This article deals with the educational challenge of responding to the pending ecological crisis (and many other future apocalyptic scenarios that haunt our imagination). It seems we are living in a time when we have given up on the idea that progress is possible or desirable, and this questions education at its roots. In order to find a proper educational response that befits our time, it is requested that we gain a new sense of orientation (which is no longer aimed (...) at progress). This is an idea I pick up from the recent work of Bruno Latour, which is the focus of the first part of the paper. In the second part, I start fleshing out what this new orientation could look like by turning to the work of Immanuel Kant (usually regarded as one of the most outspoken defenders of education geared to progress). Nonetheless, I try to read Kant against himself, so as to show how orientation can be understood in a non-modernist manner. I connect this in the third part to the radically immanent and empiricist work of William James, and draw out in the final section how a combined reading of Kant and James offers the orientation we need. (shrink)

In this paper, I will establish a conversation between Rorty and the recent proposal of post-critical pedagogy. The assumption is that through this dialogue some tenets of the latter could find a Rortyan redescription that avoids the risk of ‘metaphysical’ formulations, whereas Rorty’s ideas can increase in their relevance with respect to education thanks to the post-critical perspective. In particular, the conversation will develop by focusing on the shared attitude towards the critical-negative attitude of poststructuralist thought, the significance of the (...) subject-matter in education and an interpretation of pedagogical hermeneutics (a key notion of post-critical pedagogy) through the lens of the Rortyan idea of edification. In the conclusion, by distinguishing two views of hope – an eventist and a transitionalist – it is argued that it is precisely in this theme, which seems to be a privileged meeting ground for Rorty and post-critical pedagogy, that there may lie a major fault line. (shrink)

Currently, the repetition of a critical way of speaking results in a stagnating tendency in educational debates. This had led to the endeavour of developing a ‘post-critical pedagogy’. This paper employs Rortyan and Latourian language in order to tackle the question of how such a post-critical pedagogy should deal with critique. It argues that if one takes critique as what Latour calls a debunking activity, then post-critical pedagogy should leave critique behind. If however critique means simply to say how something (...) should not be, then post-critical pedagogy should remain critical. In addition, however, there is a need for enriching the critical vocabulary with more affirmative language. For accomplishing this need, in contrast to recent suggestions to go back to ontology, the paper suggests that new propositions developed by literary theorists like Sedgwick and Felski are more promising. All these arguments are framed by Rorty’s notion of philosophy as cultural politics. (shrink)

At a time of pedagogical exhaustion, this article wants to imagine ways to redeem education, to spare education from its unaccomplished promises, reinvent and renew its vows, and make it somehow work towards possible futures. But how can this be done when there is no longer the old inherited faith in a direction of history with an end, no ‘telos’ nor faith that educational institutions will inevitably move societies forwards? Is there any ‘after’ if the arrow of history points in (...) no direction? What can we collectively expect from education if we have no assurance that schooling can lead to anything better than what we are now, or that caring for truth will make people freer? In place of the modernist idea of progress, the alternative narrative that is being offered to school systems and teachers is what I will describe as the ‘innovation paradigm’. Within this framework what we are, what we have, and what is in place are presented as declining, inadequate, and unsatisfactory. This narrative has become so powerful that from a ‘pedagogical popular culture’ perspective it has turned into the mainstream way of thinking about our educational institutions, practices, and hopes. Would it not, however, be more pedagogically productive to speak of ‘variation’ instead of ‘innovation’? Might this be the potential path for redeeming education after progress? [Editorial note: this paper forms part of the suite of papers entitled ‘Education After Progress’.]. (shrink)

