This paper focuses on the uses of Dewey’s ideas in Mexico before his appropriation by the Mexican revolutionary government in 1923. During the early 20th century, anarchists, socialists, and teacher advocates of progressive education in Mexico invoked the name of John Dewey as an important pillar for a vision of a modern Mexico. Deweyan ideas circulated among these radical pedagogues, sprouting in urban centers such as Mérida in Yucatán province, or in poor barrios of México City, where pockets of (...) urban radicalism emerged concurrently without the necessity of concerted action. Subsequently, self-professed disciples of Dewey founded the journal Educación identifying Dewey as a member of the journal’s board of .. (shrink)

This article develops the notion of resistance as articulated in the literature of critical pedagogy as being both culturally sponsored and cognitively manifested. To do so, the authors draw upon John Dewey's conception of tools for inquiry. Dewey provides a way to conceptualize student resistance not as a form of willful disputation, but instead as a function of socialization into cultural models of thought that actively truncate inquiry. In other words, resistance can be construed as the cognitive and emotive (...) dimensions of the ongoing failure of institutions to provide ideas that help individuals both recognize social problems and imagine possible solutions. Focusing on Dewey's epistemological framework, specifically tools for inquiry, provides a way to grasp this problem. It also affords some innovative solutions; for instance, it helps conceive of possible links between the regular curriculum and the study of specific social justice issues, a relationship that is often under-examined. The aims of critical pedagogy depend upon students developing dexterity with the conceptual tools they use to make meaning of the evidence they confront; these are background skills that the regular curriculum can be made to serve even outside social justice-focused curricula. Furthermore, the article concludes that because such inquiry involves the exploration and potential revision of students' world-ordering beliefs, developing flexibility in how one thinks may be better achieved within academic subjects and topics that are not so intimately connected to students' current social lives, especially where students may be directly implicated. (shrink)

When Dewey scholars and educational theorists appeal to the value of educative growth, what exactly do they mean? Is an individual's growth contingent on receiving a formal education? Is growth too abstract a goal for educators to pursue? Richard Rorty contended that the request for a “criterion of growth” is a mistake made by John Dewey's “conservative critics,” for it unnecessarily restricts the future “down to the size of the present.” Nonetheless, educational practitioners inspired by Dewey's educational writings may ask (...) Dewey scholars and educational theorists, “How do I facilitate growth in my classroom?” Here Shane Ralston asserts, in spite of Rorty's argument, that searching for a more concrete standard of Deweyan growth is perfectly legitimate. In this essay, Ralston reviews four recent books on Dewey's educational philosophy—Naoko Saito's The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson, Stephen Fishman and Lucille McCarthy's John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope, and James Scott Johnston's Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy and Deweyan Inquiry: From Educational Theory to Practice—and through his analysis identifies some possible ways for Dewey-inspired educators to make growth a more practical pedagogical ideal. (shrink)

Deweyan pedagogy seeks to promotes growth, characterized as an increased sensitivity, responsiveness, and ability to participate in an environment. Growth, Dewey says, is fostered by the development of habits that enable further habit formation. Unfortunately, humans have their own habitual ways of encountering other species, which often do not support growth. In this article, I briefly review some common conceptions of learning and the process of habit-formation to scope out the landscape of a more responsible and responsive approach (...) to taking growth seriously. What emerges is a reflexive biosemiotics that has humans explicitly concerned with the in situ emergence of new signification in themselves and in other organisms. This requires we take a pedagogical stance in our attitudes and practices towards other species, which we can enrich with insights derived from re-interpreting traditional empirical studies. By freeing the habit-forming process from confining stereotype, a biological pedagogy can enable a more fluid and creative biosphere, unencumbered to explore unfolding possibilities in semiotic space. (shrink)

Positive education seeks to enhance wellbeing in schools by establishing a culture where success is measured in terms of happiness. This goal aligns well with Dewey’s educational philosophy, which espouses the importance of a positive school experience in the nurturing of good citizenship and the creation of a harmonious community. Dewey’s ideas and those expressed within the field of positive education, however, diverge on some aspects of their approach to education and, importantly, in their perspective on the role of philosophy (...) in science. This thesis explores the possibility of a Deweyan contribution to positive education and advances the argument that embracing Dewey’s ethics and epistemology will augment efforts to create a culture of wellbeing in schools. Specifically, this thesis argues that Dewey’s work may contribute a perspective on the complementary role of philosophy and science; suggest an experiential pedagogy that contends with the nature of subjective experience; contribute a social focus that prioritizes the common good; and provide a unified philosophical stance on the purpose of schooling. These contributions may, however modestly, address concerns expressed by writers from within and outside of positive psychology about challenges such as a need for a more philosophical approach, the effects of psychology in education, the difficulties with avoiding normative content in order to remain scientific, the problem of subjective experience, the perceived focus on individualism, and the implication that positive psychology may be a fad. Ultimately, by creating a dialogue between positive education and the work of Dewey, this thesis seeks to elicit thinking about the possibility of a Deweyan contribution to both the theory and practice of positive education. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics, and in particular, his concept of consummatory experience, should be engaged anew to rethink the merits of the Philosophy for Children programme, which arose in the 1970s in the US as an innovative educational programme that aims to use philosophy to help school children improve their ability to become more conscious of and make judgments about the aspects of their experience that have ethical, aesthetic, political, logical, or even metaphysical meaning. Although (...) an international success, the PFC programme has attracted many criticisms from a variety of directions. I claim that Deweyan concept of consummatory aesthetic experience is broad and flexible enough to provide a robust framework to make sense of the pedagogical horizon of PFC and therefore fruitfully engage the various critics of the movement coming from religious and social conservatives, educational psychologists, critical theorists, postmodernists/posthumanists, and professional philosophers themselves. The goal of this paper is to offer in a preliminary fashion the basic elements of Deweyan pragmatist aesthetics, which was principally elucidated in his Art as Experience, to defend PFC as a viable pedagogy. (shrink)

Curiously, while the efficacy of the arts for the development of multicultural understandings has long been theorized, empirical studies of this effect have been lacking. This essay recounts our combined empirical and philosophical study of this issue. We explicate the philosophical considerations that shaped the development of the arts course we studied, which was grounded in rather traditional humanist educational thought, informed by Deweyan considerations for pedagogy and multiculturalism. We also provide an overview of the course and of (...) the study design: the ways in which the course worked to teach aesthetic theory through a combination of popular and canonical works, and the ways in which it sought to instill a sense of cross-cultural appreciation and solidarity among students through the inclusion of art from different cultures and generations. We then share our research findings and our return to the realm of philosophy to interpret them. Our postcolonial analysis incorporates emerging discussions of the arts as a tool for resistance and dialogue within the system of public education, and revisit and reconsider the very concept of education for pluralistic democracy. This approach problematizes traditional conceptions of pluralism, in which an attempt is made to dissolve difference in a common understanding, and instead advocates that works from among the contemporary popular arts and works drawn from the artistic “canon” alike must be considered and employed for their instrumental value to the educational process—especially for their ability to prompt an intersubjectivity that is accompanied by a heightened awareness of difference. (shrink)

Curiously, while the efficacy of the arts for the development of multicultural understandings has long been theorized, empirical studies of this effect have been lacking. This essay recounts our combined empirical and philosophical study of this issue. We explicate the philosophical considerations that shaped the development of the arts course we studied, which was grounded in rather traditional humanist educational thought, informed by Deweyan considerations for pedagogy and multiculturalism. We also provide an overview of the course and of (...) the study design: the ways in which the course worked to teach aesthetic theory through a combination of popular and canonical works, and the ways in which it sought to instill a sense of cross-cultural appreciation and solidarity among students through the inclusion of art from different cultures and generations. We then share our research findings and our return to the realm of philosophy to interpret them. Our postcolonial analysis incorporates emerging discussions of the arts as a tool for resistance and dialogue within the system of public education, and revisit and reconsider the very concept of education for pluralistic democracy. This approach problematizes traditional conceptions of pluralism, in which an attempt is made to dissolve difference in a common understanding, and instead advocates that works from among the contemporary popular arts and works drawn from the artistic “canon” alike must be considered and employed for their instrumental value to the educational process—especially for their ability to prompt an intersubjectivity that is accompanied by a heightened awareness of difference. (shrink)

In this article, Kurt Stemhagen reconstructs mathematics education in light of Dewey's democratic theory and his ideas about mathematics and mathematics education. The resulting democratic philosophy and pedagogy of mathematics education emphasizes agency and the connections between mathematics and students' social experiences. Stemhagen considers questions about the disconnect between constructivist reformers and critical mathematics educators, and he positions Dewey's ideas as a way to draw on the best of both to create an active and more democratic school math experience.

