Search

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The ideal of theoretical integration in motivational approaches to education is worthy, but in this commentary, I raise some (semi)contrarian concerns about both the meaning of theoretical integration and how that occurs. Integration is more than an aggregation or combination of measures but rather involves synthesis into a framework with theoretic and meta-theoretic integrity. Across disciplines and fields of inquiry, the development of science largely happens within theories and at their boundaries. Integration in practice (e.g., interventions) raises different issues, mainly concerning the coordination of elements that may address different classroom issues, and therefore can stem from multiple models and theories. I also describe the common direction and progress of motivational psychology over the past several decades, albeit with some “jingle –jangle” trends muddying our conceptual waters. Yet contrary to the view that it is our multiple perspectives that confuse teachers, I argue that confusion more centrally lies in the wide gap between our generally student-centered theories and public policies and institutional norms that hinder their implementation and their integration into practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Today, multilevel analytics on educational governance, management, and leadership are common in educational leadership research, drawing on a variety of approaches and academic disciplines. This article develops a threefold critique of the state of the art. First, this article argues that research on higher education leadership often represents an unreflected position regarding the societal role of higher education—decontextualising leadership from external practices and disregarding its internal object. Second, the approaches applied in leadership as a multilevel phenomenon can be problematic. On one end of the spectrum, we find particularist approaches focusing on individual levels representing disparate and often incompatible theoretical perspectives. As these positions rarely communicate, they have difficulties producing a coherent representation of higher education leadership. Universalist approaches, in turn, study leadership on several levels but offer identical conceptual tools for any societal practice, thereby losing the sensibility of the societal, cultural, and economic tasks of higher-education institutions, and for their specific character as institutions for research and teaching. Thirdly, research on educational leadership mostly fail to provide adequate theory of pedagogical interaction and influence. This is a twofold challenge. On the one hand, research lacks a theory of the object of educational leadership, namely teaching and studying. On the other, although research often defines leadership as a process of influence aimed at supporting learning, it lacks a theory able to explain what constitutes this influence. This article elaborates the possibilities for non-affirmative theory of education to provide a theory and language to overcome these challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Report: Zeitschrift für Weiterbildungsforschung is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Michel De Certeau's scholars have rarely explored the pedagogical potential of the French thinker's thought. This paper aims at reconstructing the question of the teaching practice in De Certeau's works and, building on such reconstruction, it proposes a possible 'heterological' comprehension of teaching. Moving from an early writing dealing specifically with the teacher's identity, the paper shows how the famous dyad of strategies and tactics exposed in The practice of everyday life can be usefully applied to teaching and studying and helps further elaborate the question of teaching. From this analysis, the teacher will emerge as the owner of a strategic knowledge that, if he wants to teach, needs to be altered by the uncanny and tactical presence of the student. Teaching will finally be shown as the practice of alteration of knowledge operated by the other of such knowledge, namely, the student. In such alteration of knowledge lies the potential of a heterological comprehension of teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue focuses on the theoretical, empirical and practical integrations between embodied cognition theory (EC) and educational science. The key question is: Can EC constitute a new theoretical framework for educational science and practice? The papers of the special issue support the efforts of those interested in the role of EC in education and in the epistemological convergence of EC and educational science. They deal with a variety of relevant topics in education and offer a focus on the role of the body and embodied experience in learning and educational settings. In conclusion, some further topics are suggested that will need to be investigated in the future, such as a critical evaluation of the possibility for an epistemological alliance between educational theory and embodied cognition, and the contribution that enactive cognition can provide to educational systems, organizations, institutions and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I draw apart two different contexts of Freirean pedagogical practice that I label interactional and institutional. The interactional refers to the immediate learning environment with relation to the interaction between the students and the teacher. In contrast, the institutional refers to how the institutions of education are managed, constructed, and organised and how they relate to the individuals those institutions are composed of. I begin by presenting a brief overview of Freire's argument in favour of a revolutionary pedagogy. I then highlight how this project is represented at both interactional and institutional levels with a particular focus upon the practice of the revolutionary leaders and their role in the development of the humanisation of the oppressed. In presenting the interactional and institutional elements of