ABSTRACTFor Rorty, any attempt to articulate a theory of truth as such is of no interest. This implies that although it may be meaningful to differentiate the truths from the falsehoods, it is pointless to say what the property of goodness is in the things we believe are good to do. Rorty points out that our no longer understanding Philosophy – with the capital ‘P’–as the framing of normative notions would make room for a post-philosophical culture where the philosophers’ activity (...) would be closer to the practices of cultural critique with the self-imposed limitation of devoting themselves exclusively to advancing descriptions of how things relate to each other. This article aims to explore what would happen if this provocation were brought to the field of Pedagogy. Taking on this Rortyan theme, keeping hope on the potentially liberating and transformative power of education implies a hopeful attitude by which individuals involved in education processes express their love for the world as a commitment to a better future, as well as their belief in its possibilities. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe paper is a response to the articles published in the current issue analysing Rorty’s philosophy of hope. In these articles, Bianca Thoilliez, Stefano Oliverio and Kai Wortmann highlight the pragmatist characteristics of post-critical pedagogy. Taking a poststructuralist perspective, I propose to examine some limits of the association between Rorty’s philosophy of hope and post-critical pedagogy. I will discuss, in turn, their take on the definition of hope, on the place of critique in post-critical pedagogy and on the affirmative ethos (...) of post-critical pedagogy. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to contribute to the outlining of the philosophical and epistemological status of post-critical pedagogy in the light of the body of scholarship (both positive and negative) that has, in the last few years, already grown in relation to this theoretical project. The article invites readers to follow its authors on a stroll in ‘Post-Criticalland’. Moreover, the article raises the question of whether post-critique is a new paradigm or merely a different attitude within the critical (...) tradition. The authors conclude by arguing for a principle of complementarity and for practices of diplomatic negotiation, on the grounds that post-critique should not be construed as dependent on critique but as complementary to it and as deserving a time and space of its own. (shrink)

Post-critical pedagogy, which offers a significant alternative to the dominant trends in contemporary philosophy of education, objects to seeing education as instrumental to other ends: it attempts to conceive of education as autotelic, namely as having intrinsic value. While there are good reasons for accepting the post-critical reservations with the instrumentalization of education, I argue that its autonomy is equally problematic, as it risks turning the philosophy of education—perhaps education itself—into a privileged activity, out of touch with the most important (...) issues in the contemporary world. In this paper I offer post-critical pedagogy a way out of this dilemma, by drawing on Walter Benjamin’s essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”. After presenting the thesis concerning the autonomy of art held by Benjamin’s Frankfurt School friends, and pointing to the similarity between their view and that of post-critical pedagogy, I articulate six Benjaminian theses on post-critical pedagogy. Following Benjamin’s claim that the technological reproducibility of art changes the way it is perceived as well as its political function, I argue that school is an educational technology that reproduces the world to the masses without an “aura”, in a way that allows for political critique that does not reduce education to politics. Next, I highlight the importance of the school to post-critical pedagogy, and contribute to developing the critical-political aspect that remains essential to post-critical pedagogy. Finally, the Benjaminian perspective also makes it possible to reflect on the relation of digital technologies of reproduction to post-critical pedagogy. (shrink)

In this article we focus on note taking as a practice that is fundamental to education. We argue that note-taking should not primarily be regarded as a method that supports effective learning, but as formative of the student herself. Hence it is a practice that has educational meaning in and of itself. It is a pedagogical form in its own right. We go on arguing that the practice of lecturing can itself be seen as a form of note taking and (...) that both phenomena are not only closely related, but also that note making and lecturing consist of reciprocal operations. Studying on the basis of one’s notes comes down to the reverse operation the teacher had to perform when preparing her lessons. Moreover, thanks to making notes during a class students have a deeply embodied sense of what it means to generate and to construct new arguments and ideas. (shrink)

While civic education may not always be explicitly included in school curriculums, it can still be imparted through various non-teaching practices and in different places. In this article, we will delve into three potential educational spaces -memorials, museums, and libraries- that are commonly found in Western democracies. We will explore the significance and scope of each of these spaces and discuss their respective ethical, political, and aesthetic responsibilities. Additionally, we will examine how they possess agency and can influence the educational (...) process, recognizing that even non-human entities, such as nature itself, can play an important role in shaping our understanding of civic education. (shrink)

What is the significance of attentiveness in teaching? A spontaneous answer would be that attentiveness is a crucial aspect in the practice of teaching, because if the students do not pay attention...