This paper explores Erich Fromm’s contribution to Deweyan democratic education by referring to his psychoanalytic interpretation of John Dewey’s pragmatic theory. First, it employs the work by Gert Biesta to secure a space between critical pedagogy and Deweyan democratic education, from which Fromm’s theory can be discussed. Furthermore, it argues that Biesta’s perspective offers a valuable theoretical ground to extend the emancipatory potential of Deweyan democratic education, while avoiding some pitfalls of critical pedagogy. Subsequently, the (...) paper contrasts Marcuse’s and Fromm’s views on Dewey to show how Fromm’s understanding of Dewey was more effective than that of Marcuse for developing the potential of Dewey’s philosophy. Next, the paper clarifies key similarities and differences between Fromm’s psychoanalysis and Dewey’s pragmatism, as it is applicable specifically to emancipatory education. Finally, the paper argues that despite the differences between these two thinkers, Fromm’s theory further radicalizes Deweyan democratic education by adding new elements to the list of preconditions on the role of the emancipatory teacher. (shrink)

Teaching about homosexuality, especially in a positive light, has long been held to be a controversial issue. There is, however, a view of the capacity for reason that finds that those who deem homosexuality to be controversial will ultimately contradict themselves, becoming unreasonable. By this standard of reason, homosexuality should be treated as non controversial in schools. In this essay, John Petrovic argues that this epistemic position is problematic. Instead, he defends a Deweyan epistemology that casts reason as, in (...) part, a set of socially acquired habits of mind. People who have been socialized into heterosexist habits of mind must be exposed to counterhegemonic discourses. One such discourse can be found in the public values of liberal democracy through which the practice of reason must be pursued. Petrovic discusses the practical guidance provided by assuming a view of normative reason versus habituated reason in terms of both pedagogy and curriculum. (shrink)

While John Dewey is an icon of American education and his work object of comprehensive studies, this book ventures to fill gaps that have been neglected by previous research. In particular, it opens new perspectives on Dewey's theory of curriculum, his concept of democratic education, his role as an administrator and the extent to which his philosophy of education coincided with the practice of the Laboratory School teachers. Thus, the author joins the ranks of those who strive to historicize Dewey's (...) pragmatist pedagogy and contextualize his celebrated school experiment. Drawing on new archival research and dozens of overlooked sources, Knoll offers numerous insights into what was and was not original in Dewey's pedagogy, and to what degree Dewey and his associates were successful in faithfully implementing his complicated vision. This is Dewey scholarship at its very best! Thomas Fallace, author of Dewey and the Dilemma of Race "While many historians have chronicled the growth of John Dewey's educational philosophy, very few have traced in detail its application by Dewey in the real world. In this superb critical study of Deweyan educational reform, Michael Knoll does both. At once a tour de force and a cautionary tale." Andrew Feffer, author of The Chicago Pragmatists and American Progressivism "Michael Knoll's meticulous archival research places Dewey's work both in the long sweep of the history of educational ideas and in the context of Dewey's historical moment. Knoll highlights significant transatlantic currents in the New Education, illuminates misunderstood or overlooked episodes in Dewey's lifework, and humanizes Dewey. Knoll's findings and interpretations will challenge scholars to reassess prevailing perspectives not only on Dewey's work, but also on early 20th century education reform in the US." William G. Wraga, author of Progressive Pioneer: Alexander James Inglis and American Secondary Education. (shrink)

There are various programmes currently advocated for ways in which children might encounter philosophy as an explicit part of their education. An analysis of these reveals the ways in which they are predicated on views of what constitutes philosophy. In the sense in which they are inquiry based, purport to encourage the pursuit of puzzlement and contribute towards creating democratic citizens, these programmes either implicitly rest on the work of John Dewey or explicitly use his work as the main warrant (...) for their approach. This article explores what might count as educational in the practice of children ‘doing’ philosophy, by reconsidering Dewey’s notion of ‘experience’. The educational desire to generate inquiry, thought and democracy is not lost, but a view that philosophy takes its impetus from wonder is introduced to help re-evaluate what might count as educational experience in a Deweyan sense. (shrink)

John Dewey is a well-known proponent of certain aspects of progressive education, including the idea that students and teachers should be reflective co-inquirers, not just acquirers of information.1 Among his many other educational ideas are the continuing need to reconstruct school conditions and environments, pedagogical thinking and practice, curricular planning and development, and educational activities and outcomes.2 In the field of education, however, his ideas of ethical inquiry, thinking, and decision-making are not as widely known as his views of teaching (...) and learning. Moreover, some advocates and critics of his ideas often confuse or blur his ethical deliberations.3 Since we think his ethical... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.2 (2003) 1-18 [Access article in PDF] Aesthetic Inquiry in Education:Community,Transcendence, and the Meaning of Pedagogy Hanan A. Alexander What does it mean to understand education as an art, to conceive inquiry in education aesthetically, or to assess pedagogy artistically? Answers to these queries are often grounded in Deweyan instrumentalism, neo-Marxist critical theory, or postmodern skepticism that tend to fall prey (...) to the paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism. 1 This essay offers an alternative, communitarian account of education as an art and a neo-Kantian approach to aesthetic inquiry in education that avoids these difficulties.I begin by examining the emergence of aesthetic inquiry in education in the context of the larger qualitative revolution in educational research. The struggle to justify the qualitative turn in educational thought was initially framed in terms of two influential doctrines: that cognition and affect on the one hand, and truth, beauty, and goodness on the other, can be clearly distinguished from one another. Qualitative methods were conceived as an alternative research paradigm — a new epistemology — in keeping with Thomas Kuhn's influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 2 Qualitative research, on this account, is a cognitive endeavor aimed at discovering a form of knowledge no less valid and reliable than that produced by quantitative methodologies. This way of framing the discussion led to the dichotomizing of positivist and postpositivist epistemologies, one embracing absolutism, objectivism, and rationalism, the other relativism, subjectivism, and romanticism. 3 This approach succeeded in pointing to some serious flaws in the prevailing positivist account of social research, yet it left qualitative inquiry dependent on versions of epistemological relativism and subjectivism that philosophers of knowledge have shown to be self-contradictory and incoherent. 4 [End Page 1]Conceiving of pedagogy in aesthetic terms challenges the prevailing positivist epistemology on a deeper level because it questions the accepted distinctions between thinking and feeling, and between truth, beauty, and goodness. If art can be conceived as a form of cognitive inquiry in addition to affective expression, then the appreciation and assessment of education as art requires not merely a new research paradigm or an alternative epistemology. Rather, it entails a reshuffling of our very conception of the relations between science, art, and ethics.These concepts can be reconceived to avoid the paradoxes of radical relativism and extreme subjectivism if we recognize with Iris Murdoch that sovereignty belongs to communal conceptions of a transcendent good. Educational arts empower people to express, appreciate, and critique collective conceptions of goodness, and artistic criticism of pedagogy celebrates a sacred dimension in educational thought and practice. 5 This approach occasions a fresh look not only at the practice, appreciation, and assessment of pedagogy, but also at the very meaning of the concept of education and the sorts of inquiry that can fruitfully inform its practice. Two Dogmas of Educational Research Two dogmas have dominated educational research for most of this century: the idea that there exists a clear disjunction between the cognitive and affective domains; and the supposed radical independence from one another of truth, beauty, and goodness. 6 According to a popular view rooted in these doctrines, the search for truth is a cognitive affair governed by science, while ethics and the arts are tied to the emotions and the humanities. Inquiry into the former is objective — reliability depends on method not researcher — and into the latter, subjective — results can vary according to interpreter. In this attitude, the cognitive domain dominates the public arena through the influence and prestige of science and measurement. 7Until the middle 1970s, behavioral and social research in education expressed these dichotomies in the distinction made between quantitative and qualitative research. The former was thought to be scientific and objective, the latter, humanistic and subjective. As qualitative inquiry came into its own in the 1980s, its proponents sought justification and legitimization in accord with cognitive dominance. 8 First, they argued that qualitative research methods had checks against error as rigorous as its quantitative counterparts. 9 Later, the cognitive domain... (shrink)

