Scientific teleological explanations cite end states as causes to account for physical phenomena. Researchers in science education have noted that students can use teleological explanations in ways that are illegitimate, for example, by implying that inanimate objects are acting intentionally. Despite such cases, several examples of legitimate…

This paper considers what it could mean to say that epistemologies and methodologies are racially just or unjust. It has been argued that this has nothing to do with whether an individual researcher is racist: he or she could be anti-racist but still use an epistemology that is racially biased. To explore this issue, some pioneering research by…

Criticism of the foundational whiteness of western classical music's socio-cultural heritage remains relatively rare, and the field continues to export a prestigious self-image of cultural and technical superiority. Building on Ben Spatz' epistemology of practice, I argue that the foundational whiteness of western classical music is principally…

Although the social realist position is grounded in the fundamentally important observation that schools must engage students with knowledge that deepens and extends their understanding, rather than simply reproduce what they learn in everyday life, this approach commits a fatal flaw by equating such 'powerful knowledge' with the work of academic…

There are currently two broad forms of critique undergirding environmental education theories: the first is one of subtraction from perceived reality as it seeks to reveal and remove illusions and ideologies, while the other takes the inverse form of adding to reality in the form of investigating how matter comes to matter. We suggest a third form…

This article explores the diverse epistemic perspectives on intelligence, tracing its conceptual evolution across early Indian philosophy, Western philosophical thought and contemporary computational theories. Intelligence is examined as a dynamic, multifaceted phenomenon that transcends mere cognition, extending into embodied, ecological and…

How should educators deal with conspiracy theories in the classroom, if at all? Do the epistemic deficiencies of some conspiracy theories make them easy prey for debunking? Can the moral and political dangers that certain conspiracy theories pose to democratic societies justify educators avoiding addressing conspiracy theories in the classroom?…

During the last decade, the notion of norm-critique has had an impact on Swedish educational policymaking, including the gender-equality mission of the Swedish preschool. The aim is to better understand and problematize the relationship between gender equality, as formal curricular content, and norm-critique, as informal curricular content, in…

The recent proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) raises questions as to the role of such tools both within an educational learning environment and their epistemic capacity. If, as Alfred North Whitehead remarked, western philosophy indeed 'consists of a series of footnotes to Plato', it would be of doubtless importance to evaluate the…

In this final chapter of "Interpreting Kant in Education," I revisit and expand on some of the main differences in interpretation between the reading of Kant being presented and the familiar Kant found in education theory. It has been maintained that some deep-seated presuppositions from empiricist epistemology have influenced…

This article seeks to contribute to recent theorizing around the concept of powerful knowledge. I begin with a discussion of the current use of the term in both academia and the wider institutional environment of schools. I then give a detailed account of its origins in social realism before exploring different iterations of the concept in recent…

In this article I explore a disposition towards a critique of 'reductionism' and 'determinism' that seems to me to be very much prevalent within British sociology. I take a qualitative educational sociology that uses Bourdieusian concepts as one body of research where this disposition is expressed with particular fervour. A close examination of…

Do educational theories affect enfranchisement asymmetrically? This article analyses two sets of thinking skills in religious education as apparatuses, taking observations and political documents as a starting point. The thinking skills are described in terms of the roles they allocate, the attention and affect they direct, values and…

The paper argues that the modern school is an 'intolerable' institution. Contrary to the sensibilities of educational research that look for more and/or better schooling as a way of making education more equal and more inclusive, our position is against the modern European school as an institution of normalisation within which equality and…

This article weighs in on the developing discourse on AI's role in higher education research through a structured dialogue between two diametrically opposed academics. Utilising a dialectical framework, the discourse transcends surface-level debates to grapple with ethical, methodological, and epistemological questions that are often overlooked,…