Education as a deliberate activity and purposive process necessarily involves mediation, in the sense that the educator mediates between the child and the world. This can take different forms: the educator may function as a guide who initiates children into particular practices and domains and their modes of thinking and perceiving; or act as a filter, selecting what of the world the child encounters and how; or meet the child as representative of the adult world. I look at these types (...) of mediation at the hand of the work of John Dewey, Martin Buber, Hannah Arendt, and Richard Peters. The purpose of this paper is to explore the bearing that the mediating role of the educator—as interpreted by these authors—has on the role wonder may play in the educational process. I suggest that initiation highlights the familiarizing function of wonder, and is most readily associated with inquisitive wonder; representation draws attention to the defamiliarizing role of wonder, as well as to its world-affirming role; and selection foregrounds the distinction between momentary and dispositional wonder. (shrink)

In this paper we look at the relations between knowledge and thinking through the lens of ignorance. In relation to knowledge, ignorance becomes its “constitutive outside,” and as such it may be politically organised in order to delimit the borders of the right to knowledge [the “ignorance economy,” see Roberts and Armitage : 335–354, 2008)]. In this light, the notion of a knowledge-based society should be understood as a society structured along the lines of knowledge distribution: the rights of possession (...) of and access to knowledge demand that ignorance is planned and executed as the condition of their establishment. In relation to thinking, ignorance appears differently. According to Rancière, the teacher's ignorance conditions the student's appearance as Anthropos, a being who can be asked: what do you think about it? Hence, we are dealing with the ambiguity of ignorance which seems to be both the criterion of social exclusion, and the condition of emancipation. Following this thread with reference to Heidegger's discourse on thinking, we would like to explore the possibility of comprehending knowledge and education beyond the relations of ownership and demands of productivity. Following Rancière, we may say that thinking—as displacing the notion of ignorance—stands in the position of “politics” and questions the ways knowledge societies are structured as “police orders” along the lines of knowledge possession and exclusion. (shrink)

Journal of Philosophy of Education, EarlyView.

Michel De Certeau’s scholars have rarely explored the pedagogical potential of the French thinker’s thought. This paper aims at reconstructing the question of the teaching practice in De Certeau’s works and, building on such reconstruction, it proposes a possible ‘heterological’ comprehension of teaching. Moving from an early writing dealing specifically with the teacher’s identity, the paper shows how the famous dyad of strategies and tactics exposed in The practice of everyday life can be usefully applied to teaching and studying and (...) helps further elaborate the question of teaching. From this analysis, the teacher will emerge as the owner of a strategic knowledge that, if he wants to teach, needs to be altered by the uncanny and tactical presence of the student. Teaching will finally be shown as the practice of alteration of knowledge operated by the other of such knowledge, namely, the student. In such alteration of knowledge lies the potential of a heterological comprehension of teaching. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that it is possible to approach teaching from a fully affirmative perspective: as an educational practice that has its own internal logic and intrinsic value. By analysing a fragment from one of the Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts presented in this article as a teaching event, we show that when starting from an empirical example of teaching it is possible to distinguish principles and gestures that testify to an ontological dimension of teaching. This is possible, (...) however, only when a particular reading of this empirical material is applied. We call this an immanent reading, as opposed to a transcendent (in this case critical) reading. It should be clear that this kind of inquiry we briefly demonstrate here is exactly a post-critical attempt to re-establish our affirmative relation with one of the most devalued, repressed, and neglected educational practice, namely teaching. (shrink)