This paper explores the role that the idea of science plays within Matthew Lipman’s approach to inquiry. On the one hand it seems that Lipman shares a typically modern ‘antagonist-metascientific’ view of philosophy in opposing the scientific undertaking and philosophical inquiry. On the other hand, he models his idea of community of philosophical inquiry on the Peircean-Deweyan theoretical construct of community of inquiry which refers exactly to the scientific undertaking. And – what is still more significant – it is (...) just by capitalizing on the “scientific” origin of the construct that Lipman can revive the Socratic tradition of philosophy as a dialogic practice. But Lipman’s relationship with science is still more complex: he identifies science as a project of “outfoxing and outguessing nature.” By tracing the origin of such metaphors to the Heraclitean dictum “nature loves to hide” and to Francis Bacon’s interpretation of ancient myths, and by contrasting them with the Kuhnian idea of normal science as puzzle-solving, it becomes clear that Lipman recognizes the “thoughtful”—that is, philosophical -- dimension of science, and the need for complex thinking within science itself as a basic dimension of its development. Against the backdrop of such analyses, the paper attempts to point to the possibility of a pedagogy of science in a Lipmanian vein. (shrink)

Welcome, readers, to the latest issue of Education & Culture. This exciting edition brings us five articles and three book reviews ranging across topics including educational reform, academic freedom, teacher education, political theory, Deweyan pedagogy and aesthetics, and, a topic not often addressed by Deweyans, the practice of inclusion in today’s classrooms.Continuing a pattern of late, we open with a piece first presented as the Dewey Lecture at AERA in 2014. Diane Ravitch’s “Does Evidence Matter?” takes a direct (...) and largely critical look at educational reform over the last several decades, highlighting No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, but.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guest Editors' NoteKevin Taylor (bio) and Johnathan Flowers (bio)Welcome to this special fall 2021 issue of Education & Culture. we are pleased to bring you the second installment of this special three-part issue on Deweyan approaches to contemporary issues at the intersection of data and technology.In his extensive writings on philosophy and technology, Luciano Floridi has argued that "the time has come to translate environmental ethics into terms (...) of infosphere and informational entities, for the land we now inhabit is not just the earth."1 This may be appropriate from a Deweyan perspective as Dewey's approach to aesthetic experience focuses on the living organism within its environment and we have become digital humans in digital environments. Our digital world feels unstable because it is in constant change, but Dewey reminds us that "all interactions that effect stability and order in the whirling flux of change are rhythms. There is ebb and flow, systole and diastole: ordered change."2 The rhythms of our digital world pervade all experience in what he termed "doing and undergoing." We are swimming in a sea of data and leaving behind what investigative reporter Julia Angwin terms data pollution.3 But in the data-driven world, that data pollution is collected, analyzed, and monetized by big data tech firms in a kind of societal harm that threatens digital democracy.Whereas part one saw contributions from five scholars throwing curriculum and technology into sharp relief, this issue asks questions such as "Where ought we to begin?", "What does feminist pragmatism have to tell us about the pandemic and online teaching and learning?", and "Do the aims and means of data and technology align with human experience?"John Machielsen's "Responsible Imagineering: John Dewey's Pluralistic Ethics and Technological Innovation" seems like a good place to begin. Machielsen argues for placing Dewey's ethics at the starting point from which technological innovation can flourish. Driven by Deweyan concepts of intelligence, education, and imagination, Machielsen explores, among other themes, socially disruptive technology from the perspective of pragmatists who constantly reconstruct concepts and values through the process of Deweyan inquiry. Human beings are imaginative and plastic with regard to problem solving, and what is needed here is to keep the barriers between technology and everyday life porous so that we do not risk compartmentalizing them as distinctly different realms.In the next two essays, we turn our attention to the growing concerns surrounding intelligent technology in online educational environments. Great strides have been made in the field of artificial intelligence, and intelligent technology has inserted itself into various aspects of data and technology, such as machine learning that creates personalized learning paths for students. Whether these technologies fall under the [End Page 1] category of algorithms, machine learning, or artificial intelligence, they raise questions about their potential impact on teaching and learning.Olivier Del Fabbro is also suspicious of the current state of intelligent technology in his article, "How to Teach Machines in Artificial Intelligence: Technical Education in John Dewey, Gilbert Simondon, and Machine Learning." Citing the Google machine learning model that classified African Americans as gorillas, Del Fabbro utilizes Dewey and Gilbert Simondon to argue that the human–machine relationship is still immature and at risk of creating an alienated situation out of undesirable bad habits. Intelligent technology requires constant care by engineers and programmers to form good habits and adapt to social life if their aims are to align with Deweyan pedagogy.As Del Fabbro focuses on intelligent technology, the human dimension of online learning comes under scrutiny in two articles that adopt feminist pragmatist methods. Krissah Marga B. Taganas's article, "Feminist-Pragmatist Perspectives on Online Education: Challenging and Changing Online Educational Conversation," rightfully acknowledges how the pandemic has magnified existing inequalities in society. The rapid migration to online learning was necessarily expedited in the face of uncertainties surrounding public health, but how do educators migrate classes that were not designed with online learning in mind to begin with? Dewey emphasized schools as sites and tools for change, but how does online education provide an optimal social environment for learning? Taganas utilizes feminist pragmatism as an important philosophical resource to... (shrink)

Introduces educators and scholars to the legacy and import of Daisaku Ikeda as a singular philosopher, educator, and institution-builder, thus enriching current education discourse. In the process, the book illuminates the benefits of cross-cultural research and learning by considering the relevance of Ikeda's thought not only to established streams of pedagogy and practice in the Deweyan tradition but also to emerging trends in education research such as ecocritical education and critical race feminism.

The objective of this paper is to establish a theoretical foundation for food education in schools. Amartya Sen’s capability approach (CA), an ethical theory concerning the freedom required to achieve one’s well-being, was applied to define the previously unchallenged ethical nature of food education. The analyses were informed by foundational CA concepts, Sen’s own perspectives on ‘food’ and ‘education’, and CA-based education studies. Through these analyses, the fundamental nature of food education was defined as follows: ‘Capability to eat well’ is (...) the freedom to convert commodities (such as food or pocket money) into the ‘functionings to eat well’ that constitute children’s ‘well-eating’ (Definition 1); and the objective of food education as public policy is to expand such capability to eat well (Def. 2). However, if an appropriate pedagogy is not employed, children’s capability can be reduced (Def. 3); therefore, to avoid this, the pedagogy has to enable them to perceive more ‘associations’ (in a Deweyan sense) between related conversion factors (Def. 4), as well as to choose and participate in the educational process (Def. 5). This theory not only elucidated the ethical nature of food education but also expanded the scope of the application of the CA to food issues. (shrink)

This article proposes to analyse some aspects of the appropriation of New School thinking in Brazil, particularly Deweyan pragmatism, in the 1950s and 1960s. The analysis is based on the assumption that the developmentalist ideology that punctuated the debate on the economic, political and social restructuring of the country in these two decades constituted fertile ground for the return and expansion of pragmatist thinking amongst Brazilian educators, articulating itself, sometimes in contradictory ways, with this ideology. The focus of the (...) analysis will be on the writings of the group of educators which circulated around the figure of Anísio Teixeira, at the time director of the National Institute for Pedagogic Studies, an organ linked to the Ministry of Education and Culture, which set itself the task of producing research that would support public policy in the field of education, as well as constituting itself as a center for teacher education and the stimulus and development of innovative experiences in the public school system. The appropriation of Deweyan pragmatism, in this context, had a triple perspective: pragmatism as scientific method, implying a specific conception of science, particularly the social sciences, with emphasis on the application of scientific knowledge in the solution of practical problems; as a way of democratic life; and as a synonym for experimentalism, in the sphere of schooling. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of the application of democraticand anti-racist educational principles in a college setting.The paper explores both the implications of pedagogical theoryfor anti-racism and the implications of anti-racism forpedagogy. After giving a brief description of the conditionsencountered in an economically and intellectually impoverishedregion of the country, the paper outlines an application ofJohn Dewey's educational theory to college instruction.Then, after an account of what racism is, the paper reappliesDewey's model to the teaching of anti-racism, and with thehelp of (...) Paulo Freire's theory of educational praxis,readapts Deweyan principles to the task of reconstructingour classrooms as models of anti-racist communities. (shrink)

