This paper investigates the philosophical method of Jacques Rancière, with special attention to use of the 'presumptive tautology'. It distinguishes between the Enlightenment conception of method as universally applicable technique, and the philosophical conception of method as a certain style that has been invented by a certain person. Ultimately, the paper puts the methodology of Rancière's The Ignorant Schoolmaster under scrutiny.

This article looks at the practice of educational questioning using the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans‐Georg Gadamer. It first looks at questions and statements from a hermeneutic perspective, demonstrating some of the differences and similarities between the two. It then details Gadamer's notion of the ‘true question’, asking whether it is possible for teachers to ask ‘true questions’. Then, it turns to some concrete ways to rethink educational questioning. Three themes are proposed, themes to keep in mind when educational questions are (...) used: non‐superficiality, humility, and circuitry. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate the human act of spectatorship as found in the work of John Dewey and Paulo Freire. I will show that each is thoroughly anti-watching when it comes to educational practices. I then problematize their positions by looking at their spectatorial commitments in the realm of aesthetics. Both Dewey and Freire have a different opinion about spectatorship when it is a matter of watching art. I claim that this different in opinion derives from the practice of (...) ‘educational humanism’. By educational humanism, I mean the tendency to posit stock human traits that derive from pedagogical practices. Ultimately, I will take a stand against educational humanism, against the process of back-forming, from educational circumstances, the desirability, or the undesirability, of human traits. (shrink)

This article looks at the practice of educational questioning using the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans‐Georg Gadamer. It first looks at questions and statements from a hermeneutic perspective, demonstrating some of the differences and similarities between the two. It then details Gadamer's notion of the ‘true question’, asking whether it is possible for teachers to ask ‘true questions’. Then, it turns to some concrete ways to rethink educational questioning. Three themes are proposed, themes to keep in mind when educational questions are (...) used: non‐superficiality, humility, and circuitry. (shrink)

This article explores Derrida's claim that teaching is a deconstructive process. In order to explore this claim, the Derridean concept of "erasure" is explored. Using the concept of erasure, this article examines two important aspects of teaching: the name that teachers establish for themselves, and, teaching against social power from a Derridean perspective. Ultimately, the paper confirms Derrida's claim that teaching is indeed a deconstructive practice.

This essay explores the educational implications of the thought of Michel de Montaigne and Friedrich Nietzsche on the subject of memory. It explores the sorts of cultural memory practices that Nietzsche has called ‘mnemotechnics’, that is, the aspects of memory use that allow human beings to live life more fully. Nietzsche and Montaigne's work is explored because their work offers a different, and much more philosophically oriented, perspective on memory than is commonly discussed when educators speak of memory. Nietzsche and (...) Montaigne show how remembering and forgetting might be understood more thoroughly and deployed with more finesse. The case is made that such deployments, such mnemotechnics, have great relevance for enhancing the agency of students. (shrink)

This essay offers an educational understanding of truth deriving from the work of Jacques Rancière. Unlike other educational accounts—the traditional, progressive, and critical accounts—of truth that take education as a way of approaching pre‐existing truths (or lack of pre‐existing truths), this essay establishes an account of truth that is intrinsic to education. It uses Rancière's language theory to do so, showing that Rancière's own perspective on truth is in fact opposed to the one so often promoted in and through education. (...) To conclude, the essay explores what Rancière's perspective on truth means to the educational researcher who would write on Rancière's work. (shrink)

The paper establishes the principle of ‘back-formation’ of artistic creation, the process by which artists realise in their work a theme or motif that had not been previously intended but is brought into being as the work comes to fruition. The authors suggest that teaching also should be guided by this principle. To solve the inherent problem of power imbalance in teaching, they appeal to Bakhtin's recourse to aesthetical judgment in addressing relational issues. Gadamer's rehabilitation of prejudices shows that not (...) only is an ethics of relation worked out as an aesthetic practice, but also that aesthetic practices are worked out within an ethics of relation. (shrink)

