The general discourse on education stresses either the teacher’s or the student’s position. This article aims to contribute to a relational theory of teaching by discussing three significant concepts of teaching from the standpoint of Martin Buber’s relational philosophy. Feldman suggests that teaching implies being human in a particular way and in a particular context; Kelchtermans shows that a teacher’s ‘personal interpretative framework’ plays a crucial role in teaching and is constantly modified through interactions; Biesta defines the essence of teaching (...) in terms of the relation between the teacher’s address and the student’s personal response. Although they all contribute to the relational theory of teaching, they also seem to neglect a vital dimension found in Buber’s philosophy – the exceptional moment when a teacher and a student turn to each other as ‘this particular other person’. As a supplement to the other concepts, this article outlines the concept of ‘teaching as a way of bonding’ and makes three suggestions: (1) bonding is a prerequisite for teaching; (2) there are qualitative differences between ‘social bonding’ and ‘relational bonding’; and (3) the teaching is ultimately best understandable in terms of ‘relational bonding’. (shrink)

psychiatric diagnoses such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is a rapidly growing and globally increasing phenomenon, not least in different educational contexts such as in family and in school. Children and youths labelled as ADHD are challenging normative claims in terms of nurturing and education, whereas those labelled as ADHD are considered a risk for society to handle. The dominant paradigm regarding ADHD is biomedical, where different levels of attention and activity-impulsivity are perceived as neurobiological dys/functions within the brain best (...) managed by means of an individual diagnosis and instrumental pedagogy. The majority of those labelled as having ADHD encounter a dominant educational model in the form of what is referred to in this article as neurobehaviorism, which is based on onto-epistemological violence. As opposed to this act of violence against being—and against the psychiatrized subject—a less violent educational model is proposed, based on French philosopher Alain Badiou’s ontological examination of being and his concept of love as a truth procedure. In terms of the latter, the focus is on the potential of the encounter as a ‘Two scene of love’. Here, the encounter is a place where it is possible to create new truths and subjects, instead of taking the individual diagnosis as an axiom which only leads to individuals having fixed identities codified in a hierarchical order. This argument is drawn from the ‘mathematical’ formula 1 + 1 = ♥, which originates from an online forum for people who have come into contact with ADHD in one way or another. (shrink)

Higher education as a personal, intellectual and moral cultivation is a longstanding ideal that is constantly challenged by the view that education is merely the development of specific skills for vocational and personal success. Much research argues that the latter understanding makes education a technical affair that creates an egocentric emphasis on the individual students’ ambitions and desires. This article joins in the defence of the former ideal by enquiring into the moral dimensions of education. This is done by turning (...) to Iris Murdoch's idea of moral transformation, with a specific focus on the idea of unselfing. The main argument is that unselfing is a transformative process characterised by a growing attunement to the surrounding world, and the interconnectedness of goal and process is emphasised. Also, to gain a deeper understanding of what unselfing entails I turn to the idea of attention. It is understood as having a specific direction, outward from the egocentric, and as enabling unselfing. The article concludes by suggesting that unselfing can offer a challenge to education as it entails a moment of letting go of plans and narratives, and of surrendering to the influence of an existence that exceeds the individual. This moment is of relevance to education as it is crucial to the possibility of growing as a moral being as it cultivates a moral manner of relating to others. (shrink)

According to Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue, our being-in-the-world is to be conceived of as an existential dialogue. Elsewhere, I have conceptualized the teacher–student-relation accordingly (see Jons 2008), as a matter of calling and responding. The conceptualization rests on a secularised notion of vocation, paving way for discovering, articulating and discerning pedagogical relations in a new way. In the present article, I take this conceptualization one step further, applying the concept of calling and responding to the pedagogical relation between a (...) learner—might it be a student or a scholar—and the subject studied. The aim of the study is to afford a new way of conceiving the process as well as the outcome of learning. Thinking learning within the framework of calling and responding means understanding the learner and the subject as addressing and responding to each other. This means that predicaments of the subject—such as the truths that the subject holds and the anomalies it suffers from—address the learner in e g lectures, readings, theories, assignments, challenging the knowledge of the learner and in responding to this address, the learner in turn challenges the truths of the subject. By paying heed to, responding responsibly and challenging each other, the outcome of learning becomes a twofold phenomenon, namely both the learner and the subject reconstituting themselves, enlarged by the contribution of each other’s mode of coming-into-presence. (shrink)