English is best advanced by being relocated within the central aims of education, which in turn need to be drawn from Enlightenment values. Central among the latter is knowledge. The article argues that the least obviously "factual" side of English--novels and poetry--contributes to knowledge in direct and indirect ways. These include…

No other educational issue hits a more sensitive nerve with the American public than the role of religion in the public schools. While the intentions and actions of the religious and non-religious parents and community members overlap a great deal as they conceive of the good people they want their children to become, there is no apparent…

It is commonly assumed that to educate means to control or guide a person's acting and development. On the other hand, it is often presupposed that the addressees of education must be seen as being endowed with free will. The question raised in this paper is whether these two assumptions are compatible. It might seem that if the learner is free in…

Debates about the nature of practical knowledge and its relationship with declarative knowledge have, over the last ten years, been lively. Relatively little has, however, been written about the educational implications of these debates, particularly about the educational implications of the two broad families of positions known respectively as…

The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas suggested that the most ethical act possible is the discovery that one has assumed responsibility for the other. In fact it is the other that makes possible the genuine exploration of the self, an act dominating the adolescent era of development. Although rarely appearing in educational literature, Levinas has…

Background/Context: This article is part of a series of studies carried out by the authors in this special issue on the general topic of listening and its specific relevance to teaching. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: We examine the common activity of pretending to listen and argue that thinking about it carefully reveals some…

This article discusses William W. Brickman's historical scholarship on the international circulation of educational ideas and practices by examining the ways Brickman wrote about John Dewey and his international significance as an educational thinker and reformer. The authors argue that Brickman's scholarship was rooted in an "educational…

The physical magnitude "work" has a long history. It emerged when two different practices, performed during the whole eighteenth century, met each other. The first was theoretical, practiced by philosophers and mathematicians, and was related mainly to the "living forces" (vires vivae). The second was empirical, practiced by engineers, and was…

This paper reports on a hermeneutic phenomenological research inquiry which explored "lived experiences" of the teacher-student relationship in teacher education. An essential understanding from this research is that teachers and students experience their relationship as a play that is uncertain and lived beyond the rules of engagement. Teachers…

This article introduces contemplative practices and explains how contemplative practices, studies, and pedagogy differ. It analyzes the mechanics of some key contemplative practices and reviews the research on contemplative practices and learning. It ultimately argues in support of this new direction in pedagogy.

This article explores the significance of theories of the post-human for lifelong learning. Drawing upon the works of Karen Barad and Bruno Latour, it suggests that education has focused on the learning subject as a result of an a priori assumption of a separation of matter from meaning, the object from the subject. By contrast, a post-human…

This paper explores the implications for creating a U.S. history narrative from a Rortyan perspective. First, we review Rorty's social theory. Second, we discuss implications of his ideas regarding the creation of a U.S. history narrative based upon his ideas. Finally, we examine two concerns that would likely emerge if a Rortyan U.S. history…

This essay attempts to retrieve the notion of "common sense" within the writings of Descartes and Montaigne. I suggest that both writers represent distinct traditions in which the notion is employed. Descartes represents a modernist tradition in which common sense is understood to be a cognitive faculty, while Montaigne represents a humanist…

The purpose of this paper is to examine the ateleological moment of learning through imitation. In general, we can learn something new through imitating models we are given, which embody the values of our own society, culture and institutions. This means that imitation is understood in terms of the representation or reproduction of original…

A natural resource is not given, but depends on human knowledge for its exploitation. Thus a "unit of resource" is, to a significant degree, a "unit of meaning", and education is potentially important not only for the use of resources but also for their creation. The paper draws on poststructuralism to confirm the intuition that it would be…