Keynotes fulfill a particular function in the planning and compiling of a conference program, and these individuals are invited for a number of reasons -- to lend political and/or scholarly gravitas to the event, to stimulate and enlighten, and/or to provoke. Keynotes are also often outsiders to a particular field, and an invitation to deliver a…

John Buethe draws upon the Netflix series "Stranger Things" and develops this paper's ideas by using it as an allegory for and education towards subjectivity along lines suggested by Gert Biesta in "The Beautiful Risk of Education", and Jaeggi in her work, "Alienation." Buethe observes that the show places a wager on…

McGrath presents a prototyping proposal to better classify character education programs. He proposes 7 key elements that can facilitate identifying more and less typical programs. This proposal appears to be a very good start for improving the organization of the character education field and facilitating research. This commentary highlights 4…

In this essay, which is a response to five papers on Heidegger and education but can also be read independently, I argue that it is only when we introduce the German distinction between "Bildung" and "Erziehung" that it becomes possible to discuss in sufficient detail the possibilities and limitations of a Heideggerian account…

Robert McGrath's article has the great virtue of asking an important question: "What is character education?" He argues that currently "what it means to call something a character education program remains unclear." Without a clear definition, McGrath says, one cannot differentiate character education from other programs…

In "Democratic Foundations of Spiritually Responsive Pedagogy," Lingley worried that talk of spirituality is taboo in U.S. public school classrooms. Lingley pointed out that the dominant narrative demands silence on the topic. She wanted to make the case for spiritually responsive pedagogy as vital to an inclusive democracy. I begin this…

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…

This article is written in response to Lingley's (2016) concept of spiritually responsive pedagogy. To begin with, the word "spiritual", when applied to education, still attracts varied responses. Therefore, I have begun by examining contemporary understandings of spirituality as reflected in current research and literature, which…

Current theory, policy, and practice of lifelong learning are strongly influenced by ideas about the transformations that are taking place in contemporary societies. One influential set of ideas emphasizes that because of the rapid changes that are taking place in the (late-) modern world and because of the erosion of traditions, there is a…

In this response to Lingley's (2016) article "Democratic Foundations of Spiritually Responsive Pedagogy," the author invites the framework of (a)spiritually responsive curriculum to include a more direct engagement with a culturally relevant curriculum as well. The author agrees with Lingley's postulation that (a)spirituality is deeply…

In this commentary, we critically review the contribution of the sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-1982) to understanding recovery from problem drug use. Previous research has indicated that drug users have a "spoiled identity" and must restore a "normal" or "unspoiled" identity in order to recover. This argument has been linked to Goffman's…

The author examines one particular systematic and normative theorization of social justice in Barry Bull's "Social Justice in Education." Bull embarks on a timely and ambitious theory-to-practice project of grounding an educational theory of social justice in Rawls's seminal, liberal, distributive justice tome. The author…

For feminist literary critics and teachers writing about and teaching literature "after feminism," the path is potentially treacherous. Feminist literary criticism, if it is applied too narrowly and used to reject complex literary texts that do not uphold an imagined feminist standard of "positive images" of women, can end up undermining other…

Our article describing the characteristics of gifted students with a specific learning disability (SLD) in written language was criticized for emphasizing an ability achievement discrepancy as an indication of a written language disability and for not ruling out alternative explanations for the observed difficulties. The three primary alternative…

Three of the most emotionally charged terms in this era are "race," "racism," and "White privilege." Definitions for these terms vary by individual experiences, beliefs, opinions, and perceptions. K-20 students are rarely exposed to a detailed coverage and critical analysis of the part of U.S. history that includes genocide, territorial…