During the second half of the 20th century education has been recognized as a human right in several international conventions, and the UN also holds that “Education shall be free” and that “Elementary education shall be compulsory” (UN, 1948, Article 26). The education-as-a-human right-project could be viewed as a good intention of global inclusion in recognizing that all individuals have a right to education in virtue of being humans, and the idea of education as a human right thus has a (...) tremendous global significance. However, if we look at this more critically, the education-as-a-human right-project, may not only be grounded in altruistic good intensions for the disadvantaged. The term “elementary education”, or sometimes “primary education”, which is used in several human rights-documents seems to suggest that it is some sort of formalized education. It would be useful however to make a distinction between formal and informal education, as well as between teaching, learning, education and schooling, in the discussion of the right to education and specifically in the discussion concerning education as a “human right”. There is obviously a difference between the right to teach, the right to learn, the right to education and the right to schooling. And how are these rights related to compulsory schooling, compulsory education and the supposed duty to teach and duty to learn? A further concern is what makes this a human right rather than for example a juridical right as a citizen. By addressing these questions within a theoretical framework of social ontology and ameliorative conceptual analysis I believe that we can find new ways of dealing with fundamental problems within philosophy of education such as the nature, purpose and aims of education as well as the right to education. (shrink)

In this paper I try to 'rethink' consistency as an educational quality for the 3rd millennium, following Italo Calvino's choice to take it up in his lecture series Memos for the Next Millennium, and despite the fact that the (final) lecture devoted to this quality remained unwritten. After reflecting on how consistency already plays a certain role in Calvino's other lectures, I expand on the specific educational implications of this role's unresolved ambivalence, in order to argue that this ambivalence, properly (...) understood, might be fully constitutive of the educational significance of consistency. To achieve such an understanding I turn to Gilles Deleuze and his concept of style as a 'practice' of consistency. Not only does a stylistic understanding of consistency offer interesting possibilities for a more constructive approach to the said ambivalence—between consistency as static stability and dynamic keeping-together- but as such it also speaks to a number of issues that are directly and fundamentally educational in nature. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that the attempts to centre education in one of its three constitutive aspects that have long determined the discourse on the purpose and aims of education run the risk of one-sidedness. Theories of student-centred education have been in vogue for many centuries now, having been born out of a polemic against teacher-centred education which focuses on knowledge transfer. In turn, recent thing-centred or world-centred accounts of education polemicize against student-centred accounts and their privileging of individual (...) learning processes. However, each side of this multifaceted polemic is one-sided in its own way, and this has held back not only theories of education, but also educational practice. We argue that educational theorising that is not attentive to all three aspects and dimensions of educational practices – teacher, student, and world – will ultimately lead to a poorer understanding of the purpose and aims of education. Here, we argue with Hannah Arendt that educational love must be polyamorous. (shrink)

This article examines the relevance of post-criticality as a research stance across various traditions in educational research. After problematizing the dominance of critical approaches centred on deconstruction and denunciation, the authors advocate instead for an empirical philosophy of education. This article sets the stage for a suite of articles, published in this issue, which explore affirmative, engaged methodologies that prioritize proximity to educational practices over detached critique. Collectively, the articles investigate how post-critical methodologies can produce richer understandings of educational realities (...) and foster meaningful connections between theory and practice. (shrink)

Calvino’s apology of multiplicity starts with the exposure, revealed by his take on typically modern novels, of some fundamental contradictions underlaying the modern quest for knowledge, which are definitely not alien to our day education. Then, when Calvino goes on to explore how twentieth century literature transcended those difficulties, he provides us with a valuable inspiration for how education could cope with its ambiguous relation to knowledge, still deeply rooted in the modern approach. Guided by Calvino’s readings, we are shown (...) that literature can succeed in its epistemological (r)evolution. Meanwhile, education, as it seems, is still struggling to overcome its entanglement with the unreachable goal of teaching everything about everything, to cope with the infinity and complexity of that everything, making reflecting upon education’s epistemological stance in the twenty-first century very much a necessity, one that I will try to pursue in the following pages After a methodological introduction, the paper starts by placing Calvino’s examination of beautiful, yet unsuccessful literary attempts at an exhaustive account of the world in the context of education, to show how their unattainable ambitions are mirrored in pedagogical practice, pointing out to the “modern spirit” underlying both the aforementioned novels’ and contemporary education’s relation to knowledge. Then, with the help of J. Rancière’s take on education, I will try and make educational sense of Calvino’s account of Bouvard and Pécuchet failed quest to know everything there is to be known, and relate it to the particular model of knowledge at work in education, one that needs to be questioned. Finally, I will draw on Calvino’s praise of “the contemporary novel as (…) a method of knowledge” (SM, p. 105), and particularly on his analysis of Perec’s masterpiece La Vie mode d’emploi, and his rehabilitation of the idea of arbitrariness, to outline some reflections about how an educational multiplicity, where “everything is in everything” could come to life (Rancière, 1991, p. 26). (shrink)

