Context: College campuses in the United States are currently engaged in public and ongoing negotiation of the value and limits of free speech in educational contexts. Responses to invited campus speakers from students, faculty, and campus leaders point to diverging perspectives on the roles and responsibilities of higher education institutions and…

The purpose of this study is to examine the partial mediating effect of epistemological beliefs in the correlation between preferences towards educational philosophy and the curriculum design approach of preservice teachers. For this purpose, pre-service teachers' educational philosophy preferences, curriculum design orientation, and…

The purpose of this article is to add to the debate on the normative status and legitimacy of indoctrination in education by drawing on the political philosophy of Benedict Spinoza (1632-1677). More specifically, I will argue that Spinoza's relational approach to knowledge formation and autonomy, in light of his understanding of the natural…

This article considers the relevance of Susan Isaacs' practice and research for twenty-first century early childhood education, reflected in two studies conducted discretely nearly a century apart that theorize young children's constructions of knowledge: Isaacs' Malting House School study and the 'Young Children Are Researchers' study. The…

Philosophy is sometimes thought of as having two principal dimensions: one that aims to build systems and doctrines, and another that is concerned to unsettle fixed ways of thinking. Richard Peters seems to position himself in both camps. I suggest that education in the UK today increasingly bears the marks of rigid thinking, largely as a result…

In the US and elsewhere, creationist groups have challenged the mandatory science curriculum because it introduces the theory of evolution as the true story of biodiversity. This paper disaggregates this challenge in two distinctive levels. On the substantive level, creationists claim that Darwinian evolution is not value-neutral, as most…

The systems of education in the world have adopted many philosophies of education that are either skewed toward change or committed to conservancy. African philosophy and African philosophy of education form an activity and a process which is context-sensitive, whereby the relativity factor defines the peculiarity of thinking about education.…

This conceptual paper argues for the reconfiguring of Intercultural Communication Education (ICE) through a dialogical engagement with "Istina" (Truth) and "Pravda" (Truth in Justice). The paper argues that the field of ICE is predominantly characterised by normative conceptualisations of truth (e.g., characterised by fixed or…

Contemporary curricula specify the conceptual understanding that will be important for pupils in the world that they will soon inhabit. In so doing, concepts are characterised as representing the essential qualities of phenomena, the knowledge of which will be applicable in future contexts. Yet such a characterisation divorces concepts from the…

The notion of otherness, often misused, requires important conceptualization work in order for it to be considered in all of its forms, and not simply reduced to the account of others. Although otherness certainly questions the link to the other (relation), it also questions the link to the self (reflexivity) and the link to knowledge…

The article raises the problem of critical thinking from a constructivist perspective. In the course of argumentation, we justify the thesis that constructivism is a valuable basis for both a theoretical approach (as a model) to critical thinking and a didactic design of activities focused on shaping and developing appropriate skills and…

There has been a revived interest Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Notions emanating from his philosophy concerning the human person and that human beings together create and sustain phenomena through social practice speaks of a relational ontology that has relevance for contemporary education. This article argues that such ontology needs to be…

In the pages to follow, I propose a meditation on the concept of study, its place in our contemporary scene, and its relation to the classical notion of leisure. In general terms, we can define leisure as an extreme disposition or state in which our relation to the world remains indeterminate in some way. In this sense, leisure favours a radical…

Human thought can be characterised as being situated in the 'space of reasons'. That is to say that human thought is guided by the norms of theoretical and practical rationality which, in turn, enable autonomous thinking. But how do children learn to navigate the space of reasons? Building on the work of Tugendhat and Bakhurst, among others, we…

Philosophers of education often view the role of religion in education with suspicion, claiming it to be impossible, indoctrinatory or controversial unless reduced to secular premises and aims. The 'post-secular' and 'decolonial' turns of the new millennium have, however, afforded opportunities to revaluate this predilection. In a social and…