The themes of this conference reflect the multifaceted nature of AI's impact on the relationship between humans and AI in the educational context, from its role in teaching and curriculum development to enhancing educational equity and ethical considerations. By addressing these critical themes, we aim to foster a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between humans and AI. Additionally, we are eager to find principles or examples that guide humans to interact with AI appropriately.

Dr. Sarah Odhner, Lecturer in Education, Bryn Athyn College

A key historical question concerning infant school pedagogy is whether early educators grounded their methods in a coherent theory of child development and education. While there is evidence that Johann Oberlin, Samuel Wilderspin, James Buchanan, and David Goyder read Swedenborg, investigations into their works have failed to locate his influence. This is further complicated by the fact that Swedenborg did not gather his educational theories into a single work but scattered them throughout his voluminous oeuvre. This talk presents a digest of Swedenborg’s ideas on the mind its development and uncovers the social pressures which preluded educators from articulating them publicly. It combines actor-network theory with a semiotic linguistic approach to trace the connections through which Swedenborg’s theories traveled unseen within infant school texts. It reveals that even though these works exhibit no clear evidence of an underlying educational theory, Owen’s Essays and Wilderspin’s texts diffused Swedenborg’s views on growth and education covertly.

Please register by emailing David Lewin: david.lewin@strath.ac.uk

Kindly hosted by the Institute of Education, University of Strathclyde and supported by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

For John Dewey, the connection between education and real life was central to his vision of how teaching and learning should take place. From this, it followed that at the heart of educational experience were the concerns and interests of the child, both within school and the wider community. Dewey characterised ‘interest’ as active, objective and personally important. However, these features were not to be understood simply in terms of present interests but in the potential of the child for further growth and development. The biological metaphor of growth as an aim of education was subsequently treated to stringent criticism from R.S. Peters and others, on account of its vagueness, potential for undesirable consequences and for possessing only historical significance. Whilst close reading of Dewey does provide the means to counter these criticisms, it is arguably the case that in the language of growth, he loses sight of his own understanding that things of interest have personal importance. To address this, and to retrieve the powerful personal dimension of Deweyan interests, I turn to the American philosopher Stanley Cavell, who, in the words of his French translator Sandra Laugier, teaches us the importance of importance. I will argue that this will allow us to expand on Dewey’s conception of interest and why it is still relevant for our understanding of education.

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Adrian Skilbeck is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Winchester. He is author of Stanley Cavell and Education: Voice, Seriousness and Drama (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, 2025) and was co-editor with Paul Standish of Wittgenstein and Education: On Not Sparing Others The Trouble of Thinking (Wiley-Blackwell, 2023). Adrian is the chair of the PESGB Development Committee, a member of the PESGB Executive Committee and also sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Philosophy of Education (JOPE). Adrian is a member of the CREATE research centre at Winchester, leading on research in Philosophy of Education.

Please register by emailing David Lewin: david.lewin@strath.ac.uk

Kindly hosted by the Institute of Education, University of Strathclyde and supported by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.

This book was published in 2019, in the ‘before times’ in so many ways. Doing Theory on Education explores key debates using 70+ examples from contemporary media and popular culture to explore philosophical and theoretical debates that surround teaching and learning.  In this seminar, the book will be revisited, to suggest textual work which endures, and to offer an updating to situate the approach in relation to epistemologies of misinformation, the AI ‘takeover’ and protectionist discourse around critical literacies as neoliberal resilience.

Julian McDougall is Professor in Media and Education; Principal Fellow of Advance HE and Programme Leader for the Professional Doctorate (Ed D) in Creative and Media Education at Bournemouth University. He is Research Cluster Lead for the MIL Eco-Lab (Media and Information Literacy for Healthy Eco-Systems) in the Centre for Science, Health and Data Communication Research.

From 2013-23 he was Director of the Centre for Excellence in Media Practice and convened the annual Global Media Education Summit.

He is co-editor of the Journal of Media Literacy Education and Routledge Research in Media Literacy and Education and Chair of the Media and Information Literacy Alliance.

In the fields of education, media literacy, media, communications and cultural studies, he is author / editor of a wide range of books, articles, chapters and research reports and has provided numerous research projects for research councils, media industry, charities and non-profit organisations.

PESGB Branch Seminar: 5pm 22nd May in TL565

Towards Japanese Philosophy of Education: How to Decolonise the Curriculum

Dr Takeshi Morisato

Abstract: Philosophy has been predominantly Anglo-European regardless of its claim on universalism or humanism. Because of that, many disciplines in UK academia continue to suffer from a number of problems that originate from our legacy of colonialism and racisms. The field of education (including the philosophy of education) is not an exception to this general problem of pedagogical one-sidedness, or what W.E.B DuBois once called “the problem of the colour line.” This presentation will explore how the field of world philosophies emerged in response to this methodological and structural issue of eurocentrism in philosophy and how it has set out to tackle this burden of reductionist humanism through a plethora of intellectual resources available in world intellectual traditions. We will then delve into the works of Watsuji Tetsurō (1889–1960) as an exemplar of Japanese philosophy and investigate how his Japanese ethics, namely Rinrigaku 倫理学, diagnosed the problem of European philosophy (of education) and how we were to advance our own self-understanding in the context of post-war Japan. Lastly, we will apply what we have discover from our critical engagement with European and Japanese philosophies to our present condition. We will think about the future philosophy of education in Europe and question what it means for us to decolonize ourselves and our curriculum in Scotland/UK and beyond. 