In this article, I begin with Felski and Sedgwick’s diagnosis of the overabundance of critique in education, connecting this to Hodgson, Vlieghe, and Zamojski’s calls for a ‘post-critical pedagogy’. Rather than offering a critique of critique, I aim to think differently about the ‘uses’ of reading, taking my cue from post-critical scholarship as well as from Calvino’s experimental novel, Invisible Cities. First, I discuss how critique and post-critique differ in their orientations when engaging with a text. I argue that, instead (...) of ‘shutting down’ a text to point to its latent assumptions, post-critique opens the text up to the world by cultivating new perceptual and imaginative dimensions in our experience. This partly involves the reader being oriented towards what is worth preserving in a text—an approach that is also central to post-critical pedagogy. Second, I reflect on my own failures with respect to putting a post-critical analysis into words, since it seems that in the context of academic writing, it is difficult to avoid critique. Given this, I argue that it is more fruitful to explore three post-critical pedagogical gestures in Invisible Cities: namely, its tensions (which encourage and resist linear explanations), its fundamental but playful ambiguity (which invites both puzzlement and curiosity), and its transformative potential in relation to the everyday understandings of the cities we inhabit. These gestures encourage readers to surrender themselves to the text in a mood characterized by enchantment rather than suspicion and demonstrate to the educative potential of literature beyond critique. (shrink)

This article examines how the critical tradition initiated by Nietzsche and pursued through poststructuralism might be compatible with what is currently being described as postcritique. It does so by looking at the example of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The first section gives some indications about the state of the methodology currently known as critical discourse analysis and introduces what a ‘postcritical’ reaction could look like. The second section focuses on a concrete example and presents the main critical literature about the (...) student well-being discourse, showing that it generally limits itself to a debunking attitude. The third section explores how the affirmative and creative dimension of critique, its ‘postcritical’ dimension, has been and could be put forward to contribute to what could be called a postcritical discourse analysis methodology. (shrink)

This article aims to articulate the richness of the pedagogical relation and pedagogical tact in an age of the near ubiquitous presence of digital education. Drawing on Citton, we argue that there is an ecology of attentional influence that is pedagogically decisive. Our argument proceeds as follows: first, we introduce Citton’s theoretical frame; second, we examine the general conception of education that is established and articulated through the pedagogical relations between educator, student and world; third, we consider the concept of (...) pedagogical tact and analyse how Citton’s framing of attention gives shape to understanding pedagogical tact; last, we connect attention to education, arguing that education concerns drawing attention to aspects of the world through pedagogically tactful action. We conclude by calling for greater reflection on aspects of education which are difficult to render digitally, and which rely on the speculative and interpretive capacities of the educator. (shrink)

This article interlaces the story ‘Comfort’ by Alice Munro with Hannah Arendt’s understanding of education as intergenerational passing on. Its principal aim is not to criticise Arendt or the fictional character of Lewis but to work with them towards a richer and more complex understanding of what can go wrong in education in general and teaching in particular. For this purpose, the article does not start from a theoretical framework but from the concrete aesthetic artifact – the story – itself. (...) The departing question is: What can we learn from the literary description for our theoretical understanding of the intergenerational in educational relations? (shrink)

