This essay focuses on three primary issues i. The conceptual resources offered by Spinoza to challenge the idealism and perfectionism underpinning much educational theory and dominant educational imaginaries; ii. His descriptions of a non-ideal, practical and systematic approach to developing understanding that could be applied to educational…

Maxine Greene centered the arts as important sites for cultivating a more relational and ethical means of educating students. Advocating for an aesthetic pedagogy, Greene conceived of aesthetics as a philosophy that studies artistic making, perception, and affect as a means of understanding experiences, and the meaning of those experiences as…

In the present study, we adopt a quasi-transcendental approach in order to deconstruct the teacher-student relationship. According to the results of this study, teacher is the dominant pole and student is the passive one. This relation should be redefined in order to transfer students to the dominant pole. In this improvement process the…

In this essay, Polly Graham addresses a current instantiation of what might be called self-loss within education in the United States. Graham observes that, in her experience, many students and educators, whether decidedly or without reflection, conform to superficial schooling practices that circumscribe the possibility of receiving affirmations…

Barbara Stengel's purpose in this essay is to complicate our understanding of the quality and status of educational courage as it is typically exercised in schools today, and to offer profiles of that courage in a minor key. If we only portray -- and aspire to -- courage in the heroic form that tilts against a system that is unfair, misguided, or…

John White and John Tillson have both raised objections to the theory of moral education I have recently advanced. Here I reply to their objections and offer some critical remarks on the alternative accounts of moral education they propose.

As an overview in connection with the 50th anniversary of the "Journal of Curriculum Studies" (JCS), this article begins with John Dewey's notion that all educational actions carry philosophical implications. The tension between different education-research philosophies, between non-social and social education philosophies in Dewey's…

Using the 'medical' framework (symptoms, diagnosis and prescription) in Schwab's the Practical 1 article, I analyze the current state of contemporary curriculum theorizing as a result of the reconceptualist movement. I argue that curriculum theorizing is in serious crisis due to the loss of the original subject of curriculum studies--practice and…

The question of content -- that is, knowledge in the curriculum -- has all but disappeared from global policy and academic discourses concerning teaching and teachers. Invoking the work of Michael Young and his colleagues concerning 'bringing knowledge back in', Bildung-centred Didaktik, and Joseph J. Schwab's curriculum thinking, this article…

This article draws on Searle's philosophical realism to explore how critical agency is grounded in critical reasoning and supports the construction of art criticism as an institutional practice in art and design education. Examples of critical exchanges between a teacher and her students reveal how intentional beliefs inherent in the teacher's…

In his 1980 book "Against Empiricism: On Education, Epistemology and Value," British philosopher R. F. Holland (1923-2013) exposes the inadequacies of a philosophy of education originating from an empiricist worldview. By following Plato's view that the issue of what qualifies as knowledge has to be understood with reference to whether…

Competition is an essential part of youth sport. But should it also be part of the curriculum in physical education? Or are competitive activities incompatible with the educational context? While some researchers have argued that physical education should embrace the sporting logic of competition, others have criticized the negative experiences it…

The authors review the concept of Tong Shi (Chinese characters omitted) in ancient Chinese philosophical texts, illustrate the Chinese cultural attributes unique to the characters Tong and Shi, and confirm that the name and essence of Tong Shi Education has a clear directivity and irreplaceable coverage to university general education in…

This article is the result of a mutual interest in the radical philosophical dialogue discussed by Martin Buber. The radical dialogue is rooted in western European values of humanism, values that are challenged because they exclude women, people with disabilities, non-western, indigenous people and sexual minorities. With our basis in radical…

Discussions of love and care might seem a natural alliance for early childhood teachers. Yet, while care is now at last beginning to be accepted as a legitimate feature of early years childhood within professional discourse alongside 'education' (enshrined in concepts such as 'educare', 'ECEC', or 'well-being'), articulations of love remain an…