Response to criticism made of author's The Confrontation Between Experimentalism and Existentialism: From Dewey Through Heidegger and Beyond." (MB)

This essay serves as a guide for scholars, especially those in education, who want to gain a better understanding of Heidegger's essay, "The Question Concerning Technology". The paper has three sections: an interpretive summary, a critical commentary, and some remarks on Heidegger scholarship in education. Since Heidegger's writing style is rather…

In response to Helmut Heid's critique of domesticated philosophical critique, I focus on the metaphor of domestication, which is central to his article. Drawing on the work of Jacques Derrida, I offer a deconstructive critique of the opposition between domesticated and undomesticated critique, arguing that a clear conceptual demarcation between…

This paper starts from a brief sketch of the classical figure of critical educational theory or science (Kritische Erziehungswissenshaft). Critical educational theory presents itself as the privileged guardian of the critical principle of education (Bildung) and its emancipatory promise. It involves the possibility of saying "I" in order to speak…

This essay examines critically the conceptual and normative underpinnings of various views about educational quality, emphasizing the centrality of different assumptions about educational aims. Two distinctions play a key role in the first part of the paper: that between transcendent justifications of educational aims, versus socio-cultural…

Contemporary education theory (and official South African policy) underwrites learner-centredness. I analyse learner-centredness as a possible piece of the puzzle about why it is proving so difficult to improve academic achievement. Learner-centred ideas are grounded in the belief that cognitive abilities develop spontaneously in accordance with a…

"High stakes testing" is to be understood as testing with serious consequences for students, their teachers and their educational institutions. It plays a central role in holding teachers and educational institutions to account. In a recent article Randall Curren seeks to refute a number of philosophical arguments developed in my "The Limits of…

In this article, the author presents his views on Mike Cole's and Heather Mendick's comments on his book titled "Education and Society: Issues and Explanations in the Sociology of Education." In his review, Cole stated that the author's critical realism is seen as an advance on Marxism, of which the author is dismissive. The author refutes that…

This article looks into the workings of educational authority. While scholarly debate in education usually promotes authority as either good or bad, the same debate seldom asks questions about how authority works. This article is, then, an answer to the question "How?" How does educational authority operate? It operates, it is suggested, in much…

Offers a critical evaluation of theses presented by Martin Eger that attempt to justify the position that philosophical hermeneutics is an appropriate framework for science education in most of its aspects. Addresses the use of "meaning,""interpretation," and "text" in Eger's discussion. (LZ)

Critique is a concept that is constantly used as an instrument for agreement or disagreement, for reflection and discussion. There is a difference, however, between critique as a historically grounded phenomenon and critique as a utopian conception not situated in any particular socio-historical context. Educational theory resists reduction to…

Australia's adoption of outcomes based education (OBE), sometimes known as Essential Learnings or outcomes and standards based education, has been at the centre of a good deal of public scrutiny and debate. In Western Australia, during 2006, the planned introduction of OBE into years 11 and 12 led to a strident and vocal media campaign, in part,…

In this essay, Alexander Sidorkin offers a conceptual critique of the human capital theory that makes erroneous assumptions about the nature of student work and the private cost of schooling. Specifically, human capital theorists underestimate the private cost of schooling by taking low-level manual labor as the basis for estimating students'…

Comments on Michael Martin's paper "Philosophy of Science and Science Education" that appeared in "Studies in Philosophy and Education" 7 (1972): 210-25. (PG)

Defines and urges the development of a method of literary criticism based on an awareness of ecology, citing several of Shakespeare's works to exemplify the ecological approach. (RB)