This essay addresses the concerns educators and philosophers of education might have about an Africana existential philosophy of education by first defining Africana existential philosophy. Then, it performs a brief phenomenological investigation of the lived experiences of persons of African descent in the United States. This essay concludes by…

This is a writing story about trying to create just classroom assessment practices not excluding anybody and therefore an attempt to explore what an opening up to judgment, and in my view, what assessment focused on learning might mean and subsequently imply. Social justice and democracy is at stake. How to develop and improve our assessment…

"The fundamental task of any educational institution is to determine the manner of defining and organizing its curriculum. At the outset the obvious fact that there is more to learn, more to teach, and more to put in the curriculum than time available presents the educators with hard choices" (Kritsonis, 2007, p. v.) Therefore it is imperative…

This commentary presents the author's response to an article published in the last version of "Kairaranga" entitled "Schooling for Happiness: Rethinking the aims of education," written by Dr. Tom Cavanagh. He found it refreshing to read Cavanagh's article that focuses educators' energies onto re-visiting the wider…

Contemporary efforts to rethink the philosophical foundation of critical pedagogy are part of the ongoing project to make the field relevant to current struggles against oppression. Inherent to this project is an invitation to account for the plurality of ways and spaces in which privilege is performed in North American society and the troubling…

In Anglophone educational research in the United States, the name Foucault has been more pointedly celebrated in some subfields such as curriculum studies relative to its more noticeable censorship in subfields such as history of education. This paper illustrates how such differential epistemological politics might be accounted for through…

When Paul Hirst and Wilfred Carr squared up to each other a few years ago on the issue of the role of philosophical theory in educational practice, it became clear that theory itself had become a troubled term. The very fact that Wilfred Carr could argue for the end of educational theory recalls Paul Feyerabend's fiery argument for the end of…

The claim that "learning how to learn" is the central ability required for young people to be effective "lifelong learners" is examined for various plausible interpretations. It is vacuous if taken to mean that we need to acquire a capacity to learn, since we necessarily have this if we are to learn anything. The claim that it is a specific…

If I lose my key in Canada, for instance, and I search for it in the United Kingdom, how long will I take to find it? This paper argues that problems in education are caused by non-professional teachers who are employed when trained teachers move in search of promotion friendly activities or financially rewarding duties. This shift of focus means…

This article deals with the issue of how to establish an authentic community of inquiry. I propose the introduction of a distinction between two stages of the community of inquiry: the stage of an emergent community of inquiry and the stage of an established community of inquiry. Further on, I propose an analysis of the structure of intentions and…

This article will examine educational ideals by exploring the relation between the individual, the collective, and humanity in Kaplan's Jewish and educational philosophy. Generally the goals of individualism, nationalism, and universalism are seen as mutually exclusive. By contrast, Kaplan argues for the symbiotic relationship between…

Franz Kafka's 1912 novella "The Metamorphosis" provides an analogy for a consideration of the process of teacher identity formation and performance. Gregor Samsa awoke to find himself transformed into a giant beetle. He faced a complete loss of identity as he lost connection with the micro-political space that formed the context of his former role…

How should students be able to think and what should they be able to do as a result of studying philosophy? What will most readily engage students in the practice of the discipline? And how do we determine the learning strengths and needs of students in order to assist them in the practice of the discipline? These are the questions taken up in…

In this article I examine New Labour's approach to the transformation of education by focusing on Michael Barber's account of policy delivery, and I show that while historical analysis is relevant to policy processes it is absent in the reality of design. I provide a critical evaluation of knowledge claims underpinning policy in England before I…

In his book "Democracy and Music Education: Liberalism, Ethics, and the Politics of Practice," Paul Woodford issues an invitation for shared dialogue and debate regarding the state of music education in developed countries. Through an appropriation of John Dewey's thoughts regarding a democratic society, Woodford sees great hope for the position…