The Ofsted report Bold Beginnings was met with virulent opposition from the early years community. It tried to foreclose, rather than open up, debate about the Reception year; its wording was particularly incendiary. Almost a year on, straws in the wind suggest that the community's reaction was justified and that a battle for the soul of Reception…

More than a decade ago, critical ecopedagogue Richard Kahn expressed his fears and hopes regarding Education for sustainable development (ESD). He feared that ESD would be short lived and marginalized and would develop an instrumental pedagogy of one-sided transmission of knowledge, yet hoped for ESD to encompass three types of…

Building on the work of others, this article sketches out what a Foucauldian 'education' might look like in practice, considers some of the challenges, paradoxes and (im)possibilities with which such an 'education' would face us, and indicates some of the cherished conceits and reiterated necessities that we must give up if we take seriously the…

Homeschooling is a practice in which children of all ages do not attend school, usually by choice of their parents. Research has found diverse reasons for choosing homeschooling, including, reason related to family, personal safety, and others. However, the main reason cited repeatedly for homeschooling is dissatisfaction of parents with the…

In this article, we read together the work of two philosophers, Alain Badiou and Giorgio Agamben, as profound educational thinkers. This means that their philosophical approaches help us to articulate what is at stake in education today. As a starting point for this discussion we take their work on Saint Paul. This is because, throughout his…

The origins of philosophy of education as a discipline are relatively late, and can be traced in the Anglo-American academic world from the 1960s and a specific emphasis on conceptual problems deriving from the analytical tradition of philosophy. In more recent years, however, there has been a notable 'Continentalist' turn in the discipline,…

For Rorty, any attempt to articulate a theory of truth as such is of no interest. This implies that although it may be meaningful to differentiate the truths from the falsehoods, it is pointless to say what the property of goodness is in the things we believe are good to do. Rorty points out that our no longer understanding Philosophy -- with the…

Very rarely is one considered ahead of his/her time. Janusz Korczak has been described by so many as being such a person. His criticism of the educational system in his time served as a motivational force for his innovative pedagogy. His beliefs, techniques and methods have been echoed by experts in special education as well as in gifted education…

This article comprises three parts: The author first outlines the principles of the social reconstructionist philosophy of education related to educational activity and social philosophy. After this, he describes the educational philosophy of George S. Counts, the most important developer of the social reconstructionist philosophy of education,…

The "spatial turn" in education policy studies fuelled interest in Lefebvre's work: initially, in his work "Production of Space" and, more recently, "Rhythmanalysis" and "Right to the City". Yet, although in these texts Lefebvre critiques universities and schools and introduces original pedagogical concepts,…

In this rebuttal to Sean Whittle), Cooling and Smith opine that: 1) Whittle's key concern is with discerning the appropriate relationship between theology and education in the context of a Christian school, 2) Whittle's criticism of our work, is that it fails to achieve a proper relationship between theology and education, and 3) Whittle…

The setting up of the Courtyard of the Gentiles by Pope Benedict XVI has provided the Catholic Church with an official forum for dialogue with atheists. The intellectual energy surrounding this initiative can be harnessed to focus on how the contemporary Catholic school addressed its responsibilities to the Catholic community while offering a good…

This study examined the 2011 New York State Common Core Learning Standards. At the time of this study, these standards were new and just being introduced to teaching and learning. The goal of the study was to critically analyze and compare the content of the new standards for grades kindergarten through fifth grade by using content analysis…

Christian worldview thinking has become an increasingly prominent framework for thinking about education since its uptake by a new and rapidly growing constituency of Evangelicals. On the surface this popular surge vindicates the methodology yet the literature demonstrates a concerning lack of engagement with apparently debilitating critiques…

In this article, the author responds to the Presidential address, "Ethics for the New Political Economy: What Can It Mean to Be Professionally Responsible?" in which Michael G. Gunzenhauser defines, names, and proposes a professional ethics for educators: an ethics of the everyday. The author introduces her response by stating that…