There is a general tension between the individualised nature of current assessment practices in higher education and a collaborative approach to learning. This results in many dilemmas for educators as they try to balance academic integrity concerns and student preferences with social or collaborative assessment practices, including peer assessment, group assignments and direct assessment of teamwork or collaboration. This paper argues that focussing on singular assessment tasks or experiences tends to lead to marginal effects. Rather, we suggest that the collaborative (...) must be normalised within course structures: experiences of groupwork, peer learning and other forms of working with others should be commonplace and expected. We look to curricula to provide students with assessable tasks from many rich collaborative experiences, avoid issues of perceived and actual inequity and allow for risk and possible failure. We suggest that grading as presently enacted inhibits collaborative processes and that trust needs to be recognised as central and core to collaborative approaches. The challenges of assessing social and collaborative learning require holistic course wide attention that communicates to both students and colleagues that learning necessarily goes beyond the individual. (shrink)

In the article, we propose to frame organizational learning as inquiry into and resolving tensions arising from the performance of different commitments to work and its organizing. We expand learning as participation with its focus upon identity and membership to the development of work and the experiences and knowledge of its participants. The proposal is inspired by pragmatist philosophy both through its emphasis on learning as ascribing meaning to experience and its sociological version, symbolic interactionism with its emphasis on work (...) and its organizing in social arenas/worlds. We show that a pragmatist learning theory, founded on principles of non-dualistic, non-hierarchy, and a non-linear view on relations, thinking and practice aligns well with the proposed refurbished learning approach via complexity theory in this special issue. Further, we propose that Dewey’s pragmatism adds an important feature to a refurbished theory of learning in organizations by emphasizing the tensional and uncertain aspects of situations as contextual wholes that for a pragmatist learning theory constitute the analytical point of departure. (shrink)

Hager and Beckett assert that a ‘characteristic feature of … assorted co-present groups is that their processes and outputs are marked by the full gamut of human experiences involved in their functioning’. My paper endorses and further develops this claim. I begin by expanding on their emphasis upon the priority of relations in terms of Dewey and Bentley’s transactionalism and Buddhist dependent co-origination and emptiness. Next, I emphasize the importance of embodied perspectives in acquiring meaning and transforming the world. Here, (...) too, we will find surprising Buddhist connections. Finally, I examine the primacy of practice: how we acquire our minds and selves by participating in shared social practices. This stance is shared by philosophers as diverse as Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Dewey. (shrink)

Like other health care practices, the increasing complexity in dentistry signals the need for a reconceptualisation of dentist professional learning. Professional dental bodies, at large, still privilege formal continuing professional development (CPD) provisions focusing on off-the-job activities despite growing evidence that much invaluable learning occurs through and at work. In exploring the two common dentist CPD approaches, this article critiques the narrow conceptions of learning inscribed in these frameworks, which are individualistic and acquisition oriented. Drawing on a vignette of dentists’ (...) professional practice at work, this paper argues for a shift in discussion from an emphasis on which CPD models work best to what counts as professional learning for dentists. To flesh out these arguments, the paper proposes using an innovative conceptual approach through the lens of ‘complexity thinking’ and the concept of ‘co-present group’. Through this lens, the reframing of thinking brings out two key features of learning: Emergent learning cannot be specified in advance and much significant learning is typically beyond an individual’s learning. Given the learning potentials of group practice and group learning, the paper concludes with suggestions to support dentists’ lifelong learning at work. (shrink)

In a spirit of collegial support, this paper argues that Beckett and Hager’s theoretical justification and empirical exemplifications do not do full justice to the complexity of group or team learning. We firstly reaffirm our support for the theoretical argument Becket and Hager make, though expressing some reservations about Complexity Theory, to explain the taken-for-granted assumptions that learning by an individual is the paradigm case of learning and that context plays a minimal role in this process. Drawing on our joint (...) and separate work, we demonstrate that Becket and Hager’s argument is less radical than it may initially seem because it is predicated on: (i) cognitive-bounded rather than “distributed” or “extended” conception of mind; (ii) material rather than a “immaterial” conception of activity; and (iii) co-present rather than a “fractional” or “connective” conception of ontology. Despite making this critique, we conclude by making the case that we are adding further substance to Becket and Hager’s overarching argument and, in doing so, encouraging them to be more radical about how they conceptualise the complexity of learning. (shrink)

