In the history of Brazilian education, it is only since the 1980s, during the redemocratization of Brazil, that proposals for public education in a socialist perspective have been presented. The past two decades have been marked by a growing interest in Gramscian thought, mainly in the educational field, making possible the elaboration of proposals for public school organization in Brazil. However, intellectuals and pedagogues in Brazil have confused the Gramscian ‘unitary school’ with what is known in Brazil as the ‘polytechnical (...) school’, a vague idea of education which is attributed to Marx and taken up by Lenin in the course of the Soviet Revolution. The two conceptions of education differ because of the varying historical contexts in which Marx, Lenin and Gramsci lived and developed their thinking on the roles of State and school. These fundamental differences have been overlooked during the diffusion of Gramscian thought in Brazil, causing confusion in the understanding of the ‘unitary school’ and the ‘polytechnical school’. (shrink)

In the context of the increasingly transnational organization of society, culture, and communication, this article develops a conceptualization of the global common as a basic condition of interrelation and shared experience, and describes contemporary political efforts to fully democratize this condition. The article demonstrates the implications for curriculum and teaching of this project, describing in particular the importance of fundamentally challenging the interpellation of students as subjects of the nation, and the necessity for new and radically collaborative forms of political (...) and pedagogical authority that can more powerfully realize the imaginative potential of educators and students alike as global democratic actors. In this effort, familiar progressive educational ideas (e.g. the importance of the continuity of the curriculum, and the meaning and purpose of experimentalism) are interrogated and rearticulated. The article concludes with a discussion of the unique ways in which education can contribute to constructing a democratic society in the global era, and how the central aspects of such a pedagogy in common can also suggest essential principles for the organization of social movements in this context. (shrink)

Anarchist theory has a long-standing history in political theory, sociology, and philosophy. As a radical discourse, anarchist theory pushes educators and researchers towards new conceptualizations of community, theory, and praxis. Early writers, like Joseph Proudhoun and Emma Goldman, to more contemporary anarchists, such as Noam Chomsky, have established anarchist theory as an important school of thought that sits outside the Marxist discourses that have dominated the radical academic scene. Today, anarchists have been responsible for staging effective protests (specifically, Seattle, 1999) (...) and have influenced autonomous groups like the Animal Liberation Front in their organizational and guiding philosophies. Interestingly, anarchism is glaringly absent from the literature in educational theory and research. In this article, I highlight aspects of anarchist theory that are particularly applicable to education, and also establishes specific ways that anarchist theory can inform one's own educational praxis. Specifically, I employ the anarchist framework of direct action and micro-level strategies, such as sabotage, that challenge people to resist the oppressive practices found in institutions today. (shrink)

In defending a new framework for incorporating metacognitive debiasing strategies into critical thinking education, Jeffrey Maynes draws on ecological rationality theory to argue that in felicitous environments, agents will achieve greater epistemic success by relying on heuristics rather than more ideally rational procedures. He considers a challenge presented by Mercier and Sperber’s “interactionist” thesis that individual biases contribute to successful group reasoning. I argue that the challenge can be met without assuming an individualist ideal of the critical thinker as a (...) solitary reasoner. Focusing on cognitive laziness and myside bias, I then argue that a more complete reckoning with the implications of interactionism about reasoning will require us to transcend individualism more fully to embrace the selection, design, regulation, and navigation of dialogic environments as central pedagogical aims of critical thinking education. (shrink)

The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo‐Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a ‘language of critique’. By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of critical pedagogy is twofold: 1) to correct the pessimistic conclusions of Neo‐Marxist theories, and 2) to transform a ‘language of critique’ into a ‘language of possibility’ . Then, (...) what political projects do critical pedagogies present to us? What alternative visions of schooling do critical pedagogies offer against the mainstream pedagogy? The purpose of this paper is to identify main projects of critical pedagogy, and to explore overarching politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy. Although there are diverse theories and approaches in critical pedagogy, three overarching projects can be identified, which I call: 1) the project of experience, 2) the project of anti‐system, and 3) the project of inclusion. Based on an examination of the general trends and characteristics of these three projects of critical pedagogy, I argue that three prominent politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy are culturalist politics, self/identity politics, and grassroots politics. In trying to better understand why and how critical pedagogy has developed the political stances as it has, the last part of the paper links these three politics to the historical developments of the New Left and the New Social Movements. (shrink)