Freire's pedagogy separately the tension between the individual and the state is made plain and the limitations of his politico-educational project are drawn out. I argue that due to an inconsistent application of the relationship between means and ends in Freire's politico-educational project an incoherence between the interactional and institutional levels of education is highlighted. In responding to this limitation of Freire's politico-educational project with a thoroughly interconnected relationship of means and ends I show that there remains a necessary conflict between the interests of the individual and the state. As a result of this a door is opened for the development of an argument in favour of the disestablishment of education and state from a Freirean perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The call for a kind of education which can contribute to a sustainable future has resulted in the "education for sustainable development" (ESD) campaign. What is implied here is that a sustainable future can be achieved if people are properly educated. ESD ignores the current, popular perception that the future is non-shapeable and determined regarding sustainability issues; ESD presupposes a necessary understanding of a future that can be formed. The logic of standard education supports the perception of a future non-shapeable through the promotion of competencies designed for flexibility. Nevertheless both systems still conceive of education mainly as training, closing down the future. In this contribution, I argue that ESD needs to take current educational systems and today's society with their non-sustainable future-building practices into account, because otherwise ESD would not make any difference to the educational and societal status quo. My main objective is to show that education must be thought of as something other than just training: considering education predominantly as subjectification holds the possibility for open and alternative futures. In this article, I discuss the potentials of this understanding (and the notion of an open future) for education with a view to sustainability. I explicitly address an interdisciplinary audience with the aim of raising awareness that education is more than training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discovery learning continues to be a topic of heated debate. It has been called a zombie, and this special issue raises the question whether it may be a phoenix arising from the ashes to which the topic was burnt. However, in this commentary I propose it is more like an elephant—a huge topic approached by many people who address different aspects. What is needed in the discussion about discovery learning and related approaches, I argue, is sublation: the kind of lifting up from the one-dimensional discussion between two extremes (minimal guidance vs. direct instruction) that puts an end to the everlasting tug of war by integrating justified concerns from both opposite positions. I evaluate how the different contributions to the special issue help to sublate the discussion about discovery learning. In particular, the case study presented by Trninic illustrates how strong guidance and repetition may be needed for the discovery of something that cannot be told. I further suggest scaffolding, inferentialism, and design research as potential theoretical and methodological ways forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essential function of scientific disciplines is to generate knowledge using the scientific method. In a context characterised by acknowledgement of methodological complementarity and the existence of innumerable mechanisms for production (articles, theses...) and dissemination (databases, platforms...), production is a measure of any given discipline's normative development and projection. As a result of this situation, in Pedagogy-and, more specifically, in Educational Theory-we can witness a growing concern with systematising knowledge in a complex and dynamic context and based on reference frameworks. Therefore, this article aims to describe scientific production in Educational Theory, with the intention of discovering the creation and dissemination processes involved in theses retrieved from the Spanish doctoral theses database TESEO (2001-2015). A descriptive-comparative census study was carried out, with a total of n = 229 sampling units. The results show the following: thematic axes, which categorise thesis content into groups, are present; dissemination is influenced by the non-specific use of keywords, as well as by the area's organisation and structure in different universities; there are no statistically significant differences in terms of author gender. In conclusion, we can identify an ever greater intention to provide the area with more scientific content but little concern with increasing this content's visibility in databases such as TESEO. All in all, research production in Spain relating to Educational Theory is a good representative sample of researchers' efforts to project their interest in discovering, understanding and improving education. Therefore, special care should be taken when compiling production data in databases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though the interrelationship between education and democratic politics is as old as democracy itself, it is seldom explicitly formulated in the literature. Most of the time, the political system is taken as a given, and education conceptualized as an instrument for stability and social integration. Many contemporary discussions about citizenship education and democracy in the Western world mirror this tendency. In the paper, I argue that, in order to conceptualise the socio-political potential of education we need to understand democracy in more political terms. This means that democracy can neither be seen primarily as a mode of associated living (Dewey), nor a model for handling different life-views (political liberalism à la Rawls and Gutmann). A third alternative is Gert Biesta's notion of democratic subjectification. Even