This Special Issue addresses a range of educational issues linked to main themes from our 2019 book The Emergence of Complexity: Rethinking Education as a Social Science. This book elaborated two major theses that raise fundamental questions for philosophy of education. First, that learning by groups is typically a distinctive kind of learning that is not reducible to learning by individuals. Second, that a degree of holism, as against a focus on individuals, is essential for achieving a convincing understanding of (...) this distinctive type of group learning. These two theses are of direct interest to philosophy of education since they challenges the resources of received theories of learning. Yet this kind of group learning characterises the vast bulk of human learning situations that occur outside of formal education systems. In this Special Issue introductory article we, firstly, introduce some basic principles of complexity theory, and demonstrate that, together with the concept of a ‘co-present group’ (between 2 and about 12 individuals), these ideas offer develop novel understandings of the distinctive learning that occurs within such groups. Secondly, we outline and illustrate with further examples the main features of co-present groups. Thirdly, we consolidate our conceptual work by showing five ways in which our account of group learning serves to refurbish the concept of ‘learning’. (shrink)

This Special Issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory originated from a suggestion by the late Professor Jim Walker that the main themes of our 2019 book were ripe for further exploration, not on...

Small human complex systems, here called co-present groups, are found across all fields of human social life. Complexity thinking suggests why this is so: that these groups, irrespective of formal content, have a meta-function of providing maximum complexity to manage the indeterminacy or uncertainty that characterises the most complex of human social issues. This claim depends on an understanding of the functioning of these groups as being characterised by irreducibly complex intersubjective (person to person) relations, which are involved in the (...) processing of raw human experience (‘affective processing’), to produce shared meaningfulness. An example of the use of co-present groups in medical continuing professional development (CPD) is given. (shrink)

In the post-Apartheid era South Africa’s universities have faced serious questions about the quality of their student learning in the face of near impossible challenges. The University of Cape Town, widely seen as the country’s leading higher education institution, has shown remarkable resilience, however, in the range of initiatives it has launched to support and enhance student learning. These initiatives, designed with a common purpose, are of course intended to work together so that their effects might be compounded and realized (...) in enhanced student learning outcomes. Drawing substantially on the power of compounding (which is itself redolent of the claim made by complexity theory that relations and emergence are crucial concepts), complexity theory offers unique insights into how and why things change – and also into how and why things remain largely the same or inexorably grind towards failure. The networked initiatives undertaken by the University of Cape Town constitute a case of learning refurbishment that is also well explained and understood in terms of complexity theory. This paper draws on concepts from complexity theory both to understand how learning might be enhanced in higher education institutions in severely straitened circumstances and to offer insights for education leaders and policy-makers in this domain. (shrink)

This paper examines the learning and performance of the air traffic control (ATC) work domain. This domain was chosen because it embodies features that represent future work for many other industries (e.g., information service provision mediated by information technologies; a high reliance on communication skills and collaborative work; increasing complexity and intensity of the work activity), within an organisational context undergoing considerable change. In ATC work learning occurs formally as part of accredited training and informally, as part of everyday practice. (...) In this way learning and experience of ATC work shapes – and is shaped by – the way work is organised, which includes the divisions of labour and technological artefacts. ATC work is experienced temporally, complexly, through affect and socially. Controllers learn to use a variety of socio-material resources which include embodiment and artefacts to undertake the work. In so doing the article demonstrates the ways in which learning and performance is not just a cognitive undertaking, but one that draws on embodiment to achieve what here is called “interdependent sentience”. This involves using all their senses to gain an awareness of problems as they emerge to collectively accomplish a seamless air traffic flow in a complex interdependent socio-technical system. (shrink)

This paper focuses on learning that takes place outside formal classrooms within groups or teams. Based on the conceptual framework of informal learning, adult learning and lifelong learning, it investigates how two contrasting groups of adult learners in Vietnam, Mekong doctors and Hanoi hairdressers, learn, interact, and collaborate through their informal learning experiences in the workplace. These are two ‘co-present groups’ or two ‘complex systems’. For Vietnamese learners, the challenges of Confucian heritage culture, or the lack of awareness of cultural (...) differences, created obstacles to collaboration and participation. The contribution to this Special Issue argues that co-present group learning applies well to non-Western Confucius-based cultures and other countries with similar values, despite this lack of awareness of cultural differences. (shrink)

In many ways, Ron Barnett’s academic oeuvre is unique. Without a doubt, he is one of the (if not the) most central founding academics of the research field ‘the philosophy of higher education’, whi...

A testimony to what I perceive to be the accomplishments of Dahlbeck’s (2021) Spinoza: Fiction and Manipulation in Civic Education is that, as I turn the over the last page, contemplating the total...

