Nothing was more important to Tolstoy than character development. For him, the purpose of life is to grow morally. The purpose of literature -- as all art -- is to aid that growth. Abstract philosophy and pedantic scholarship are therefore redundant. Indeed, even the psychological novel is a distraction. Moral truths are self-evident. They are…

A teaching philosophy statement (TPS) is a brief, deeply personal narrative that gives insight into an educator's perspective on the teaching enterprise. A TPS is typically comprised of a reflection on the educator's values and beliefs, a description of what happens during the learning process, and statements about how teachers and learners…

Through a Foucauldian theoretical framework, this article contests the efficacy of the modern assessable and visible learning curriculum, and analyses how the current education episteme disempowers the ethical subjectification of the individual, dislocating the development of aesthetic agency. It articulates a tension between education for the…

This paper addresses a central aspect of Kant's theory of moral progress and its links to both political violence and pedagogy. Kant claims in the "Conflict of the Faculties" that the reaction to the French Revolution demonstrates that the 'human race has always progressed and will further progress toward the better'. It thus constitutes…

The theory of metaphor has gone through its development, starting with the works of Aristotle, in which it was begun, to the present state, when the linguistic paradigm became anthropocentric, and all linguistic phenomena are considered in direct connection with a person, his thinking, with society. The metaphor, which manifests the principle of…

Youth sport is habitually promoted as an important context for learning that contributes to a person's broader development beyond sport-specific skills. A growing body of research in this area has operated within a life skills discourse that focuses on useful, positive and decontextualised skills in the production of successful and adaptive…

In this article, we aim to extend the existing literature on the theory of transformational school leadership through a neo-Daoist lens. Focussing on the writings of the third-century Chinese philosopher Wang Bi, we make three arguments. First, his ideas promote a transformational leader who effects change through ziran (spontaneity or natural…

In this article, we present a new perspective on how to combine inquiry-based, problem-oriented learning with practices in the Humanities. Our particular interest is how the initial phase of finding "the problem" can be undertaken in a conjoint way with students, that is in the form of inquiry-based learning where there are no…

This paper considers the recent growth in different kinds of learning outside the classroom, especially Forest Schools. It shows how the activities associated with Forest Schools often involve mainstream curriculum content delivered in outdoor settings, with a focus on developing skills and attitudes that can be utilised when back in the…

This essay has several related goals. The first is to contribute to the philosophy of education literature on Cora Diamond while introducing the work of her sister, Julie Diamond, to the field. I introduce Julie Diamond's work by connecting it to the work of John Dewey, and a secondary goal of the paper is to test lines of connection between Dewey…

This paper introduces the special section on Cora Diamond's significance for education and educators. The introduction is meant to be the beginning of a conversation, and--to that end--the special section editors suggest lines of connections that philosophers of education might draw between their work and the work of Cora Diamond. Their list is…

In this paper we consider some of the problems inherent in the attempt to define and circumscribe an exclusively 'educational love', as presented by Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski in a recent paper for this journal. In seeking to move beyond the confusing interpersonal relations involved in student-centred discourses on teaching, the authors aim…

This essay analyzes Derrida's questioning of the relationship between "Theory and Practice" in his recently published seminar of 1976-1977 of this same title. It traces Derrida's reading of this relationship in Marx and Marxism, beginning with various interpretations (such as Althusser's) of the famous line from Marx's "Theses on…

Philosophers and other scholars writing on the idea of race have pointed to a tension, in society and in intellectual life, between: (1) an understanding of race as an experienced identity, the experience of which must not be denied in the interest of both social justice and critical attentiveness to social structures of racist oppression; and (2)…

In this theoretical article, the qualities of the artist for peacebuilding and peace education are explored. Peacebuilding and peace education are not only based on skills and knowledge, but also on art, a creative process that originates in our imagination. The question guiding this paper is: How can we, as peacebuilders and educators, imagine,…