Volume 16, Number 2, 2007

EN:

Concerns are raised regarding the place of the arts in education, specifically as they are used in the social science context of educational research under the title ‘arts-based research’. An examination of Elliot Eisner’s claim that art is research concludes that, though the arts may be used for display, data, or heuristic in educational research, they are not being recognised for their distinctive characteristics. John White’s critique of the theory of multiple intelligences is revisited to mitigate common claims for the arts based upon Gardner. Given the dominance of scientism in today’s research climate, it is argued that the arts take their rightful place as foil to research in its quest for certainty; that they be the antagonist mode of thought called for by John Stuart Mill.

EN:

Martin Buber provides an ethical understanding of dialogical resistance. But does this notion take sufficiently into account the oppositional force of resistance and the shifting realities of monologic relations? How are we to understand the terms dialogue and resistance? What impact will the ethics of dialogical resistance have on evaluation practices in public education? To address these questions, each term of this dyadic relationship must be defined. First I will differentiate dialogue from conversation, argument and discussion. Secondly it must be shown that my view of ethical resistance cannot be synonymous with criticism, disagreement or dissent per se, though undoubtedly certain connections do exist in practice. Then it will be appropriate to delve into a linguistic analysis of the substantive terms of dialogue and resistance as separate notions before using them together as intersecting concepts. Once I have delineated dialogical resistance as a dyadic tension, I will highlight Martin Buber's passion for human worth – the motivation for respect- as the necessary condition for the ethical success of dialogical resistance. The balance of this paper will take a look at the psychological roots of dialogical resistance, the complexity of practising dialogical resistance, and asymmetrical relations in the classroom.

EN:

This paper asks and examines the question “who are you?” In doing so it embarks across the conceptual terrain of subjectivity, passing through five different regions. First is the subject and otherness, in which are considered Arendtian notions of the “who” of the individual in the appearing world. Next is the relation between the “I” and the “you” in systems of recognition, and how those systems are creations and expressions of social normativity. This is followed by the idea of the sovereignty of the self as a reaction to its dislocation within systems of recognition. Sovereignty as such is viewed through the thought of Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt. With Foucault, the authors approach the question of social normativity as a frame rather than a constraint by which the self is stylized. The fourth section of the paper then explores self-questioning as a means of explicit or intentional self-stylization. Contrasting the “mere liberation” of thinking in Arendt’s thought with broader understandings of freedom, the fifth section relates Arendt’s conception of the miraculous with Derrida’s of the event. The paper’s trajectory returns in conclusion to the implications of its course for the initial question of who one is, particularly with respect to the teaching subject.

EN:

Taking up the theme of this year’s Congress – Bridging communities: Making public knowledge, making knowledge public – our panel’s three essays each examines from three different locations how knowledge and knowledge-making function in the contemporary market/knowledge economy: international education, autobiographical inquiry, and teacher education. The educational vision and commitment that these three distinct pieces share is ethics of care. Problematizing commodification of knowledge and its notion of having knowledge, we make the case for the centrality of being in human and societal living. We then make suggestions for how the being-dimension can be conceptualized and lived. In particular, we argue that caring, being present, self-knowing and human agency are central.

EN:

This bricolage of verses and prose, addresses the themes of poetics in and of philosophizing, and brings poetic provocations to philosophical musings. Authors muse on what it is to philosophize in the mood and mode of poetics, and why that matters for Education. Preliminary incursions are made into the issues of entrenched dualism between intellect (mind) and senses (heart), and ensuing privileging of the former over the latter. A collegially written introduction sets the general framework.

EN:

This paper considers a self-acknowledged indoctrinator’s defense of his teaching. This defense relies on the correspondence conception of truth which allows a logical gap between the conduct of an inquiry and the truth of our beliefs. In criticism, I will seek to characterize the truth of our beliefs in terms of a link with genuine inquiry. Finally, I consider the value of having true beliefs and what constitutes the importance of acquiring the ability to inquire. On this view, good teaching, at a minimum, involves the exercise and the fostering of what I shall call epistemic prudence.

EN:

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to underscore the possible dangers of abstraction, objectification and reification as roots of human domination over other human and non-human beings; and to suggest that, as one possibility, place-based education, can counter these dominating patterns by pulling up their roots through fostering relational ontologies based on care and emotional/sensuous experience. The author will foreground the work of Henri Lefebvre, Neil Evernden, and R. D. Laing in the abstraction discussion, while the discussion of place-based education will draw largely on the writings of David Gruenewald.