This essay analyzes the educational significance of the metaphysical novel, that is, how it can be used to educate ourselves and our students. Mordechai Gordon begins by describing the nature of the metaphysical novel while contrasting it to “pure” philosophy and theory building. Gordon also situates Beauvoir’s insights in the broader context of the ongoing conversation on philosophy and literature. In the next part, he examines Beauvoir’s philosophy of lived experience and compare her philosophical approach to more traditional phenomenological theories. (...) From the analysis of Beauvoir’s philosophy of lived experience, Gordon turns to explore the role that ambiguity, contingency, and complexity play in helping us make sense of people’s lives while drawing on examples from several metaphysical novels to illustrate these notions. He concludes this essay by reflecting on the question: what can the study of metaphysical novels bring to philosophy of education? (shrink)

Three decades ago, the term Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) entered educational discourse. However, it is important to note that the concept of ‘ESD’ did not emerge from scholarly debates on education, rather as a tool to carry forward the agenda of sustainable development. As a result, it has been conceptualized in many different ways. This article is an attempt to further the debate on ESD-conceptualization. The paper discusses connections between constructivism, transformative learning, and Erich Fromm’s idea of ‘to be’ (...) and argues that the focus of ESD needs to change from narrow behavioural outcomes to emancipating learners to ask critical questions, decide (without the influence of anonymous authority of capitalism) and engage in activities that allows them to develop an authentic relationship with their world. The article suggests that consistent opportunities (inside and outside the classroom) to reflect and question the ‘having’ mode and taking steps towards ‘being’ mode will address the problem of ‘otherness’ and contribute towards a more sustainable world. (shrink)

Modern schooling in Korea, which was officially established by law in 1949, is well known for its function as an engine of economic success in modern Korea. Although this fact seems to be world-wid...

The purpose of this study is to conceptualize and theorize the circulation-chain model as an education policy implementation framework systematically. The circular-chain education policy implementation process and effect evaluation analysis model are a theoretical innovation model and practical exploration path to explore the implementation and effect evaluation of education policies according to the new problems and trends in the implementation of education policies. In particular, the connotation, the theoretical basis, the elements, the value, and the objective and significance of the (...) circulation-chain education policy implementation model have been explored and analyzed in this study. (shrink)

What does it mean to teach, live, and imagine one’s futures amidst a global pandemic? How to respond to the reality of unequal and overlapping crises, COVID-19 being one of them? Can alternative understandings of time help us create a more just post-pandemic university? Drawing on environmental humanities, disaster and critical time studies, in conversation with qualitative data, this article theorizes a ‘pedagogy of scale’: a practical and conceptual centering on multiple temporalities and diverse interpretative frames. The analysis argues for (...) the need to attend to overlapping, non-linear, and changeable scales of time, reference, and meaning that students draw on in order to make sense of crises: every crisis, even as unprecedented as COVID-19, is embedded in environmental processes, long-term vulnerabilities and injustices. These overlooked and overlapping scales interweave personal, planetary, and theological notions of time—from ecological deep time to the divine time—meaning, and self. In its focus on asynchronicity, overlap and multiplicity, the analysis extends current theorizations of temporality and crisis in higher education, challenges paradigms of mastery, advocates for epistemic plurality, and embraces decolonial notions of human subjectivity, providing a much-needed critical model for the post-pandemic university. (shrink)

Shadow education, or supplementary private tutoring, has expanded to become a multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide, capitalising on the desires of parents and their children to succeed and excel in education. In doing so, shadow education draws upon and reproduces cultural capital represented by knowledge, skills and educational credentials and symbolic capital constituted in the prestige, privilege and legitimacy of educational achievement. The study on which this article is based adopts a critical discourse analytic approach to examine the websites of five leading (...) private tuition centres in Singapore as seen through the lens of Bourdieu’s concept of capital. The aim is to identify specific forms of cultural capital, examine how they are harnessed for promotional purposes, and show how this reflects and reproduces the forms and representations of educational achievement and success valued in Singapore. Findings offer a deeper understanding of the marketing discourse of shadow education that pivots on the quality of private tutors, success beyond examinations and school, and concrete representations of social distinction and achievement. More significantly, the study contributes to research situated at the nexus of shadow education and Bourdieu’s concept of capital to shed light on how shadow education reflects and magnifies broader socio-cultural orientations and socio-economic structures. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to engage in a critical review of Roberto Esposito’s biopolitical account by including a thoroughgoing interrogation of racism and white supremacy through the lens of Black affect studies. It is argued that both white supremacy studies and Esposito’s framework could work side-by-side in ways that are productive for affirmative educational biopolitics. In particular, the analysis highlights two insights: first, engagement with white supremacy as a biopolitical category—in particular, white supremacy as an affective embodiment—is essential (...) for the ability of education to interrogate the racialization of Black bodies; and, second, attentiveness to Black affect in biopolitical accounts is crucial for the decentering of white supremacy in education. These insights broaden the conceptual parameters of educational biopolitics by foregrounding the affective biopower of racism and white supremacy as central to affirmative educational biopolitics. (shrink)

