For a decade or so there has been a new "hype" in educational research: it is called educational neuroscience or even neuroeducation (and neuroethics)--there are numerous publications, special journals, and an abundance of research projects together with the advertisement of many positions at renowned research centres worldwide. After a…

Debates in science seem to depend on referential language-games, but in other senses they do not. Language works in more complex ways, even in work that purports to be purely scientific. This article investigates the scope and limitations of language-games in educational history and theory. The study addresses concepts and pictures as examples of…

Debates in science seem to depend on referential language-games, but in other senses they do not. This article addresses non-representational theory. It is a branch of newer approaches to cultural geography that strive to get a handle on spatial relationships not by representing them, but rather by presenting them. In this case, present connotes…

Sceptics of an Africanisation of education have often lambasted its proponents for re-inventing something that has very little, if any, role to play in contemporary African society. The contributors to this issue hold a different view and, through the papers included in this issue, arguments are proffered in defence of an Africanisation of…

In this article we argue that "ubuntu" (human interdependence) is not some form of essentialist notion that unfolds in exactly the same way as some critics of "ubuntu" might want to suggest. Rather, we offer a philosophical position that (re)considers the situation of the self in relation to others. The article starts from the general issues at…

Time, space, causality, communicating and acting together set limits on our freedom. Starting from the position of Wittgenstein, who advocates neither a position of pure subjectivity nor of pure objectivity, and taking into account what is implied by initiation into the symbolic order of language and culture, it is argued that the limitations on…

Ludwig Wittgenstein's insights on the nature of philosophy have changed philosophy in general and the philosophy of education specifically. This essay discusses Wittgenstein's philosophy about the connection between language and life form, describes Wittgenstein's constructive philosophical account of how meaning and understanding are possible,…

This paper deals with the highly personal way an individual makes sense of the world in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the so-called private language. For Wittgenstein following a rule can never mean just following another rule, though we do follow rules blindly. His idea of the "form of life" elicits that "what we do" refers to what we have…

This paper sets out Peter Winch's central ideas about the nature of the social sciences, and reappraises their potential for educational research. It is argued that the dichotomy between "reasons" and "causes" has done much harm, and that the important matter of understanding "what is real for us" has recently been neglected. Winch's philosophy…