Starting from Illich's identification of the compulsory schooling process with the rational initiation rite to the modern, free-market, society, the paper aims to detach the philosophical premises this expensive and unequal ritual is grounded in. After having referred to Van Gennep's conception of the rites of passage, we shall show that the…

After reading about the successful Finnish education system, a group of American educators traveled to Finland on an 8-day study tour of three cities to observe several schools and talk with educators there. In this reflective paper, the author describes and analyzes certain aspects of Finnish education as compared with public education in the…

Western (and Christian) education is an intellectualised, dualistic tradition which downplays the role of the body and emotions and thus the importance of practice in learning. Insights from neuroscience and James K. A. Smith's reflections on Christian college pedagogy introduce a consideration of the role of affectivity in learning, which…

Recently there has been growing concern about the ways in which professional values such as "acknowledging diversity and promoting equality of opportunity" (Higher Education Academy (HEA), 2006, p. 4) have been understood and evidenced in higher education. In this article, we outline how the Learning to Teach Inclusively open educational…

This paper is concerned with the process of religious thinking as a linguistic form of investigating the world of values, which stands in contrast to theology and religious studies. It hinges around Wittgenstein's comment, "I am not a religious man but I cannot help but see every question from a religious point of view." It argues that scientific…

The American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC), comprising 34 American Indian tribally controlled colleges and universities, has undertaken a comprehensive effort to develop an "Indigenous Framework for Evaluation" that synthesizes Indigenous ways of knowing and Western evaluation practice. To ground the framework, AIHEC engaged…

The idea of "the African university" is usually accompanied by an emphasis on Africanisation of education, and of knowledge, on changing the demographic profile of student, staff and administrative bodies, educational syllabi and curricula, and the criteria for research activity and for throughput. The idea of "Africanising"…