This paper starts from a brief sketch of the classical figure of critical educational theory or science (Kritische Erziehungswissenshaft). Critical educational theory presents itself as the privileged guardian of the critical principle of education (Bildung) and its emancipatory promise. It involves the possibility of saying "I" in order to speak…

Responding to Jan Masschelein's discussion of critical distance and the trivialisation of critique in his 'How to Conceive of Critical Educational Theory Today?,' I draw attention to the antinomic character of immanence and transcendence - that is, to the way that it entails both non-circumventible necessity and omnipresent risks. I argue that the…

Many philosophers of education emphasise the impossibility to really "solve" philosophical--and with that, educational--problems these days. Philosophers have been trying to give philosophy a new, constructive turn in the face of this insolvability. This paper focuses on irony-based approaches that try to exploit the very uncertainty of…

This essay examines critically the conceptual and normative underpinnings of various views about educational quality, emphasizing the centrality of different assumptions about educational aims. Two distinctions play a key role in the first part of the paper: that between transcendent justifications of educational aims, versus socio-cultural…

In this paper I reply to Stefaan Cuypers' explication and critique of my views on rationality and critical thinking (Cuypers, 2004). While Cuypers' discussion is praiseworthy in several respects, I argue that it (1) mistakenly attributes to me a Humean view of (practical) reason, and (2) unsuccessfully argues that my position lacks the resources…

This symposium begins with a critique by Paul Hirst of Wilfred Carr's "Philosophy and Education" ("Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2004, 38.1"), where Carr argues that philosophy of education should be concerned with practical philosophy rather than "theoretical philosophy." Hirst argues that the philosophy of education is best understood as a…

In the light of recent writings of Richard Pring, and in relation to the application of empirical research methods in education, this paper offers a corrective to a neo-realist viewpoint and develops a critical realist perspective. The argument is made that the deployment of empirical research methods needs to be underpinned by a meta-theory…

In this article the author argues that for 150 years Jewish education has negotiated the tensions between modernity and Judaism by means of liberal religion, ultra Orthodoxy, and secular Zionism. All three are in crisis today due to the rise of postmodernism. Jewish educational thought therefore needs to create new syntheses between Jewish and…

This article makes the case for the relevance of Kant's perception in "The Contest of the Faculties" of the Humanities (as Philosophy) both to the university and to society in general. It illustrates this point by commenting on 20th-century essays by such diverse thinkers as Freud, Weber and Hayek. It suggests that the future of the Humanities is…

Drawing on historical research, this paper draws attention to Dewey's oft-neglected, but no less brilliant work published in 1929, The Sources of a Science of Education. Dewey's critique of efforts in his day to seek "quick-fixes" to practical educational and curricular issues by employing premature scientific investigations and findings has…

Egalitarian and participation-oriented teaching emphasizes critical discussion and informal relationships between students and professors. The authors argue that the use of egalitarian and some aspects of participation-oriented teaching at business schools differs systematically across countries according to the strength of democratic culture.…

This article explores the relationship between ontological assumptions and studies of educational dialogue through a focus on Bakhtin's "dialogic". The term dialogic is frequently appropriated to a modernist framework of assumptions, in particular the neo-Vygotskian or sociocultural tradition. However, Vygotsky's theory of education is dialectic,…

Has Harry Judge's career reproduced in a lifetime the centuries-old history of Brasenose College and the University of Oxford? His biography and the history of his college in relation to Christian belief and modern university reform are briefly recapitulated. All tell a story of adaptation and modernisation, the man short, the college long, the…

Discourse on e-learning propagated myths that generated overstatements regarding the effects of technologies on learning. No pedagogical approach could ever meet such overexpectations. The subsequent disappointment actually paves the way for research targeting more realistic goals. As the myths are fading away, learning technologies might take a…

In her 2006 bestseller about the rise of "raunch culture" and of such self-ascribed "Female Chauvinist Pigs" as the tawdry socialite Paris Hilton, Ariel Levy describes these phenomena as being indicative of a drastic cultural shift. Serious concerns have been raised, most recently by the American Psychological Association, about the effects of…