This research paper considers the place of the European lifelong-learning philosophical concept of Bildung (self-formation) and how Socratic questioning activities might be used to facilitate its development. Originating with the great philosophical thinkers of the German Renaissance, it is a concept that is again attracting attention because of…

Confucianism, long regarded as the key philosophy on personal character-building and interpersonal relations in Chinese society, used to be pivotal to citizenship education in Taiwan, but that has changed in the last 20 years. In the wake of democratization in the late 1980s, growing liberalism and pluralism in Taiwanese society prompted the…

This article highlights value learning in kindergartens exemplified by the value of forgiveness. Values are basic ideas on human behaviour and they function as a compass that helps children to make choices and priorities in their lives, to choose between good or bad, right or wrong. Value learning is an important part of the educational work in a…

Initiatives intended to support and advance the "scholarship of teaching" have become common in Canada as well as internationally. Nonetheless, the notion of a scholarship of teaching remains contested and has been described as under-theorized. In this conceptual study, I contribute to the ongoing "theory debate" in the…

Postmodernism, born under western secular conditions, has the following characteristics: it emphasizes pluralism and relativism and rejects any certain belief and absolute value; it conflicts with essentialism, and considers human identity to be a social construct; it rejects the idea that values are based on developmental realities and also…

In this article I respond to the commentators on my Kohlberg Memorial Lecture.

According to Rousseau, conscience and conscience alone can elevate human beings to a level above that of animals. It is conscience, understood as infallible judge of good and bad, which makes man like God. Conscience itself is, in this context, understood as divine, as an "immortal and celestial voice". Therefore, if the voice of…

Historically, teachers unions have played a special role in strengthening democratic cultures, and they are urgently called on to do so again. What is needed now more than ever says Kahlenberg, is a "social justice unionism" that goes beyond the narrow self-interest of members in bargaining for better wages and benefits to also engage in…

Colleges and universities incorporate international, student-teaching programs as a way to help prepare globally minded prospective teachers. This article adds to this conversation, offering insight from a multicase study analysis of three educators conducted 5 years after their experience student teaching in Kenya, East Africa. The researcher…

Many higher education studies have examined linear relationships between student experiences and outcomes, but this assumption may be questionable. In two notable examples previous research that assumed a linear relationship reached different substantive conclusions and implications than did research that explored non-linear associations among the…

Hassan in "The Kite Runner" was brave, kind-hearted and loyal, but he still ended up with misery. From the three dimensional ethical perspective, Hassan's tragedy is not only greatly related to national and religious ethics, but also influenced by deformed family ethics. Thus it can be seen that national discrimination and religious…

Background: Getting educational reforms "to scale" continues to be a primary preoccupation of scholars, but such studies tend to remain focused on the organizational or other characteristics of the school(s) receiving a given innovation. Purpose: This article brackets the organizational elements of reform dissemination to consider the…

Geographers can be influenced by the occupational ethical values in their cultures. In this research, the opinions of the geography teaching candidates were determined according to occupational ethical values at Marmara University, Faculty of Education, Department of Geography Teaching. Occupational ethical values identified are used to collect…

This paper presents an attempt to apply Jacques Rancière's emancipatory pedagogy of "the ignorant schoolmaster" to environmental education, which emphasises environmental ethics. The paper tells the story of a philosophy of nature project in the framework of an environmental adult education course at a Second Chance School in Greece,…

This research is a philosophical study into the potentialities of realising a poststructural democratic education through considering the reflections of educators involved in various "democratic" educational programmes. Utilising the conceptual tools of Biesta (2006), as inspired by Arendt (1998), this study explores what it would entail…