Just as Dewey argued during the industrial revolution, from the 1890s–1930s, and Martin argued in the 1960s–1990s with our “second wave” working revolution : today’s times are out of joint, potentially dangerous conflicts exist, and teachers have some responsibility in making things right. We are in another social revolution, as work is changing significantly again, due to advances in technology. Let’s call these current changes in work the technology revolution. Again, we need to rethink our school structures, curriculum, and pedagogy. (...) In an effort to contribute to that process, I direct our attention to the need to redefine work, and re/examine the connections between work and education in this paper. (shrink)

Democracies Always in the Making develops Barbara Thayer-Bacon’s relational and pluralistic democratic theory, as well as translates that socio-political philosophical theory into educational theory and recommendations for school reform in American public schools. Democracy is a goal, an ideal which we must continually strive for that can guide us in our decision-making, as we continue to live in a world that is unpredictable, flawed, and limited in terms of its resources.

The author describes a published symposium which debated Is Critical Thinking Biased? The symposium meant to address concerns about critical thinking that are being expressed by feminist and postmodern scholars. However, through the author's critique, and the symposium respondent's, we learn the participants ended up begging the question of bias. The author maintains that the belief that critical thinking is unbiased is based on an assumption that knowers can be separated from what is known. She argues that critical thinking is (...) a tool which has no life of its own, it only has meaning and purpose when fallible, biased people use it (weak sense bias). She challenges the idea of a transcendental epistemological perspective, thus all knowledge is provisional and perspectival (strong sense bias). The author begins to redescribe a transformed critical thinking as constructive thinking. (shrink)

This article explores pragmatism's associationwith relativism, not to rescue it fromrelativism but rather to highlight how aspectsof the classic pragmatists' positions supportqualified relativism. I do so in an effort tohelp restore ``relativism'' as a meaningfulconcept that is nuanced and complex, ratherthan naive and vulgar, as it is regularlyportrayed by more traditional philosophers. This nuanced relativism I call qualifiedrelativism. Qualified relativists insist thatall inquiry are affected by philosophicalassumptions which are culturally bound, andthat all inquirers are situated knowers who areculturally bound as (...) well. However, we cancompensate for our cultural embeddedness byopening our horizons and including others inour conversations. I connect the classicpragmatist points to current feministepistemological work and show that qualifiedrelativists (pragmatists, feminists, andpostmodernists) can claim roots to theirpositions in Peirce, James, and Dewey, some ofthe very scholars others turn to for theirpragmatic realism and their nonvulgar absolutism. (shrink)

This article explores the centralpragmatist and feminist philosophical assumption thatknowers can not be separated from what is known, thatthere is a dialectical relationship between socialbeings and ideas that is dynamic, flexible, andreciprocal. The author seeks a closer examination ofconstructive thinking in relation to the practice ofthinking constructively within social communities. She discusses social communities that constructknowledge as radical democratic communitiesalways-in-the-making, and the skills of communicatingand relating which help knowers be able to activelyparticipate in the construction of knowledge. Giventhe fallibility of (...) the pluralistic subjects, she showsthe importance of addressing cultural influences andpolitical power in theories about thinking. Sheargues for the value of embracing pluralistic anddemocratic commitments on epistemological grounds aswell as moral grounds. (shrink)

Collection of important essays by feminist scholars from cultural studies, philosophy of education, curriculum theory, and women’s studies. Education Feminism is a revised and updated version of Lynda Stone’s out-of-print anthology, The Education Feminism Reader. The text is intended as a course text and provides students a foundational base in feminist theories in education. The classics section is comprised of the readings that students have most responded to in classes. The contemporary readings section demonstrates how the third-wave feminist criticism of (...) the 1990s has an impact on today’s feminist work. Both of these sections address critical multicultural educational issues and have an inclusive, diverse selection of feminist scholars who bring race, class, sexual orientation, religious practices, and colonial/postcolonial perspectives to bear on their work. The individual essays are concise and well written and arranged in such a way that it is easy for instructors to assign them around themes of their own choosing. “The incredible value of this fine collection is that it demonstrates what it means to critically consider, interrogate, and challenge historic and contemporary ideas regarding educational equity while using these very ideas to imagine new possibilities. It will serve as an indispensable resource in graduate classrooms where students can use the text to ground and forward explorations of the necessarily complex considerations of equity in education today.” — Adela C. Licona, coeditor of Feminist Pedagogy: Looking Back to Move Forward. (shrink)