In this presentation we consider how the functions offered by digital technologies today reconstitute the parent-child relationship. We relate the seemingly dystopian aspects of the technology depicted the episode of the television series Black Mirror, ‘Arkangel’, to widely available technologies and apps designed for parents, and take these as indicative of key aspects of the instrumentalised, scientised parenting culture today. We resist a reading of the episode in critical, dystopian terms, however, by drawing attention, first, to aspects of what we see in the episode that are illustrative of what we do when we raise children and, second, of how such technology reconstitutes agency and responsibility in respect of the pedagogical specificity of the figure of the parent.

Dr Naomi Hodgson is Reader in Education at Edge Hill University, UK, and Visiting Professor at KU Leuven, Belgium. Her research focuses on upbringing, culture, governance, and subjectivity, drawing particularly on Foucault and Cavell. Her publications include Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children: the grammar of upbringing (with Prof. Stefan Ramaekers, 2019), Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy (with Profs Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski, 2018), and Philosophy and Theory in Educational Research: writing in the margin (2016). She is currently writing a monograph on power. She is co-convenor of the BERA Philosophy of Education SIG and Assistant Editor of the journal Ethics & Education.

Speaker: David Lewin, Strathclyde Institute of Education

This talk uses popular cinema to examine the idea of existential education as an underexplored educational concept. Existentialism generally concerns the contingency and freedom of the human condition. Existential education, then, concerns those educational activities designed to confront students with their own freedom. But the idea of cultivating freedom has presented educational theory with a paradox. While it may be hard to capture the idea of existential education in general theoretical terms, it can be powerfully illustrated in popular cinema most obviously in the genre of bildungsroman – or coming of age stories. After surveying the field of existential education, I focus on Biesta’s concept of existential education and argue that his own attempts to illustrate this concept are a little too direct. I suggest that the indirectness of popular cinema is better equipped to bring existential education to life.

Speaker: Michael Quinn, University of Glasgow

I analyse the effectiveness of teaching ‘The Extended Mind’ thesis (EMT), a seminal paper by Andy Clarke & David Chalmers (1998), at high-school level through engaging with Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000). I offer a charitable account of how these concepts could be taught without fiction, but ultimately demonstrate that this approach is inherently limited in terms of how it relates to students, its accessibility and what it asks of them. As I discuss the ‘traditional’ lessons, which are interspersed with addressing relevant pedagogical themes by teaching EMT in this way, I ruminate on example assessment questions based on the topic. I also evaluate the pedagogical and philosophical limitations of teaching these concepts engaging directly with Clark & Chalmers’ text. With regards to teaching using Memento, I elucidate on selected classroom tasks while focusing on more general upshots such as improving understanding, emotional engagement and creativity. Students are also encouraged to reflect on the philosophical implications of EMT, particularly with reference to their use of modern technology. I postulate that engaging with fictional narratives offers wider, and longer lasting, benefits and opens more doors for students to begin their own intellectual, philosophical journeys both during and upon completion of the course.

Michael Quinn is currently undertaking a PhD project in the Philosophy of Education at the University of Glasgow. I make the case that there are situations when speculative fiction, a mode particularly interested in philosophical conundrums in its “thought experiments”, can offer alternative, and perhaps more effective, methods of teaching foundational and complex philosophical concepts when compared with traditional philosophical discourse. Speculative fiction and film (fantasy and neo-noir) and traditional philosophical discourse “do” philosophy but in radically different ways. Choosing major philosophical preoccupations, knowledge & doubt, epistemology of memory and morality, which are also central concerns of representative examples of speculative fiction and film, he evaluates the various pedagogical methods and results produced by these contrasting modes. He completed a MLitt in Fantasy in 2018 at Glasgow and I am interested in exploring intersections between literature, film and philosophy as well as how they complement one another. Michael has taught English in high schools in Scotland, Spain and Australia and adore almost all things speculative fiction, but mainly H.G.Wells, Ursula Le Guin and, of course, Kurt Vonnegut. He is also interested in science fiction on screen, particularly The Blade Runner series, Star Wars and anything AI related.