This project reflects on the way in which students in a situation of social risk construct their identity. Based on the reflections and theories originating from research conducted on individuals and collective groups in a situation of social exclusion due to disability, social class or ethnicity, this paper will analyse the conflicts these students have to deal with when constructing their identity. It also examines the challenge that education has to face to turn those conflicts into opportunities that will help (...) to build life projects with which they can freely identify. For this reason, from a critical perspective, the school’s role in constructing identity will be analysed, as will the way in which it affects children and adolescents from minority groups. In the same way, we will study and put forward some different channels aimed at providing more equal educational attention to those identities that are depreciated in neoliberal society. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper is a reflective piece on the thought processes individuals and teams have when engaging in decoloniality work in Teacher Training/Education. We argue that until the self is decolonized, the process of decolonialization becomes rhetoric. We also question how much we can decolonize whilst working in the academy whose very culture, symbols and practices are borne out of colonialism and the period of enlightenment; whose very raison d’être is to elevate some knowledge over others and to claim cultural (...) and academic superiority. The current political landscape in England approaches anti-racism as a political ideology that must be avoided in schools and education and this ideological battlefield is evident in teacher education. We aim to recognize the tensions and resistance to decolonialize, which demonstrates the messy and contingent process of moving between shifting positions and subjectivities. It confronts the challenge of the teacher–practitioner who must balance their own moral and philosophical grounding whilst attending the political imperatives of the work. This can take the form of according with the policies and procedures of the institutions in which they are situated which can often be balkanizing and debilitating. (shrink)

(2010). The Complexities of Teaching the Complex: Examining How Future Educators Construct Understandings of Sociocultural Knowledge and Schooling. Educational Studies: Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 91-115.

Education is increasingly coming under the shadow of economics. In this article we engage in ideology critique by applying a critical realist analysis to conventional economic models and the teaching of students. Through a historical and philosophical interrogation, we argue that the current curriculum suffers from a diminutive understanding of human being. We argue that economics education has for a long time now worked with a highly abstracted and decontextualized idea of human being that has absented other dimensions of human (...) concerns. We examine the current English Advanced level economic curriculum and the revised curriculum which will be taught from September 2015. Using an understanding of the dynamics of structure and agency and that economics operates in open systems, we argue for retroduction as an appropriate methodology. (shrink)

The so-called ‘hidden curriculum’ is often presented as a counterproductive element in education, and many scholars argue that it should be eliminated, by being made explicit, in education in general and specifically in higher education. The problem of the HC has not been solved by the transition from a teacher-centered education to a student-centered educational model that takes the student’s experience as the starting point of learning. In this article we turn to several philosophers of education to propose that HC (...) can be made explicit in HE when the teacher recognizes and lives his/her teaching as a personal issue, not merely a technical one; and that the students’ experience of the learning process is not merely individual but emerges through their interpersonal relationship with the teacher. We suggest ways in which this interpersonal relationship can be strengthened despite current challenges in HE. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTextbooks, in general, and English teaching textbooks, in particular, are acknowledged as common sites for social reproduction and disseminating dominant ideologies. In an attempt to contribute to research on textbook ideology, the current study attempted to uncover neoliberal mentality in the highly popular ELT materials taught in Iranian private language institutes. Scrutinized though CDA methodology proposed by Fairclough [2001. Language and power. London: Routledge; 2003. Analysing discourse: Textual analysis for social research. London: Routledge], the textbooks were found to popularize certain (...) tenets of neoliberalism such as market, consumerism, branding, individual productivity/marketability as well as superficial, non-critical multiculturalism which was employed, simply to present a perfect, utopian image of the West. Such a practice, it is believed here, is a clear instance of ‘inculcation’. London: Routledge) whose effect needs to be counterbalanced by reflective teaching and critical pedagogy. (shrink)

