Philosophical pragmatists rarely receive credit for their contribution to virtue ethics. But perhaps they should. How did America's philosopher of democracy, John Dewey, and one of its most famous elder statesmen, Benjamin Franklin, advise troubled souls in search of moral improvement? According to James Campbell, Dewey and Franklin recommended…

The current "exemplarist turn" within virtue ethics is increasingly shedding light on the importance of exemplars both as enabling one to identify the virtues and for the importance they bear for orienting one's conduct, as well as for educating the novice. However, even if categorizations of exemplars have already been proposed, there…

At a time when extremist movements are gaining proportions on the world stage, it is relevant to reanalyse experiences that intended to establish democracy as a principle in school education. The School Republic was one of them, which was proposed by the Sampaio Dória Reform, in 1920, taking the New School as its context; the School Republic aimed…

Forgiveness is usually analysed in terms of the benefits to victims or perpetrators. When referring to victims, attention is focused on overcoming the negative emotions caused by harm or achieving good that is important to them. In this article, the issue of the victims' responsibility for the personal and moral development of the perpetrators, as…

How can the teaching of knowledge in schools contribute to the development of students as individual human beings, with the capacity not only for problem solving within the existing structures of society but also for developing ideas and solutions that go "beyond the existing structures?" The purpose of this article is to bring this…

In most schools everywhere, democracy and participation continue to be carried out through the usual channels based on representative democracy and the vote of elected representatives. However, this reality is not monolithic, and we do find centers committed to practise a full and more profound democracy. Based on a case study, the article…

This article proposes that Catherine Elgin and Nelson Goodman's work on exemplification is relevant for discussions within moral philosophy and moral education. Generalizing Elgin and Goodman's account of exemplification to also cover ethics, the article develops a two-factor account of moral exemplarity. According to this account, instantiation…

The aim of this article is to show that an aesthetics of exemplarity could be a useful component of projects of moral self-cultivation. Using Linda Zagzebski's exemplarism, I describe a distinctive, aesthetically-inflected mode of admiration called moral attraction whose object is the inner beauty of a person--the expression of the 'inner' virtues…

This article provides a conceptual framework for considering both the theoretical and methodological factors that underpin the successful validation of a competency framework. Drawing on educational assessment literature, this article argues that a valid competency framework relates to an interpretive judgement of the credibility of the claims…

Evaluative criteria define a "high quality" or "successful" evaluand and provide the basis for judgment of merit and worth, yet they are often assumed and implicit in the evaluation process. This article presents an empirically supported model that describes and integrates two aspects of criteria: domain and source. Domain…

While a conception of science as value free has been dominant since Max Weber defended it in the nineteenth century, recent years have witnessed an emerging consensus that science is not -- and cannot be -- completely free of values. Which values may legitimately influence science, and in which ways, is currently a topic of heated debate in…

Discussions of the aims and efficacy of teachers tend to focus on an extended present pre supposing a more or less common profile across subjects and recent times. Given the concern with contemporary schooling this is unsurprising, but it limits what might be learned about the character of good and bad teaching, about the particularities of…

This article explores the similarities between humanistic (and existential) psychotherapy, represented here by the ideas of Viktor Frankl, Erich Fromm and Irvin Yalom, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Despite the ongoing dialogue between both therapies during the last decade, regarding both their convergences and divergences, there is…

Cosmopolitan education has been much theorized, discussed, and proposed, but what exactly might it look like and what specific processes might it involve? Cosmopolitanism's recognition of shared humanity and the subsequent entailment of democratic inclusion make explicit the moral and political nature of cosmopolitan education and philosophy. As…

In the Preface to Part Four of the "Ethics," Spinoza offers the reader an "exemplar" of human nature. However, Spinoza does not conceive of human nature as a universal in which each human being participates, simply by virtue of being human. Rather, each human being is conceived as singular. Thriving individual lives assume…