In this article, I will try to elucidate the relevance of Deleuze and Guattari’s approaches in the philosophy of education, along the lines of the Deleuzean pedagogy of ‘do with me’ and the absence of pre-established rules for learning or methodological anarchism. To do so, I will consider three important milestones in Deleuze and Guattari’s thought: (i) antihumanism as the matrix of a pedagogy of generosity, (ii) the primacy of functioning over meaning as a vindication of practical learning versus rote (...) learning, (iii) the concepts of ‘deterritorialisation-reterritorialisation’ as the unlearning required by all true learning. (shrink)

In this experimental piece of writing I want to think about the pedagogy of contact and the plight of the hikikomori or social recluse in Japan. I am interested in exploring how the hikikomori practices a kind of contactlessness or what I will call a deadly ipseity of desire. What does it mean to resist contact, to be without contact, to be without desire? What does it mean to risk contact, to risk being tactile with the other, to risk affirming (...) one’s desires? I want to generate a discussion about what has happened to desire, to its promise and possibility and why it is so difficult to anticipate or forecast what is to come. For me the BwO of hikikomori is the ruin of desire, the collapse of desire, a disaster of desire. I am pursuing a line of thought which highlights the loss of the possibility of processual schizophrenic breakthrough and in its place the becoming-autistic of the self, the perilous breakdown of the self. (shrink)

Here, I wish to pursue an analysis of the potential link between the thinkers Félix Guattari and Bernard Stiegler as I see in both thinkers a profound rumination of the question of therapeutic care and curation at the institutional level. My concern is with the institutional object and its deadly repetitions. By and through agitating the coefficient of transversality, my argument is that this might problematize the dyadic and sometimes dysfunctional transindividual relationships between doctor and patient, teacher and pupil. My (...) concern is with the passage from the machinic objet petit ‘a’ in Lacan to Winnicott’s transitional object (objet petit ‘b’), and then beyond their functions to the institutional object itself which Guattari idiosyncratically calls the objet petit ‘c’. The rationale behind this move is to consider how the mediating third object needs to be recast in light of the poisonous and addictive nature of transitional objects such as smartphone technology. My point is that we must rethink the pharmacological possibility of the incorporation of the transitional object at the institutional level, which is to say, to understand the relationship between institutional objects such as the therapeutic club and the transitional object (digital technologies) in order to appreciate critically the toxic effects of the latter. Yet we also must understand the pharmacological or therapeutic aspects of the transitional object in itself, which is to say to understand its precise curative usage at the institutional level. (shrink)

The 50th anniversary of the publication of Anti-Oedipus in 1972, just a few years after the events in May-June 1968 in Paris, affords us the opportunity to reflect on the very simple question, what...

The Deleuze/Guattari text Anti-Oedipus burst onto the intellectual scene in 1972 as a radical new means to reconceptualise capitalism and its effects. At the heart of Anti-Oedipus and its analysis of capitalism is the concept of deterritorialization, and how it evacuates identities, culture, values, and, indeed, coherent thought itself, and it makes them susceptible to the equations and dynamics of capital flows. Anti-Oedipus presents the mechanisms with respect to how deterritorialization interacts with and to an extent liberates desire as ‘desiring-machines’. (...) This philosophy of education paper applies the workings of deterritorialization and desire from Anti-Oedipus to the dynamics of contemporary climate change education and the Anthropocene. As such, it posits this dynamic as being critical to present day approaches to the philosophy of education that wish to engage with capitalism and its effects, and at the same time positively enter the climate change debate. This paper suggests that understanding the matrix of deterritorialization, desire, climate change and learning, is perhaps the most important work that can be performed in the philosophy of education today and with respect to the future. (shrink)

