"In a time of unacceptable global injustice, growing inequalities in the distribution of power, accelerating climate change, and unwavering racism and social exclusion, we are today facing the biggest challenges of human history" (European Conference on Intercultural Dialogue in Development Education, 2008: 1). A favourable wind is…

European education agendas have emphasized the importance of early childhood education in providing the foundations for lifelong learning. Central to the success of early childhood education is the quality of provision, with the workforce being key. While qualifications levels are frequently cited as important for the quality of provision here we…

This article revisits the Eight-Year Study, which was a set of simultaneous experiments in secondary education carried out by 30 schools from 1933 to 1941. These schools were free from the usual subject and unit requirements for college admission for a period of eight years, beginning with the class entering college in 1936. Freed from the demands…

If Neil Postman, were alive today, what would he say to Prensky, the originator of the term, "digital native", about the ways in which teachers should approach the wonders and perils of e-learning in their classrooms? As the Dean of a faculty of education which is devoted to both creating and critiquing a variety of digital teaching and…

This 2015 updated capsule on a History and Philosophy of Andragogy includes nine new items and is mainly limited [with a few exceptions] to a chronological history and the accompanying philosophy of andragogy, in line with when the English language documents were published and personal descriptions of events were recorded. Some of these documents,…

Strangely, the concept of philosophical education is not much in use, at least not as a "philosophical" concept. In this essay, Steinar Boyum attempts to outline such a philosophical concept of philosophical education. Boyum uses Plato's Allegory of the Cave, Rene Descartes's life of doubt, and Immanuel Kant's criticism of metaphysics as paradigms…

Education as a practice in its own right (or "sui generis" practice) invokes quite a different set of ethical considerations than does education understood as a subordinate activity--i.e. prescribed and controlled in its essentials by the current powers-that-be in a society. But the idea of education as a vehicle for the "values" of a particular…

One way to characterise pragmatism is to see it as a philosophy that placed communication at the heart of philosophical, educational and political thinking. Whereas the shift from consciousness to communication can be seen as a major innovation in modern philosophy, it is not without problems. This article highlights some of these problems and…

I attempted to argue that, for Aristotle, art can be understood to have instrumental consequences directed toward external ends affecting ethical praxis. First, I considered the philosophical case that art, for Aristotle, affects ethical practice. Second, the non-philosophical literature related to some of the possible usages of art is sampled.…

In this paper I discuss three different ways in which we can refer to those we teach: as learner, as student or as speaker. My interest is not in any aspect of teaching but in the question whether there can be such a thing as emancipatory education. Working with ideas from Jacques Ranciere I offer the suggestion that emancipatory education can be…

This autoethnographic essay shares my experience as a teaching assistant, desiring to be more self aware of how my race informed my pedagogy in the classroom. Set in "Race and Cultural Diversity," an advanced undergrad writing course, I examine my commitments to racial and social justice within classroom happenings. Using critical…

Inquiry-based learning (IBL) has become a common theme in both school and higher education in recent years. It suggests a model of curriculum development and practice that moves educational debate beyond teacher or student-based approaches towards a model of teaching and learning in which the endeavour is shared. This paper discusses an…

Some educators may see cooperative learning as a Western pedagogy that is difficult to use in Eastern countries with a Confucian Heritage, while others argue that the philosophy of Confucius parallels the elements of cooperative learning. This article reports the key findings of a 2-year longitudinal study that investigated the perceptions of…

Booker T. Washington was born a slave in the American South, rising remarkably in the period after slavery to become a leader of his race. His advocacy of appeasement with the Southern white establishment incurred the ire of his black peers, given the withdrawal of the franchise from ex-slaves in southern states after a brief period of positive…

Student populations in higher education in Australia and elsewhere in the developed world have experienced significant diversity over the past two decades. The existing literature has provided limited clarity about the effects of this diversity on the dimensions underpinning students' study philosophy domain. Based on a large data set from a…