This article shares reflections from members of the community of philosophers of education in the United States and Canada who were invited to express their insights in response to the theme ‘Snaps...

In this writing, David Hansen illuminates the aesthetic, moral, and epistemic meaning of bearing witness to teaching and teachers by drawing upon a recently completed field-based endeavor that included extensive school visits. Hansen shows how bearing witness can bring the inquirer close to the truth of teaching. However, the witness must undertake ethical work to ready her- or himself for the task. Even such readiness, which must be continuously re-won on each occasion, guarantees nothing. The witness in the classroom must (...) work with faith, hope, and a deep sense of the worthwhileness of teaching. Hansen suggests that the witness's practice as well as testimony regarding the work can have a valuable influence on the consciousness, and conscience, of all who concern themselves with teaching and teachers. (shrink)

In this article, I map current conceptions of cosmopolitanism and sketch distinctions between the concept and humanism and multiculturalism. The differences mirror what I take to be a central motif of cosmopolitanism: the capacity to fuse reflective openness to the new with reflective loyalty to the known. This motif invites a reconsideration of the meaning of culture as well as of the relations between home and the world.

It is a truism that the person in the role of teacher matters. Students learn this truth very early in school. Teachers’ testimonials underscore its reality. School administrators relearn it every time they think about collegiality. These commonplaces attest to the truth that it is persons, not roles as such, who educate, or who fail to do so, as the case may be. It takes a human being to bring to life the many-sided nature of the role.As obvious as these (...) points may appear, they beg the question of what it means to be a person in the role of teacher. What does it mean to invest one’s person in the role? What does it mean to allow the role to affect the very person one is becoming? What does it mean to fuse person... (shrink)

In this article, we describe a longitudinal inquiry into what it means to be a person in our contemporary world. Our method constitutes a dynamic, non-objectifying fusion of empirical and philosophical anthropology. Field-based anthropology examines actualities: how people lead their lives and talk about them. Philosophical anthropology addresses possibilities: who and what people could become in light of actualities while not being determined by them. We describe and illustrate our fieldwork in the classrooms of 16 teachers who work in New (...) York City public schools. We have sought in our observations to identify and think about signs or expressions of persons-in-the-making. We also touch on a series of dinner-discussions we have held with the teachers. These meetings have centered on the question of becoming a person in today’s political and cultural environment, and how education figures into the equation. Finally, we also describe the weekly meetings we have held as a research team, in which we engage the play of concepts and percepts. We close with remarks on the conceptual and existential ties that can link philosophy and fieldwork in schools. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Creativity in Teaching and Building a Meaningful Life as a TeacherDavid T. HansenMy point of departure in this essay is the idea that creativity in teaching often has less to do with inventiveness per se than it does with responsiveness. To draw on terms from John Dewey, creative teachers "rise to the needs of the situation" presented in the educational setting.1 They respond well to circumstances not because they (...) necessarily have the pedagogical equivalent of Twyla Tharp's talent for choreography or B.B. King's brilliance on the blues guitar; rather, I want to suggest that creative teachers, at least in many cases, "rise" and do what is needed because they have learned to pay attention both to students and to the subject(s) at hand. In other words, I propose that we consider the idea that creativity in teaching often manifests itself most vividly, if also subtly, in a kind of ongoing attentiveness, by which I mean a dynamic combination of patience, listening, and initiative.I will begin the discussion by first sketching a conception of creativity in teaching centered around the idea of attentiveness. Then I address two [End Page 57] consequences of this conception. The first is that the most suitable models of good practice for new teachers to start with are not the profession's versions, presuming such exist, of Pablo Picasso, Marie Curie, or Michael Jordan. I do not mean that it is uniformly inappropriate to place such models in front of teacher candidates, any more than it would be wrong to put before art students the work of a Cassatt or Rembrandt. However, I will argue that among the best and most consequential initial models are those experiences in which teacher candidates themselves truly listened to the doings of the world around them and heeded what was said, whether the latter "spoke" in the form of a work of art, a human voice or gesture, or the play of wind in the trees. If new teachers take seriously this kind of experience, they can gain a valuable perspective for approaching the long and often difficult process of appreciating teaching's details and engaging them in educational settings. I illustrate these claims by examining a field-based activity that was part of a teacher education program I used to direct.The second consequence of the conception of creativity in teaching I will put forward points to the title of this essay. If new teachers deepen their ability to pay attention and to engage in creative work, they position themselves to receive one of teaching's primary offerings to its practitioners, namely, a life of meaning."Ordinary" Pedagogical CreativityCreativity in teaching can take many forms. We witness it in the structuring of an artful lesson plan; in the logic, flow, and pacing of a dynamic lecture; or in a timely and evocative example or illustration the teacher employs to clinch a point in the midst of a class. All of this is familiar and an important, indeed indispensable, way to think about good teaching. Creativity in practice is associated here, among other things, with notions of expertise and of knowledge gained through experience.However, I want to add to this portrait the notion that creativity in practice can also spring from responsiveness. Rather than issuing solely from what the teacher brings to the educational setting — consider again terms such as expertise and knowledge — creativity can point to what the teacher is capable of deriving or drawing from it. Creativity as responsiveness denotes a form of openness to the setting, which may or may not complement or fit harmoniously with what is preset, prefigured, or anticipated. Experienced teachers would be the first to say that there are times when it becomes educationally vital to shelve a preset plan. There are times when one form of creativity in teaching, embodied in a well-wrought lesson plan, must give way to another form, embodied in what I am calling responsiveness. The art of teaching consists, in part, of balancing these expressions of pedagogical creativity.Let me share the following vignette as a basis for elucidating this point. One morning in March 2002, during which... (shrink)