Colonization has traditionally been studied as a monological and definitive period. This article seeks to problematize its analysis by means of the so-called ‘philosophy of desire’ and ‘rhizomatic thinking’, enriching them, in methodological terms, by the Actor-Network-Theory. In this vein, an alternative explanation of the colonial regime is offered by emphasizing how it assembled several worlds—Indigenous and Europeans—guided by a desiring-production that put originary accumulation before anything else; a standpoint that also enables a discussion about the network of colonial education (...) deployed in the Audiencia de Quito, which can be evidenced by a revision of some actions of the Augustinian order during the sixteenth century. In conclusion, education was deeply related to colonial assemblage that was continuously deterritorializing the ‘New World’ and the indigenous cultures that inhabited it. (shrink)

Deleuze and Guattari’s thought on remainders of childhood has proven its worth for educational theory and philosophy. However, thus far the discussion has not paid much attention to their notion of infantilization, which reveals a new dimension of their understanding of childhood. In this article, I develop both their concept of becoming-child and their concept of infantilization. This allows for thinking the remainders of childhood as inherently risky and ambiguous. I argue that this new understanding does not only paint a (...) more complete picture of Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of childhood, but is also better equipped to evade two dangers already identified in the Deleuze and Guattari scholarship: the romanticization of childhood on the one hand and the risky proximity of becoming-child to the acceleration of consumerist capitalism on the other hand. (shrink)

Animals are at work everywhere in education, yet existing nowhere: Education doesn’t know them beyond their instrumental use value; as animals-for-us (Pedersen, 2019a, p. 7; Wallin, 2014, p. 149; c...

The list of causalities for wars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is horrendous with an estimated 187 million people dying in the period 1900 to the present day, with approximately 75 mi...

In Anti-Oedipus, Deleuze and Guattari saw the difficulty of disentangling the question of Spinoza and, later, of Reich from the very limit of a system of representation by which they mean Oedipus. As A Thousand Plateaus would emphasize later, this limit brings out the question of the desire for democracy (‘democracies are majorities’). It desires Oedipus. In What Is Philosophy?, the limit question (Oedipus) gave way to the concept of a people to come. Fifty years since its publication, Anti-Oedipus remains (...) a relevant text (apropos of its ‘strategic adversary’ identified by Foucault) against the background of the social pathology of neofascism, populist politics, and the rise of the alt-right and neoconservative movements in recent years. The paper tries to locate this inflexion point where the desire for democracy modulates into the bi-univocal plasticity of Oedipal desire whose dangers people already seem to know. They have unmasked Oedipus’ double impasse and have escaped it. They no longer desire fascism; they desire fascists, neocons, and right-leaning mob rousers. Fifty years since its publication, Anti-Oedipus confronts a type of people who have learned to behave like the enemies of capitalism, too careful not to overload desire and destroy its bi-univocality, its great balancing act on the Body without organs. Incidentally, in ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control,’ Deleuze spoke about a people who know how to ‘surf’ replacing the ‘older sports.’ This applies to people who could become either schizoidal or regress to its more familiar inversion, the simulacra of Oedipus. (shrink)

This article briefly introduces and comments on the EPAT special issue ‘Philosophical reflections on modern education in Japan: strategies and prospects’ edited by Morimichi Kato. There are seven papers excluding the editor’s introductory essay. This special issue provides a unique approach to Japanese educational philosophy by offering and deliberating features and concepts peculiar to Japanese education.

Inequality and injustice in education have been viewed from the perspective of social justice. Since the emergence of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, social justice issues have attracted the attention of social and political philosophers. Theoretical consequences of social and political philosophy have been actively incorporated into the field of education. However, the issue of educational justice remains controversial and requires further philosophical consideration. To further philosophical consideration, this paper explores how the class or the classroom can generate space (...) and time for democracy, by focusing on the educational specificity of the classroom community, which is called ‘Gakkyu’ in Japanese. Social justice in education is not only a policy issue, but also a practical issue which should be tackled in the classroom. Rethinking the ways of democracy to face conflicts arising due to differences and equality of children in the classroom is an important method of bridging social justice and education. In this paper, the following question will be explored: how classroom democracy can be nurtured and the classroom community transformed into a democratic place where children from various background and experiences gather and learn from each other. (shrink)

This short essay makes a comment on the special issue on Japanese scholars’ responses to modern education in Japan edited by Morimichi Kato. The essay mainly focuses on the historical experiences shared by most of east Asian countries, the establishment of modern education of which tended to be historically forced by the external superpower: the experiences of feeling split between tradition and modernity. From the post-colonial perspective, the essay poses a challenging question of how the east Asian educators are to (...) purse a way of overcoming the split and reinventing their own subjectivities without falling into cultural essentialism or western universalism. (shrink)

