Within the rough ground that is the field of education there is a complex web of ethical obligations: to prepare our students for their future work; to be ethical as educators in our conduct and teaching; to the ethical principles embedded in the contexts in which we work; and given the Southern context of this work, the ethical obligations we have to this land and its First Peoples. We put out a call to colleagues whose work has been concerned with (...) the pedagogies of professional ethics, the ethical burdens of institutional injustice, and the application of ethical theory to education’s applied fields. In the responses we received it can be seen that ethical concerns in education are broad ranging, covering terrain varying from the preparation of preservice teachers, ethics in higher education, early childhood and care, educational leadership, relational and communicative ethics. Perhaps it could also be argued that this paper demonstrates Gibbon’s observation that ‘Assumptions about the particularity of this time as new and ripe with opportunity to make a difference through philosophy of education are not new and there’s much to learn from the persistence of wanting to imagine that they are’. However, while the field of ethics is perennially concerned with human relations and pedagogical interventions to improve these, the responses collected here show that educational ethics is far from static. Educational ethics is a field that continues to develop in response to changing contexts. (shrink)

This book takes up, and takes seriously, the institutional sites and pedagogical investments of professional identity for college English teachers and examines how these site and investments both constitute and complicate the space of our politics.

This paper re-examines Lyotard's notion of the postmodern condition in terms of its relevance and significance for education. The first section of the paper examines the Wittgensteinian role that Lyotard ascribes to philosophy in the postmodern condition. The second section, following Lyotard's discursive turn, locates the problem of the legitimation of education and knowledge in relation to capitalism. The final section provides a review of both Lyotard's responses to his critics and his reappraisal of his own work.

In this paper I investigate ‘the confessional’ as an aspect of Wittgenstein's style both as a mode of philosophising and as a mode of ‘writing the self’, tied explicitly to pedagogical practices. There are strong links between Wittgenstein's confessional mode of philosophising and his life—for him philosophy is a way of life —and interesting theoretical connections between confessional practices and pedagogy, usefully explored in the writings of the French philosopher, Michel Foucault. The Investigations provides a basis and springboard for understanding (...) the notion of ‘writing the self’ as a pedagogical practice which encourages a confessional mode compelling us to tell the truth about ourselves and, thus, creating the conditions for ethico-poetical self-constitution. (shrink)

Poststructuralism--as a name for a mode of thinking, a style of philosophizing, a kind of writing--has exercised a profound influence upon contemporary Western thought and the institution of the university. As a French and predominantly Parisian affair, poststructuralism is inseparable from the intellectual milieu of postwar France, a world dominated by Alexandre Kojève's and Jean Hyppolite's interpretations of Hegel, Jacques Lacan's reading of Freud, Gaston Bachelard's epistemology, George Canguilhem's studies of science, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism. It is also inseparable from (...) the structuralist tradition of linguistics based upon the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jacobson, and the structuralist interpretations of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, and the early Michel Foucault. Poststructuralism, considered in terms of contemporary cultural history, can be understood as belonging to the broad movement of European formalism, with explicit historical links to both Formalist and Futurist linguistics and poetics, and with aspects of the European avant-garde, especially André Breton's surrealism. Each essay in this unique collection by and for educators is devoted to the work and educational significance of one of ten major poststructuralist philosophers. (shrink)

This collection of essays provides an introduction to Nietzsche's thought and educational writings, and examines questions concerning the centrality of values for education in postmodernity.

Philosophers of education have always been interested in epistemological issues. In their efforts to help inform educational theory and practice they have dealt extensively with concepts like knowledge, teaching, learning, thinking, understanding, belief, justification, theory, the disciplines, rationality and the like. Their inquiries have addressed issues about what kinds of knowledge are most important and worthwhile, and how knowledge and information might best be organised as curricular activity. They have also investigated the relationships between teaching and learning, belief and opinion, (...) knowledge and belief, and data and information. For some a key issue has been how students can become autonomous knowers. This issue has often been bound up with questions about what count as appropriate standards for reasonableness or rationality, and the conditions under which we can properly regard understanding as having occurred. During the past decade renewed interest has been shown in what is involved in becoming an authority, expert or competent performer in a given area of knowledge, as well as in how we evaluate and critique different or competing beliefs, theories, points of view or paradigms. (shrink)