This essay explores the educational implications of the thought of Michel de Montaigne and Friedrich Nietzsche on the subject of memory. It explores the sorts of cultural memory practices that Nietzsche has called ‘mnemotechnics’, that is, the aspects of memory use that allow human beings to live life more fully. Nietzsche and Montaigne's work is explored because their work offers a different, and much more philosophically oriented, perspective on memory than is commonly discussed when educators speak of memory. Nietzsche and (...) Montaigne show how remembering and forgetting might be understood more thoroughly and deployed with more finesse. The case is made that such deployments, such mnemotechnics, have great relevance for enhancing the agency of students. (shrink)

In this article, I contextualize the community of inquiry approach, and Philosophy for Children, within the current milieu of education. Specifically, I argue that whereas former scholarship on Philosophy for Children had a tendency to critique the problems of teacher authority and knowledge transmission, we must now consider subtler, learner-centered scenarios of education as a threat to Philosophy for Children. I begin by offering a personal anecdote about my own experience attending a ‘reverse-integrated’ elementary school in 1968. I use this (...) anecdote to show the detrimental aspects of the turn to learning—and the concomitant turn away from teaching—over past five decades. I go on to detail what I call “the logic of learning.” The logic of learning has five components: 1) That learning has a theory, or ‘logic,’ in other words, that learners can be figured out. 2) That learning is instrumental, that people need to learn things in order to acquire something that will be obtained after the learning is complete. 3) That learning concerns normation, or, some people get learning ‘right’ while others do not. 4) That teaching is the same as instruction, so that teaching always means delivering knowledge to students. 5) That authority should reside as a possession of the learner, and thus authority is understood as a thing rather than a relation. I show that these elements of the logic of learning stand in the way of the goals of Philosophy for Children, and that opponents of Philosophy for Children have used these elements to assail the Philosophy for Children project. I continue by describing a relational understanding of authority. I demonstrate the importance of relational authority and relational teaching as key components of Philosophy for Children. In conclusion, I argue that Philosophy for Children needs to spearhead a movement of relational teaching. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Pedagogy's Explanatory Role That Explanation is Rife Explanation, Language and Truth Truth in Education The Emancipated Scholar Notes References.

In this article, I argue that education has come to a crossroads. It is so easy to become educated that the role of the teacher can be seen as redundant. Because of this fact, it is time to reconsider what the teacher does, and whether the aim of clear communication by the teacher can, or should, be an educational goal. I argue that clear communication can no longer be embraced. Instead I offer two new educational ideas for 2011 and beyond. (...) One is that the teacher’s role should be a relational role. The other idea is that the teacher’s speech should be poetic rather than informative. (shrink)

Using the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Jessica Benjamin, I here describe the role of language in achieving intersubjective relationships among persons.

Paulo Freire's major work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, owes adebt to psychoanalysis. In particular, as this paper argues,Freire's account of teacher authority needs to be understoodthrough psychoanalytic sensibilities. Paulo Freire maintains thatteacher authority can be ``on the side of freedom.'' This is ahighly charged claim given that liberalist traditions generallycast authority as the enemy of freedom. Breaking with liberalunderstandings of authority, Freire's ``authority on the sideof freedom'' is a matter of maintaining the delicate psychicbalance that leads neither to domination nor (...) to submission.This paper investigates how such an authoritative balance functions. (shrink)

This article looks into the workings of educational authority. While scholarly debate in education usually promotes authority as either good or bad, the same debate seldom asks questions about how authority works. This article is, then, an answer to the question ‘How?’ How does educational authority operate? It operates, it is suggested, in much the same way that literary authority operates. To make the case for educational authority as literary authority, the paper uses the philosophical work of Jacques Derrida and (...) the literary work of Franz Kafka. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Progressivist and Critical Objections to Traditionalism: Epistemology, Authority and Spectatorship Complicity with Traditionalism Under the Name of Rancière A Method that Belongs to Whom? Philosophical Method, the Literal and Metaphorical Method's Name Conclusion Notes References.

