Learning about "nature" has particular significance for education because the idea of nature is an important source of inspiring meaning-rich experience and creation. In order to have meaningful experiences in learning and living, this paper argues for a personal subject-related lifeworld approach to the learning of "nature".…

It is sometimes said that there has been a "paradigm shift" in the field of assessment over the last two or three decades: a new preoccupation with what learners can do, what they know or what they have achieved. It is suggested in this article that this change has precipitated a need to distinguish two conceptually and logically…

The concepts of tacit knowledge and tacit knowing have been of interest to philosophers and epistemologists as well as behavioral and social scientists. The tacit dimension can be found in both individual and collective practices in versatile, implicit, informal, and unintentional ways. There is no clear, broadly accepted definition of tacit…

The debate concerning the relation of the theory of education and the practice of education is not new. In Germany, these discussions are an integral part of the development of educational science in the eighteenth century which is closely connected to Johann Friedrich Herbart and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Their concepts illustrate different…

Over the last decade there has been a noticeable growth in published works citing Critical Race Theory (CRT). This has led to a growth in interest in the UK of practical research projects utilising CRT as their framework. It is clear that research on "race" is an emerging topic of study. What is less visible is a debate on how CRT is…

Since the 1970s, somatics have increasingly become a part of the dance training landscape. Although the psychophysical benefits seem sufficient in themselves to warrant inclusion in dance, this article explores another possible outcome of embracing somatic pedagogical principles, a change that affects not "what" is taught in a dance class, but…

The imagination has traditionally been associated with unreality and is commonly thought to be the antithesis of reason. This is a notion of imagination that can be found in Plato's writing and has influenced modern Western epistemology and educational ideals. As such, traditional schooling, which has focused on the cultivation of reason and the…

This paper explores the significance of the concept of power/knowledge in educational theory. The argument proceeds in two main parts. In the first, I consider aspects of Stephen J. Ball's highly influential work in educational theory. I examine his reception of Foucault's concept of power/knowledge and suggest that there are problems in his…

Confronted with the choice of "either" insisting on the inevitability of philosophic reflection and thus risking being neglected by research funding and the policy of offering chairs or of giving up on its philosophical orientation and also becoming committed to empirical research, this article suggests a third option for the Philosophy of…

In this paper I shall first examine an apparent paradox in Confucius' view on whether everyone is perfectible through education: on the one hand, he states that education should be provided to all, on the other hand, he says that common people cannot be made to know things. To understand this apparent paradox, I shall argue that education for…

It is commonplace to speak of education as a right. Yet it has been seldom defended as a natural right. Natural rights are pre-social, while education is social intrinsically. This analysis attempts to show how Aristotle's concept of education can be conceived as a natural and necessary process to fulfill individual autonomy. In this sense it…

For a practicing arts educator, the relationship between theory and practice is often unproblematic: theory is considered to be irrelevant for the good practice. Considering the matter from an academic standpoint, one faces the distinction between poietic, or productive, and contemplative, or responsive, mindsets stemming from the classical…

This issue of the "Journal of Curriculum Studies" presents a symposium on the recent work of Michael Young. Contemporary curriculum theory has little specific to say about how knowledge is selected, organized and transformed into curriculum content for teaching and learning. Over the last two decades, Young has taken a rather different…

This article outlines how student teachers' experiences of a philosophical community of enquiry (PCoE) facilitated their pedagogical reflections. Although reflection occupies an important place in teacher education curricula and pedagogy, it is a contested and problematic concept. In this study, a group of second year student teachers took part in…

Every society craves naturally to live in communion and understanding with the persons and the groups found in it. This is also in line with the aphorism that man is a "being-with-others", as against the separatist and segregationist opinion of each person living "for-itself". Whereas the first denotes man as altruistic and…