developing and improving self-regulated learning pedagogy in order to make it widespread. However, drawing from the educational philosophy of Paulo Freire, teaching students to regulate their learning can be tied to a curriculum of obedience, subordination, and oppression. Using Freire’s discussion of concepts such as adaptation, prescription, and dependence, I suggest that self-regulated learning: targets individual psychological changes that render individuals (...) adaptable to existing social orders; is guided by a logic to prescribe a certain kind of self; and produces a relationship of dependence as learners depend on teachers for learning the necessary scripts to regulate their learning. This analysis points to ethical complexities related to teaching students to academically self-regulate. (shrink)

Los estudiantes de educación a menudo se han preguntado: “¿Pero qué puedo hacer yo?” Esta noción de que la experiencia educativa tiene que ver sobre todo con transmitir destrezas y conocimientos a los estudiantes, y no sobre algún proceso de transformación, empoderamiento o compromiso con el mundo, es el foco del presente artículo. El argumento central es que los educadores pueden hacer algo para facilitar, inculcar y cultivar el cambio, y que los actos individuales pueden conducir a cambios significativos. Se (...) invita a los educadores y otros profesionales a reflexionar para ser capaces de iniciar un proceso de debate dialéctico, compromiso significativo y acción contextualizada hacia el cambio. Entender que la educación es un proyecto político, y que las relaciones de desigualdad de poder que emanan de, o se transmiten mediante la educación, pueden ser dañinas para muchos grupos e individuos, requiere reflexión, diálogo, introspección, compromiso y humildad. La educación necesita empaparse de oportunidades para un aprendizaje diferenciado, en yuxtaposición a las muchas reformas contemporáneas liberales, procurando problematizar la desigualdad, y haciendo que la educación/escolarización sea más relevante para todos los estudiantes y partes interesadas. La pedagogía crítica es empleada como marco de referencia para entender el cambio en la educación. (shrink)

In this paper, I define exploratory talk and explore a number of examples that were analyzed using the dataanalytic coding rules delineated by Soter et al.. Then, I propose expanding the rules for exploratory talk outlined by Soter et al. and suggest coding facilitator utterances as substantive contributions to the dialogue not intrusive interjections to the discourse. I argue that this approach recognizes the facilitator as an equal participant in the dialogue who is positioned to model good inquiry, cultivate shared (...) possession of the discourse and redistribute power amongst participants. I suggest that a possible mechanism for realizing these goals is an instructional pedagogy that is participatory, liberatory, democratic and critical, such as P4C, which is defined by a community committed to intersubjective interaction and the productive evolution of ideas. (shrink)

In vernacular understandings or conversations about resistance as it occurs with students in public schools, it is frequently viewed as a negative action or set of behaviours to be changed or curtailed. This paper puts forward an argument that allows for the possibility of seeing moments of resistance as something to be recognized and celebrated with students. I do not suggest that resistance must always or only be viewed in this manner, but rather that it might be viewed thus, and (...) thereby allow for multiple understandings of an action such as resistance. Beginning with my own hegemonic understanding of resistance as a necessarily bad/undesirable characteristic or behaviour, I then build on Foucault’s relational approach to understanding power (and its operations), leading then to a discussion of student engagement as also a relational process and one that has more than one possible form. By offering a possibility of understanding student engagement as a process that works both within and outside the structures that produce and maintain the White, middle class, heterosexual, abled, Christian, male child as the defacto subject of schooling, I build an argument that opens a more fluid conception of resistance than the necessarily negative action it is often perceived to be. (shrink)