Introduction: Western Marxism in Educational Philosophy and Theory -- Ideology and Schooling -- Marxism and Education: Will the Doctrine Bear the Weight? -- Education and Cultural Disadvantage -- Illich and Anarchism -- Knowledge and Ideology in the Marxist Philosophy of Education -- Liberal Education and Social Change -- The Continuing Conflicts Between Capitalism and Democracy: Ramifications for Schooling -- Luce Irigaray: Women becoming subjects for a divine economy -- The Nature and Limits of Critical Theory in Education -- Class Dismissed? (...) Historical materialism and the politics of 'difference' -- A Brief Commentary on the Hegelian-Marxist Origins of Gramsci's 'Philosophy of Praxis' -- Hope, political imagination, and agency in Marxism and beyond: Explicating the transformative worldview and ethico-ontoepistemology -- Knowledge socialism: the rise of peer production - collegiality, collaboration, and collective intelligence. (shrink)

This book takes as a premise that Derrida is a profound educational thinker, who from the very beginning concerned himself with questions of pedagogy.

(1997). Wittgenstein and post‐analytic philosophy of education: Rorty or Lyotard? Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 1-32. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.1997.tb00018.x.

Introduction: education, philosophy and politics -- Writing the self: Wittgenstein, confession and pedagogy -- Nietzsche, nihilism and the critique of modernity: post-Nietzschean philosophy of education -- Heidegger, education and modernity -- Truth-telling as an educational practice of the self: Foucault and the ethics of subjectivity -- Neoliberal governmentality: Foucault on the birth of biopolitics -- Lyotard, nihilism and education -- Gilles Deleuze's 'societies of control': from disciplinary pedagogy to perpetual training -- Geophilosophy, education and the pedagogy of the concept - (...) Humanism, Derrida and the new humanities -- Politics and deconstruction: Derrida, neoliberalism and democracy -- Neopragmatism, ethnocentrism and the politics of the ethnos: Rorty's 'postmodernist bourgeois liberalism' -- Achieving America: postmodernism and Rorty's critique of the cultural left -- Deranging the investigations: Cavell on the philosophy of the child -- White philosophy in/of America. (shrink)

This paper discusses Stanley Cavell's approach to the Investigations,focusing upon his essay – `Notes and Afterthoughts on the Opening ofWittgenstein's Investigations'. First, the paper investigates the waysin which Cavell makes central the figure and `voice' of the child to hisreading of the opening of the Investigations. Second, it argues thatCavell's Notes provides a basis for a Wittgensteinian pedagogics,for not only does it hold up the figure of the child as central to the Investigations but it does so in a philosophical (...) style that, thoughdistinctively Cavell's own, comes closest to the spirit of philosophizing inWittgenstein's sense. Third, the paper concludes by discussing the complexvocal and figural structure of the Investigations which serves tohighlight different aspects of the figure of the child and the child's `voice'. (shrink)

(1997). Education and the philosophy of the subject (or constitution of self) Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. v-xi. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-5812.1997.tb00523.x.

This distinctive collection by scholars from around the world focuses upon the cultural, educational, and political significance of Richard Rorty's thought. The nine essays which comprise the collection examine a variety of related themes: Rorty's neopragmatism, his view of philosophy, his philosophy of education and culture, Rorty's comparison between Dewey and Foucault, his relation to postmodern theory, and, also his form of political liberalism.