This handbook presents a comprehensive introduction to the core areas of philosophy of education combined with an up-to-date selection of the central themes. It includes 95 newly commissioned articles that focus on and advance key arguments; each essay incorporates essential background material serving to clarify the history and logic of the relevant topic, examining the status quo of the discipline with respect to the topic, and discussing the possible futures of the field. The book provides a state-of-the-art overview of philosophy (...) of education, covering a range of topics: Voices from the present and the past deals with 36 major figures that philosophers of education rely on; Schools of thought addresses 14 stances including Eastern, Indigenous, and African philosophies of education as well as religiously inspired philosophies of education such as Jewish and Islamic; Revisiting enduring educational debates scrutinizes 25 issues heavily debated in the past and the present, for example care and justice, democracy, and the curriculum; New areas and developments addresses 17 emerging issues that have garnered considerable attention like neuroscience, videogames, and radicalization. The collection is relevant for lecturers teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of education as well as for colleagues in teacher training. Moreover, it helps junior researchers in philosophy of education to situate the problems they are addressing within the wider field of philosophy of education and offers a valuable update for experienced scholars dealing with issues in the sub-discipline. Combined with different conceptions of the purpose of philosophy, it discusses various aspects, using diverse perspectives to do so. Contributing Editors: Section 1: Voices from the Present and the Past: Nuraan Davids Section 2: Schools of Thought: Christiane Thompson and Joris Vlieghe Section 3: Revisiting Enduring Debates: Ann Chinnery, Naomi Hodgson, and Viktor Johansson Section 4: New Areas and Developments: Kai Horsthemke, Dirk Willem Postma, and Claudia Ruitenberg. (shrink)

Should engineering ethics be taught? Despite the obvious truism that we all want our students to be moral engineers who practice virtuous professional behavior, I argue, in this article that the question itself obscures several ambiguities that prompt preliminary resolution. Upon clarification of these ambiguities, and an attempt to delineate key issues that make the question a philosophically interesting one, I conclude that engineering ethics not only should not, but cannot, be taught if we understand “teaching engineering ethics” to mean (...) training engineers to be moral individuals (as some advocates seem to have proposed). However, I also conclude that there is a justification to teaching engineering ethics, insofar as we are able to clearly identify the most desirable and efficacious pedagogical approach to the subject area, which I propose to be a case study-based format that utilizes the principle of human cognitive pattern recognition. (shrink)

Extending the dialogue on corporate social performance as descriptive stakeholder management, we examine differences in CSP activity between family and nonfamily firms. We argue that CSP activity can be explained by the firm’s identity orientation toward stakeholders. Specifically, individualistic, relational, or collectivistic identity orientations can describe a firm’s level of CSP activity toward certain stakeholders. Family firms, we suggest, adopt a more relational orientation toward their stakeholders than nonfamily firms, and thus engage in higher levels of CSP. Further, we invoke (...) collectivistic identity orientation to argue that the higher the level of family or founder involvement within a family firm, the greater the level of CSP toward specific stakeholders. Using social performance rating data from 1991 to 2005, we find that family and nonfamily firms demonstrate notable differences in terms of social initiatives and social concerns. We also find that the level of family and founder involvement is related to the type and frequency of a family firm’s social initiatives and social concerns. (shrink)

David Charles presents a major new study of Aristotle's views on meaning, essence, necessity, and related topics. These interconnected views are central to Aristotle's metaphysics, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science, and are also highly relevant to current philosophical debates. Charles aims to reach a clear understanding of Aristotle's claims and arguments, to assess their truth, and to evaluate their importance to ancient and modern philosophy.

Extensive and diverse conceptual work towards developing a definition of ‘mental disorder’ was motivated by the declassification of homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual in 1973. This highly politicised event was understood as a call for psychiatry to provide assurances against further misclassification on the basis of discrimination or socio-political deviance. Today, if a definition of mental disorder fails to exclude homosexuality, then it fails to provide this safeguard against potential abuses and therefore fails to do an important part (...) of the work it was intended to do. We argue that fact-based definitions of mental disorder, relying on scientific theory, fail to offer a robust definition of mental disorder that excludes homosexuality. Definitions of mental disorder based on values do not fare better: these definitions are silent on questions about the diagnostic status of individuals in oppressive societies and over-inclusive of mental or behavioural states that happen to be negatively valued in the individual's social context. We consider the latest definition proposed for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-5 in light of these observations. We argue that definition fails to improve on these earlier deficiencies. Its inclusion in the manual may offer false reassurance against repetition of past misclassifications. We conclude with a provocation that if candidate definitions of mental disorder are unable to exclude homosexuality, it might perhaps be preferable not to attempt a definition at all. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The link between firm corporate social performance (CSP) and executive compensation could be driven by a sorting effect (a firm’s CSP is related to the initial levels of compensation of newly hired executives), or by an incentive effect (incumbent executives are rewarded for past firm CSP). Existing empirical work focuses exclusively on the incentive effect. In contrast, in this paper we explore the sorting effect of firm CSP on the initial compensation of newly hired executives. In doing so, we develop (...) a novel theoretical approach based on an integration of stakeholder theory and human capital theory, suggesting a positive association between the initial compensation of executives and firm CSP strengths and concerns. It also suggests that the strength of this relationship varies between different executive roles (as a function of stakeholder-management responsibilities). We find support for this theoretical framework in a large sample of newly-hired executives employed by Standard & Poor 1500 firms. (shrink)