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:...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aesthetic Experience and Education:Themes and QuestionsDeborah Kerdeman"Being with" music. Attentive responsiveness in teaching. Scholarly learning as engagement with beauty. Three evocative images of aesthetic experience come to light in the essays by Custodero, Hansen, and Neumann. From the musical play of children conducting imaginary orchestras to the vocational aspirations of adults who gaze through telescopes or study paintings at Chicago's Art Institute, aesthetic experience spans a range of activities (...) and ages. No matter the setting or moment, aesthetic experience vitalizes our lives with meaning and joy. Why this is so and what difference this makes for education emerge as overarching concerns in this set of papers. Addressing these issues, the authors articulate a number of commonthemes and reach similar conclusions about the nature and value of aesthetic experience.I want to identify and analyze key ideas that run throughout these essays. Doing so deepens our appreciation of the authors' insights and underscores the importance of the project they undertake. I also want to examine three questions that the essays suggest but do not develop. Exploring these questions, I hope to further enrich our understanding of aesthetic experience and its place in education.First and foremost, aesthetic experience for all three authors integrates multiple ways of knowing and enables individuals to perceive connections that they might otherwise overlook. According to Custodero, aesthetic experience harmonizes imagination, physicality, and "thinking-in-action." [End Page 88] Thinking-in-action, Custodero says, while "critical and consequential," is nonverbal and nonjudgmental — unifying rather than analytic. Synthesizing bodily movement, imagination, and thought, aesthetic experience reveals "surprise relationships between seemingly disparate phenomena." The theme of integration is echoed in Neumann's description of scholarly learning as aesthetic experience. Scholarly learning does not shun feeling or lived experience, Neumann writes. This way of knowing instead is "deeply emotional and personal." Insight fuses with emotion, enabling scholars to "feel the whole picture," as David the astronomer puts it in his interview with Neumann. For Hansen, aesthetic experience connotes heightened perception, a way of being that attends to nuances of gesture that would otherwise remain invisible. "The aesthetic highlights aspects of wonder and of beauty that emerge, spontaneously and unrehearsed," Hansen explains. A form of creativity, aesthetic perception combines with moral and intellectual understanding to fully embrace "the living dynamic gestalt" of teaching and learning.Aesthetic experience thus integrates mind, body, and emotion. Hansen links aesthetic experience to moral judgment as well. Integrating various ways of knowing, aesthetic experience enables individuals to perceive and understand relationships that pulse throughout the social and natural world. Such understanding is pleasurable, the authors agree.Aesthetic experience not only is integrative. It also is interactive. Custodero's musicians interact with instruments, musical scores, and other individuals. Neumann's scholars interact with ideas and scholarly materials. Hansen's preservice teachers interact with works of art, subject matter, students, and one another. Interacting with people and things, individuals become absorbed in what they are doing. "Being with" music is howCustodero puts it. Carmen, the professor of music in Neumann's essay, says that playing music well "is like a complete focus of oneness."Being absorbed in aesthetic interaction does not discount or dissolve the ability to make decisions or direct action. Aesthetic experience rather presumes and promotes "aesthetic agency," to borrow a phrase from Custodero. "To 'be in the moment,'" Custodero writes, "is to encounter the aesthetic — fully engaged in an activity for which one's individual contributions are perceived as vital." Hansen's description of aesthetic perception combines attentiveness and responsiveness in a "dynamic combination of patience, listening, and initiative." Neumann states that scholarly learning is an experience of "deep engrossment." Such engrossment does not extinguish the self, however. In the words of David the astronomer, feeling "the whole picture... is a combination of both what you see, sort of an instinctive or primal thing, and also your knowledge of what, you know, you put together." [End Page 89]The interactive nature of aesthetic experience thus signifies a kind of "agency-in-situ." Aesthetic experience is shaped or directed by the contribution and initiative of individuals. But individuals cannot act in advance of experience or know what to do, unless they are... (shrink)