This paper engages with Italo Calvino’s lecture on Visibility, included in his last—and testamentary—volume Six Memos, by understanding it in an educational and pedagogical key. While the question of pedagogy is expressly addressed by Calvino himself in his lecture, the interpretation here provided is not merely an application of his tenets but an elaboration on and an autonomous development of them. In particular, in the spotlight there is the intimate bond image-cum-writing which seems to preside over Calvino’s insights and is (...) here suggested as key to tackling the challenges of the contemporary mediascape and the “tautological vision” dominating therein. While a part of the educational discourse invokes “homeostatic” pedagogical solutions, namely the (ultimately confrontational) deployment of writing to compensate for the iconic ruling regime, this paper explores the possibility of a specific kind of visual education (instantiated by comics and Otto Neurath’s Isotype), which combines the role of the image with some features traditionally attributed to the pedagogy of writing (e.g. the cultivation of abilities of abstraction, of reflection etc.). A pedagogy of figuration is, accordingly, proposed as an interruption of the tautological vision of the new media and as conducive to educating readers of the unwritten world and of the world of digital images, Mr. Palomar—the hero of Calvino’s last novel—possibly being the archetype of this kind of (new?) readership. By referring to two influential notions in the contemporary debate in educational philosophy and theory, this pedagogy is finally interpreted in term of (visual) thing-centredness rather than (visual) subjectification. (shrink)

While the aesthetics of Rancière is a well-explored topic, there has been something missing from the reception of his works, and that is the relation between Rancière’s aesthetics and music. However, in recent years an interest in this relation has resulted in several academic contributions, which is sign enough that there is in fact a musical element in his works. Rancière himself, in response to this reception, has acknowledged as much. Music is a human form of expression that uses the (...) physicality of air to produce vibrations that encounter and resonate with the human body. Musicality is the ability to attend to such vibrations and harness the expectations and surprises that they bring about. In this article, I explore how a musical approach to Rancière’s writings can inform educational philosophy, especially as regards the practice of teaching. Particular attention is paid to his notion of the sensorium as a sensible realm where we experience and encounter difference and otherness, in political events as well as in teaching situations. Attending ethically to these situations is predicated on a certain sensibility that involves certain aesthetic qualities. In this article, I explore this sensibility as a particular educational musicality. Drawing from educational philosophy, the aesthetic theory of Jacques Rancière, and music philosophy, I connect this musicality of teaching to an ability to navigate in an ethical space that comes to life through a material/sensible community of interests formed in teaching practice. I use the term acousmatic experience as an explorative device in an attempt to depict teaching practice as something that can bring about a specific educational sensorium. (shrink)

This book proposes a philosophical exploration of the educational role that media plays in university study practices, with a focus on the practices of lecturing and academic writing. Are the media employed in university study practices mere accessories, or rather constitutive of these practices? While this seems to be a purely theoretical question, its practical implications are wide and concern whether such a thing as a ‘digital university’ is possible. The 'digital university' has been, for a long time, a theoretical (...) construct. However, in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, moving the university into the digital realm has become a necessity. The difficulties in transitioning to an online university during the 2020 pandemic showed the increased urgency of the questions explored in this book. -/- The book describes lecturing and academic writing through the lens of a phenomenology of gestures and arrives at a description of the experience of university thinking as expanding the subject’s range of experiences about the world and about one’s modes of thinking about the world. The media configuration characteristic for university study practices is a movement of rendering inoperative one medium through another medium so that thinking can emerge, a movement called ‘mediatic displacement’. The question of the digital university becomes then a question whether mediatic displacement is possible on a digital screen. Although this is conceivable, digital technologies are still relatively new, and we are not used to playing with them in a profanatory way as the book discusses through the example of videoconferencing and MOOCs. The promise of the digital university seems to remain utopian until we figure out how to enact the techniques of mediatic displacement currently flourishing at the physical university. (shrink)