In this paper I consider how tragic film might ethically educate and I discuss three Denis Villeneuve sci-fi films. In the process I illustrate how these movies contain tragic visions that shape the ethical purposes of the main characters. To begin I discuss some core features of tragic art and I suggest that tragic films are those that offer reminder of what is of most value by providing an experience of what is most painful to lose. I thereafter summarise three different accounts of the relationship between tragic art, aesthetic value and moral education (those provided by Carroll, Rorty and Lamarque) so as to defend a more pluralistic perspective on this relationship. I argue that tragic films have potential to ethically educate audiences in a way that enhances the aesthetic value of the films in at least three ways: by deepening moral understanding, by deepening understanding of the nature of human being and ethical purpose and by deepening understanding of ethical theory. I pull the paper together by showing how the narratives in Arrival, Bladerunner 49 and Dune contain tragic dimensions of: vision informed purpose, sublime imagery, waywardness, loss and re-cognition. To conclude, I document some of the ways these movies might have potential for ethics education.

James MacAllister is a senior lecturer in philosophy of education at The University of Edinburgh. He is currently writing a monograph on tragedy, film and ethics education and co-editing a second collection on artful education and death.

Fuelled by an introductory rant about AI art-making’s mechanistic enactment of ‘being’, this paper explores our educational relation with art and film-making as a participation in the ‘mystery of being’; one to which the art work (e.g. film) – as a spatial-temporal arrangement in material - draws us (readers and makers) to ‘in love’. German philosopher, and father of modern hermeneutics, Hans-Georg Gadamer asks how we are to ‘know’ a piece of art, which exemplifies a desire for abstraction when it is, ultimately, also non-generalisable and (discursively) unknowable – yet always calling us for signification through its aesthetic structure. French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain suggests that an art work able to address and move us in this way is the result of the artist’s cultivated habit of craft as a form of practical intellect. ‘In love’ with her/his material, the artist intuits matter’s potential revelation of b/Being and ‘shines’ (transcendental) Beauty onto the material through her/his craft skills. Art’s (e.g. film’s) ability to move an audience’s intellect and senses in pleasure and delight – and with that any revelation of being and knowledge in art - relies on two hermeneutic gestures: the artist’s practical intellect - able to skilfully arrange matter towards a mystery (of being) – as well as the reader’s and maker’s hermeneutic openness to be moved ‘in love’ beyond what they already know of the world – even themselves.

Katja Frimberger is Lecturer in Education Studies at the Strathclyde Institute of Education in Glasgow, Scotland. Her research is located in philosophy of education – curious how theatre- and film-making may be theorised as education. Her most recent publications look at German theatre maker/theorist Bertolt Brecht’s actor training and his philosophising theatre of estrangement and Latvian director Asja Lācis' educational philosophy in her proletarian children's theatre.

THIS EVENT IS FREE TO ATTEND BUT FOR CATERING PURPOSES (TEA/COFFEE/BISCUITS) PLEASE EMAIL TO CONFIRM: DAVID.LEWIN@STRATH.AC.UK

Click here to view the seminar paper.

PURPOSE: This presentation demonstrates how the conceptual universe of French post-structuralist thinker Jean Baudrillard can be employed to extrapolate current tendencies in digital consumer capitalism. This is done with a focus upon changing conditions for education. The purpose is to suggest strategies to sensitize our everyday thinking, which is caught within the boundaries of a language that lacks sufficient conceptual tools to match a runaway capitalism. The strategy consists is creating concepts that make it possible to think differently.

The presentation thus adds to an increasing body of post-foundational research that explores the effects of school and education policy. This is done by establishing a conceptual framework that differs from the empirical language employed by policy itself. Hereby it becomes possible to think differently about the rationalities employed by policy-makers, practitioners and the school effectiveness research serving them. By re-articulating policy with a Baudrillardian conceptual framework it becomes possible to observe national and transnational policy as the effects of a crisis-producing and competition-motivating simulation. This makes it possible to problematize in a new light a persistent policy trend (Krejsler, 2021).

CASE: Since the 1990s a transnational school policy dream has haunted the globe, moving from the Anglo-American orbit to the Nordic countries, continental Europe, Asia and beyond. It produced an extensive simulation that monitoring, evaluation and documentation can become the engine to systematically manage school policy and practice towards better quality (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010) .

Drawing on Jean Baudrillard's thinking (e.g.Baudrillard, 1998 & 2001), this presentation tests the hypothesis of how far this school policy dream can be understood as a ‘grand simulation’ creating a soft-governance comprehensive matrix of formats and standards that incentivizes nations, municipalities, schools and individuals: Education and learning are translated into quantifiable comparability in a ‘global knowledge-based economy’. A crisis or ‘a fear of falling behind’ is produced, which motivates competition to succeed at local, national and global levels (Krejsler, 2021).