Within the framework of an interdisciplinary project on epistemic strategies in text and talk, this article examines such strategies in a secondary school textbook on social science. After a summary of current insights into the theory of knowledge in philosophy, psychology and linguistics, it is shown how discourse presupposes and expresses knowledge, with special emphasis on discourse processing and learning from text and its applications in education. The specific aim of this article is to study in some detail how exactly (...) ‘new’ knowledge is formulated in pedagogical discourse, and how ‘old’ knowledge is presupposed in a lesson on migration. We thus are able to describe the categories of, and the functional relations between, old and new knowledge, as discursive manifestations of underlying cognitive strategies of teaching and learning. It was also observed that in textbooks what is purported to be presented as knowledge often has an ideological basis. (shrink)

The article discuses the education issue as a central and decisive factor inshaping, reproducing and representing individual and collective identity.I present the Palestinian case study because the Palestinian people are atthe present in a very critical period of constructing their national identityand education is part of the nation-building project. I have chosen to studytwo periods in the life of Palestinians, 1972 during the revolution and thepresent 1999 the start of the establishment of an independent Palestinianentity and to examine how the (...) economic, social, political conditions etc.affect the formation of the educational philosophy of those periods; aneducational philosophy that will affect the formation of education and theformation of private and collective consciousness. (shrink)

In this article I discuss how Jacques Rancière’s thought invites us to re-conceptualize the education–emancipation nexus. The primary goal of traditional approaches to emancipatory and anti-oppressive education has been to empower the oppressed so that the latter can (re)gain their voice and transform their situations. Building on Rancière’s ideas, I argue that the processes of empowering the oppressed imply that one has the power to empower the other, and thus start with an assumption of inequality. I conclude the article with (...) a call for a pedagogy of ignorance. Grounded in Rancière’s thought, this pedagogy is ignorant of any division and hierarchy of intelligence. (shrink)

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)

Intersemiotic translation (IT) was defined by Roman Jakobson (The Translation Studies Reader, Routledge, London, p. 114, 2000) as “transmutation of signs”—“an interpretation of verbal signs by means of signs of nonverbal sign systems.” Despite its theoretical relevance, and in spite of the frequency in which it is practiced, the phenomenon remains virtually unexplored in terms of conceptual modeling, especially from a semiotic perspective. Our approach is based on two premises: (i) IT is fundamentally a semiotic operation process (semiosis) and (ii) (...) IT is a deeply iconic-dependent process. We exemplify our approach by means of literature to dance IT and we explore some implications for the development of a general model of IT. (shrink)

This inaugural handbook documents the distinctive research field that utilizes history and philosophy in investigation of theoretical, curricular and pedagogical issues in the teaching of science and mathematics. It is contributed to by 130 researchers from 30 countries; it provides a logically structured, fully referenced guide to the ways in which science and mathematics education is, informed by the history and philosophy of these disciplines, as well as by the philosophy of education more generally. The first handbook to cover the (...) field, it lays down a much-needed marker of progress to date and provides a platform for informed and coherent future analysis and research of the subject. -/- The publication comes at a time of heightened worldwide concern over the standard of science and mathematics education, attended by fierce debate over how best to reform curricula and enliven student engagement in the subjects There is a growing recognition among educators and policy makers that the learning of science must dovetail with learning about science; this handbook is uniquely positioned as a locus for the discussion. -/- The handbook features sections on pedagogical, theoretical, national, and biographical research, setting the literature of each tradition in its historical context. Each chapter engages in an assessment of the strengths and weakness of the research addressed, and suggests potentially fruitful avenues of future research. A key element of the handbook’s broader analytical framework is its identification and examination of unnoticed philosophical assumptions in science and mathematics research. It reminds readers at a crucial juncture that there has been a long and rich tradition of historical and philosophical engagements with science and mathematics teaching, and that lessons can be learnt from these engagements for the resolution of current theoretical, curricular and pedagogical questions that face teachers and administrators. (shrink)

I formulate a Deweyan argument for school gardening that prepares students for a specific type of gardening activism: community gardening, or the political activity of collectively organizing, planting and tending gardens for the purposes of food security, education and community development.