Education theory has been exhibiting a renewed rejection of education’s instrumentality to political and economic influences against a policy trend that implicitly considers education a mere pragmatic tool. This paper suggests an ontological investigation that goes beyond normatively supporting or rejecting the instrumentality of education. It looks at instrumental relationships as a form of prosthesis supplementing the ontological incompleteness of its involved subjects. This incompleteness is argued for through Laclau and Mouffe’s understanding of antagonism and Bernard Stiegler’s philosophy of technics. (...) The contribution problematizes the ethical consequences such reading may have, manifested in the ethical ambivalence of instrumental ends. Then, it contends that a democratic approach to the instrumentality of education should acknowledge an inherent indeterminacy of education and what it is instrumental for and advocate a democratic coexistence with this ontology. This echoes Freud’s concept of mourning as a healthy response to the loss of a natural essence, in contrast to melancholia, which refuses it. Such a position is developed by interrogating different theoretical positions and regarding the quest for education’s (anti-) instrumentality as a performative discourse by many populist discourses. (shrink)

This paper primarily aims at conceptualizing a new philosophical approach to literature education, one that we—in the vein of certain pedagogical trends—propose to call “thing-centered”. Point of departure is the ongoing confrontation with a two-sided educational problem: on the one hand, the confrontation with the steady decline of younger generations’ engagements with ‘classical’ literature; on the other hand, that with the unsatisfactory answers which either accept this development, in light of the world’s irresistible digitization, or try overcoming it through a (...) more student-centered, ‘biographical’ appropriation of literature. Beyond the more immediate didactical difficulties which this two-fold problem poses, we ask ourselves the question whether it is not time for a more fundamental renewal of our understanding of literature’s contemporary educational significance. In answering this question, for which we turn to such diverse authors as Rousseau, Deleuze and Calvino, it is argued that if education is to continue its care for both classical literacy and literary classics—and not so much against as in relation to ascending digital literacies—a more radically immanent, thing-centered perspective is likely to prove the most sustainable, in the sense of enabling truly new, ‘care-ful’ literary-educational practices to emerge. (shrink)

This article highlights the educational and the aesthetic significance of the subject matter (i.e., “the third thing”) in the relationship between teacher and pupil. This, through a reading of two texts, one written by the 19th century educationist and German philosopher Johann Friedrich Herbart, and one written by the contemporary philosopher and political theorist Jacques Rancière. By emphasizing the third thing between pupil and teacher, the article intends to reimagine both the educative and aesthetic values of those timeless things around (...) us, such as objects of art and education, which give life a meaning beyond our limited socio-cultural desires, interests, concepts, and identities. Teaching, from this “fusion of the horizon” between Herbart and Rancière, is an activity created by the heterogeneity already integral to the “essence” of the subject matter. As such, the article also offers a fusion of the horizon between aesthetics and Didaktik. (shrink)

This article examines how the practice of fieldwork can enable researchers to attend to the educational environment of the school in a world-oriented way, rather than take an explanatory or demystifying approach that spirals away from what happens in the world. Finding new ways and new vocabularies to approach educational realities gains a special urgency in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), a country whose social fabric is often analysed in terms of a lack: the Congolese state is considered weak (...) or fragile and its education sector is seen as being in a deep learning crisis. Recent studies have successfully used fieldwork methods to explain the remarkable persistence of the DRC’s public education sector by ethnographically accounting for the ways it is governed on a political or bureaucratic level. We propose that fieldwork, understood as a world-oriented research practice, which instils in researchers a curiosity for the world, can also enable researchers to attend to those classroom gestures that safeguard the existence and persistence of Congolese schools on a pedagogical level. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article I venture the hypothesis that music confronts education with the possibility to think violence in ways that are both inherently educational and radically affirmative. Beginning with a reflection on a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, which emphatically evokes the violence within the genesis of music, I then move in a different direction in the second section, which surveys how extant (music-) educational has thematized violence so far. Concluding that this thematization, notwithstanding many nuances, invariably implies a (...) negative validation of violence, I devote the third section to a search for more affirmative concepts of educational violence. Eventually, this culminates in a return to the issue of a possibly intrinsic, positive relation between violence and music education. I first discuss this possibility more generally, connecting the discussed affirmative concepts of violence to the antipodal music-educational ideas of Plato and Nietzsche. Finally, in the last section, returning to Browning’s poem, I specify it by reclaiming the particular violence of music’s instrumental aspects for music education. (shrink)