Student-centered learning has been conceived as a Western export to the East and the developing world in the last few decades. Philosophers of education often associate student-centered learning with frameworks related to meeting the needs of individual pupils: from Deweyan experiential learning, to the ‘pedagogy of the oppressed’ and other social justice orientations. Yet student-centered learning has also become, in the era of neoliberal education, a jingoistic advertisement for practices and ideologies which can be seen to lead to (...) a global devaluation of the educational profession, and the bolstering of the view of the student as a customer. In this article, I want to disentangle these views and explore some limitations of either model of student-centered learning. To add context, I consider education in the United Arab Emirates today, which provides an extreme example of the risks involved with prioritizing student’s self-identified needs and interests above all else, as in an idealized or exaggerated student-centered concept. I conclude with brief comments on amending the philosophical concept of student-centered learning to be useful in diverse contexts today. (shrink)

In this essay Harry Boyte and Margaret Finders argue that addressing the “shrinkage” of education and democracy requires acting politically to reclaim and augment Deweyan agency-focused concepts of democracy and education. Looking at agency from the vantage of civic studies, which advances a politics of agency — a citizen politics that is different from ideological politics — and citizens as cocreators of political communities, Boyte and Finders explore the technocratic trends that have eclipsed agency. These disempower educators, students, and (...) communities. Using the case study of the youth empowerment initiative Public Achievement and its translation into the Special Education Program and partnerships of Augsburg College, the authors conclude with an examination of how agentic practices have survived in “shadow spaces” in schools, how such spaces might be turned into “free spaces” for democratic change, and how teacher education needs to prepare “citizen teachers” as well as promoting pedagogies of empowerment. These suggest grounds for a movement of hope and democratic change. (shrink)

Should ethics be taught in the high schools? Should high school faculty teach it themselves or invite college and university professors (or instructors) into the classroom to share their expertise? In this paper, I argue that the challenge to teach ethics in the high schools has a distinctly Deweyan dimension to it, since (i) Dewey proposed that it be attempted and (ii) he provided many valuable resources with which to proceed. The paper is organized into four sections. In the (...) first, I summarize Jim Garrison’s account of Dewey’s philosophy as education and argue that it offers an exceptional tool-kit to someone interested in advocating for high school ethics pedagogy. The second section presents Dewey’s model for ethics instruction in a high school setting, as articulated in his only essay devoted specifically to the subject: “Teaching Ethics in the High School.” The third examines Peter Singer’s brief essay, “Moral Experts,” to see whether moral expertise is a sine qua non for teaching ethics in the high schools. In the fourth and concluding section, I propose that meeting the Deweyan challenge of teaching ethics in the high schools requires, first, preparing oneself to overcome the objection that such a project is naïve, utopian or just plain foolish and, second, organizing enthusiastic participants to develop and test a prototype, experimenting with various implementation strategies on a small scale before attempting a bolder and larger scale version of the project. Apropos of this second requirement, I showcase the Center for Education in Law and Democracy’s “The High School Ethics Project” in the state of Colorado. (shrink)

This article reviews John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect, A Critical Engagement with Dewey's Democracy and Education, edited and spearheaded by David T. Hansen, with contributions by Gert Biesta, Reba N. Page, Larry A. Hickman, Naoko Saito, Gary D. Fenstermacher, Herbert M. Kliebard, Sharon Fieman-Nemser and Elizabeth Minnich. This review will not only praise and evaluate the merits of this book, but will also attempt to frame this new study of Dewey within the challenges that continue to engage education in (...) the realms of democracy, as the latter continues to strive for its own survival. While highlighting salient aspects of Hansen et al.'s rereading of Dewey's great work, this review seeks to frame both Dewey's text and this Deweyan study within the breadth of those other challenges by which education—and in turn philosophy of education—has come to take on issues such as: the nexus between theory and practice, the prevalent domination of the social scientific paradigm in education and the continuous threat of the standardisation and institutionalisation of human learning. It will be argued that, to meet this challenge, philosophy of education must sustain a continuous engagement with Dewey's work. A rereading of Dewey also involves a revaluation of his pragmatic theory of education and its lineage, moving from Emerson's metaphilosophy to Cavell's ethics. As Hansen et al. invariably engage with the latter, this review will question, through Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of pragmatisation, whether Deweyan pragmatism can still challenge the current state of affairs by which education is not only systematised away from learning, but also subsumed into a more institutionalised state—a condition that immediately jars with Dewey's own philosophical instincts and pedagogical labours. (shrink)

In an era defined by events that continuously shake Fukuyama’s thesis according to which liberal democracy constitutes the end of History, there is need for a democratic ideal that puts the role of civic action at the heart of its justification. In this article, I argue that John Dewey’s democratic ideal understood as a matter of civic co-creation, where democratic pursuits are continually redefined by citizens through solving communal problems - not set by history, once and for all - provides (...) a valuable response to this need. To this end, this article reconsiders Deweyan democracy by:(1) presenting it as a transformational process, in opposition to liberal democracy; (2) discussing Dewey’s conception of active citizenship as requiring more than mere political participation; (3) articulating Dewey’s democratic ideal as a form of applied social intelligence; (4) making explicit the pedagogical consequences of Deweyan democracy; and (5) interpreting it as a form of peaceful conflict resolution aiming at balance in inter-personal relationships. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 141-156 [Access article in PDF] Music Education as Critical PracticeA Naturalist View Lauri Väkevä University Of Oulu, Finland I This essay defends naturalism as a framework for philosophy of music education. I have three general reasons for supporting naturalism. First, by taking naturalism seriously we can keep our philosophies up-to-date with scientific inquiry. Second, naturalism can emancipate us from transcendental pseudo-questions and (...) instead help us to deal with the empirical problems of everyday life. Third, with naturalism, we can free ourselves from a priori theories of morals and aesthetics and thus view the active part that normative and aesthetic concerns play in human praxis. Even if I endorse naturalism, I do not subscribe to scientism. 1 Rather, I submit to a pragmatist view that stresses the role of philosophy (and science) in dealing with the questions of our life practices. Of the recent perspectives in the philosophy of music education my approach comes closest to the critical praxialism discussed in the MayDay group. 2All in all, I find a lot in common with the praxialist discussion (within or outside the MayDay group) and the kind of pragmatism that follows John Dewey's mature philosophy. 3 However, it seems to me that the naturalist bent of Deweyan pragmatism has not been thoroughly analyzed in our field. 4 One reason for this [End Page 141] might be the bad report that 'hard' or reductive naturalism has been given in connection with the experimental paradigm of music education research. 5 I want to argue that the critical potential of Deweyan pragmatism should not (and cannot) be separated from a naturalist approach. Taken together, critical and naturalist views can contribute to any philosophy, especially in fields that have a long tradition of leaning on otherworldly explanations.In what follows, I begin by outlining (in broad brushstrokes) the historical position of pragmatism and its status in present day philosophy. Next, I focus on the implications of Deweyan naturalist pragmatism and the possibility of maintaining a critical pragmatist attitude with naturalist presumptions in a pedagogical context. In the final part of the essay, I outline an interpretative framework for a critical pragmatism of music education that takes advantage of the naturalizing tendencies in contemporary philosophy without losing its grasp on the things that matter musically. II For a while, pragmatism had a bad name in academic philosophy. This was especially true after the linguistic turn in the first half of the last century. 6 By making the linguistic turn, many philosophers hoped to disassociate themselves from the speculative tradition(s) once and for all. Logical analysts also made it more difficult for philosophers to ignore the findings of scientists. Thus they paved the way for contemporary reductive naturalism that takes science as the measure of what can be known. 7However, analytic philosophers were not alone in their attempt to provide philosophy with scientific rigor. Classical pragmatists, too, had integrated a naturalist penchant in their output. Embracing naturalism with an open-ended experimental spirit, they wanted to focus on "the problems of men" as the chief subject matter of philosophy. 8 To many analytic philosophers, this seemed like a return to armchair speculation with an ingredient of sentimental ethics thrown in for good measure. Worse still, it looked as though the classical pragmatists were giving in to the spirit of the corporate West: speaking of the truth as "cash-value" surely seemed like a blasphemy to intellectuals who sought from formal logic and mathematics a purity of mind to clear up the messiness of everyday experience. 9Logical analysis also had its shortcomings. While many mainstream philosophers turned to logical analysis for clarity and certainty, at the same time they submitted to Cartesian-Kantian mind-body dualism with its problematic epistemology. Thus, they kept supporting the tensions between the rationalist and empiricist or analytic and synthetic domains of knowledge that haunted modernist neo-Kantian arguments.These distinctions turned out to be easy targets for postanalytic critics. 10 [End Page 142]Classical pragmatists anticipated this... (shrink)