The world of John Dewey scholarship recently lost one of its most thoughtful contributors, and teachers of all kinds lost one of their most passionate and committed advocates. Philip W. Jackson was born in 1928 in Vineland, New Jersey, a locale known historically for its excellent grape-growing soil and veterinarian Arthur Goldhaft’s famous pledge to “put a chicken in every pot.” Jackson’s adoptive parents were, appropriately enough, chicken farmers, and, as the story goes, they noticed early on his indisputable knack (...) for singing and poetry recitation. Feeling very at home on the stage, the plucky six-year-old even tried his hand as a vaudevillian, performing a snake charmer act between reels at.. (shrink)

In this article, I seek to illuminate the texture of moral experience. I pursue that aim through a close reading of David Lean's film, Brief Encounter, produced in 1946. The chief protagonist in the film undergoes a moral odyssey that reveals and tests all that she has understood about how to conduct a life. Her experience sheds light on the constituents of an individual moral sensibility as well as how its enactment appears in practice when one confronts a heartfelt difficulty. (...) I argue that moral experience is best understood through the idiom of narrative and character, rather than through ethical language that places formal or universal principle at the center of the moral life. In the workshop of the moral self, as Lean's protagonist reveals, the task is not to fashion or take on universal principles but rather to cultivate virtuous relations with other people in the here-and-now. (shrink)

Foreword - The Honorable Gerald E. Ragan -- Introduction -- Code of Ethics [adopted by the International Association of Chiefs of Police] -- Ch. 1 Code of ethics -- Ch. 2 Practicality versus the code of ethics -- Ch. 3 Gratuities -- Ch. 4 Police solicitations -- Ch. 6 Personal matters -- Ch. 7 The jaded policeman -- Ch. 8 The administration of discipline -- Ch. 9 Where are we going? -- Epilogue -- Index.

In Visions of Statesmanship: A Statesman's Imagination and Autonomy, I provide a critical examination of the figure of the statesman as it has been presented in the philosophical reflections of three key thinkers: Plato, Yannis Markrygiannis, and Cornelius Castoriadis.

Bearing witness is a familiar if diversely employed concept. On the one hand, it concerns the accuracy and validity of practical affairs, for example in a court of law, at a wedding, or in a law office. On the other hand, the term can embody powerful religious, social, and/ or moral meaning, whether in bearing witness to historical trauma and human suffering, or in paying heed to everyday, seemingly ordinary aspects of nature and of human life. In this article, we (...) address the question of what renders a witness trustworthy. We characterize ethical and epistemic constituents of witnessing. We examine the work of several exemplary witnesses: W. G. Sebald, Saidiya Hartman, Jonathan Lear, Etty Hillesum, and John Berger alongside Jean Mohr. These sources help us think about the education of a person who aspires to bear witness, whether it be to traumatic events or to quotidian life in educational or other settings. We present criteria of trustworthiness that can support reflection on what we take to be the important place of bearing witness in educational inquiry and practice. (shrink)