Online research in philosophy

This article outlines and appraises the considerable criticism of educational research, both in the United Kingdom and in North America, and shows how it has pointed to a narrowing of what counts as good or worthwhile research in the policy discourse. In particular, this involved prioritising research that purports to show clearly and unmistakably 'what works', and institutionalising this view of research in a range of centres that receive official approval. The article, though recognising the fruit of such centres, challenges (...) the epistemological basis of such a narrowing of what counts as research, and, in doing so, analyses what is meant by evidence, the different kinds and strengths of evidence and the consequent need to democratise the search and appraisal of evidence in the constant refinement and criticism of the evidence. (shrink)

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 interest in moral education has focused largely on the teaching of morality or on nurturing moral qualities and virtues or on the "moral atmosphere" of the school; but little, comparatively speaking, has been written about education itself as essentially a moral practice. Failure, in this respect, has damaging results. First, the practice of education goes adrift from its moral roots ? and serves particular ends such as economic well-being or citizenship as conceived by those in power. Secondly, the programmes (...) of moral or personal and social education are isolated from the moral context in which they make sense. These issues are addressed in the lecture. (shrink)

Writing a little over a decade ago of developments in educational philosophy, R. F. Dearden remarked on the dearth of alternative approaches to that of conceptual analysis which predominated, at least in Anglophone cultures, at that time. One possible avenue of enquiry which he identified as conspicuously absent in this respect was the development of a distinctively Catholic approach to problems of educational philosophy, observing that a work of the mid-war years, Maritain's Education at the Crossroads (1943), appeared to be (...) well nigh the only modern effort in this direction. More than a decade on from this, in a climate no longer exclusively dominated by conceptual analysis - indeed, in which there is unprecedented interest in a wealth of different schools, traditions and approaches to philosophy of education - Dearden's remarks about the absence of a distinctively Catholic perspective still apply. In the following essay, therefore, the authors have undertaken, via a critical analysis of Maritain's educational speculations of half a century ago, to try to discern some of the principal issues and considerations which would need to be addressed in the interests of identifying a distinctively Catholic educational philosophy. (shrink)