This book shows readers how philosophy of education relates to and influences classroom practice. The book presents the authors' own philosophy of education and places it in the context of a broad range of other classic and contemporary perspectives. Within each chapter the theory is related to schools and classrooms as they really exist including issues and problems that teachers, parents, students, and administrators face daily. The book is easily accessible in approach, cutting-edge in its multicultural and feminist focus, and (...) rich in its development of philosophical issues. (shrink)

In A Pluralistic Universe, James argues that the world we experience is more than we can describe. Our theories are incomplete, open, and imperfect. Concepts function to try to shape, organize, and describe this open, flowing universe, while the universe continually escapes beyond our artificial boundaries. For James and myself, the universe is unfinished, a “primal stuff” or “pure experience.” However, James starts with parts and moves to wholes, and I want to start from wholes and move to parts and (...) back to wholes again. This is an issue between us I further consider, for while he describes himself as a radical empiricist, emphasizing the parts, my descriptions are in terms of w/holism. I use this opportunity to explore James’s contributions to my metaphor of “pure experience” as being like an infinite Ocean and the fishing nets we create represent our ontologies and epistemologies that help us catch up our experiences and give them meaning. I also make the case for why a better understanding of ontology matters for us as educators, using Maria Montessori’s curriculum and instruction design, Dinè Primary School, and Cajete’s theology of place and culturally based science as examples of relational fishing nets we could be using to teach our children. (shrink)

I write this short essay in response to Peirce, as a feminist, pragmatist, and cultural studies scholar, in the hope that it will help to bring feminism and pragmatism together. I suggest that Peirce offers marginalized and colonized people a way to argue for the importance of their input, with his theory of fallibilism, even if he still claims a position of privilege. He also offers assistance through his concept of “a community of inquirers.” It is curious that Peirce’s definition (...) of a university argues for a split between theory and practice that his earlier work sought to heal. Peirce opened a door to help diverse scholars be able to enter the university, and find a way to address issues of power, with his youthful connecting of theory to practice, that his more senior position draws our attention away from and seeks to hold off. Fortunately, it is too late. Peirce’s youthful pragmatism has been developed in important ways by other scholars and now serves as an example of a way to do philosophy that does connect theory to practice and does seek to address real problems in diverse peoples lives, and help to find solutions that effect change. (shrink)

This essay offers a critical analysis of Locke's and Rousseau's basic assumptions upon which classical liberalism is built: rationalism, universalism, and individualism. I then describe an alternative starting place for democracy with a transactional view of individuals-in-relation-to-others. I then offer specific educational examples to help me sketch two themes that illustrate problems with classical liberalism and how a transactional democracy-always-in-the-making can help to solve these problems.

My article aims to develop a relational, pluralistic political theory that moves beyond standard theories of liberal democracy, and to consider how such a theory translates into our public school settings. I use a narrative style argument to share stories that focus on homogeneity and diversity from my visit to a Japanese elementary school, as I consider, drawing on the work of Chantal Mouffe, the important role harmony and disagreement, and a tension between homogeneity and diversity, play in encouraging citizens (...) to contribute to their school and their larger communities in a democracy-always-in-the-making. I argue that there is much we can learn from Japanese educational practices. (shrink)

Thayer-Bacon tells her story in a conversational tone that traces her personal and professional roots as she describes various chapters of her life: first as a philosopher, how she became involved in education, and then how that involvement became a career as a philosopher of education, in a large teacher education program, and now at a research institution. She sketches her philosophical contributions, as a pragmatist, feminist, postmodernist, and cultural studies scholar, to philosophy, philosophy of education, and education.

