This work aims to clarify the nature of the philosophy of education, intending to indicate both the limits and the uses of philosophical criticism of educational aims and concepts. It is based upon the fact that education is a subject full of unexamined presumptions.

In this work the distinguished physical chemist and philosopher, Michael Polanyi, demonstrates that the scientist's personal participation in his knowledge, in ...

A scientific community cannot practice its trade without some set of received beliefs. These beliefs form the foundation of the "educational initiation that prepares and licenses the student for professional practice". The nature of the "rigorous and rigid" preparation helps ensure that the received beliefs are firmly fixed in the student's mind. Scientists take great pains to defend the assumption that scientists know what the world is like...To this end, "normal science" will often suppress novelties which undermine its foundations. Research (...) is therefore not about discovering the unknown, but rather "a strenuous and devoted attempt to force nature into the conceptual boxes supplied by professional education". (shrink)

In the 1960s a radical concept emerged from the great French thinker Jacques Derrida. Read the book that changed the way we think; read "Writing and Difference," the classic introduction.

Introduction The publication in of a collection of papers under the title The Study of Education, edited by Professor JW Tibble, inaugurated a new era in ...

Wilfred Carr; Theories of Theory and Practice, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 2, 30 May 2006, Pages 177–186, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.146.

"A fascinating and timely treatment of the objectivism versus relativism debates occurring in philosophy of science, literary theory, the social sciences, ...

"Life is hard for Anne and her father under Cromwell's harsh rule, which has reduced them from wealth to poverty. With one friend fearing for his life and another apparently lost to her, a man she hates sees her as a way of fulfilling all his ambitions. Will she have to surrender to him or lose everything?"--EBL.

Three issues features as the central themes throughout this book: the nature of social science in general; the nature of educational enquiry in particular; and ...

The 'postmodern condition,' in which instrumentalism finally usurps all other considerations, has produced a kind of intellectual paralysis in the world of education. The authors of this book show how such postmodernist thinkers as Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard illuminate puzzling aspects of education, arguing that educational theory is currently at an impasse. They postulate that we need these new and disturbing ideas in order to "think again" fruitfully and creatively about education.

A recent review of his work describes Wilfred Carr as 'one of the most brilliant philosophers now working in the rich British tradition of educational philosophy ... His work is rigorous, refreshing and original ... and examines a number of fundamental issues with clarity and penetration'. In For Education Wilfred Carr provides a comprehensive justification for reconstructing educational theory and research as a form of critical inquiry. In doing this, he confronts a number of important philosophical questions. What is educational (...) theory? What is an educational practice? How are theory and practice related? What is the role of values in educational research? Is a genuinely educational science possible? By appealing to developments in critical theory, the philosophy of science and the philosophy of the social sciences, Wilfred Carr provides answers to these questions which vindicate the idea of an educational science that is not 'on' or 'about' education but 'for education' - a science genuinely committed to promoting educational values and ideals. (shrink)

Like the latter, it unites into one and the same function the possibility of giving things a sign, of representing one thing by another, and the possibility of causing a sign to shift in relation to what it designates. The four functions that define the ...

Hayden White probes the notion of authority in art and literature and examines the problems of meaning - its production, distribution, and consumption - in different historical epochs. In the end, he suggests, the only meaning that history can have is the kind that a narrative imagination gives to it. The secret of the process by which consciousness invests history with meaning resides in the content of the form, in the way our narrative capacities transforms the present into a fulfillment (...) of a past from which we would wish to have desceneded. (shrink)

This edition includes new essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as Rorty's previously unpublished essay "The ...

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

Preface This volume contains essays written during the period 1972-1980. They are arranged roughly in order of composition. Except for the Introduction, ...