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 essay, Leonard Waks examines John Dewey's account of listening, drawing on Dewey's writings to establish a direct connection in his work between listening and democracy. Waks devotes the first part of the essay to explaining Dewey's distinction between one-way or straight-line listening and transactional listening-in-conversation, and to demonstrating the close connection between transactional listening and what Dewey called “cooperative friendship.” In the second part of the essay, Waks establishes the further link between Dewey's notions of cooperative friendship and (...) democratic society with particular reference to machine-age technologies of mass communication. He maintains that while these technologies provide the means for extending communications throughout modern industrial nations, they simultaneously undermine the conditions fostering face-to-face listening-in-conversation. It remains an open question, Waks concludes, whether new educational arrangements incorporating interactive digital communication technologies will embody and promote transactional listening-in-conversation and revitalized democratic community. (shrink)

(2004). Workplace Learning in America: Shifting roles of households, schools and firms. Educational Philosophy and Theory: Vol. 36, No. 5, pp. 563-577.

In this paper, Leonard Waks investigates connections between listening and expertise or mastery, contrasting approaches from Eastern and Western philosophy. The first section accounts for listening in the Daoist classic Zhuangzi, a work addressing themes in Chinese philosophy through metaphor and story narratives. In one story a character named “Confucius” advises a student to fast the mind and listen recklessly. The affinity between reckless and what has been called “apophatic” listening is demonstrated by the shared feature of mental emptiness — (...) listening without the imposition of conceptual categories. The second section demonstrates close affinities between the account of listening and expertise or mastery in the Zhuangzi and in the account of expert perception in contemporary Western philosophy and psychology, as exemplified by phenomenologist Hubert Dreyfus. (shrink)

1. A Travelling Classic On the centennial anniversary of the publication of Dewey’s Democracy and Education (New York, Macmillan, 1916) this symposium (including contributions from European and non European scholars) explores both the epoch-making significance and the topicality of the ideas in Dewey’s masterpiece for the development of European educational reflection. Democracy and Education has frequently been represented as a turning point in educational discourse, inaugurating a radically...

The Indian-America philosopher Sri Chinmoy Ghose has distinguished between outer silence, inner silence, and innermost silence. In this paper I explore these distinctions and their educational relevance. My main conclusions are that (a) a deep inner silence, undistracted by questions or other thoughts, is at the root of one paradigm kind of good listening in education, and (b) what Chinmoy refers to as “innermost silence” is the moral virtue of receptivity to others that sustains inner silence, even under challenging conditions, (...) a virtue of importance in teaching and in learning from others. (shrink)

Rorty's neopragmatism is an attempt to retrofit Dewey's experimentalism for the post-modern situation. Specifically, he substitutes "language" for "experience" and "culture" for "science", to arrive at a philosophy "no closer to science than to art". I argue that the first move results from misunderstanding of the role experience plays in the context of verification in Dewey's experimental logic. The second move leaves Rorty without any alternative method even for approaching the very problems which Dewey proposed to solve with his experimentalism.

Writers on education have frequently contrasted knowledge and understanding as educational aims. I shall be prepared to defend the view that this contrast can mislead us in our thinking about education, and can direct our attention away from facts which are important to take into account in the evaluation of educational procedures.

Rorty's neopragmatism is an attempt to retrofit Dewey's experimentalism for the post-modern situation. Specifically, he substitutes "language" for "experience" and "culture" for "science", to arrive at a philosophy "no closer to science than to art". I argue that the first move results from misunderstanding of the role experience plays in the context of verification in Dewey's experimental logic. The second move leaves Rorty without any alternative method even for approaching the very problems which Dewey proposed to solve with his experimentalism.

Through expert analysis, this text proves that John Dewey's views on efficiency in education are as relevant as ever. By exploring Deweyan theories of teaching and learning, the volume illustrates how they can aid educators in navigating the theoretical and practical implications of accountability, standardization, and assessment. The Contemporary Relevance of John Dewey's Theories on Teaching and Learning deconstructs issues regarding accountability mechanisms, uniform assessment systems, and standardization processes through a Deweyan lens. Connecting the zeitgeist of the era from which (...) Dewey's ideas emerged and current global political, social, and economic contexts, the book emphasizes the importance of resilient systems in reconciliating the tension between standardized assessments and individual student development. Contributors provide insights from a range of settings across Pre-K, primary, secondary, and higher education and address topics including teacher agency, voice, leadership, and democracy. The volume will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and academics with an interest in philosophy of education, education policy and the impact of neoliberal agendas, as well as teaching and learning more broadly. (shrink)

