While the project of consolidating democracy into a durable and highly esteemed value in American culture has always been difficult to sustain, especially within the public schools, the struggle now assumes the character of a grave and inescapable need. Given the authoritarian and fascist resurgence across the globe, democracy and its accompanying…

In interdisciplinary education, metaphors often provide the epistemological clarity that is lacking in our definitions and theories of interdisciplinarity. The problem is that ineffective and unsubstantiated metaphors proliferate. We lack a root metaphor or shared world view of interdisciplinarity. Is it time that we move away from thinking in…

This paper is organized around five sections. The first section provides a brief background on post foundational inquiry and new materialism, two approaches that frame the conversation regarding sensation, thingness, and pedagogy. Following this introduction, further section titles incorporate dialogue from the Slimer scene. The next two sections…

The vast majority of contemporary scholars working in intellectual character education endeavor to identify those elements that render an educational program reliably successful at fostering the growth of intellectual excellences in students. In this article, I adopt an opposite perspective: I examine potential reasons as to why virtue-based…

In what follows, we revisit the most promising conceptions of "hope" while following Haraway's admonition to "stay with the trouble." Thirty-five years after Haraway's (1991) opening to the Manifesto for Cyborgs where she states that "irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes" (p. 149), we…

Here I craft a case for recognizing the roots and patterns that ground the possibility of contemporary com-posting--as outlined in Donna Haraway's Staying with the Trouble--by New Materialists and critical pragmatists, especially those who are affected by the social injustices and ill-advised practices of today's formal education. I explore both…

In this paper, the notion of pearl diving as a metaphor for historical methodology is explored as a possible conceptual contribution to pedagogical thinking and practice. Pearl diving in the thinking of Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin refers to a process of bringing to life and coming to terms with a fragmented past, and requires of the thinker…

The importance of Levinas's philosophy for education has been widely discussed. In 'Levinas: Ethics or Mystification?' however, Alistair Miller questions whether Levinas's work is of value at all, raising doubts about whether his philosophy can, in any way, be helpful when it comes to practical ethical decision-making, especially within education.…

Mainstream transformative learning emphasizes personally significant learning and liberation from limited ways of being in the world. Reflecting humanistic and emancipatory philosophical commitments, this emphasis can make it difficult to appreciate the transformative potential of learning for and by knowledge, a type of transformation adults can…

Within the recent rise in the incorporation of contemplative practices in higher education, mindfulness stands out as the most studied and implemented practice. However, most of its studied implementations have been focused on interventions associated with mental health. Very little attention has been given to the study of mindfulness's…

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study examining the influence of professional development (PD) on tutors' teaching philosophies. It found that tutors construe their role in three ways: as transmitter, facilitator, or reflexive practitioner. The findings suggest most tutors, prior to a PD program, hold a teacher-focused conception…

Teachers matter. They make a difference in the life of the individual and the society at large. Hence, their education and training has always been at the centre of any government's education policy. This paper focuses on teacher education in Albania. The narrative describes and analyzes the main milestones in teacher education during the four…

This article uses Charles W. Mills' Racial Contract to interrogate the political, historical, and philosophical roots of the conservative campaign against critical race theory (CRT) in schools. Prescribing that political power will be used to maintain a white supremacist racial hierarchy, the Racial Contract connects itself to American schools…

In recent times, schools have begun to focus on issues of wellbeing, engaging with ideas from various fields such as positive psychology. It is in this context that there is a growing interest in humility, rather than this interest having emerged from debates in moral philosophy and moral education. However, to the extent that education for…

This paper aims to raise awareness of the relevance of the philosophy of Charlotte Mason to primary school education today. First a biography of Mason, tracing her development from an orphaned pupil apprentice to an internationally influential figure, puts her philosophy in context. This is followed by an overview of her philosophy, with a focus…