This paper, while not presenting a general discussion of authority in education, attempts to uncover some of the anomalies, paradoxes and tensions in the concept. It will argue for a revaluation of authority as an educational virtue, as a form of participatory guidance that is an aid to growth. The paper intends to help provoke continued debate over our perceived educational virtues and vices. I argue that virtuous authority is authority exercised from the point of view of a larger experience (...) and a wider horizon. If teachers’ ‘pedagogical imperative’ is to bridge the gap between forms of knowledge and their pupils, then their practice will involve authority. I suggest here that such authority should be repositioned as participatory, immanent and democratic. As Dewey says, ‘The need for authority is…constant…[I]t is the need for principles that are both stable enough and flexible enough to give direction to the processes of living in its vicissitudes and uncertainties.’ In answer to this, I suggest that teachers practice their authority in order to create stable yet flexible, open and indeterminate, but not chaotic situations that combine with pupils’ experiences in such a way as to enable educational growth. Authority practised as a form of participatory guidance, to pursue this Deweyan line of argument, can be ‘an aid to freedom’ and not freedom's enemy. This paper will argue that authority, so revalued, ought to be cultivated in our educational thought and practice. Eds: This paper forms part of a Special Issue titled ‘Beyond Virtue and Vice: Education for a Darker Age’, in which the editors invited authors to engage in exercises of ‘transvaluation’. Certain apparently settled educational concepts (from agency and fulfilment to alienation and ignorance) can be reinterpreted and transvaluated (in a Nietzschean vein) such that virtues become vices, and vices, virtues. The editors encouraged authors to employ polemics and some occasional exaggeration to reimagine educational values that are all too readily accepted within contemporary educational discourses. (shrink)