Roger Shepard's description of an abstract representational space defined by landmark objects and kinematic transformations between them fails to successfully capture the essence of the perceptual tasks he expects of it, such as object recognition. Ultimately, objects are recognized in the context of events. The dynamic nature of events is what determines the perceived kinematic behavior, and it is at the level of dynamics that events can be classified as types. [Shepard].

In this contribution, we will discuss the opportunities and challenges arising from memory institutions' need to redefine their archival strategies for contemporary collecting in a world of big data. We will reflect on this topic by critically examining the case study of the UK Web Archive, which is made up of the six UK Legal Deposit Libraries: the British Library, National Library of Scotland, National Library of Wales, Bodleian Libraries Oxford, Cambridge University Library and Trinity College Dublin. The UK Web (...) Archive aims to archive, preserve and give access to the UK web space. This is achieved through an annual domain crawl, first undertaken in 2013, in addition to more frequent crawls of key websites and specially curated collections which date back as far as 2005. These collections reflect important aspects of British culture and events that shape society. This commentary will explore a number of questions including: what heritage is captured and what heritage is instead neglected by the UK Web archive? What heritage is created in the form of new data and what are its properties? What are the ethical issues that memory institutions face when developing these web archiving practices? What transformations are required to overcome such challenges and what institutional futures can we envisage? (shrink)

According to the conceptualist view in the philosophy of perception, we must possess concepts for all the objects, properties and relations which feature in our perceptual experiences. In this paper, I investigate the possibility of developing an argument against the conceptualist view by appealing to the notion of attention. In Part One, I begin by setting out an apparently promising version of such an argument, a version which appeals to a link between attention and perceptual demonstrative concept possession. In Part (...) Two, however, I show how the conceptualist can challenge what appears to be the key premise of the argument, and I go on to describe, in Part Three, an important further difficulty which we face if we attempt to overcome this challenge in a particular way. My conclusion will be that the conceptualist's challenge to the argument is convincing and hence that the argument remains inconclusive. (shrink)

In 2012, and 2014 Libraries and Learning Services from the University of Auckland created two online courses to introduce students to the concept of academic integrity and its associated values and expectations. The challenge was to introduce the somewhat dry subject matter to a diverse group of students in an engaging way and to avoid large tracts of text that were difficult to comprehend. Initial research undertaken by the development team suggested that visually representing bodies of text was an effective (...) way of communicating with the target audience. Dual coding theory, multimodal instructional design and cognitive load theories provided a framework for the learning design approach taken by the design team who ultimately selected Richard Mayer’s (2001) Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning as a basis for designing the two courses. This paper outlines how the two courses were designed in accordance principles outlined in Mayer’s theory and how the design team integrated seven of Mayer’s twelve principles to create dynamic, visual and aural elements such as animations, narrations and text to engage learners in a more meaningful learning process. (shrink)

In Part 1, I contend (using Coriolanus as my mouthpiece) that Keeley and Clarke have failed to show that there is anything intellectually suspect about conspiracy theories per se. Conspiracy theorists need not commit the ‘fundamental attribution error’ there is no reason to suppose that all or most conspiracy theories constitute the cores of degenerating research programs, nor does situationism - a dubious doctrine in itself - lend any support to a systematic skepticism about conspiracy theories. In Part 2. I (...) argue (in propria persona) that the idea that there is something suspect about conspiracy theories is one of the most dangerous and idiotic superstitions to disgrace our political culture. (shrink)