There is much to celebrate about the liberal-progressive approach championed by New Zealand, which continues to be a prized feature of New Zealand education. Many liberal-progressive practices developed in New Zealand and contextualised for New Zealand students that sought to expand and enrich education were borrowed from Native Schools, Maori…

The resurgence of Confucian education in present-day China has received increasing academic attention over the last two decades. However, certain aspects of this trend remain poorly understood, particularly parents' involvement in their children's Confucian education. Based on a qualitative study conducted at a Confucian school, this article sheds…

This introduction to my "Interpreting Kant in Education: Dissolving Dualisms and Embodying Mind" begins with a disturbing puzzle. Immanuel Kant is one of the most significant thinkers of modern times, with unrivalled influence, but he receives a great deal of criticism in educational theory. The widespread, supposedly 'Kantian' picture…

In this contribution to the Special Issue on the instrumentalisation of education, we focus on the relation between politics and education, as today there is a dominant discourse on rendering education subservient to the realisation of political aims. Rather than analysing the many ways in which such instrumentalisation takes place, we propose to…

The aim of the article is to posit the question whether, or under what conditions 'instrumentalism' can be seen as a viable target of the philosophical critique of education. Firstly, I will briefly review and compare three critical conceptions in modern philosophy that interpreted Western civilization as a form of instrumentalism, yet, at the…

The theme of childhood and education in Lyotard's philosophy provides an interesting field of reflection combining education studies and continental philosophy. Childhood in Lyotard's thought is mostly understood as "infantia," a concept that appears towards the end of his work. The claim of this article is that childhood in Lyotard's…

This article explores how key ideas from the critical theory of Oskar Negt can be utilized to address critiques and further enhance Mezirow's theory of transformative learning. The implications of Negt's work on the dialectical nature of experience are identified. So too are the connections he makes between experience, social structures, and…

In the past years, there has been an intensive discussion on the topic of academic freedom in the university. More precisely, it has been criticized that the university is confronted with a growing intolerance and the request to limit free speech. This contribution takes a case at a German university as point of departure. It shows how the current…

Higher Education (HE) constitutes a space that calls urgently for new understandings in the contemporary political moment. One way of establishing such an understanding of HE is to consider more fully the work of political theorists in relation to questions of power in the modern nation-state, particularly as these impinge upon the key problem of…

In this historical study, I present the emergence and evolution of Jamey Aebersold's Play-A-Long volumes and their key role in bringing jazz improvisation to formal music education. Drawing on oral histories and using a framework from sound studies, I present chord-scales and pattern playing as Deweyan conceptual technologies that assist beginners…

This article is based on results from research that addressed the ways young Black Metal musicians construct their musical learning and socialization. In this article we will focus on one of the strands in that study; a trace of a classic ideal from "Bildung" theory. Using Bildung theory, we explore similarities between the ideals and…

Examining developments in the history of education in Africa as a whole raises far-reaching philosophical, anthropological and historical questions about what Africa is and whether such a history is even possible "as such." The course of that history and its tributaries wend around social theories; its dominant issues, tensions and gaps…

This paper considers the plight of Western education and the demands it makes upon us. It argues that the feared end of education underpins and unduly shackles reflection on the current crisis of education. As a spectral, abysmal prospect, it both fetters and stimulates educational critique, mobilising critique to the support of a cause it cannot…

This article interrogates a key feature of anarchist education; focusing on a problem with implications not only for anarchist conceptions of education, but for anarchist philosophy and practice more broadly. The problem is this: if anarchism consists in the principled opposition to all forms of coercive authority, then how is this to be…

This article explores how literary study engages readers' moral perception and imagination. Although some philosophers discuss reading as a largely solitary activity, this article explores social practices of reading common in English language arts classrooms in secondary schools. The article shows how reading with others can change the quality of…