Currently, there is a resurgence of interests in phenomenology in education. This article sheds light on the importance of hermeneutical phenomenology in teaching and learning based on the lived experience of a Sioux Indian adolescent boy, elicited from an ethnographic case study conducted at an alternative high school in the US. Employing narrative inquiry, this article seeks phenomenological ways of understanding students' lived experiences and explores the meaning of the pedagogical practice of hermeneutical phenomenology in education. I delve into how (...) hermeneutical understanding of the phenomena of students' lived experience can catapult both students and teachers into the personal growth and development in a reciprocal way. It is my hope that such an understanding will facilitate an educational aim that focuses on the ontology of being and becoming while students' existence is brought to the center of teaching and learning. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between Heidegger’s critique of educational comportment and his analysis of space in Being and Time. It posits that providing an educational corrective to the practice of tacit rational, described as ‘circumspection’ in Being and Time, would provide an opportunity to reorient Dasein toward clearer awareness of the spatial context. A phenomenological approach to education might be framed as a process that reorganizes how changes are anticipated by comported expectations. Addressing conditions of spatial comportment in education (...) reveals that while models of learning illusorily claim to provide infinite opportunities, contingent upon mastery of delimited knowledge, a phenomenological approach to education begins by first delimiting illusions of possibility. (shrink)

This article considers the state of philosophy of education in our current age and assesses prospects for the future of the field. I argue that as philosophers of education, we live in both the best of times and the worst of times. Developments in one key organisation, the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia, are examined in relation to broader international trends. Informed by the work of Pierre Hadot, I also reflect on what it might mean to talk of philosophy (...) of education as a way of life in the contemporary world. (shrink)

This article draws on different bodies of knowledge in order to review the potential role of outdoor education in providing nature-based experiences that might contribute to sustainable living. A pragmatic perspective is adopted to critique what outdoor education is, and then what it might be. Phenomenology is used to challenge the belief that there is a causal relationship between activities and learning outcomes but foremost to consider what it is to be in nature in the first place. Aspects of both (...) realism and social constructionism are presented as essential to environmental philosophy and the concomitant, but contested, relationship between people and planet. Through these multiple realities the moral significance of nature emerges not only as a theoretical consideration but as a practical one too. In this way I challenge dualisms that provide stumbling blocks to practice and celebrate instead pluralistic thinking where starting points are based on real-life work settings where theory and practice can emerge together through place-specific solutions. (shrink)

The aim of what follows is to explore how to raise the question of Being by way of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology. Phenomenological ontology is a way of approaching and conducting philosophy exemplified in the work of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s, and specifically in his magnum opus Being and Time. In preparation to raise the question of Being a more nuanced understanding of Heidegger’s phenomenological analyses on truth and language are summarized. Following, the manner in which Being is referenced is analyzed (...) before considering the way of Heidegger’s phenomenological ontology. In conclusion, existing attempts and continuing efforts into the question of Being in education through phenomenological ontology are shared. At a time when decontextualized and reductive ways of knowing and being are becoming the norm within education, phenomenological ontology offers new possibilities for scholarship and practice. The present inquiry does not offer solutions in the traditional sense but rather traces a path that opens and keeps in tension the question of Being in education in order to support further study. (shrink)

In his 2012 article Philosophy of Education for the Public Good: Five Challenges and an Agenda, Gert Biesta identifies five substantial issues about the future of education and the work required to address these issues. This article employs a Heideggerian reading of education to evaluate ‘Biesta’s truth’. I argue that Biesta’s point of view underestimates knowledge’s predominance and relativism; frames intentionality in pre-Heideggerian terms, which—although not a problem in itself because an individual is free to choose a particular perspective on (...) the concept—raises the issue of consistency in Biesta’s theoretical framework; and a final criticism concerns Biesta’s choice of tools for engaging with the identified challenges: The primary tools Biesta uses are intrinsic to the perspective he challenges. The use of a ‘first person perspective’ to frame pedagogy that focuses on the subject and ‘subjectification’ reaffirms the fundamental Western gesture that makes human beings subjects who ‘stand-over-and-against’ the world. I argue that it is possible to penetrate Plato’s ‘theoretical gaze’ and find a ‘weak’ alternative to an all-encompassing point of view of education through a Heideggerian approach that regards intentionality and thinking as ‘hearing’. (shrink)

Over the last couple of decades, Heideggerian philosophy has become an important resource for educationalists. A growing body of literature has demonstrated its educational potential, thus illumining pivotal educational features and phenomena. Whereas my research is situated in the critical space opened by this literature, I adopt a slightly different perspective: in this paper, I discuss what we may refer to as the thoroughly educational nature of Heideggerian philosophy. I contend that Heideggerian thought is not only anchored by questions and (...) features that are quintessentially pedagogical but also represents a passionate and ethical call to freedom, becoming and the space of the ‘not-yet’, a call that appeals to the self to overturn his gesture and position; a call that is, in and of itself, educational. Rather than abandoning the initiative towards Being, Heidegger, in the late 1920s, created an ethic of resoluteness and choice that places freedom and responsibility centre stage. Hence, when analysing Heidegger’s thought, we need not necessarily place educational concerns and demands from without, nor must we necessarily apply Heideggerian insights to analyse educational features and phenomena, for Heideggerian philosophy is always already rooted in, and in a sense is, an educational endeavour. (shrink)