This paper, while not presenting a general discussion of authority in education, attempts to uncover some of the anomalies, paradoxes and tensions in the concept. It will argue for a revaluation of authority as an educational virtue, as a form of participatory guidance that is an aid to growth. The paper intends to help provoke continued debate over our perceived educational virtues and vices. I argue that virtuous authority is authority exercised from the point of view of a larger experience (...) and a wider horizon. If teachers’ ‘pedagogical imperative’ is to bridge the gap between forms of knowledge and their pupils, then their practice will involve authority. I suggest here that such authority should be repositioned as participatory, immanent and democratic. As Dewey says, ‘The need for authority is…constant…[I]t is the need for principles that are both stable enough and flexible enough to give direction to the processes of living in its vicissitudes and uncertainties.’ In answer to this, I suggest that teachers practice their authority in order to create stable yet flexible, open and indeterminate, but not chaotic situations that combine with pupils’ experiences in such a way as to enable educational growth. Authority practised as a form of participatory guidance, to pursue this Deweyan line of argument, can be ‘an aid to freedom’ and not freedom's enemy. This paper will argue that authority, so revalued, ought to be cultivated in our educational thought and practice. Eds: This paper forms part of a Special Issue titled ‘Beyond Virtue and Vice: Education for a Darker Age’, in which the editors invited authors to engage in exercises of ‘transvaluation’. Certain apparently settled educational concepts (from agency and fulfilment to alienation and ignorance) can be reinterpreted and transvaluated (in a Nietzschean vein) such that virtues become vices, and vices, virtues. The editors encouraged authors to employ polemics and some occasional exaggeration to reimagine educational values that are all too readily accepted within contemporary educational discourses. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 141-156 [Access article in PDF] Music Education as Critical PracticeA Naturalist View Lauri Väkevä University Of Oulu, Finland I This essay defends naturalism as a framework for philosophy of music education. I have three general reasons for supporting naturalism. First, by taking naturalism seriously we can keep our philosophies up-to-date with scientific inquiry. Second, naturalism can emancipate us from transcendental pseudo-questions and (...) instead help us to deal with the empirical problems of everyday life. Third, with naturalism, we can free ourselves from a priori theories of morals and aesthetics and thus view the active part that normative and aesthetic concerns play in human praxis. Even if I endorse naturalism, I do not subscribe to scientism. 1 Rather, I submit to a pragmatist view that stresses the role of philosophy (and science) in dealing with the questions of our life practices. Of the recent perspectives in the philosophy of music education my approach comes closest to the critical praxialism discussed in the MayDay group. 2All in all, I find a lot in common with the praxialist discussion (within or outside the MayDay group) and the kind of pragmatism that follows John Dewey's mature philosophy. 3 However, it seems to me that the naturalist bent of Deweyan pragmatism has not been thoroughly analyzed in our field. 4 One reason for this [End Page 141] might be the bad report that 'hard' or reductive naturalism has been given in connection with the experimental paradigm of music education research. 5 I want to argue that the critical potential of Deweyan pragmatism should not (and cannot) be separated from a naturalist approach. Taken together, critical and naturalist views can contribute to any philosophy, especially in fields that have a long tradition of leaning on otherworldly explanations.In what follows, I begin by outlining (in broad brushstrokes) the historical position of pragmatism and its status in present day philosophy. Next, I focus on the implications of Deweyan naturalist pragmatism and the possibility of maintaining a critical pragmatist attitude with naturalist presumptions in a pedagogical context. In the final part of the essay, I outline an interpretative framework for a critical pragmatism of music education that takes advantage of the naturalizing tendencies in contemporary philosophy without losing its grasp on the things that matter musically. II For a while, pragmatism had a bad name in academic philosophy. This was especially true after the linguistic turn in the first half of the last century. 6 By making the linguistic turn, many philosophers hoped to disassociate themselves from the speculative tradition(s) once and for all. Logical analysts also made it more difficult for philosophers to ignore the findings of scientists. Thus they paved the way for contemporary reductive naturalism that takes science as the measure of what can be known. 7However, analytic philosophers were not alone in their attempt to provide philosophy with scientific rigor. Classical pragmatists, too, had integrated a naturalist penchant in their output. Embracing naturalism with an open-ended experimental spirit, they wanted to focus on "the problems of men" as the chief subject matter of philosophy. 8 To many analytic philosophers, this seemed like a return to armchair speculation with an ingredient of sentimental ethics thrown in for good measure. Worse still, it looked as though the classical pragmatists were giving in to the spirit of the corporate West: speaking of the truth as "cash-value" surely seemed like a blasphemy to intellectuals who sought from formal logic and mathematics a purity of mind to clear up the messiness of everyday experience. 9Logical analysis also had its shortcomings. While many mainstream philosophers turned to logical analysis for clarity and certainty, at the same time they submitted to Cartesian-Kantian mind-body dualism with its problematic epistemology. Thus, they kept supporting the tensions between the rationalist and empiricist or analytic and synthetic domains of knowledge that haunted modernist neo-Kantian arguments.These distinctions turned out to be easy targets for postanalytic critics. 10 [End Page 142]Classical pragmatists anticipated this... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to reconstruct Dewey’s conception of experimentalism, mainly through his pedagogical writings, on the one hand; and to show the relevance of this reconstruction to current reassessments of Dewey’s political thought, on the other. The grounds for our perspective have a double character too. Firstly, we reconstruct the links between experimentalism and education on the basis of the first edition of How We Think (1910, MW 6), perhaps one of Dewey’s most noteworthy pedagogical texts. (...) Secondly, we critically address three different reassessments of Dewey’s experimentalism in contemporary political thought, namely: 1) Pappas’s defense of Dewey’s substantive idea of democracy; 2) Forstenzer’s proposal of Deweyan experimentalism as an appropriate methodology for political philosophy; and 3) Anderson’s vindication of Deweyan experimental democracy in the context of social epistemology. It is sustained that in HWT Dewey places experimentalism as a kind of antidote against dogmatism and unreflective ways of reasoning. Thus, he links experimentalism with anti-dogmatism placing a special role in schooling for at least two reasons: 1) it is in the schooling phase that children are still sensitive to the development of certain habits; 2) dogmatism seems inevitable in any society but the educational phase is a key instance to try to avoid it. Neither (1) nor (2) are present in contemporary reassessments of Deweyan experimentalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education by Randall Everett AllsupJuliet HessRandall Everett Allsup, Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2016).As a leading voice in music education, Randall Allsup works continually to reconceptualize music education toward democratic and socially just praxis.1 He routinely challenges the field to become self-conscious of practices that limit forward movement, providing (...) powerful critiques2 and urging music education toward open possibilities.3 Remixing the Classroom: Toward an Open Philosophy of Music Education is work that will shift our field. His comprehensive philosophy of music education looks, longs, for moral openings4 through which twenty-first-century music education may become a space of possibility. His writing interweaves stories and theory toward what he calls an "open philosophy," drawing upon the ideas of John Dewey, Maxine Greene, and Roland Barthes. Allsup introduces stories of Dapper Dan, Jiro Ono, Kafka, Atul Gawande, and the Orpheus Orchestra in New York City to illustrate powerful points about current and possible paradigms of music education.Chapter 1, "Toward Open Encounters," discusses the making and breaking of the law (tradition) and explores how tradition and the Master-Apprentice model restrict what is possible in music education. Allsup explores the nature of music education and the limitations it places upon its participants. Chapter 2, "Music-Teacher Quality and Expertise," asks fundamental questions of our field and [End Page 100] explores and challenges the "place and purpose of public schooling in a democratic society."5 Allsup speaks to the function of education and critiques music education. Chapter 3, "learning in laboratories," puts forward a Deweyan laboratory model in which a museum is at the center of the school with learning laboratories situated around it. He explores what this structural fluidity might enable and develops notions of lawmaking and lawbreaking, extending possibilities of the open encounter. The final chapter, "looking, Longing, for Moral Openings," calls on music educators to embrace a more open music education paradigm. Allsup draws upon Greene to challenge music education to move "from the predictable to the possible."6 He puts forward the Orpheus Orchestra, a conductorless orchestra, as one possibility.I situate myself as an anti-racist, anti-colonial, feminist scholar rooted in anti-oppression scholarship.7 locating my review through this framework, I elaborate upon what I see as the major strengths and limitations of this work, drawing upon Judith Butler8 and postcolonial theory. significantly, Allsup's book calls upon music education to "give an account of [it]self" and promotes a self-consciousness crucial for our field in the age of high stakes accountability measures. I contend that he provides a music education philosophy for what stuart Hall terms the "postcolonial moment"9 and ultimately positions music education as a space of possibility. Alongside these strengths, I offer a challenge toward what I view as the open possibilities of closed forms and a critique of his "pedagogy of travel and surprise."Judith Butler points to the impossibility of giving an account of oneself. she notes,I speak as an 'I,' but do not make the mistake of thinking that I know precisely all that I am doing when I speak in that way. I find that my very formation implicates the other and me, that my own foreignness to myself is, paradoxically, the source of my ethical connection with others.10Butler notes the subject's "partial opacity to [her]self."11 In Remixing the Classroom, Allsup calls upon music educators to account for the practices and traditions continually reinscribed in the field. He poses challenging but fundamental questions in the work in music education, asking readers to consider what they do unconsciously. Butler asserts we can never fully account for ourselves. Allsup challenges the field to try, pushing music educators to face hard truths and limitations of what music education is and has been. In chapter 1, for example, he argues:To call a studying musician "unmusical" is to extinguish a light; it is to act as if the future is certain and that human potential is somehow fixed. It is to act [End Page 101... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Aesthetic Potential of Global Issues CurriculumWilliam Gaudelli (bio) and Randall Hewitt (bio)IntroductionGlobal issues rarely suggest conversations about aesthetics, as they conjure thinking about massive problems such as global warming, famine, and war rather than beautiful thoughts such as grace, love, and compassion. Students may engage in study of global issues in any number of venues, perhaps through a world geography class, within world literature, or as part of (...) a course in Earth science. They would likely be exposed to readings, Web sites, and videos about the nature and extent of problems. Teachers might engage them in small and large group discussions of problems, and, ideally, there would be some consideration of what they might do as citizens. Such processes, their outcomes, and subsequent civic directions are generally not regarded as aesthetic acts, however. One is likely to consider the aesthetic value of a piece of art, a song or poem, movie or performance, but to speak of activities like teaching global issues being aesthetic seems discordant.Yet, this is not so within John Dewey's notion of aesthetics. He argues that aesthetics can exist outside of museums and beyond theaters, potentially in social discourse. Activities like public talk, while not as inherently pleasing as listening to music, have the potential to be experienced as aesthetic:Hence an experience of thinking has its own esthetic quality. It differs from those experiences that are acknowledged to be esthetic, but only [End Page 83] in its materials … [T]he experience itself has a satisfying emotional quality because it possesses integral integration and fulfillment reached through ordered and organized movement … In short, esthetic cannot be sharply marked off from intellectual experience since the latter must bear an esthetic stamp to be itself complete.1Dewey's contention that all types of activity, from repairing an automobile to discussing species extinction, can point toward transcendence has not achieved widespread recognition among philosophers, nor has its utility been demonstrated in curriculum.2 Aesthetics and art are still largely confined to the museum, hermetically sealed off from everyday experiences in a Schillerian "ideal kingdom."3 To suggest curriculum, schools, and pedagogy as potential landscapes for artwork far removed from the museum is to render oneself a heretic in many quarters of educational discourse.Yet, there is a despondency and desperation about schools, and thereby curriculum, that too often fail to teach for and about something more than narrow, capitalist-driven, techno-rationalist ends. Constructivist orientations in teaching, for example, have contributed to shifting the manner of teaching but have done relatively little to reframe the ends of learning. Metaphorically, constructivism is a spoon of sugar to help swallow the bitter pill that is learning for and as work. What is lacking in this conceptualization, according to Parker Palmer, Nel Noddings, and Aostre Johnson, is an aesthetic and spiritual rationale for learning that honors the sanctity of students beyond their academic capacities, values the processes of learning as much as its outcomes, and seeks a space for learning that is transcendent.4What we seek in this article with Dewey, then, is an antidote for the malaise that has befallen curriculum, one that is rooted in an aesthetic way of thinking instantiated in a most unlikely candidate: teaching about global issues. We begin by briefly outlining some of Dewey's thinking related to aesthetics, particularly as it germinated in his career and biography. We then turn to the work of contemporary scholars in education who have similarly found value in Dewey's notion of aesthetics. Finally, we draw an illustration from a recent study of student focus groups engaged in reading global media. This student conversation about the potential cataclysm of global warming demonstrates the surprising capacity of such bleak policy discussions to generate aesthetic moments. The significance of this work lies in its potential to contribute to a broadened curriculum discourse that aims toward living an aesthetically resonant life in classrooms and wider social environs while augmenting and enhancing the rationalistic focus of contemporary schools and, indeed, the study of global issues.Deweyan Aesthetics and BiographyWe begin by weaving Dewey's biography with his notion of aesthetics as an internal process of... (shrink)

A blue-ribbon panel convened by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) concluded in 2010 that teacher education in the United States must be “turned upside down,” with practical experience at its center and academic content woven around the practical. It might seem that the new clinical model based on medical education, which has been adopted by eight states, would be well-aligned with a Deweyan inquiry-based pedagogy. Dewey himself recognized a paradox, however: preparation for the combination (...) of rigor and flexibility needed for inquiry-based pedagogical skills absolutely requires immersion in clinical settings, even as immersion in the teaching environment that prevails in U.S. public schools systematically socializes new teachers to a very different set of skills than those needed for this model of effective pedagogy. Recent scholarship by Kuhnian scholars provides practical guidance for an alternative understanding of how changes in practice occur and may be transmitted to future generations. (shrink)

