These two remarkable books, both published in 2010, share many themes but differ in significant ways, and each is very much worth reading and pondering. Oord’s The Nature of Love concentrates primarily on conceptual and theological themes relating to the very nature of love itself and what influential theologians have had to say about love. His Defining Love focuses on how the social and physical sciences impact our understanding of human and divine love. Both books presuppose and express many themes (...) that are prominent in process theology such as: freedom is universally present (by degrees) in all creatures, especially us; predestination is abhorrent and untenable; God exists necessarily and everlastingly but not .. (shrink)
This article provides a material enactment of educational theory to explore how we might do educational theory differently by defamiliarising the familiar. Theory is often assumed to be abstract, located solely in the realm of ideas and separate from practice. However, this view of theory emerges from a set of ontological and epistemological assumptions of separating meaning from matter that are taken to be foundational, when this need not be the case. Drawing upon what variously might be termed materialist, performative (...) or post-human positions, the article suggests that it is possible to re-enact theory as a matter-ing practice—of matter and meaning. The assumption of a separation that divides theory from practice is challenged in this article, which suggests that theory matters by being entangled with the material and that a separation of matter from meaning is an effect. This approach enacts things as matters of concern by contrast with the representation of objects as matters of fact. In this way, educational theory becomes a form of responsible experimentation rather than simply a representation of others. Some implications for education are outlined. (shrink)
Drawing upon concepts from actor-network theory (ANT), this article explores how the principle of symmetry can provide alternative readings of the translations of the prescribed into the enacted curriculum, without reducing understanding to explanation. The paper explores the contrasting ways in which the prescribed curriculum is translated into the enacted curriculum as certain organisations, individuals and artefacts become enrolled through networks of school and college. It points to the ways in which a position which eschews conventional distinctions e.g. between the (...) human and non-human, and enacts an anti-foundationalist ontology provides the basis for a radical materialist understanding of the multiplicity of educational practices. (shrink)
An explicit linking of the minutiae of everyday parenting practices and the good of society as a whole has been a feature of government policy. The state has taken responsibility for instilling the right parenting skills to deal with what is said to be the societal fall-out of contemporary and family change. ?Knowledge? about parenting is seen as a resource that parents must access in order to fulfil their moral duty as good parents. In this policy portrait, caring for children (...) is posed as a classless and gender-neutral activity. A key theme of this article is that parents from different social class groups are positioned and understand themselves in quite distinct ways in relation to parenting skills advice and expert intervention into their family and home lives. We take a ?relational? perspective to show how mothers and fathers from different social class groups see themselves, and are located by policy and practice, as clients or consumers, and as commonplace or pioneers, in relation to parenting support for themselves and the education system for their children. We identify the lived gendered and classed disparities of power, and associated moral worth, attached to particular parenting practices. (shrink)
Educational analysts need new ways to engage with policy processes in a networked world of complex transnational connections. In this discussion, Tara Fenwick and Richard Edwards argue for a greater focus on materiality in educational policy as a way to trace the heterogeneous interactions and precarious linkages that enact policy as complex manifestations. In particular, Fenwick and Edwards point to the methodologies of actor-network theory (ANT), at least in its most recent permutations, as a useful approach to materiality in policy (...) analysis. Published examples of educational policy studies drawing from these methodologies are beginning to appear. In reviewing these, we argue that ANT sensibilities help to make visible the sociomaterial assemblages—the “messy objects”—that enact policy, the micro-negotiations that mobilize and stabilize (and destabilize) these assemblages, and the multiple ontologies that often coexist in policy environments. Fenwick and Edwards conclude with a discussion of methodological issues for working with concepts of ontological variance and messy objects in educational policy. (shrink)
This article argues that process philosophy and Hartmanian formal axiology are natural allies that can contribute much to each other. Hartmanian axiology can bring much needed order and clarity to process thought about the definitions of “good,” “better,” and “best,” about what things are intrinsically good, and about the nature and value of unique, enduring, individual persons. Process thought can bring to axiology greater clarity about and emphasis on the relational and temporal features of human selfhood. The nature and significance (...) of personal endurance is emphasized throughout. (shrink)
It specifically addressesWhat constitutes a context for learning?How do we engage the full resources of learners for learning?What are the relationships between ...
Rather than eliminate the terms "mental health and illness" because of the grave moral consequences of psychiatric labeling, conservative definitions are proposed and defended. Mental health is rational autonomy, and mental illness is the sustained loss of such. Key terms are explained, advantages are explored, and alternative concepts are criticized. The value and descriptive components of all such definitions are consciously acknowledged. Where rational autonomy is intact, mental hospitals and psychotherapists should not think of themselves as treating an illness. Instead, (...) they are functioning as applied axiologists, moral educators, spiritual mentors, etc. They deal with what Szasz has called "personal, social, and ethical problems in living." But mental illness is real. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
