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Discusses the evolution of progressive education. Factors drawing the unification progressive educators; Conditions constituting progressive education to flourish; Explanation on the types of progressive education.

This paper examines and evaluates some aspects of the legacy of the West Riding of Yorkshire County Council and its long serving Chief Education Officer, Sir Alec Clegg, who held the post between 1945 and 1974. Against a subsequent political discourse of markets, choice and autonomy which portrays local authorities as the cause of poor educational outcomes and school failure, political developments have led to a diminution of the role of local authorities, destruction of local democratic accountability and greater centralisation of power and control of education. Drawing on interviews and email correspondence with former pupils, teachers, officers and others of the West Riding, its successor authorities and beyond, we explore the context, tensions, successes and lasting impact of Clegg's ideas and practice, particularly in relation to support for community development and the arts and creativity. The paper also looks at Clegg's influence and legacy with regard to selection for secondary education and the role of middle schools, the development of primary education and the impact on successor authorities to the West Riding and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

R. Freeman Butts was an American historian and philosopher of education who died in March 2010. This paper will investigate Butts’ various roles and writings and ask the question: why is Butts important to the contemporary generation of teacher educators and teachers? This paper will argue that the breadth of Butts’ work builds connections and is a very positive model for sub-disciplines in education. Firstly, it is critical to examine Butts’ contribution, as Butts provokes teachers to inquire about the ‘context of education,’ rather than simply the ‘how to’ of teaching and the question of classroom management. Additionally, it is significant to for educators to study Butts’ life and works as they embody the essence of service – in his case, as an education diplomat. He started with what former US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton calls ‘the conversation,’ and this led eventually to projects such as the Afghan Project to bring development to Afghanistan in the era of the mid to late twentieth century. Finally, one can argue that Freeman Butts’ life and works provide educators with an interdisciplinary example as Butts’ combined the talents of an historian and an international educator, something that remains sorely needed today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Capacity building in social science research methods is positioned by research councils as crucial to global competitiveness. The pedagogies involved, however, remain under-researched and the pedagogical culture under-developed. This paper builds upon recent thematic reviews of the literature to report new research that shifts the focus from individual experiences of research methods teaching to empirical evidence from a study crossing research methods, disciplines and nations. A dialogic, expert panel method was used, engaging international experts to examine teaching and learning practices in advanced social research methods. Experts, perspectives demonstrated strong thematic commonalities across quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods domains in terms of pedagogy, by connecting learners to research, giving direct and immersive experiences of research practice and promoting reflexivity. This paper argues that through analysis of expert responses to the distinct pedagogic challenges of the methods classroom, the principles and illustrative examples generated can form the knowledge and understanding required to enhance pedagogic culture and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper begins with an analysis of global problems shaping education, particularly as they impact upon learning and life chances. In addressing these problems a range of philosophical positions and controversies are considered, including: traditional romantic and institutional views of schooling; and more recent maximalist, neo-liberal, emancipatory and post-modern-perspectives of lifelong learning. In this paper we argue that these do not represent ‘the last word’ on the provision of learning and the enhancement of life chances and instead we put forward an alternative view based upon the notion of adopting an inclusive problem-solving approach, which we believe may be better suited to offering solutions to the various global problems that have been identified or that are still emerging. We believe that such an approach addresses and expands the individual, social, economic and political features of education and conduces to the improvement and expansion of learning and life chances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this article is to contribute to the understanding and use of the theory of communities of practice. In order to clarify terms, explore applications for education and reflect on various critiques of the theory in the literature, two educational researchers conducted a series of interviews with the theorist Etienne Wenger-Trayner. The interviews have been thematically organised around key concepts from the theory. By relating the concepts to their uses in research and to other social theories, Wenger-Trayner clarifies key ideas of the theory including what constitutes a ‘community of practice’. He explains how he conceptualises identity and participation in order to develop a social theory of learning in which power and boundaries are inherent. The interviewers draw on these conceptual discussions with Wenger-Trayner to consider how the theory of communities of practice resonates with key debates and issues in education. By unpacking some key concepts of the theory from an educational perspective, we provide researchers with conceptual tools to support the complex decision-making that is involved in selecting the best and most appropriate theory or theories to use in their research. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

It is increasingly maintained that cost–benefit analysis (CBA) should play a greater role in educational policy-making. This article critically examines the rationale guiding CBA and its compatibility to educational settings. Drawing on philosophical discussions, it argues that the rationale guiding CBA has some fundamental limitations that render the use of it in education beneficial only under certain restrictive circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Professor Roy Harris (2009) criticises me for ignoring freedom of speech in order to focus on 'soft' issues, such as game theory, decision theory and chaos theory. In this response, I accept most of his arguments relating to freedom of speech, but argue that, in order to develop better systems of education, we need to pay more attention to the circumstances in which that freedom can be exercised than Harris admits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the philosophy of teaching. The author explains some ways in which the separation of educational philosophy from educational practice and inadequacies in the understanding of philosophers to what teaching means have been vital to each. The consequence will be that it is necessary to think again about teaching and about dissociation in particular, that has been taken for granted in the current educational philosophy. It has been expressed through the distinction between the question of what is teaching and from the question of what is good teaching.

The article focuses on three related concerns: first, approaches to the teaching of philosophy of education; second, working conditions in philosophy of education the making (educating) of philosophers of education. During one of the interviews the terms `inside-out' and `outside-in' were coined to mark contrasting pedagogical approaches to philosophy of education. The distinction consists in drawing attention to a pair of contrasting approaches to the teaching of philosophy of education. The pedagogical dimension involves, an approach to the teaching of philosophy of education which departs from the student's current and pressing concerns, for example, the issues of classroom discipline, moral education and proceeding from these to more critical philosophical matters. The educational or curricular dimension involves assuming a priority of importance in the preparation of future philosophers of education which stresses primarily a grasp of practical `educational' matters and only secondarily a high measure of competence in academic philosophy. The academic philosopher means a person who possesses or is studying for the Ph.D. degree in an arts faculty philosophy department. The field of academic philosophy is technical and diverse and any specialty, requires and presupposes a considerable background in other over-lapping areas of philosophy and sometimes in fields outside philosophy as for example in the philosophy of science or of history.

The article presents a discussion on the relationship between art, knowledge and education. It is about the claim of experience of the arts to be a form of knowledge as well as, importantly, a good deal more than knowledge. This discussion is important because the conceptual understanding of art as a kind of knowledge has hitherto received little or no attention from philosophers, and it badly needs this attention. Philosophers of education believe that the study of philosophy of art is a necessary preliminary to the understanding of the importance of art-education in a liberal curriculum. Strictly speaking, the complement of this would be an examination of its claims to a place alongside other subjects in education and also, of the principles of art-education itself. The arts, taken in a very inclusive sense indeed, on the whole and with some notable exceptions get a very poor deal in the schools of Great Britain. In this, the art of literature may be an exception. Music and the plastic arts, in spite of their historical-cultural importance, are widely regarded as frills, as nice, pleasant but peripheral amusements, to be dropped when the serious prospect of academic examinations looms ahead.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editors discuss articles within the issue on such topics related to education as the development of educational philosophy, the growth of neoliberal universities, and vocational education.