This paper discusses what constitutes good teaching, taking as its cue the ‘aesthetic’ concept treated in everyday aesthetics and ‘internal good’ accounted by McIntyre. Teaching is viewed as practice, not merely as a basic action, due to its epistemological nature as everyday work. What everyday aesthetics teaches us is that even in the practice of teaching, sensory experiences such as comfort, familiarity, discomfort, ordinariness, etc. can be viewed as aesthetic experience. This kind of aesthetic experience constitute intuition supporting ’good teaching’ (...) that confirmed by examining Dreyfus et al. This ‘good teaching’ sensitivity is not specific to the individual practitioner, but is considered to be an ‘in-practice value (internal good?)’ (McIntyre) shared by the community of practice. From the aesthetic perspective, this value could be called ‘aesthetic value in practice’. In the teaching community of practice, ‘good teaching’ is both ‘beautiful teaching’ and ‘ethically good’ teaching. Teaching should be seen as a relational practice, and for this reason, The Ethico-Aesthetics of Teaching should be constructed. (shrink)

Although modern education is expected to solve social problems, it has brought about new problems. While theoretical critiques of education have not always been successful, with the transition to a data-driven society, education as a historical product is actually losing its efficacy. However, this does not mean that acquisition of knowledge and skills is becoming unnecessary. Prompted by the need to change the purpose of public education, we are forced to rethink the nature of education boldly. Competency-based education, as advocated (...) by the OECD, appears to have led to such rethinking; however, it is widely accepted as a revised version of modern education. If this trend continues, the contradiction between education and society will deepen further. To overcome this contradiction, we must change our view of education. With education and learning having an asymmetrical relationship to begin with, the clue to changing our view of education lies in re-examining our view of learning. A more comprehensive way of learning that has accompanied human history is attracting the attention of various disciplines. I present a redefined framework for learning that is inherent to humans, which I call the ecological view of learning, and explore an alternative to modern education, learning from the Japanese thought on ‘Manabi (learning).’. (shrink)

Education about catastrophes often begins with, and at times even focuses on, passing down catastrophe memories. For this education, catastrophe memories that are unique to the survivors must be translated carefully to ensure that they can be understood by successors who may not have experienced a catastrophe themselves. This study elaborates on the structure of the translation of these memories between the survivors and successors. It also focuses on the educational significance of the practical application of such translations. Section 1 (...) describes the purpose of this study while Section 2 examines the reasons for the emphasis on passing down survivors’ memories in catastrophe education. Section 3 focuses on telling-listening exchanges while passing down these memories and examines the structure and characteristics of such exchanges. It was identified that it is imperative that these exchanges should communicate the experience that cannot be translated in words or is incommensurable. If both, the survivors and successors, are truthful to the incommensurability, and if they both dare to experience it, they will be able to find the potential and possibilities to transform human lives and societies while weaving together the narratives of catastrophe memories that would be transformed and generated endlessly. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to examine the relationship between education and technological rationality from the perspective of the philosophy of education, and to show that while education is deeply related to technique, skills, or technology, it can never be reduced to technical knowledge, and that there are things in education that overflow technical knowledge. I will here ask why there is something in education that overflows technical knowledge — I will define it as knowledge of pathos — and (...) why it is necessary to redefine the meaning of education in terms of knowledge of pathos. In order to address this issue, I will first examine the relationship between technology and transcendence in the world of education in Kei Hachiya’s Education and Transcendence. Second, I will show that recent outstanding theoretical achievements of Japanese philosophers of education — Satoji Yano’s Education from the Perspectives of Gift and Exchange, Yasuo Imai’s Medial Perspective on Education, and Tsunemi Tanaka’s Clinical Theory of Human Becoming — are all located within the problematic area of ‘technology-pathos-education’. Finally, I would like to propose a ‘philosophy of education built on fragile parts’, with a view to redefining education through the knowledge of pathos, paying attention to the experience of pathei mathos and the opportunity of weakness in the philosophy of education. (shrink)

