For the first time, Walter Benjamin's critical comments on educator and philosopher Rudolf Steiner are examined in depth. In particular, Benjamin detected protofascist themes within Steiner's seemingly progressive notion of child-centered, arts-based, developmentally appropriate early childhood education. But this does not mean that Benjamin…

The present study aims on the one hand to analyze North American curriculum reforms with a focus on the twentieth century, and on the other hand it aims to demonstrate the implications of Weberian rationality theory for century-specific curriculum theory and practice. At the theoretical level the study shows the implications of Weberian…

Purpose: This largely conceptual study aims to draw from the author's experience of conversations with Svalbard's educators, lessons for international higher education institutions' engagement with climate change education and thinking for non-specialists. Design/methodology/approach: "In situ" discussions with Svalbard's educators…

More and more lately, commentators who have defended Socrates have emphasized the extent to which he uses non-rational means of educating his interlocutors, and commentators have downplayed the extent to which he means to offer arguments that provide justification or are rationally persuasive. The trend is refreshing since students of Socrates…

This article scrutinises the ontological nature of democracy and the implications that different ontological assumptions might have for educational practice. To achieve this, we use Karen Barad's notion of diffraction to read John Dewey's, Ernesto Laclau's and Barad's theoretical insights through one another. Our starting point is Dewey's famous…

The present article continues my work in logomachy and the philosophy of education. It turns to Bernard Stiegler's concept of the 'idiotext' as the means of terming what I have previously called 'particular sets of sense'. The gambit of the article is that 'intropy' (uncertainty provoked by informational complexity) provides a very useful concept…

Education theory has been exhibiting a renewed rejection of education's instrumentality to political and economic influences against a policy trend that implicitly considers education a mere pragmatic tool. This paper suggests an ontological investigation that goes beyond normatively supporting or rejecting the instrumentality of education. It…

This paper explores the extent to which critique in the educational sciences can be mechanized. This is the case when critique of pedagogical concepts and discourses is entirely determined by the structures and processes of the critique itself. If the process of critique functions independently of the specificity and concreteness of its object,…

Although widely accepted to be the capacity to exercise control in one's learning, there remains confusion about what exactly this means. Failure to reconcile contradictions has left the field resigned to pluralism, describing 'versions' of learner autonomy according to divergent theoretical orientations. However, each version is incomplete,…

Education is dominated by economic priorities and intellectual virtues that place emphasis on individual success, yet issues of social injustice are demanding of urgent attention. My hopes for social justice are rooted in education. I consider the place of schooling for continually reimagining social justice, and to think about what it might be to…

Engaging with current protests for climate justice on university campuses, this paper discusses how matters of concern are shared in the university and how cohabitation on campus itself becomes a public matter. Multiple ecological and political crises shed light on the interdependence between the public and the communal dimension of university.…

Dewey argued long ago that to learn something one has to undergo some experience. In a classroom, teachers have a range of tools to engage, entice, or threaten students to engage in activities that are designed, in one way or another, as experiences that will lead them to learn something. In schools, teachers have institutional power and grades to…

The COVID-19 pandemic raised not only overwhelming practical challenges but also deep ethical dilemmas for educators. There have been few efforts to connect these challenges to either ethical dilemmas teachers faced in pre-pandemic times or to philosophical analyses of complex normative terrain of teachers' work. We facilitated eleven discussion…

According to Jennifer Billman, western evaluation bias against indigenous thinking is due to ontological incompetence. If so, the solution she offers (a highly abstract list of criteria) is inadequate since it fails to address let alone resolve a wide range of philosophical dilemmas at the intersection of logic and ontology. Furthermore, it fails…

Patricia Carini (1932-2021) was a progressive educator and thinker who was among the key figures of open education. This article reflects on her work, illuminating its quality as an art of listening. The idea of listening has been of primary importance within the tradition of progressive education in the United States and internationally.…