The presentation maps the drive that produces at transnational, national and local levels the idea of students, schools and nations that can be systematically optimized. One detects the symptoms of ‘the Grand Simulation’ (1)in its totalizing search for evidence and What Works solutions; (2)in its reductions of complex learning into taxonomies of competencies, knowledge and skills; (3)in its promises that every student can move systematically towards mastery of necessary competences for 21st century challenges. ‘The Grand Simulation’ expands by integrating national policy into loosely coupled rhizomatic governance networks that extend outward to transnational actors (OECD, IEA and EU) and inward through the ministry to municipalities. The latter extend the simulation to local schools, whereby it re-formats how teachers and students think and act (Krejsler, 2018 & 2021).

With an aura of objectivity, big data, science, AI and machine learning, ‘the Grand Simulation’ suggests that the best available knowledge and methods can be made accessible to all. The presentation argues that this simulation risks decoupling us from the real and enclosing us into a simulatory space of self-reference of such complexity that will be hard to get out of... The question is posed whether we are becoming trapped in a wide-ranging simulacrum!?!?... Or as Baudrillard puts it with reference to the Bulgarian-Swiss writer Elias Canetti (1905-94): "Without realizing it, all of humanity had suddenly left reality".

 References:

Baudrillard, J. (1998). Paroxysm. London: Verso.

Baudrillard, J. (2001). Jean Baudrillard - Selected Writings. Stanford University Press.

Krejsler, J.B. (2021). The ’Grand Simulation’ and Dreams of Success by Assessment: Baudrillardian  reflections on (trans-)national school policy. Journal of Education Policy.36(1), 24-43.  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02680939.2019.1664766 

Krejsler, J. B. (2018). EuroVisions in School Policy and the Knowledge Economy. In N.Hobbel & B.Bales

(Eds.), Navigating the Common Good in Teacher Education Policy. NY & London: Routledge.

Rizvi, F., & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing Education Policy. London & NY: Routledge.

John Benedicto Krejsler is Professor at the Danish School of Education, Aarhus University, DENMARK. His research on new conditions for (pre-)school and teacher education in a transnational perspective brings together research on education policy, new conditions for producing ’truths’ & social technologies. His work on theory development draws on Baudrillard, Deleuze and Foucault among others. He is President of the Nordic Educational Research Association and council member of the European Educational Research Association (2009-2018). He was a Visiting Professor at Kristianstad University (Sweden) (2009-2010) and at UCLA (2015-2016).

THIS EVENT IS FREE TO ATTEND BUT FOR CATERING PURPOSES (TEA/COFFEE/BISCUITS) PLEASE EMAIL TO CONFIRM: DAVID.LEWIN@STRATH.AC.UK

Queer pedagogies are often positioned as anti-normative and anti-oppressive, going-against-the-grain of hetero- and cisnormative forms of teaching and learning. Recent developments in queer and trans theories, however, have begun to recalibrate such praxis beyond normative/anti-normative binaries, while still retaining their critical edge. Thinking with these developments, the purpose of this work-in-progress is to explore how representations of queerness in select sitcoms (Schitt's Creek and Derry Girls) enact a queer pedagogy that achieves its effects by troubling how normative/anti-normative binaries typically sustain themselves. On this, I point to the pedagogical role irony, sarcasm, and camp play in exposing audiences to other ways of representing queerness that exceed zero-sum logics of the margin and the centre. I conclude with some notes on the pedagogical significance of laughter, homing in on its capacity to disrupt unequal distributions of heteronormative power without reifying categories of the powerful and the powerless. 

Dr Seán Henry is a Lecturer in Education at the Department of Secondary and Further Education, Edge Hill University. His research explores questions of gender, sexuality, religion, and education from a philosophical perspective. He is the author of a forthcoming monograph with Routledge entitled Queer Thriving in Religious Schools. 

THIS EVENT IS FREE TO ATTEND BUT FOR CATERING PURPOSES (TEA/COFFEE/BISCUITS) PLEASE EMAIL TO CONFIRM: DAVID.LEWIN@STRATH.AC.UK

If you were told your life’s potential, would it change how you live? This is one of the questions posed in Apple TV’s series The Big Door Prize (2023), adapted from the MO Walsh book of the same name. The residents of a small town become fascinated by the MORPHO machine that appears mysteriously one night and dispenses small blue cards with the promise of revealing the life potential of the holder. Consequently, the townsfolk embark on a collective odyssey to understand what is meant by “life potential” with sometimes comedic, sometimes tragic, results.

Potential is something that features often in education discourse, probably because education itself could never begin without an assumption that the student has the potential to participate in it.

However, it is not always clear which notion of potential is being invoked in this discourse. Considering, for example, the rhetorical ubiquity of “fulfilling one’s potential”, it could perhaps be said to be a finite void within an individual into which all educational efforts should be funnelled. Such fulfilment may be an admirable goal, but it is less clear what happens when maximum potential is reached – humanistic psychologists such as Maslow may term this rare achievement self-actualisation. Potential itself, though if we take the idea at its root, can only ever be a suggestion of possibility since an overt expression of potential becomes an action; therefore, the potential becomes lost in its own affirmation, leading to a logical absurdity that those who have fulfilled their potential also have none. At the opposite end of the continuum, most teachers would likely balk at any mention of a student with “no potential” – almost as unicorn-like as those whose potential has been entirely fulfilled. 