Against the prevailing outcomes-based education and the instrumentalization of education, a movement has arisen towards holistic education. This aims to go beyond objective measurement of the outcomes of education in order to treat the student as a whole person. In this paper, we shall examine some strands of education in Japan which in some way or another feature the idea of the whole person. This includes the tradition of clinical pedagogy, which originated in Kyoto University, Yukichi Shitahodo’s educational anthropology (Kyoiku-Ningengaku), (...) Kuniyoshi Obara’s Zenjin Education (the education of the whole person) and holistic education. Notwithstanding the fact that such education is benevolent in intention, it can be miseducative in some respects. In the light of this, and with some reference to criticism of the idea of the whole person, we shall point to an alternative vision of education of the whole person following Cavell’s Emersonian moral perfectionism – a perfectionism that is thoroughly anti-foundationalist and that transcends self-entrapment in circulatory discourse on the whole. In critical dialogue between the rich traditions of Japanese thought and the critical voice of liberalism raised from within the West, we hope to find a more nuanced answer to the question of how being a whole might make sense. (shrink)

This paper studies the theory and practice of Minna in Manabi, as the Japanese concept of learning from the perspective of moral education. The Japanese word Minna, which means “all” or “everyone,” plays an important role in Manabi. The word “Minna” is often found in textbooks used in moral education classes, and great value is placed on “thinking about everyone.” Minna, a component of Manabi, not only makes the self (the learner) nothing and selfless, but also makes it possible to (...) enter all, everyone, and the world. This may create possibilities for inclusiveness, reciprocal harmony, hospitality, solidarity, and cooperativeness. This Manabi of “thinking about everyone” can be found in moral classes and in all aspects of learning (educational) activities in Japanese schools. Among them, in addition to being a traditional Buddhist practice dealing with Nothingness and Selflessness, Souji (cleaning time) is also very important in schools as a Japanese moral practice of “thinking about everyone.” The moral concepts developed in the West, such as democracy, community, solidarity, engagement, and citizenship, are not only realized through the establishment of the individual, self-realization, and perfection of personality, but by “thinking about everyone,” as expressed in Nothingness, Selflessness, and Minna. (shrink)

This paper attempts to reinterpret asylum theory (1954) propounded by Ortwin Henssler (1923–2017) as a free-space theory of education, as a way of grasping the problematic nature of ‘pedagogical protection.’ The theoretical potential of Henssler’s thought has been more appreciated, accepted, and developed in Japan than in his native Germany. First, I outline Henssler’s theory of asylum and show how his theory has been received and developed in Japan, especially in the fields of historical researches. Secondly, I discuss the possibility (...) of reading Henssler’s thought of asylum as a theory of ‘pedagogical protection.’ Thirdly, I consider whether it is possible to interpret ‘free space’ in education based on the model of asylum. Finally, I delineate some prospects for and challenges involved in connecting the theory of asylum to the theory of education. (shrink)

Man [sic.] follows the earth, earth follows the heaven, heaven follows the Tao and the Tao follows nature.– Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)Taoism, as an ancient traditional Chinese philosophy, not only prof...

Reimagining the call to teach: A witness to teachers and teaching, by David T. Hansen, Teachers College Press, 2021, 192 pp., USD29.95 (pbk), ISBN 978-0807765463David Hansen and the call the teach:...

We now live in a world where digital technology is no longer ‘separate, virtual, [or] “other” to a ‘natural’ human and social life’ (Jandrić et al., 2018, p. 893). Contemporary information and comm...

In this paper, I explore German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s conception of the art of acting, and his views on the new actor’s conduct towards their craft, as a pedagogical model for Brechts’ broader view on how we should live our lives. Drawing on his key writings – most importantly, his famous street scene essay – I will show that Brecht’s conception of the theory-practice connection in his approach to actor training/acting bears some deeper insight into Brecht’s conception of the art (...) of living a flourishing life. The new actor is called to develop a conduct of careful observation and imitation of human action, one that is marked by the pleasure and lightness of exploring the contradictory workings of the social world. By placing the actor’s craft at the heart of his educational philosophy, Brecht invites us (the audience) into the theatre as a pedagogical space. Here, not unlike Brecht’s actors, we are summoned to hone our ability to boldly engage with a complex world of human actions and ideas. Brecht maintains that there resides an intellectual as well as sensual delight in being challenged to not simply accept theatre’s presentations as ‘truth’; instead, we are to learn to ‘weigh up’, ‘test’, and ‘improvise’ joyfully with theatre’s proposed ideas and practices—so that we may find out if they serve, or hinder, the creation of a larger flourishing life (beyond the theatre): a life in which we can move together, pleasurably. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. One is to draw a distinction between two types of trust. The other is to argue for its applicability in academic discourse on educational policies. One of the two types of trust is ethical trust that rests on beliefs about others’ ethical virtues. The other is institutional trust that typically depends on law enforcement and economic incentives. Ideas about a social order based primarily on institutional trust have haunted political thought since the time of Thomas (...) Hobbes. Such ideas may seem realistic if we focus on business relations, where conformity to contractual terms suffices to meet the needs of all concerned. Intimate relationships rely more on ethical trust. In the first half of the paper the difference between these two types of trust is explained. In the final sections it is argued that successful schoolwork depends on ethical trust and that measures to make schools more reliable in the institutional sense, through supervision and accountability, need to be applied with caution. Such measures can undermine ethical trust because they, at least implicitly, question the moral integrity of teachers and school-heads. (shrink)