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold; it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.We live in a social universe in which the formation, circulation, and utilization of knowledge presents a fundamental problem.If the accumulation of capital has been an essential feature of our society, the accumulation of knowledge has not been any less so.Now, the exercise, production, and accumulation of this knowledge (...) cannot be dissociated from the mechanisms of power; complex relations exist which must be analysed. (shrink)

Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold; it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange.We live in a social universe in which the formation, circulation, and utilization of knowledge presents a fundamental problem.If the accumulation of capital has been an essential feature of our society, the accumulation of knowledge has not been any less so.Now, the exercise, production, and accumulation of this knowledge (...) cannot be dissociated from the mechanisms of power; complex relations exist which must be analysed. (shrink)

Responding to Jacques Derrida's vision for what a "new" humanities should strive toward, Peter Trifonas and Michael Peters gather together in a single volume original essays by major scholars in the humanities today. Using Derrida's seven programmatic theses as a springboard, the contributors aim to reimagine, as Derrida did, the tasks for the new humanities in such areas as history of literature, history of democracy, history of profession, idea of sovereignty, and history of man.

Jacques Derrida is perhaps the foremost philosopher of the humanities and of its place in the university. Over the long period of his career he has been concerned with the fate, status, place and contribution of the humanities. Through his deconstructive readings and writings he has done much not only to reinvent the western tradition by attending closely to those texts which constitute it but also he has redefined its procedures and protocols. This paper first introduces the notion of postmodern (...) nursing, its relation to the culture wars and some of the main characteristics of so‐called poststructuralism, considered as a response to the scientific pretensions of structuralism. Secondly, it provides some background to Derrida, who Althusser believed to be the most important French philosopher of the 20th century. Thirdly, it explores a recent essay where Derrida outlines seven programmatic theses or what he calls ‘seven professions of faith’ for the new humanities. Finally, and very tentatively, it suggests what such a view might contribute to the nursing humanities. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: The Meanings of “Postmodernism” The Meanings of Post‐structuralism Education and the Politics of Post‐structuralism.

I was thinking about my philosophical work and saying to myself: ‘I destroy, I destroy, I destroy…’Context: The ‘linguistic turn’ of Western philosophy ; and correlatively, the decline of universalist discourses. The weariness with regard to ‘theory’, and the miserable slackening that goes along with it. The time has come to philosophize.…there is no danger of philosophy's ‘coming to an end’. Religion did not come to an end in the Enlightenment, nor painting in Impressionism. Even if the period from Plato (...) to Nietzsche is encapsulated and ‘distanced’ in the way Heidegger suggests, and even if twentieth‐century philosophy comes to seem a stage of awkward transitional backing and filling, there will be something called ‘philosophy’ on the other side of the transition. (shrink)

Historizing Subjectivity in Childhood Studies.

Michael A. PetersBeijing Normal UniversityMy deepest condolences to Pepe, Dom and Marcus and to Jim’s grandchildren. Tina and I spent a lot of time at the Marshall family home, often attending dinn...

James D Marshall, Michael Peters, Miles Shepheard; Brent's Transcendental Arguments for the Forms of Knowledge, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, I.

James D Marshall, Michael Peters, Miles Shepheard; Brent's Transcendental Arguments for the Forms of Knowledge, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 15, I.

This book investigates how philosophical texts display a variety of literary forms and explores philosophical writing and the relation of philosophy to literature and reading. Discusses the many different philosophical genres that have developed, among them letters, the treatise, the confession, the meditation, the allegory, the essay, the soliloquy, the symposium, the consolation, the commentary, the disputation, and the dialogue Shows how these forms of philosophy have conditioned and become the basis of academic writing within both the university and higher (...) education more generally Explores questions of philosophical writing and the relation of philosophy to literature and reading. (shrink)

This first volume focuses on a collection of texts from the latter twenty years of Educational Philosophy and Theory, selected for their critical status as turning points or important awakenings in post-structural theory. In the last twenty years, the applications of the postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives have become less mono-focused, less narrowly concerned with technical questions and also less interested in epistemology, and more interested in ethics. This book covers questions of genealogy, ontology, the body and the institution, giving examples (...) of theoretical applications of post-structural theory that testify to the generative and endlessly applicable potential of this work to different fields and avenues of thought. While informed by Foucault’s thinking of the political subjugation of docile bodies to individuals as self-determining beings, the chapters in this book culminate in amalgamations of different schools of educational philosophy, which explore poststructuralist approaches to education. Beyond the Philosophy of the Subject will be key reading for academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, philosophy, education, educational theory, post-structural theory, the policy and politics of education, and the pedagogy of education. (shrink)