In this seminar, I will embrace this confusion, and follow how the characters’ notions of potential change in The Big Door Prize, from its beginning as a fixed quality held within an individual to its ending as an “arrow” - an ambiguous conceptualisation that I will examine in more detail. I will frame this journey using Israel Scheffler’s (1985) comprehensive conceptualisation “Of Human Potential”.

Nicola Robertson has a PhD in Education from the University of Strathclyde where she currently works as a Teaching Fellow in Education Studies. Her research interests include Philosophy of Education, Technology, and Popular Culture. She was a recipient of the Michael and Madonna Marsden international endowment at the US Popular Culture Association annual conference in 2023, where she presented on philosophies of education in Rick and Morty. Most recently, she presented on popular culture and philosophy of education at ECER 2023, and was appointed to the editorial board of the Popular Culture Review. Full profile available: Nicola Robertson | University of Strathclyde

This event is free to attend but for catering purposes (tea/coffee/biscuits) please email to confirm: david.lewin@strath.ac.uk

AN EXPLORATION OF THE OPEN AND HIDDEN CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THEATRE AND PEDAGOGY

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CANCELLED DUE TO VIRUS TRAVEL ISSUES (Postposed, but no new date set as of yet)

The Canon as a Vehicle of Cultural Subversion: The Role of Literary Classics in the Curriculum

Room LH226a, Lord Hope Building, University of Strathclyde

Abstract:  This paper takes issue with the view that the many texts of the Western literary canon reflect the interests of the socio-economic establishment and are vehicles of cultural imperialism by the West. I argue that many classic texts are critical of the cruelty and hypocrisy of those who hold power in society. Western literature also includes many texts that subvert notions of occidental cultural superiority. In denouncing, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and all forms of exploitation, many important works of literature undermine occidental cultural preconceptions regarding the status of European civilisation as well as attitudes to religion and to male-female relations. The first part of this paper presents the argument that is the focus of the critique in this paper. This is the argument that the traditional curriculum is itself suborned in the interests of the agencies of social and political control and of Western cultural hegemony. Accordingly teaching many literary texts implies collusion with these malign agencies of power. Against this view, the second part of the paper offers an overview of texts that could be characterised as subversive of the status quo in its socio-political and cultural forms. The third section defends the claim advanced in the paper by exploring in some detail one text, Candide by Voltaire. The conclusion considers the legacy of the canon in our time.

Dr Kevin Williams is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Evaluation, Quality and Inspection at the Institute of Education, Dublin City University and a former President of the Educational Studies Association of Ireland.   His most recent publications address the place of imaginative literature in education and the rationale of language learning.  His books include Faith and the Nation: Religion, Culture, Schooling in Ireland, Education and the Voice of Michael Oakeshott and Religion and Citizenship Education in Europe (2008), written as part of the Children’s Identity and Citizenship Education in Europe (CiCe) project funded by the European Commission.

The digitisation – and depoliticisation – of the parent

In recent years, sources of advice and expertise for parents have proliferated. Books, tv shows, web forums, and classes abound. A more recent development in this so-called ‘parenting culture’ are apps designed for parents. Critical analysis of this digitisation has often focused on the child, pointing to the datafication of childhood, while other analyses are concerned with the potential learning gains that can be achieved through the use of such technologies. Here, however, I will focus on the parent; specifically, I consider the implications of parenting apps for the position of the parent by reasserting the representational – political, pedagogical – dimension of the figure of the parent.  While we can see parenting apps as an extension of the instrumentalisation, scientisation, and psychologisation identified in critical analyses of the parenting culture, introducing a pedagogical-philosophical register, drawing on Stanley Cavell and Klaus Mollenhauer, brings out the political aspect of the figure of the parent. An analysis of a selection of apps aimed at the period from pregnancy to three years old shows that, what appears as a politicisation of parents through a sociological lens, can be seen as a depoliticisation of parents through a pedagogical-philosophical lens.

This presentation draws on a recently published article co-authored with Dr Stefan Ramaekers (KU Leuven): Ramaekers, S. and Hodgson, N., (2019) ‘Parenting apps and the depoliticisation of the parent’, Special Issue: Childhood, Parenting Culture, and Adult-Child Relations in Transnational Perspectives, C. Faircloth and R. Rosen (eds), Families, Relationships, and Society. Available at: https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/frs/pre-prints/content-frsd1900009r2

Bio:

Dr Naomi Hodgson is Senior Lecturer in Education Studies at Liverpool Hope University, UK, where she teaches and researches in philosophy of education. Her research focuses on the relationship between education, governance, and subjectivity. Her publications include Philosophy and Theory in Education: Writing in the Margin, with Professor Amanda Fulford (Routledge, 2016), Citizenship for the Learning Society: Europe, Subjectivity, and Educational Research (Wiley, 2016), Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy, with Dr Joris Vlieghe and Dr Piotr Zamojski (Punctum Books, 2018), and most recently Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children: The Grammar of Upbringing, with Dr Stefan Ramaekers (Palgrave, 2019). 