In this essay we explore whether and how we should use bibliometrics in hiring, promoting, and granting in the academy. We suggest a Deweyan-Hickmanian pragmatist approach to reflecting on the technology of bibliometrics as a resource for inherently qualitative judgements in these deliberations. We begin with a literature review of current work evaluating the role and use of bibliometrics in the academy, from advocating for them to questioning their construct validity and assessing their limitations and/or dangerous consequences. In the next (...) section, we take a step back and provide a Deweyan philosophical analysis of the validity and practical use of qualitative assessment. In our conclusion we reflect on what pragmatism can teach about recent algorithmic tools used for faculty evaluation. (shrink)

The STS education movement is identified and related to the critique of technology of the 1960s–1970s. The critics of technology included the system of education in their critiques. There is a practical tension or contradiction in attempting to develop their insights within the curriculum routines of the schools and colleges. This tension is explored under six categories: reductive knowledge, socialization of technical modes of thinking, technicalized processes of learning, the loss of meaning, radical monopoly over learning, and the socialization of (...) secular values. (shrink)

I propose a model for the development of citizen rights based on the advance of political and social rights and apply it to contemporary claims regarding environmental rights. In terms of this “claims and attenuations” model, I sketch the roles of environmental philosophers and activists, the media and public opinion, and political insiders in the development of positive rights. I then predict a weakeningof environmental claims and a marginalization of environmental philosophies as environmental claims are secured as positive rights.

I propose a model for the development of citizen rights based on the advance of political and social rights and apply it to contemporary claims regarding environmental rights. In terms of this “claims and attenuations” model, I sketch the roles of environmental philosophers and activists, the media and public opinion, and political insiders in the development of positive rights. I then predict a weakeningof environmental claims and a marginalization of environmental philosophies as environmental claims are secured as positive rights.

The development of Web 2.0 has opened new opportunities for teaching and learning - an entire ecology of online learning. This ecology has not previously been systematically investigated. This book offers the first comprehensive conceptual map for this territory.

Prior to 1980, researchers rarely studied intuition in education. Those in the behaviorist tradition discounted studies of teacher thinking, and regarded all talk of intuition as mysterious nonsense. Since then, however, the cognitive revolution has triumphed. Studies of thinking are commonplace, and have contributed to our understanding of how novices and expert teachers perceive, understand, and act. The current consensus is that novices require explicit rules when carrying out the tasks of teaching, while experts, through years of experience and learning, (...) store an abundance of cases in long term memory, which they draw upon to perceive salient features of situations. This enables them to act intuitively in... (shrink)

The four papers in this symposium were selected from thirty submissions for the Past President’s Panel at the 2014 annual meeting of the John Dewey Society in Philadelphia. Taken collectively, they demonstrate the continuing power of Dewey’s philosophy to inspire, clarify, and critique contemporary educational ideas and practices. I will have a few words to say about these papers below, but first I want to put them in context. The John Dewey Society, in its current form, has three operational missions: (...) to encourage, and contribute to, critical inquiry into pressing contemporary issues in culture, society, and education in the spirit of John Dewey; to foster and provide venues for new educational.. (shrink)

John Dewey's Democracy and Education is the touchstone for a great deal of modern educational theory. It covers a wide range of themes and issues relating to education, including teaching, learning, educational environments, subject matter, values, and the nature of work and play. This Handbook is designed to help experts and non-experts to navigate Dewey's text. The authors are specialists in the fields of philosophy and education; their chapters offer readers expert insight into areas of Dewey work that they know (...) well and have returned to time and time again throughout their careers. The Handbook is divided into two parts. Part I features short companion chapters corresponding to each of Dewey's chapters in Democracy and Education. These serve to guide readers through the complex arguments developed in the book. Part II features general articles placing the book into historical, philosophical and practical contexts and highlighting its relevance today. (shrink)

John Dewey presented The Public and Its Problems in a series of lectures in 1926, shortly after Walter Lippmann published two influential works, Public Opinion and The Phantom Public . In those works, Lippmann had denied that broad publics should share in determining public policy. He argued that the policy issues were far removed from the lives of ordinary citizens, whose collective opinion, as a result, would inevitably be ill-informed, self-interested and readily manipulated.Dewey countered that the problem of public opinion (...) was not primarily lack of information, but rather of community formation. A democratic community, he argued, could overcome the ignorance and narrow self-interest that plagued .. (shrink)

: This article provides a close reading of Democracy and Education, situated in the context of Dewey's work prior to and during World War I, to illuminate the close tie between Dewey's overriding concerns during this period and today's educational concerns. The analysis suggests two projects for contemporary democratic educators.