The differences between soul and spirit can be quite difficult to understand throughout the works of John Dewey. What are they, how do they differ, and how do they relate to meaningful growth? Drawing from his personal correspondence and an analysis of the work in the later part of his life, Becky Noël Smith and Randy Hewitt conclude that, in…

In this article Antti Moilanen assesses criticisms of Wolfgang Klafki's model of exemplary teaching made by Meinert Meyer and Hilbert Meyer and by Chi-Hua Chu. "Exemplary teaching" is a style of discovery-based teaching in which students study concrete examples of general principles in such a way that they acquire transferable knowledge…

Like other papers in this symposium, this essay approaches the question of responsible belief through the lens of social epistemology: what are the processes by which knowledge claims, evidence, perspectives, and arguments get shared within knowledge-making communities? In this paper, Nicholas Burbules argues that these processes are essentially…

In two articles, "Might Knowledge Be Insertable?" and "Is Knowledge Insertion Desirable?," John Tillson argues that knowledge insertion is conceivable and desirable for the person who has it inserted. By knowledge insertion, he means the immediate or almost immediate acquisition of knowledge by means other than traditional…

Despite his popularity in educational discourses, Lev S. Vygotsky tends to be read mainly as an educational psychologist or learning theorist. His potential contribution to a theory of education remains largely undiscussed. The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) is often misunderstood as a sort of "educational tool," which severely…

From the late eighteenth through the end of the nineteenth century, educational philosophers and practitioners debated the benefits and shortcomings of the use of emulation in schools. During this period, "emulation" referred to a pedagogy that leveraged comparisons between students as a tool to motivate them to higher achievement. Many…

On an enactivist conception of cognition, the unit of explanation is not just the brain, not just the body, and not just the environment, but the body--brain--environment understood as a dynamically coupled structure or gestalt. On this view, referencing Viktor von Weizsäcker's metaphor of the gestalt circle (Gestaltkreis), the brain is not in the…

What happens if we think of children's play as a form of great art that we turn to and return to for inspiration, for education? If we can see play as art, then what and how can we learn from children's play or from playing with them? What can philosophy, or philosophers, learn from children's play? In this essay Viktor Johansson gives examples of…

In education, we are concerned with the teaching and learning of subjects, but the word "subject" can refer to the discipline being studied as well as the individual who is studying. In this essay, Teresa Strong-Wilson explores this "double entendre" (which William Pinar refers to as the "double consciousness") of…

Human memory systems perform various functions beyond simple storage and retrieval of information. They link together information about events, build abstractions, and perform memory updating. In contrast, typical information storage and access technologies, such as note-taking applications and Wikipedia, tend to store information verbatim. In…

This article by David Aldridge concerns the promise of knowledge "insertion." The promise can be elucidated as follows: knowledge could be inserted by a less time-consuming (and possibly in many senses less expensive) technological process than traditional learning, whereby, for example, some relatively swift procedure of implanting or…

Deliberation has become a defining ideal of democratic theory, and learning is central to robust deliberation. It is challenging for people to learn from each other, however, in contexts of inequality and deep social cleavages--though this is precisely when such learning is most needed. The political theorist Danielle Allen has argued that the…

This essay examines speculative narratives reflective of Silicon Valley and corporate technology culture that project creative scenarios and sociotechnical futures for cities and citizens, whereby learning and creativity become global imperatives to defer future risk within a new digital urbanism. Taking inspiration from Fredric Jameson's…

For open-mindedness to be an Aristotelian personal virtue, its possession must make agents better off. Unfortunately, open-mindedness does not currently pay. The reasons include (1) "novelty glut" -- taking seriously even a tiny percentage of the worthwhile, available ideas would be overwhelming; and (2) "deception campaigns"…

In response to a fractured and vitriolic public culture, many civic educators hope to cultivate students' ability to learn from people who are different from themselves. In this article Rachel Wahl illuminates how college students' conceptions of moral order shape their willingness to learn during deliberative dialogue from people whose political…