Philosopher Zehou Li and an Aesthetics-Education Approach to Educational Maturity

Abstract: This presentation is composed of two parts: (1) my study of approximately three aspects of Zehou Li’s aestheticised philosophy and (2) my application of these relevant aspects of Li’s philosophy to develop an aesthetics-education approach in order to deal with the educational question—the issue of educational maturity—that I set out to consider in my doctoral thesis. My expositions/examinations of Li’s thought involve his aesthetic metaphysics, aesthetic ethical theory, and theory of subjectality. Based on Li’s cross-cultural philosophical inquiry, I explore how he reinterprets Chinese tradition through Western perspectives such as aesthetics, Marxist theory, and Kantian philosophy to establish his own philosophical system which is meaningful not only in contemporary China but also for our global world.

As a piece of work in philosophy of education, my major task lies in the applied study of developing an aesthetics-education approach to educational maturity. I first reformulate my philosophical research question about educational maturity, in which three ‘immature’ states of mind in a Kantian sense are identified in contemporary education—states of mind by which students, parents, and teachers are respectively and typically encumbered.  I then draw upon the aesthetic state of mind which I have elaborated through Li’s lens to explore practical ways out of dilemmas. The present form of my aesthetics-education approach is concerned with educational reforms at various system levels. It includes reconsiderations of the prevailing practice of student evaluation and the dominant policy ideology of teacher education—accompanied by a new proposal regarding the idea of parent-oriented collaborative research.

Bio: Flora Liuying Wei has been a Doctoral student at the University of Glasgow since 2015, with a special interest in the philosophical approach to education. She is currently interested in philosophy of education in a cross-cultural context. This research interest for her has two dimensions: (1) in terms of educational scholarship, it includes a comparison of Philosophy of Education in the Anglophone world with General Pedagogy (Allgemeine Pädagogik) in the German tradition; (2) in terms of philosophy, it is basically related to a comparison of philosophies undergirding the construction of different cultures/civilisations, in particular between contrasting cultures/civilisations such as that of the Chinese and that of the ‘West’. Her latest publication is ‘Modern Teacher’s Public and Private Morality: An Approach Inspired by Philosopher Zehou Li’. In: Peters M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Teacher Education. Springer, Singapore. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1179-6_15-1.   

Virtue and the quiet art of scholarship: Reclaiming the university

Dr Anne Pirrie will address some of the themes in her recent book Virtue and the Quiet Art of Scholarship: Reclaiming the University (Routledge, 2019). She offers a fresh perspective on what it is to be a ‘good knower’ in a social and educational environment dominated by the market order. Pirrie explores how narrowly conceived epistemic virtues might be broadened out by seeing those who work and study in the university in their full humanity. In an era characterized by deep and enduring social and cultural divisions, the book offers a timely, accessible and critical perspective on the perils of retreating behind disciplinary boundaries, reminding readers of the need to remain open to the other in a time of increased social and political polarization.

Drawing on the work of Leonard Cohen, Ali Smith, Italo Calvino and Raymond Carver, Pirrie seeks to move across disciplines and distort the line between the humanities and the social sciences as a way of bringing them closer together. She explores virtue in the context of scholarship and research, particularly how the ‘virtues of unknowing’ challenge traditional notions of the ‘good knower’. Virtue and the Quiet Art of Scholarship: Reclaiming the University offers the framework within which to bridge the gap between ‘us’ and ‘them’ in relation to developments in the university sector, addressing the urgent need for a form of language that promotes unity over division.

For a recent review of Dr Pirrie’s book see:
Sophie Ward (2019): Virtue and the quiet art of scholarship: Reclaiming the university, Educational Philosophy and Theory, DOI: 10.1080/00131857.2019.1666711

For any inquiries and to confirm attendance (free, but for catering purposes), please email: Dr David Lewin: david.lewin@strath.ac.uk

Nature, Education and Posthumanist thought: A pedagogical perspective on Donna Haraway’s understanding of making kin

In times of ecological crisis new modes of human-nature-relationships are more necessary than ever. However, pedagogical arrangements mostly understand nature as a resource that must be catered to for securing the survival of mankind. Individual entities are called to action, responsibility is placed in the hands of single human beings and Greta Thunberg is attacked by the media for not being able to travel to the US without causing harm to the environment. My talk offers a posthumanist approach to this complex topic. In a first step, I am going to introduces the concept of “making kin” by Donna Haraway enriched with a critical discussion of subjectivity and agency by Judith Butler to unveil the hidden problems of unbroken and individual agency. Making kin describes a process that understands entities besides human beings as equal partners in action and symmetrical parts in networks of agents. Instead of understanding human subject as the only nodes of power, Haraway grasps the social as a string figure in which different knots are equally important for acting, living and dying together. In a second step, I am going to discuss the impacts of such an approach to ecology education and especially pedagogies of revovery. A different understanding of nature, culture and agency emerges from this discussion that allows educators and researchers in the field of education to think from the perspective of a posthumanist point of view. Finally, I am going to connect the different threads and argue for a posthumanist understanding of educational relationships that neither takes the distinction between nature and culture nor the differentiation between passivity and activity for granted.

