This article explores intercultural education research about intercultural encounters as aesthetic phenomena. I will argue that Gadamer's notion of "hermeneutical identity" when encountering an artwork can enrich intercultural education studies' (IES) conceptualisations of an event-based research and pedagogy, conceived as a mode of…

A key epistemological assumption in the ideologies of many of the groups termed extremist is that there is an unmediated access to a Divine Will. Driven by this assumption, and facilitated by several other factors, a range of coercive actions (including violence) to force others into submission to the perceived Will of God are seen as justified by…

In this commentary, Elana Michelson responds to Chad Hoggan and Tetyana Kloubert's critique of Michelson's "The Ethical Knower: Rethinking Our Pedagogy in the Age of Trump" (2019). Michelson concludes that Hoggan and Kloubert are right to call attention to the reemergence of fascist discourse and action across much of the globe and to…

Piaget's theory has been characterized as descriptive and not explanatory, not qualifying as causal explanation. Piaget was consistent in showing how his theory was both explanatory and causal. Vygotsky also endorsed causal-genetic explanation but, on the basis of knowledge of only Piaget's earliest works, he claimed that Piaget's theory was not…

The competing global forces of homogenizing commercialism and absolutist sectarianism continue to engender a regime of fear and have all but eclipsed what John Dewey called the democratic "habit of amicable cooperation." The values of cooperation are increasingly seen as "unrealistic" and even taken as signs of weakness in the…

Provides some philosophical groundwork for contemporary debates about the idea of critical thinking. Discusses three styles of critique: critical dogmatism, transcendental critique (Karl-Otto Apel), and deconstruction (Jacques Derrida). Argues that while transcendental critique is able to solve some of the problems of the dogmatic approach to…

The capability approach advocates that interpersonal comparisons be made in the space of functionings and capabilities. However, Amartya Sen has not specified which capabilities should be selected as the relevant ones. This has provoked two types of criticism. The stronger critique is Martha Nussbaum's claim that Sen should endorse one specific…

Since the 1960s, the epistemological-cum-methodological orientations of American and British comparative education changed from being historical to being social scientific. This metamorphosis has impoverished the field, and a return to a re-invented historical mode of comparative analysis would help to humanize comparative education in a cosmos of…

Presents a response to, and critique of, the purely postmodernist approach to the study of history. Maintains that an appreciation of the subjective and constructed nature of knowledge still can be integrated, as a component, into a study of the understanding, construction, and transcription of history. (MJP)