This article provides a conceptual clarification of the complementary relationship between teachers’ research literacy and their role-based agency. In many countries, teachers are increasingly expected to actively use and develop research. However, without taking account of teachers’ distinct conditions of agency, this expectation may weaken rather than strengthen the profession. Top-down mechanisms that push teachers to follow rigid evidence-based procedures diminish their professional autonomy. At the same time, conceptual research on teachers’ agency has developed new tools for promoting research literacy (...) in a way that is conducive to professional autonomy. By conceptualizing research literacy as shaped by polyphonic agency, the article clarifies this field to support future teachers in terms of teacher education and working life. The article also articulates strategies for enhancing agency, such as raising awareness of the relevant standards, responding to accountability mechanisms, and developing teacher education programs. (shrink)

Since the Korean Philosophy of Education Society was established in 1964, the question regarding the nature of Philosophy of Education as a modern discipline has always been a vexing question to mo...

This study explores to conceptualize and practicalize three-dimensional interaction model of internationalization from China’s higher education perspective. Applying documentary analysis, a qualitative method, and interviews, 15 international administrative staff and directors from eight sampled local universities were interviewed to present in-depth insights into the internationalization of the local higher education system in Beijing. The major findings are that strategic positioning in terms of the internationalization of local universities should be based on the following: top-level design of a national macro internationalization (...) strategy; a focus on the internal need for internationalization at the regional level; and understanding the distinctive advantages of internationalization at the local level. The choices for the internationalization of local universities should focus on the absolute advantages of the ‘scale’ of resources and rationally expand the relative advantages concerning the ‘structure’ of resources. Implementation of the strategy for internationalization of local universities should actively build on the competitive advantage of ‘strategic resource integration’. In conclusion, the need to combine national needs with regional development, the importance of combining connotation and capacity building, and of adhering to a combination of a top-level layout or design and local practice are explored and summarized. Finally, both the theoretical contribution and practical implications of this study are discussed. (shrink)

Therapeutic translations of the microbiome-gut-brain (MGB) axis are reconstructing the educational subject in a manner amenable to Foucauldian analysis. Yet, at the same time, under the sway of MGB research social scientists are taking a biosocial turn that threatens the integrity of Foucault’s historicizing philosophical project. Meeting that challenge head-on, this article argues that the MGB axis augments the neurobiological constitution of the educational subject by means of a dietetic mode of subjectivation. Absent a pedagogical element, there is a hollowness (...) to critical academics’ claims that holobiontic self-conceptions springing from the axis can elicit a resistant subjectivity. Though wild pedagogies might inform a resistant tactics of the self, contemporary self-technologies are – as Foucault has taught us – a pale shadow of the ancient Greek conception of dietetics as an holistic, embodied and ensouled practice. At the intersection between the disciplinary apparatuses of criminology and education, therefore, the MGB-driven biosocial turn unambiguously reinforces the social control function of schooling. (shrink)

This study explores the educational meaning of Songdok in traditional Korean education. Songdok refers to the act of memorizing text completely while reading it aloud; however, in traditional Korean education, it used to symbolize ‘learning’ itself. Historically, Songdok was regarded in extreme terms: being criticized as low-level memorization or encouraged as a religious ritual. In the Goryeo Dynasty, when civil service exams were introduced, Songdok was performed to memorize Confucian textbooks solely for passing the exam. However, its status changed in (...) the mid-1600s because of an educational reform movement by Neo-Confucian fundamentalists. Given the widespread perception in South Korea that ‘imitating a saint is a way of learning’, Songdok has been elevated as part of moral consciousness. Here, we discuss how Songdok takes on two opposing educational objectives: One is passing the exam, and the other is imitating a saint. An examination of Songdok provides insightful perspectives on Korean education, especially regarding sluggish moral education. (shrink)