Bio:
Sebastian Engelmann (Dr. phil, M.A. Applied Ethics, M.A. Education-Culture-Anthropology) is a Post-Doc researcher at the Institute for Education of the University of Tübingen Germany. His main fields of interest are theories of education, history of education and the critical discussion of posthumanist thought in education studies. His more recent publications include Alternative Schooling – European Concepts and New Education (2017), Pädagogik der Sizialen Freiheit (2018) and texts on Forest Bathing (2019).

Is there a need for the rediscovery of teaching?

In the current 'age of learning,' teaching seems to have gained a bad name. This is partly because a focus on teaching runs the risk of only being concerned with the 'input-side' of education but not with what this might mean for learners and their learning. And it is because teaching is often seen as an attempt to control students and limit their freedom, rather than as something that can contribute to their empowerment and emancipation. It looks as if the only people who are still excited about teaching are therefore those who actually believe that education should be about controlling students, managing their behaviour and instilling knowledge and skills in them. In my recent book, The Rediscovery of Teaching (Routledge, 2017), I raise the question whether teaching can indeed only be seen as a limitation of the student's freedom, and ask whether learning is automatically an expression of the student's freedom. I raise questions about both assumptions and argue that there is indeed a need for rediscovering and reclaiming teaching for the sake of education that is interested in the grown-up freedom of children and young people. 

Gert Biesta (www.gertbiesta.com) is Professor of Education in the Department of Education of Brunel University London and, for one day a week, NIVOZ Professor for Education at the University of Humanistic Studies, the Netherlands. He writes about the theory and philosophy of education and the theory and philosophy of educational and social research, and has a broad interest in teaching, curriculum, and the relationships between education and democracy. He is currently also a member of the Education Council of the Netherlands, the advisory board for the Dutch government and parliament.

Student Politics in the Age of Consumerism: The Case of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017

This paper focuses on the UK Government’s Higher Education and Research Act 2017. Recent scholarly discussions have addressed the structural reforms introduced in the Act (e.g. the Teaching Excellence Framework and the Office for Students), however, there has been less analysis of the policy in terms of its underpinning consumerist discourse. This paper therefore starts by arguing that the reform promotes consumerist understanding of universities and students. While the UK higher education sector has changed dramatically over the past decade and is still in a process of change, there are questions to be asked on how the motives for student politics have shifted over the recent years to align with a marketised sector. Luescher-Mamasela (2013) argues that unions have moved to represent consumer interests. Furthermore, they could be seen promoting good student experience through various social events and facilities (Brooks et al. 2016). Some (see Brooks et al. 2016; Klemenčič 2011) suggest that this repositioning of unions affects the ways in which students engage with political activism.

The paper draws on my recent British Academy project that explored the ways in which five students’ unions across England and the representative from the National Union of Students engaged with the consultation processes leading to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017. The data was analysed by using Fairclough’s approach to discourse analysis. While the unions interviewed demonstrated significant opposition to the policy and further marketisation of higher education, their critique was fragmented and often accompanied by consumerist counter arguments. The unions emphasised existing and proposed consumer rights as benefitting students and the unions. The reasons for a lack of consistency in the participants’ discourses will be questioned and discussed in relation to their relationship with the university management and wider student population they represent.

 Biography:

Rille Raaper is Assistant Professor in the School of Education at Durham University. Her research interests include neoliberalisation of higher education policy and practice, consumerist positioning of students and student politics. She applies critical theory and discourse analysis to explore these themes. Her most recent research project explores students’ unions’ response to the consumerist higher education policy discourses in England.

Sponsored by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Strathclyde branch, and in association with the ‘Rights, Citizenship and Dialogue’ research group (University of Strathclyde) 

Book Launch

Dwelling: Heidegger, Archaeology, Mortality (Routledge 2018)

Traditional Asian cultures offer rich conceptions of the teacher, such as Sensei, Sifu, or Guru, figures who master, embody and transmit living traditions. Although they take different forms and represent varied traditions (Zen Buddhist, Confucian, Daoist, Hindu, and so on), these masters often expect a level of commitment and submission of their students that is relatively foreign to the ideal of the Western autonomous learner. In contrast to modern student-led learning, these masters might resist explicit explanation of learning processes and outcomes. This kind of pedagogy of submission requires a deep-reaching trust with regard to refused explanations. It is, then, tempting to contrast the deeply transformative albeit authoritarian pedagogical encounters suggested in East Asian traditional pedagogy, with the more superficial but apparently more liberal and critical nature of Western learning that is generally committed to more explicit outcomes.