though Biesta identifies depoliticising trends in citizenship education policies, I argue that his alternative still fails to be a sufficiently political alternative. What is lacking in Biesta is the explicit attention to political causes and the kind of collective activities that define a democracy: the creation of one's own laws, norms and institutions. This capacity of the collective to question and govern itself is put in relief by Cornelius Castoriadis's notion of 'the project of autonomy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Zeitschrift für Psychodrama und Soziometrie is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Ability and achievement are not traits: they are relations. Mistaking traits for relations has a history even in science (our understanding of gravity). This mistake is possibly responsible for the lackluster performance of the results of our educational research when we have tried to use it to inform policy. It is particularly troublesome for interventions that target 'children at risk.' The paper provides a quasi-formal outline of achievement as a relation and it then uses the outline to explain some problematic research findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two related aspects of the present 'knowledge capitalism' stage of globalisation are discussed in this article: the transformation of education to make it more directly supportive of educational growth and competition, and the growing demands on educational research to provide scientific evidence for education policy and practice, using narrowly defined methods and techniques. It is argued that both developments have profound consequences for the construction and use of educational theory, and the vital need for critical discussion and communication in this respect is emphasised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our paper we aim at reflecting upon the extent to which educational theory may be used as a framework in the analysis of policy documents. As policy texts are 'heteroglossic in character' (Lingard and Ozga, in The Routledge Falmer reader in education policy and politics, Routledge, London and New York, , p. 2) and create 'circumstances in which the range of options available in deciding what to do are narrowed or changed' (Ball in, Education policy and social class: The selected works of Stephen J Ball, Routledge, London and New York, , p. 46), they need to be theoretically tackled in their underlying assumptions and implications. This proposal draws on an analysis of two sets of documents of the European Union: texts produced between 2000 and 2006, underlying the European Union programmes; and texts produced by a working group focusing on the key competences of Lifelong Learning (2003-2006). Initially, the framework for the analysis of different documents was grounded on the existing research in the field of educational policy. Now we attempt a secondary analysis of the collected data by transposing the borders of this particular and highly prolific field. We argue that what is outside the texts may reshape what is inside the texts. Educational theory allows us to define some conceptual tools in order to question the documents as political apparatus which open and constrain possibilities. Therefore, we will use educational theory as an arena where different matters, perspectives and possibilities may be explored and assembled. We have engaged in a conversation with both the data and some theoretical approaches. Central to this conversation are the concepts of 'ignorant schoolmaster' (Rancière, in The ignorant schoolmaster five lessons in intellectual emancipation, Stanford University Press, Stanford, ), 'learning contexts' (Edwards, in Rethinking contexts for learning and teaching, Routledge, Oxon and New York, , ), and 'experience' (Larrosa, in Revista Brasileira de Educação, 19:20-28, ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate concerning the relation of the theory of education and the practice of education is not new. In Germany, these discussions are an integral part of the development of educational science in the eighteenth century which is closely connected to Johann Friedrich Herbart and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Their concepts illustrate different answers upon the question of how to connect theory and practice in education. And although those answers are embedded in a very specific horizon of ethical and metaphysical ideas, the problems which are addressed in those discussions are still important in modern debates. The paper focuses upon the concepts of Herbart and Schleiermacher and presents those theories in the problematic context of the possibilities and limitations of educational theory and its importance for educational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses two main questions: (1) What has theory been doing? and (2) What might theory be doing? The first question is addressed historically, and the second question is addressed imaginatively. In between those two topics, I have inserted a brief interval to raise some sticking points pertaining to the question, 'What is properly educational about educational theory?' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the task of educational theory or philosophy if it is not merely conceived as specification of philosophical doctrines in the realm of education? In my view it is the particular task of educational-philosophical theory to work critically on the historically developed cultural constructs that shape our (educational) experience. Thus, the activity that educational theorists are to perform is the critical reflection of the 'limits of our world' by drawing on philosophical references and theories. In this text I describe this activity drawing from my own research practice with a particular focus on its relation to what is called thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Edwin, a person contemplating a career in teaching, has a conversation with Phyllis, a teacher and amateur theorist, about reasons to become a teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that an educated being logically does not have to be a human. Philosophers analyzing the concept of education have reached a consensual notion of the matter; but in applying that idea, they have barely discussed whether or not human beings are the only entities that may be educated. Using their notion as the core of a heuristic conception of education, this paper attempts to show that in some contexts it might make sense to predicate education of certain non-human entities. In addition, the paper examines the place of beliefs, reflective intelligence, practical thinking, and feelings in education. It concludes by discussing its implications for educational theory and practice and for the connections between the educated being and personhood and the right to education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The call for reforms in science education has been ongoing for a century, with new movements and approaches continuously reshaping the identity and values of the discipline. The HPS movement has an equally long history and taken part in the debates defining its purpose and revising curriculum. Its limited success, however, is due not only to competition with alternative visions and paradigms (e.g. STS, multi-culturalism, constructivism, traditionalism) which deadlock implementation, and which have led to conflicting meanings of scientific literacy, but the inability to rise above the debate. At issue is a fundamental problem plaguing science education at the school level, one it shares with education in general. It is my contention that it requires a guiding 'metatheory' of education that can appropriately distance itself from the dual dependencies of metatheories in psychology and the demands of socialization-especially as articulated in most common conceptions of scientific literacy tied to citizenship. I offer as a suggestion Egan's cultural-linguistic theory as a metatheory to help resolve the impasse. I hope to make reformers familiar with his important ideas in general and more specifically, to show how they can complement HPS rationales and reinforce the work of those researchers who have emphasized the value of narrative in learning science. This will be elaborated in Part II of a supplemental paper to the present one. As a prerequisite to presenting Egan's metatheory I first raise the issue of the need for a conceptual shift back to philosophy of education within the discipline, and thereto, on developing and demarcating true educational theories (essentially neglected since Hirst). In the same vein it is suggested a new research field should be opened with the express purpose of developing a discipline-specific 'philosophy of science education' (largely neglected since Dewey) which could in addition serve to reinforce science education's growing sense of academic autonomy and independence from socio-economic demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the second of two parts and continues the conversation which had called for a shift in the conceptual focus of science education towards philosophy of education, with the requirement to develop a discipline-specific 'philosophy' of science education. In Part I, conflicting conceptions of science literacy were identified with disparate 'visions' tied to competing research programs as well as school-based curricular paradigms. The impasse in the goals of science education and thereto, the contending views of science literacy, were themselves associated with three underlying fundamental aims of education (knowledge-itself; personal development; socialization) which, it was argued, usually undercut the potential of each other. During periods of 'crisis-talk' and throughout science educational history these three aims have repeatedly attempted to assert themselves. The inability of science education research to affect long-term change in classrooms was correlated not only to the failure to reach a consensus on the aims (due to competing programs and to the educational ideologies of their social groups), but especially to the failure of developing true educational theories (largely neglected since Hirst). Such theories, especially metatheories, could serve to reinforce science education's growing sense of academic autonomy and independence from socio-economic demands. In Part II, I offer as a suggestion Egan's cultural-linguistic theory as a metatheory to help resolve the impasse. I hope to make reformers familiar with his important ideas in general, and more specifically, to show how they can complement HPS rationales and reinforce the work of those researchers who have emphasized the value of narrative in learning science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational theory does not oppose educational practice, as many seem to think; instead it is a form of practice and the action of theory exists at two levels. At a cultural level theory is characterized by linguistic forms of action and at a social level it is characterized by the day to day practices that organize and reward the work of producing educational philosophy. While the social practices that govern the production of philosophy certainly beg for ethnographic attention, any consideration anthropologists or philosophers give it will eventually find its way to the page and hence to the cultural forms of linguistic action that are the subject of this paper. Focusing on how educational philosophers see the things that they do, as opposed to what they see, I will suggest that the way educational philosophy is fashioned is an important part of what is fashioned. Ironically, as I will show, the ``way'' of educational philosophy can flow with or against the ``what'' of it – an author, that is, can say that they are for or against this or that, but their stylized way of saying it can contradict the literal meaning of their words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An analysis is provided detailing the conditions for the appropriate theoretical study of the object of educational science: pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]