This article takes the author's personal experience of being a Head of Department (HOD) in an English University, and frames this experience as a transition narrative. The format draws on the work of Sandra Acker, who framed her own experience as a Head of Department in Canada, in three areas. Utilising literature both on Higher Education…

Ethnography as a methodological approach presents the fieldworker with many ethical crossroads throughout the research process. This is because of the unique position that ethnographers find themselves in, the environments that they research and the relationships which are formed. This paper presents four confessional vignettes from a broader…

In "A Theory of Moral Education," Michael Hand defends the importance of teaching children moral standards, even while taking seriously the fact that reasonable people disagree about morality. While I agree there are universal moral values based on the kind of beings humans are, I raise two issues with Hand's account. The first is an…

Research shows that various pharmaceuticals can offer modest cognition enhancing effects for healthy individuals. These finding have caused some academics to support liberal use of pharmacological cognitive enhancement (PCE) in schools and universities. This approach partially arises from arguments implying there is little moral justification for…

In this short essay I express my own deep sympathy with Nel Noddings's ethic of care and applaud her stubborn resistance in "Happiness and Education" to what John Dewey would have called false dualisms, such as those between intelligence and emotion, theory and practice, or vocation and academic studies.However, I question whether…

Defending emotions is neither banal nor senselessness. It is not falling into sentimentality (Camps, 2011, p. 33) would say. Emotions take shape within human actions and imply leadership, not just in a purely mechanistic sense, but in the sense set out by Sartre (1973), dealing with the way the individual understands emotions and the role they…

Since early times, human beings have searched for spiritual experiences that provide connections to their hearts and souls. People sometimes find these connections through experiencing music--perhaps the last remaining ubiquitous spiritual experience in Western culture. And yet, material values rule our world, even in music education. Is music in…

In this article, the author engages in a lively interactive discussion with Paul Woodford's text, "Democracy and Music Education." He questions Woodford's criticism of Praxial Music Education (PME)--particularly his dismissal of PME as a "performance alone" notion. PME, this author asserts, is fundamentally multidimensional, contextually reflexive…

Reviews and responds to arguments against a caring ethic in nursing: (1) caring is too vague; (2) caregivers may be exploited; (3) it does not solve ethical conflicts; (4) it is relativistic; (5) it is based on partiality; (6) patients may not want it; (7) it may focus too much on the nurse; and (8) emotional responsiveness may hinder rather than…

The author suggests that the relationship between art and religion is far closer than either the theorists of aesthetics or the students of theology commonly suppose, so close that the one may easily be confused with the other. He considers the relationship under three rubrics: knowing, being, and doing. (Author/SJL)

This paper argues that morality is essentially a matter of rational reflection and judgment and has little to do with feelings or affections. The notions of reason and justification are analyzed. Four types of feelings are defined and shown to provide inadequate bases for moral judgment. (Author/SJL)

Discusses John Dewey's theory on ethics in education and the theory of deliberation, examining his views on emotion and ethical deliberation; emotion and aesthetic sensibility; use of research results in ethical deliberation; use of the scientific approach and scientific results; and emotion and aesthetics in scientific discovery. (SM)

In this paper I describe and discuss the way that a book I had written on a five-year longitudinal study of school science teaching was received by the pupils and teachers it featured. By and large the pupils' reception was positive. However, one group of teachers was deeply hurt by the book. I trace this mainly to my failure to consider…

Discusses how children construct their experiences of justice and injustice and how abuse relates exclusively to the meaning assigned to these constructs. Notes that children's psychological adaptation is shaped by the legal system's response to the child's plight and how the traumatic event is interpreted according to the ethical standards that…