Pedagogical approaches emanating from posthumanist and neomaterialist theoretical frameworks can potentially redefine what learning and teaching are. In this paper, I argue, however, that these discussions are marked by a distinct absence, having to do with the role of teachers and the nature of teaching itself. Attempting to make up for this…

Responding to both recent interest in sound within qualitative education research and sound studies literature that conceptualizes sound as a posthuman technology, we use this paper to explore the following research questions: How does sound both enact and unveil posthuman learning ecologies? And how can education scholars engage sound within…

In this paper I consider whether forest schools provide a space where we could rethink pedagogy in the Anthropocene. I explore the challenges and possibilities of thinking beyond the business-as-usual of human-centric pedagogies drawing upon an ethnographic study of two forest schools, located in the West Midlands of England conducted in…

Contemporary discourses of social justice in education, disability, mental health, social policy and feminist studies are refracted increasingly through concerns about psychological and structural vulnerabilities created by the crises of late capitalism. Focusing on developments in British social policy generally and educational research…

Humanism has always been constructed out of an historical context. Despite the differences in the notions of humanism mediated by historical particularity, there has nevertheless been continuity in the tradition. This article argues that an orientation towards the "good life" animates the various humanisms in modern Western history, and…

In this paper, we seek to develop an understanding of the human driven by a commitment to the politics of disability, especially those of people with intellectual disabilities. Our position as family members and allies to people associated with this phenomenon of intellectual disability influences our philosophical conceptions and political…

This article considers a conflated ontological space where national projections named Koreanness are conjoined through national educational reform discourses associated with "excellence" and "equality." It focuses on the shifting educational reform narratives that made appeals to notions of crisis before and after the IMF…

In this article, we explore some alternate ways of approaching childhood and learning by taking three short forays into what Donna Haraway calls a "post-human landscape". This exploration takes us beyond the horizons of orthodox educational approaches, in which the individual child is typically seen to be developing and learning within…

Formal education in Western society is firmly rooted in humanist ideals. "Becoming human" by cultivating certain cognitive, social, and moral abilities has even symbolised the idea of education as such in Enlightenment philosophical traditions. These ideas are increasingly coming under scrutiny by posthumanist theorists, who are addressing…

This paper focuses primarily on the later work of Said. After a brief review of what Said himself saw as formative events in his life it reviews the tradition of "philological hermeneutics" as Said himself defined it and within which he located his own work as a scholar. His key themes of intertextuality, post-colonialism, and…

Said's chief claim to fame as a scholar is the contribution he made to understanding the power and knowledge behind European colonialism. Less well known is his contribution to music, specifically classical music, which formed a prominent focus of his intellectual energies during the latter years of his life. For Said, who was a proficient pianist…

This introductory essay to this special issue of Discourse on Edward Said and the cultural politics of education provides an overview discussion of four inter-related themes representing the wideranging scope of Said's academic and political writings. The first of these themes relates to his idea of Orientalism, through which Said sought to…

This essay unearths the educational and socio-political implications of Edward W. Said's work for our understanding of what a secular humanism might mean in the highly charged atmosphere of the post-Cold War and September 11 discourses that have pervaded the USA and, to varying degrees, other parts of the world. It asks what it means to move…

In April 2002 Judith Halberstam, academic, cultural critic and author of "Female Masculinity", toured Australia giving public and academic lectures about her recent work on sub-cultures, the Brandon Teena archive, representations of the transgender body and her notion of female masculinity. The interview is introduced through a brief…