The paper is in two parts. The first part of the paper is a critique of current methodology in educational research: scientific, critical and interpretive. The ontological and epistemological assumptions of those methodologies are described from the standpoint of John Searle's analytic philosophy. In the second part two research papers with…

Kurt Hahn is one of the most important school reformers of the 20th century worldwide and yet he is largely unknown and underestimated. This fact is amazing since Hahn, who incidentally began his career as a politician, was not only the founder and headmaster of famous boarding schools in Germany and Scotland, but also the initiator and organizer…

Social science is fundamentally about humanity and human relationships. Humans, alone and in interaction with one another, are situated--in a context, a time, and a place. Their action and interaction has potential for unpredictability, agency, growth, change. As a science, it rests uncomfortably in the positivistic framework: the social always…

This paper is designed to introduce readers to teacher-philosopher-practitioner, Paulo Freire and to illustrate the power of his educational ideals for the task of teaching leadership. Readers will encounter Freire, understand how one's definition of leadership needs to match one's approach to teaching leadership, review a proposed Freirean…

The notion of a community of inquiry has been treated by many of its proponents as being an exemplar of democracy in action. We argue that the assumptions underlying this view present some practical and theoretical difficulties, particularly in relation to distribution of power among the members of a community of inquiry. We identify two…

Ownership and economic behaviors are highly salient elements of the human social landscape. Indeed, the human world is literally constructed of property. Individuals perceive and manipulate a complex web of people and property that is largely invisible and abstract. In this chapter, the authors focus on drawing together information from a variety…

The question of the philosophy of education remains an important topic of active discussion in science, education, and government. There are well-argued demands that the purposes of education be rethought, and recognition of the humanistic essence of education and its huge role in the revitalization of life and in the search for solutions to…

This article sets out to compare and contrast language and rhetoric espoused by Richard Pratt, founder and Superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School until 1904, and Estelle Reel, author of "Course of Study for Indian Schools" and Superintendent of Indian Schools between 1898-1910, pertaining to the educational philosophy of the…

Epistemologies of situated knowledges, advanced by scholars such as Donna Haraway, Lorraine Code, and Maureen Ford, challenge mainstream epistemology's claim to be the gold standard in determining what counts as knowledge. In this essay, James Lang uses the work of these and other feminist theorists to explicate the notion of situated knowledges…

This paper revisits how late 20th-century attempts to account for conceptual and other difficult art-work by defining the concept "art" have failed to offer a useful strategy for educators seeking a non-instrumental justification for teaching the arts. It is suggested that this theoretical ground is nonetheless instructive and provides useful…

What is proposed is a meditation on the phrase "transformation of the educational system", paying attention to the sense of the words, and showing what the desire for educational change can reveal. After explaining to what extent "educational system" is a quasi-oxymoron, the meaning of "transformation" has to be…

Learning in formal schools violates several simple principles: that no one can learn on an empty spirit; that true learning requires an absence of fear or authority; that learning is the most natural of human instincts. By making schooling compulsory, we have abandoned trust in our individual and collective experience in favour of experts and…

The crucial epistemological question for formulating the principles that underlie moral education concerns the status of rationality and objectivity in ethics and education. In this essay Katariina Holma argues that the intertwined understanding of the concepts of education, ethics, rationality, and objectivity is built into our language and our…

My aim in this paper is to show the relevance of an "effective semiotics"; that is, a field study based upon Peirce's semiotics. The general context of this investigation is educational semiotics rather than semiotics of teaching: I am concerned with a general approach of educational processes, not with skills and curricula. My paper is…

"What is ?Curriculum Theory" articulates the problematic of difference, diversity, and multiplicity in contemporary curriculum thought. More specifically, this essay argues that the conceptualization of difference that dominates the contemporary curriculum landscape is inadequate to either the task of ontological experimentation or the creation of…