This chapter examines the relationship between the two fields of science education and philosophy of education to inquire how philosophy could better contribute to improving science curriculum, teaching, and learning, especially science teacher education. An inspection of respective research journals exhibits an almost complete neglect of each field for the other (barring exceptions).While it can be admitted that philosophy has been an area of limited and scattered interest for science education researchers for some time, the subfield of philosophy of education (...) has been little canvassed and remains an underdeveloped area. To help bring science education closer into the fold of educational philosophy and theorizing, the historical development of science education and philosophy of education are sketched to reveal their common roots, interests, and concerns. Thereto, the contours of a new philosophy of science education are presented (as an integration of three academic fields). Arguments are provided which seek to illustrate why philosophy in general and philosophy of education in particular can make positive contributions to teacher education and the research field together with suggesting future directions and possible reform contributions (scientific literacy, educational aims, educational theory, pedagogical content knowledge, science teacher, and curricular epistemologies). (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which neoliberal schooling is threatening education. We define education as the development of cognitive and imaginative capacities for understanding of and critical engagement with social reality. Education opens horizons of possibility for collective and individual life-experience and activity by exposing the one-sidedness and contradictions of ruling-value systems. Schooling, by contrast, subordinates thought and imagination to the reproduction of the ruling money-value system, narrowing horizons of possibility for collective and individual life to service to the (...) prevailing structure of power. Our paper draws on our overlapping experiences as educators, one in the university system, the other in the adult education system. In both systems, students’ life-requirement for education is subordinated to the capitalist need for compliant wage-labourers and consumers. In opposition to this instrumentalization we will present an interpretation of “real world education” as a unique form of collective work through which teachers and students construct alternatives that can serve as the guiding ideas for new projects for social and political transformation. (shrink)

This article is a review of the book Antonio Gramsci: A Pedagogy to Change the World edited by Nicola Pizzolato and John Holst, which brings together contributions from specialists in Gramscian educational thought from different language-regions: English, Italian, French and Latin American. Seeking to contextualize the book, the articles reconstruct the main features of the reception of Gramscian thought in the Anglophone world. This shows the vast Anglophone tradition in employing Gramsci not only in the political or cultural field, but (...) also in the educational one. It also suggests that this tradition has reached our days, the Anglophone world being one of the main spaces in the study and use of Gramsci. The article, furthermore, outlines Gramsci’s legacy as a truly international challenge. In this sense, the book suggests a Gramscian problem that has gained an important influence in Gramscian studies over the last few decades, particularly in Italy and the Anglophone world: that of translation. This translation among intellectuals from various countries is not, to paraphrase Gramsci, “perfect” but it is essential in order to understand and assume our contemporary political-pedagogical challenges. (shrink)

This thesis develops an Hegelian philosophy of education by presenting the concept as the comprehension of the dialectic of enlightenment. It begins by examining recent critical theory of education which has employed Habermas's idea of communicative action in order to reassess the relationship between education and political critique. It goes on to expose the flaws in this approach by uncovering its uncritical use of critique as the method of enlightenment. Enlightenment as overcoming presupposes enlightenment as absolute education. The philosophical issues (...) raised here are then substantially examined by returning to Habermas in order to trace the presupposition of critique as method in his theorizing. It is argued that Habermas also presupposes critique as absolute enlightenment, or overcoming, in both the emancipatory knowledge-constitutive interest and in The Theory of Communicative Action, and further, that it is this presupposition which returns as the contradiction of the dialectic of enlightenment in his work. Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment is then itself examined along with Adorno's Negative Dialectics. Here it is argued that although this work marks an educational and philosophical development over Habermas, nevertheless its authors also presuppose the identity of enlightenment, this time in the claim that the dialectic of enlightenment, and negative dialectics, are not a determinate negation. The thesis shows how Habermas and Adorno, in their respective views of the dialectic of enlightenment, repeat but do not comprehend the selfdetermination which is the actual in Hegelian philosophy. The final chapter of the thesis employs Hegelian philosophy to re-examine the aporia of education as method. It argues that the dialectic of enlightenment is actual when it is recognized as the self-education of philosophical consciousness, and is the identity and non-identity which is the concept. The implications of Hegelian philosophy of education as the recognition of misrecognition are then explored, first with regard to rethinking the identity of the teacher in civil society and developing the concept as ethical pedagogy; and then to recognizing critique as comprehensive education with regard to the state in civil society. (shrink)