In 1947, the Truman Commission recommended that American colleges and universities recommit themselves to civic education. Community colleges accepted this responsibility and today they offer a wide range of programs and activities designed to educate students and prepare them for the life of an engaged citizen. Still, overall, the data show that…

In a spirit of collegial support, this paper argues that Beckett and Hager's theoretical justification and empirical exemplifications do not do full justice to the complexity of group or team learning. We firstly reaffirm our support for the theoretical argument Becket and Hager make, though expressing some reservations about Complexity Theory, to…

In this article Cristoph Wulf examines the basic concepts of pedagogy and educational science in the German-speaking world, looking at education and socialization from the perspective of educational anthropology. He makes evident that the complex German concept of "Bildung," in particular, can only be fully understood by means of a…

This essay begins with the premise that Italo Calvino's Memos serve as a fundamentally educational proposition. Each of his lectures can be regarded as a substantive proposal, encouraging a revaluation of our contemporary world through unconventional forms of knowledge, especially considering the challenges posed by the new millennium. The essay's…

Can Aristotle's idea of practice be made fruitful for music pedagogical action in schools? That this is the case is repeatedly asserted in the music pedagogical discussion. This article takes up this assertion and develops a proposal for class music making based on Aristotle's theory of action.

This paper explores the fundamental tenets of Plato's philosophy of education, particularly his views on a practice of great educational potential: communal musical participation. According to Plato, music can attune the individual and the community to cosmic harmony and this, in turn, is the only way to form and maintain a community. The paper…

Hager and Beckett assert that a 'characteristic feature of … assorted co-present groups is that their processes and outputs are marked by the "full gamut of human experiences" involved in their functioning'. My paper endorses and further develops this claim. I begin by expanding on their emphasis upon the priority of relations in terms…

The following article traces the legacy of John Dewey's "A Common Faith" (1934) and Dewey's concept of "the religious" in the thought of Philip H. Phenix, a prominent philosopher of education during the 1950s and 1960s. Phenix frequently cited "A Common Faith" and echoed Dewey's commitments to naturalism, creativity,…

In this paper, I argue that the dominant assumption that educational research means empirical research narrows the range of possibilities for educational research. More specifically, research methods courses and textbooks exclude philosophy of education as a viable way of going about educational research, which limits what we can know about…

The present study aims on the one hand to analyze North American curriculum reforms with a focus on the twentieth century, and on the other hand it aims to demonstrate the implications of Weberian rationality theory for century-specific curriculum theory and practice. At the theoretical level the study shows the implications of Weberian…

Purpose: This largely conceptual study aims to draw from the author's experience of conversations with Svalbard's educators, lessons for international higher education institutions' engagement with climate change education and thinking for non-specialists. Design/methodology/approach: "In situ" discussions with Svalbard's educators…

For the first time, Walter Benjamin's critical comments on educator and philosopher Rudolf Steiner are examined in depth. In particular, Benjamin detected protofascist themes within Steiner's seemingly progressive notion of child-centered, arts-based, developmentally appropriate early childhood education. But this does not mean that Benjamin…

This scholarly collection is a continuation of a lecture series highlighting the essential nature of biography in the history of art education. The editors feature 16 prominent art educators, organized into one of three chronological sections spanning the past two decades. The contributing art educators explore influences that shaped their beliefs…

The present article continues my work in logomachy and the philosophy of education. It turns to Bernard Stiegler's concept of the 'idiotext' as the means of terming what I have previously called 'particular sets of sense'. The gambit of the article is that 'intropy' (uncertainty provoked by informational complexity) provides a very useful concept…

Education theory has been exhibiting a renewed rejection of education's instrumentality to political and economic influences against a policy trend that implicitly considers education a mere pragmatic tool. This paper suggests an ontological investigation that goes beyond normatively supporting or rejecting the instrumentality of education. It…