This paper explores how engaging in and with philosophy in the streets has unique and special potential for children doing philosophy both inside and outside the classroom. We highlight techniques drawn from research into the political, social and activist potential of street art, and we illustrate how to apply these techniques in a P4C context in what we call guerrilla philosophy. We argue that guerrilla philosophy is a pedagogically powerful method to philosophically engage students whose ages range from 11-13. In (...) calling attention to the power of guerrilla philosophy to engage students philosophically, we are tacitly assuming a Deweyan philosophical approach, which emphasises the importance of promoting civic-mindedness as a social value; the reliance on imaginative, creative and experiential forms of learning as essential to education ; and a vision of the classroom as an embodiment of the larger civic community to which we all belong and in which we all must cooperate and engage. This paper traces these three themes in Dewey’s philosophical views of education and democracy, and considers how they are given a twenty-first century interpretation through street art, guerrilla philosophy and children’s activism. (shrink)

This work investigates the complexity of ethics as a field of inquiry and practice across a principal's career. Fully contextualized, and thus carrying the contradictions and requirements of any school, the issues realistically do not usually lead to a single, beat-all answer, as any solution will likely have positive and negative consequences. Drawn from the authors' experiences and studies of schools over decades, the central figure is a fictional principal of a magnet school, whose dilemmas reflect the questions educators must (...) be prepared for. Each decision takes into account the principal's and staff's identities and values because they are all human and their opinions influence the outcomes. The work injects analytic, virtue, feminist, care, deontological, and critical theory insights as Deweyan ethics provides a lens for examining dilemmas. This accessible work blends reflective theory, the ordinary worlds of schools, and engaging pedagogical practice to guide those planning to enter the education sector. (shrink)

In this article, we use the basic concepts of Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy on democracy and education as analytical tools for exploring the democratic potential of a transnational education policy within the contemporary European risk discourse. A Deweyan reading of main policy documents, starting with the 2000 Lisbon Strategy, allows for critical discussion of some of the basic assumptions and consequences of the EU-advocated transnational education policy. The data sources include 28 EU policy documents from 2000 to 2014. The analysis (...) shows that in addition to a prevailing “human capital” discourse, there is potential for a communicative “democratic discourse” that promotes social cohesion. The democratic discourse underlines the full and free communication between different groups as the only way to promote and ensure the conditions for social cohesion. In this crisis of nearby wars, terror attacks and refugees in Europe, economy and competition are not viable concepts for seeking solutions. We argue that a shift to a language adapted to the real crisis and the fear of future crises in Europe is needed. We argue that a language that understands social efficiency, communication and a moral interest in the way Dewey outlined the concepts in Democracy and Education corresponds to the strong need to maintain and strengthen a democratic education and a democratic way of living for all. (shrink)

In the light of some tenets of philosophy of childhood, this paper proposes an ‘updating’ interpretation of the educational notion of repuerescentia , offered by the Renaissance humanist Desiderius Erasmus. In particular, Erasmus’ argumentation about the need for an early liberal education is reconstellated into the domain of a reading of culture as a form of play, that is, as a transitional space and his concept of repuerescentia is read in reference to Deleuzian ‘becoming child.’ It is shown, on the (...) one hand, that there is no complete overlapping between the Deleuzian construct and the notion here investigated; on the other, that a dialogue between these two ideas could result in a more articulated way of looking at the position of the teacher within the educational relationship. It is argued, moreover, that a re-appropriation of the notion of repuerescentia could allow us to reconstruct school as a site in which the classical heritage is made alive and not simply passed on. If the idea of repuerescentia implies that the classical heritage is structured as a pedagogy, thanks to philosophy of childhood we could broaden and elaborate on this view and recognize that the classical heritage is not something closed but always in the making. Indeed, it is due to children’s voices that it revives and can continue to speak to us. In this sense, a repuerescentia-oriented teaching could also act as a strategy to resolve some of the deadlocks associated with the Deweyan controversy between the child and the curriculum. A different inflection of the latter relationship and a fresher way of experiencing ‘tradition’ seem more urgent than ever in contemporary educational scenarios, which are marked by what has been defined the “endgame of the loss of historical continuity.” In addition to that, the idea of the teacher’s re-turn to childhood allows us to overcome some of the setbacks of the constructivist approaches in education, as they have been denounced in more recent literature in educational theory. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper is exploratory in a sense: I explore the possibility of feminist pragmatism as a pedagogical position compatible with online education. I argue in this paper that feminist pragmatism (FP) can be an important philosophic resource to continually challenge and change the online educational conversation. Contemporary feminist pragmatism is a conscious effort of women philosophers who took inspiration from the works of major women pragmatist thinkers, as well as others, especially John Dewey. Early women pragmatists developed a fruitful collegial (...) relationship with John Dewey and collaborated on studies and issues that shaped Dewey's pragmatism. FP's main tenets include an emphasis on context and experience, pluralism, diversity, and commitment to transformation. My aim in this paper is twofold: first, I seek to discuss online education and remote learning as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic; and second, drawing from FP's philosophical tenets, I explore feminist-pragmatist perspectives on online education. Furthermore, I wish to contribute to the expansion and depth of Deweyan approaches through feminist consciousness and sensibilities. (shrink)