In European culture the figure of the master (Meister; Maître; Maestro) still exists but as a relative curiosity, or something of an historical relic. However, things look decidedly different from the perspective of the continental traditions of education: namely Bildung (educational or cultural trans-/formation). In this context, masters act as living representatives of the tradition, or offer inspiration and guidance through texts that aid Bildung. The historical link of the Meister to the European construction of education as Bildung (Meister Eckhart having used the term Bildung in reference to ‘becoming God’) is suggestive of a possible link between European concepts of educational formation, and East Asian pedagogical ideas of self-transformation/ self-cultivation.

This conference will create a space for exploring the Anglo-American traditions of educational trans-/formation (e.g. education and the Transcendentalists) and European constructions of Bildung, alongside East Asian traditions of trans-/formation and development. Relatively little work in this area has been undertaken and many questions about the commensurability of North American, European and East Asian pedagogy remain. It is not obvious that educational formation as Bildung is generalizable in the way suggested above. Nor is it obvious that the lifeworlds of these different traditions are mutually illuminating or at all commensurable. What is clear, though, is the continued interest in (self-) formation through various East Asian practices, from varied martial arts to health and spiritual practices (e.g. Aikido, Tai Chi, Yoga, mindfulness etc.), suggesting that ‘traditional’ practices and pedagogical relations have something important to contribute despite the marginal place they occupy within educational discourse. Six scholars working within this field have been invited to present papers that will address these and other related themes such as:

• Concepts of teaching, teacher and self-formation across East and West

• East Asian Martial Arts philosophy and pedagogy

• 道 (jap.: dō /chin.: Dao) as educational form

• Intercultural comparative understandings of Bildung/ Bildsamkeit

• The role of (filial) piety, submission, and authority

• Problems of translation and commensurability

Conference Programme:

10:20 Welcome and introduction Dr David Lewin, University of Strathclyde

10:30 – 11:15 Prof Paul Standish, University College London, Tu Weyming and Liberal Education in a Global Era

11:15 Tea & Coffee

11:30 – 12:15 Dr Andrea English, University of Edinburgh, Title TBC

12:15 – 13:00 Dr Karsten Kenklies, University of Strathclyde, Alienation and In-Habitation - The Educating Journey in West and East

13:00 Lunch

14:00 – 14:45 Dr James MacAllister, University of Edinburgh, Education as transformation of human desire: From Ikiru to MacIntyre

14:45 – 15:30 Qasir Shah, University College London, Junzi: A Teacher for All Seasons

15:30 Tea & Coffee

16:00 – 16:45 Dr Joris Vlieghe, University of Aberdeen, A Flusserian analysis of western and eastern practices of literacy initiation

16:45 – 17:30 Prof Naoko Saito, University of Kyoto, TBC

Apolitical education

In a context where populist political dispositions hold the newsworthy reins of procedural politics in the U.K. and the U.S.A., a stronger relationship between education and politics is in high demand. Educators are asking serious questions about, for example, how to best teach their students to be more politically engaged. Without attempting to diminish the significance of these questions, this paper will approach the relationship between politics and education in a different way. While most contemporary philosophy and theory argues, to a greater or lesser extent, that the political pervades every aspect of individual lives, this is not the consciously lived experience of most people. Rather than negate these experiences in the name of a fully developed ‘critical consciousness’ (or its absence), this paper will suggest that political and educational philosophy must account for what Laurent Dubreuil names the ‘apolitical’. Recognising, teaching, or creating space for the apolitical would not mean advocating for apolitical dispositions in the colloquial sense, where one would not care about politics at all. The apolitical instead figures that which exceeds the political and, in doing so, might remind us of what the political should protect or leave alone.

Dr Emile Bojesen is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the University of Winchester, where he is programme leader of the MA Philosophy of Education. He writes on the experiential, relational and political dimensions of educational thought and practice. He has published widely in journals such as Studies in Philosophy and Education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Ethics and Education and Philosophy Today. He has recently co-edited a book titled Against Value in the Arts and Education (2016).

Educational Philosophy for a Post-secular Age (Routledge 2016)

• Welcome and Introduction

• Prof Ninetta Santoro, Director of Research

• Rights, Citizenship, Dialogue: Claire Cassidy, Convenor of the ‘Rights, Citizenship and Dialogue’ research group

• Author’s Introduction: David Lewin (University of Strathclyde) Formations of the Post-secular in Education 

• Response paper: Piotr Zamojski (Liverpool Hope University) And Yet Immanence! Religion and Education after Metaphysics

•  Questions and discussion