In what follows, I focus on the partiality and fallibility of each of us as individuals, and explore what that means for us as epistemic agents. When we examine the tradition of Western European thought, we note that most epistemological theories assume individuals can know the answer, and are able to critique what is passed down to others as socially constructed knowledge. Many have made the argument that while humanity can be deceived, one individual can know, and therefore teach the (...) others about their deceptions and false beliefs. I argue that because we are embedded and embodied social beings who do not have transcendental, objective, "God's eye views" of the world in which we live, we need each other to help us be potential knowers able to make knowledge claims. Others help us become aware of our own situatedness and help us develop enlarged views. Rather than thinking that individual philosophers, credentialed experts in their field of study, know more and therefore have knowledge they can teach humanity, I argue that all of us, as members of humanity, have much that we can teach each other. My position is that it is only with the help of others that we are able to know anything. (shrink)

Thayer-Bacon uses this opportunity to further explore Rancière's ideas concerning equality as described in The Ignorant Schoolmaster and their connection to democracy, as he explains in Hatred of Democracy. For Rancière, intelligence and equality are synonymous terms, just as reason and will are synonymous terms. Rancière recommends the only way to really teach a student is by viewing the student as an equal. Thayer-Bacon learned to view students as equals through her experience as a Montessori teacher, and so she brings (...) Montessori into conversation with Rancière to further explore the idea of equality between teachers and students, as well as between citizens in a democracy. There are problems with both Rancière's perspective and Montessori's that feminist theory, in the form of a relational ontology and epistemology, can help us solve by finding our way out of the paradoxes of democracy and on to trusting our students, our future democratic citizens. (shrink)

: My project aims to develop a relational, pluralistic political theory that moves us beyond liberal democracy, and to consider how such a theory translates into our public school settings. In this essay I argue that Dewey offers us possibilities for moving beyond one key assumption of classical liberalism, individualism, with his theory of social transaction. I focus my discussion for this paper on Dewey's renascent liberal democracy. I move from a discussion of Dewey's liberal democratic theory to what a (...) relational, pluralistic democratic theory might look like, with Dewey's help. (shrink)

My task in Beyond Liberal Democracy in Schools was to develop a relational, pluralistic social political theory that moves beyond liberal democracy. I find Dewey is a key source to help us find our way out of liberal democracy’s assumptions and show us how to move on. He offers us the possibilities of moving beyond individualism, with his theory of social transaction and he shows us how to move beyond rationalism in his arguments for truths as warranted assertions. A transactional (...) description of selves-in-relation-with-others describes us as becoming individuals out of our social settings. At the same time that we are becoming individuals within a social setting, we are continually affecting that social setting. Individuals are not aggregates with separate boundaries that have no relation to one another. In fact, the ‘self’ is fictive, and contingent. Our ‘selves’ are multifarious and fractured, due to repressive forces imposed upon us by others as well as supportive forces offered to us by others. Others bind us and help us become free at the same time. The democratic theory I develop is a radical democratic theory that represents feminist and multicultural concerns. This theory is radical because of my efforts to present an anti-racist theory that critiques basic foundational-level assumptions embedded within both individualism and collectivism. The theory moves beyond modernism and critical theory as it seeks to address postmodern concerns of power and exclusionary practice without appealing to grand narratives such as Reason, the Scientific Method, or Dialogue. I follow Dewey’s social transactional lead and describe our world as one that is pluralistic, relational, and in process as we continually contribute to the on-going constructing of knowing. I argue, in agreement with Dewey , that a democracy is a mode of associated living, not just a view of political democracy, and that it needs to be struggled for on all fronts, with all our social institutions, including: political, economic, educational, scientific, artistic, religious, and familial. This comprehensive view of democracy is consistent with the transactional relational assumption I describe, for it recognizes that social institutions are no more autonomous and separate from each other than individuals are separate from each other. For this essay, I explore education’s role in helping us understand how connected we all are to each other, moving us closer to living in a world we may someday call a democracy. (shrink)

This issue marks the beginning of a new editor-in-chief for Studies in Philosophy and Education . I am excited to begin my tenure in this role, and to continue developing the long-standing strength and quality of this journal, which enjoys a 54-year history of continual support from editors in the fields of philosophy, philosophy of education, social science, and educational policy, in support of addressing philosophical, theoretical, normative and conceptual problems and issues in educational research, policy and practice.Let me introduce (...) myself a little. I am a “military brat” who grew up on USA military bases around the world during the Cold War, the 1960s civil rights movement, the 2nd wave of the feminist movement, and the Viet Nam War, all of which greatly affected me. I am a former Montessori elementary teacher, mother of four very talented adult children and grandmother of two adorable granddaughters.I am a full professor, who worked in undergraduate teacher education for .. (shrink)