A key question in the field of educational theory is the question of what is ‘educational’ in education. Responses to this question in the field are often connected to some type of change that is to take place in the child: children are socialised, they become subjects, or learn. I argue that this way of understanding what is educational in education is not applicable to a specific type of educational practice, which I label as co-existential practices. Co-existential practices are often (...) taken up by educators, but to understand what is educational in them, we need an understanding that does not rely on references to changing children. I build an alternative view of education with the help of Derrida’s concept of hospitality. I show how this interpretation of what is educational in education may help the field of educational theory to develop a fuller understanding of the relation between ethics and education. (shrink)

This article brings into perspective the need to decolonise the concept of the Trinity (as the specific doctrine and Christian name of God) as a crucial step in decolonising the religious education curriculum. It discusses the concept of decolonisation and its applicability to religious education, specifically Christianity, within higher education (e.g. in Teacher Education Programmes) in the South African context. God as the Trinity has throughout the history of Atlantic slavery and colonialism been employed to legitimise colonial rule and it, (...) therefore, needs to be decolonised. To decolonise the concept of the Trinity is, however, highly problematic, as the historic relation between Christianity and African traditional religions (ATRs) indicates. Decolonising the concept of the Trinity can quickly develop into a tension between a position of either continuity or discontinuity (of ATR with Christianity). Contribution: This article argues for an alternative approach for the decolonisation of the concept of the Trinity, namely to allow for the deconstruction of the concept of the Trinity, and by implication of other concepts – like decolonisation and religion – as well. This approach is proposed to develop more openness and playfulness with regard to religious beliefs in general. I argue that this may provide a hopeful, open and just vision of life which should be part of the decolonised religious education curriculum. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this reply to Agbaria’s reflections on religious authority I first make a distinction between three forms of authority: theological, sociological and educational. Defending the need for a purely educational account of authority, I develop with Arendt a thing-centered approach towards education. This allows me to transcend the traditional opposition between teacher – and student-centered views in education. From this perspective I argue for making a further distinction, viz. between religious education and education about religion. I will defend the last (...) approach towards teaching about religion and conclude this reply by making some suggestions regarding what this teaching entails with reference to religious painting. (shrink)

Predmet istraživanja su izazovi nastavnika u radu sa učenicima iz osetljivih socijalnih grupa, tokom nastave u vanrednim okolnostima, uslovljenim pandemijom koronavirusa. U radu su prikazani rezultati kvalitativnog istraživanja, sprovedenog krajem 2021. godine, u okviru projekta Pravo na obrazovanje u periodu krize izazvane pandemijom virusa COVID-19 u Srbiji. U polustrukturisanim individualnim intervjuima učestvovalo je 50 nastavnika osnovnih, srednjih i škola za obrazovanje učenika sa smetnjama u razvoju i invaliditetom, iz 14 gradova u Srbiji. Tokom obrazovno-vaspitnog procesa sa učenicima iz osetljivih socijalnih (...) grupa, nastavnici su suočeni sa brojnim izazovima: digitalni jaz prvog i drugog nivoa, diskontinuitet u procesu obrazovanja, neodgovarajuća podrška u učenju od strane roditelja, nemotivisanost učenika za učenje, otežana komunikacija, teškoće u praćenju nastave, nemogućnost sprovođenja epidemioloških mera i individualnih tretmana itd. Sudeći na osnovu izazova nastavnika, učenici iz osetljivih grupa više su pogođeni obrazovnom krizom nego njihovi vršnjaci iz privilegovanih grupa. Neophodno je sprovođenje sistemskih mera podrške u cilju obezbeđivanja inkluzivnog pristupa obrazovanju. (shrink)

The super computer Deep thought in The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy once informed us that the answer to what it is all about is 42. The problem being of course that no one had thought to figure...