This response to Zongjie Wu's "Interpretation, autonomy, and interpretation" focuses on the "battle between East and West" which contextualizes Wu's proposal to counter the current Western domination of Chinese pedagogic discourse with an "authentic language" recovered from the Chinese classics. It points out that it is impossible and undesirable to reject all Western influences. The dualistic opposition between East and West over-simplifies and blinds one to the complexity of China's history and culture, and unnecessarily limits future possibilities. It challenges Wu's (...) conflation of Confucianism and Daoism and his claim that the authentic "language of Tao" recovered from the "Analects" is a language "pointing to the nameless". The response concludes with an alternative Deweyan account of how to make Chinese education authentic. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880Robert GrudinThe Elephants Teach: Creative Writing Since 1880, by D. G. Myers; 224 pp. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996, $30.40 paper.D. G. Myers opens his history of creating writing instruction in America with an anecdote: When Vladimir Nabokov was proposed for a chair in literature at Harvard, Roman Jakobson objected. “What’s next?” he said. “Shall we appoint [End Page 529] (...) elephants to teach zoology?” This question not only provides Myers’s book with its title but also suggests a major issue of literary pedagogy: is the teaching of literature the province of philologists and theorists who interpret books, or is it the province of authors who write them? Jakobson the philologist implies that writers, who just produce the stuff, lack knowledge of interpretive method and thus have little business in the classroom. Others—writers and teachers alike—have thought differently and have over the past century fostered the growth of creative writing at American colleges and high schools.The Elephants Teach is a comprehensive and coherent effort to deal with a ponderous mass of history and discourse: the development of writing curricula since 1880 and the ongoing professional dialogue about the proper relationship between writing and teaching. The first four of his seven chapters deal with roots and preliminaries: the rise of literature instruction as philology after the Civil War, the inception of English composition at Harvard (championed by Adams Sherman Hill, Barrett Wendell, Dean Le Baron Briggs, and Charles Townsend Copeland), and the professional, cultural, and financial forces drawing writers to campuses in the early twentieth century. These chapters establish three major forces leading to the rise of the creative writing curriculum: the consensus that writing experience is of value to the individual and society, the reiterated conviction that literary instruction should consider the perspective of the writer, and the broad recognition by “serious” writers, who had little or no access to the mass market, that they could agreeably support themselves in the classroom. These forces would lead to what Myers correctly sees as a massive compromise: a complex of writing programs simultaneously satisfying students’ needs and allowing thousands of writers to pursue, if only by fits and starts, their professional calling.Myers then serves up the main course: a three-chapter narrative, stretching from the 1920s down to the present, of the history of creative writing as a so-named and self-conscious institution in American education. The opening of this section is not only informative but characteristic of the overall lucidity of Myers’s style: “Creative writing was first taught under its own name in the 1920s. It began in junior high school where it was originally conducted as an experiment to replace traditional English—grammar, spelling, penmanship, even literature classes—with something more appealing to young people. As such it was part of a broader movement to reform American education in the first half of the twentieth century. The cry was that subjects should not be taught, students should; the reform movement called itself progressive education. Creative writing was invented to transport progressive methods and materials into a junior-high-school English classroom. The man who invented it was a progressive educator—once well known, now largely forgotten—named Hughes Mearns” (p. 101). William Hughes Mearns (1875–1965) was himself a disciple of John Dewey, whose ideas formed the basis for progressive education in general. Adapting the Deweyan concept of learning as a spur to personal [End Page 530] development, Mearns saw writing “as the efficient cause of an education in which the final cause was personal growth” (pp. 104–11).After Mearns, Myers considers a somewhat more familiar chapter in history: the appearance of creative writing as a self-contained discipline on the college campus. Credit for the original initiative goes to Norman Foerster (1887–1972), who in 1930 took over the newly-founded School of Letters at the University of Iowa. A follower of Irving Babbitt and the “new humanism,” Foerster set out (in his own words) “to give all types of literary students a rigorous and appropriate discipline” (p. 126). Foerster’s “discipline” was a varied curriculum including... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and EmersonMichael J. McGandyNaoko Saito The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson American Philosophy Series. Foreword by Stanley CavellNew York: Fordham University Press, 2005. xvi + 210 pp.This book presents the reader with a tantalizing and sometimes frustrating mixture of philosophical enterprises. Saito examines the role of imagination in personal growth and education (...) as presented in the philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson (who coined the expression "gleam of light" in "Self-Reliance") and John Dewey. She also joins in conversation the 19th century Emerson, the early 20th century Dewey, and the contemporary Stanley Cavell. Finally, Saito offers insights that will aid educators as they balance the sometime contrary aims of achieving educational standards and inspiring personal development.These are all worthy projects. There is no doubt that each project has relations to the other two and that each gains force and clarification from those relations. Yet it is evident that, within the compass of 160 pages, it is not easy to do all three things and do them well. It is then principally as a standard academic monograph addressing education and imagination in the works of Emerson, Dewey, and Cavell that The Gleam of Light should be considered. Libraries and scholars of American philosophy will want this book on their shelves as a resource on these crucial topics and as a new reading of these important figures in philosophy.Saito is at her best when she engages in textual analysis and comparison in order to bridge the gulf that Cavell claims (see Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome) exists between Dewey and Emerson. Scholars of Emerson and Dewey (and perhaps of Cavell) will find The Gleam of Light an interesting study that highlights important connections among Emerson's concept of imagination, Dewey's idea of impulse, and Cavell's theme of Emersonian moral perfectionism. The book is rich in presentations of texts well-known as well as obscure. The upshot of Saito's reading is that the Emersonian concern for the project of moral perfection is found to be quite alive in Dewey's pedagogical outlook and that questions regarding the goals of Deweyan education can be addressed from the standpoint of the cultivation of the native imaginative capacities of individuals. In sum: Education is a matter of identifing, cultivating, and, when necessary, retrieving the gleam of light intrinsic to each person.Readers interested in Saito's creative and fine reading of these three philosophers will have to be wary, however. In the course of drawing their works into relationship she cannot resist the anachronistic impulse to bring all three into conversation as if they were contemporaries fully aware of each one's respective body of writing. This is interesting rhetorically, but questionable in a work that is firmly grounded in the history of philosophy. Moreover, as it is only Saito who is in the position to create this three-way [End Page 303] conversation, her anachronistic gestures occur at times when she should forthrightly join that conversation and make her own claims.Taking a step back from Saito's close reading of the major texts of these three philosophers, readers will also find a larger argument for ameliorating differences between pragmatism and idealism via an aesthetic analysis of human experience and action. This might be Saito's principal contribution. Looking to Dewey's Experience and Nature and Art as Experience, Saito finds that these works lay more emphasis on individual experience and imagination. It is when one considers experience from the first-person standpoint (appropriately infused with aesthetic categories) that the apparent scientistic quality of Dewey's philosophy is constrained and the Emersonian theme of personhood is highlighted. The claim undergirding this approach is that while idealism and pragmatism differ widely when considered from the standpoints of epistemology and metaphysics, it is in aesthetics that there are grounds for conceptual reconciliation. This is a provocative thesis that bears further consideration by Saito and others.The Gleam of Light is less satisfying when one considers the book from the standpoint of pedagogical theory. Saito aims to contribute to the discussion regarding goal-oriented... (shrink)

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2012! Contemporary picturebooks open up spaces for philosophical dialogues between people of all ages. As works of art, picturebooks offer unique opportunities to explore ideas and to create meaning collaboratively. This book considers censorship of certain well-known picturebooks, challenging the assumptions on which this censorship is based. Through a lively exploration of children's responses to these same picturebooks the authors paint a way of working philosophically based on respectful listening and creative and authentic interactions, rather (...) than scripted lessons. This dialogical process challenges much current practice in education. The authors propose that a courageous and critical practice of listening is central to the facilitation of mutually educative dialogue. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of education studies, philosophy of education, literacy teaching and learning, children's literature, childhood and pedagogy. (shrink)

Reconstruction is a central notion in Dewey’s account of inquiry and in his metaphilosophical commitments. In his work, Dewey made a call for reconstruction of philosophy, in the reconstruction of central notions of the discipline, like knowledge, logic, truth, the good, reason, and experience. Inquiry itself is reconstructive, according to Dewey, involving the transformation of an indeterminate situation into one which is determinate and understood. Dewey’s philosophical views should therefore be of interest to those taking part in the recent turn (...) towards revisionary philosophical methodologies, like conceptual engineering, explication, and amelioration. In light of the recent developments in revisionary methodologies, I aim to explore Dewey’s conception of concepts in relation to the conceptual engineering literature, suggesting that it provides a useful conception of concepts for conceptual engineering, and to suggest a Deweyan model of philosophical inquiry where concepts are the objects of inquiry. In both cases, I hope to show a productive interaction between Dewey’s ideas and contemporary discussions of conceptual engineering. (shrink)

Scott Aiken and Thomas Dabay contend that a satisfactory account of truth is both infallibilist and antiskeptical. Externalist correspondence theories, they say, preserve the infallibility of the truth-relation yet invite skeptical qualms. In tying truth to experience, pragmatist theories resist skeptical challenges, but embrace a fallibilism that renders their account of truth inconsistent and even incoherent. While agreeing with Aiken and Dabay that externalist accounts are vulnerable to skepticism, I dispute each of the four arguments they offer against pragmatist fallibilism. (...) Though partially successful against Peirce’s more popular view that truth is the final belief of a community of inquirers, their arguments are wholly ineffective against Dewey’s account of truth as warranted assertability. (shrink)

In this paper Johan Dahlbeck sets out to propose a pedagogy of “as if,” seeking to address the educational paradox of how students can be influenced to approximate a life guided by reason without assuming that they are already sufficiently rational to adhere to dictates of practical reason. He does so by outlining a fictionalist account, drawing primarily on Hans Vaihinger's systematic treatment of heuristic fictions and on Spinoza's ideas about how passive affects can be made to strengthen reason. (...) Dahlbeck suggests that such an account can help us overcome the problem of assuming that reason needs to be enlisted as an instrument in the educational endeavor to live according to the guidance of reason. The reason this is so is that fictions can use passive affects that are prosocial and that thereby strengthen the sense of community necessary for laying a cooperative foundation for successful joint striving. Dahlbeck suggests further that exemplary teachers are crucial to this endeavor insofar as they can offer educational fictions as imaginative and temporary placeholders for the truth, allowing students to act “as if” they were already guided by reason. (shrink)

This article addresses and rebuts the claim that the purpose of the Socratic method is to humiliate, shame, and perplex participants. It clarifies pedagogical and exegetical confusions surrounding the Socratic method, what the Socratic method is, what its epistemological ambitions are, and how the historical Socrates likely viewed it. First, this article explains the Socratic method; second, it clarifies a misunderstanding regarding Socrates' role in intentionally perplexing his interlocutors; third, it discusses two different types of perplexity and relates these to (...) philosophical inquiry and dialectical pedagogy; finally, it refutes the claim that those who use the Socratic method intentionally attempt to shame and humiliate students. (shrink)

The case for inquiry -- The case for Deweyan inquiry -- An account of general inquiry -- Inquiry in science education -- Inquiry in social science education -- Inquiry in art and art education -- Inquiry, embodiment, and kinaesthetics in education -- Conclusion.