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In this essay, Leonard Waks reconsiders the issue of the public character of charter schools, that is, schools funded through public taxation but operated by non-state organizations such as nonprofit and for-profit educational corporations and nongovernmental public interest organizations. Using John Dewey's conception of a democratic public as a framework, Waks examines the following questions: (1) Are schools chartered and funded by government, but operated by nonprofit nongovernmental organizations, ever appropriate instruments of a democratic public? (2) If so, what criteria might distinguish those that are appropriate from those that are not? (3) How might public education be re-institutionalized so as to include the charter schools that are appropriate? Waks concludes that Dewey's theory of democratic publics can play a useful role in thinking about how to balance the democratic benefits of charter schools for the various subcommunities of our society with the democratic requirement of broad public discourse and intergroup education.

Background/Context Although the concept of listening had been neglected by philosophers of education, it has received focused attention since 2003, when Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon addressed it in her presidential address to the Philosophy of Education Society. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study Haroutunian-Gordon offered a cognitive theory of listening, according to which an act of listening involves raising questions about both the speaker's utterance and the listener's own beliefs. Research Design This article draws on the methods of philosophical analysis to provide a competing account of listening. This account distinguishes between two types of listening, a cognitive (thinking) type and a noncognitive (empathic feeling) type. Findings/Results By considering a number of familiar classroom incidents, I show that both kinds of listening have important roles in teaching and learning. Conclusions/Recommendations I conclude by questioning whether the empathic type of listening can directly be taught. I conclude that it cannot be, but that teachers can provide three kinds of “helps” indirectly to foster its growth in learners.

In this essay, Leonard Waks reviews three recent books on cosmopolitan education: Kwame Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; Neil Burtonwood's Cultural Diversity, Liberal Pluralism, and Schools: Isaiah Berlin and Education; and Thomas Popkewitz's Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform: Science, Education and Making Society by Making the Child. Each of the three books challenges cosmopolitan universalism. Appiah argues that universal principles do not help us understand how members of distinct cultural groups can flourish in close proximity. Burtonwood adds that the expression of these principles in conflict situations can offend and humiliate illiberal groups and render them culturally reactive, inventing restrictive ideals of cultural “purity” that block cosmopolitan harmony. Popkewitz argues that the cosmopolitan premise of enlightenment for all imposes civilizing disciplines on those the dominant groups perceive as “others,” disciplines that render them abject. Taken together, the three books provide important planks in a comprehensive critique of cosmopolitan universalism as a philosophy of education.

The topic of listening has been broadly neglected in educational studies. This special issue presents studies on the connections between listening and reflecting in educational contexts.

In an earlier article I drew a distinction between two general types of listening. In one the listener brings pre-determined categories to bear in extracting useful information from the speaker’s utterance. In the other the listener suspends such categories to hear as much as possible in the utterance. This distinction has been challenged by Sophie Haroutunian-Gordon. This article responds to her critique.

This article provides a close reading of Democracy and Education, situated in the context of Dewey’s work prior to and during World War I, to illuminate the close tie between Dewey’s overriding concerns during this period and today’s educational concerns. The analysis suggests two projects for contemporary democratic educators.

In interview format this paper provides an introduction to the US education system for the non‐American faculty member, focusing primarily on the university sector. Issues addressed include: key differences inherent in the US system (versus the majority of the world); the structure of education; the role of the individual states and that of the federal government; funding; accreditation; faculty assessment and promotion; and the practicalities of teaching for an American university.

Globalization, unlike 20th century social and economic developments, will cause fundamental rather than merely incremental educational change. `Globalization' refers to a complex of technological and economic factorsincluding the global spread of communicationtechnology networks, and the global integration ofproduct and labor markets. I argue that (1) there is a powerful new alliance among elites and educational consumers for fundamental change; (2) globalization destabilizes the internal processes of school organizations that constrain fundamental change,motivating educators to innovate; (3) globalization erodes the institutional categories of public discourse that hold standard school practice in place, allowing a `shadow institution' of non-standard educational agencies to form; and (4) new synthetic visions of educational institutions in better accord with models of rational action in networked environments, are being formulated; and (5) these are now guiding a convergence of piecemeal innovations towards a fundamentally transformed institutional pattern.

Donald A. Schon is among our generation’s most influential philosophers of design and design education, yet remains uncelebrated in both philosophy and design education. This paradox dissolves when we consider Schon’s specific contribution. He was, by his own account, a displaced philosopher working in (among other places) a management consulting firm, a governmental agency, a non-profit center for social development, and finally a university department of urban planning. He used his marginal position in the design professions to reframe professional practice generally. Schon spoke from philosophy and design to professional practice, conceiving design to be its unifying core. From his philosophy of design he projected a new model for teaching and learning in the professions, and a new conception of the research university. The former has been taken up and elaborated by educators in the professions ‐ in schools of medicine, law, business, public administration, education, engineering, architecture, among others. The latter has entered the mainstream of discussion among higher education reformers. Philosophers and design educators have not paid the same measure of attention to Schon’s ideas. My purpose in this article is to re-introduce Schon as philosopher and design educator, to provide a simple exposition of his basic ideas ‐ his conception of design, his notion that all professional practice is ‘designlike,’ his ideas about how design is taught and learned, and his conception of the university as a collection of schools of design.

In Schon's account, the distinguishing feature of professional work is its 'designlike' character. For Schon, professional training (including teacher preparation) involves engagement in design experiments in virtual worlds he calls 'reflective practica'. Some teacher educators have developed models of teacher preparation following Schon's guidelines. Others have expressed reservations about his framework. But there has not yet been adequate critical assessment of the conceptual fit between Schon's framework and teacher preparation. This study contributes such an assessment. After providing a map through Schon's system of ideas I proffer two conclusions. First, conventional school teaching is not 'designlike' in Schon's sense. Second, teacher training cannot adequately be conducted 'off-line' in the virtual spaces Schon calls 'reflective practica'.

Rorty's neopragmatism is an attempt to retrofit Dewey's experimentalism for the post-modern situation. Specifically, he substitutes "language" for "experience" and "culture" for "science", to arrive at a philosophy "no closer to science than to art". I argue that the first move results from misunderstanding of the role experience plays in the context of verification in Dewey's experimental logic. The second move leaves Rorty without any alternative method even for approaching the very problems which Dewey proposed to solve with his experimentalism.

The publication of Kilpatrick's classic paper on the project method' sparked a lively theoretical debate in the USA about learner-directed projects in the curriculum. Boyd Bode's critique a decade later brought the American debate to a close, but projects have continued to play an important practical role. Recent trends in the US, including authentic assessment' and project-related work in the postindustrial economy, have stimulated renewed attention to learner projects.This paper reviews the earlier debate on project method and assesses its implications for postindustrial education.

Globalization of markets and expanding communication technology networks affect all dimensions of education: curriculum, instructional method, learning environments, and administration. In this article, the author anticipates the impacts upon education in science, technology, and society (STS).

Today's citizens are faced with personal and social value and lifestyle choices as well as the need to make decisions on public policy issues that lay beyond the scope of traditional value and moral systems. According to Prewitt (1983), our lack of understanding about the new technology and its implications threatens the quality of our lives, our natural environment, our future generations, and even our democratic institutions. The extension of life by artificial means, genetic screening, strategic defense initiatives in outer space, the environmental repercussions of genetically engineered organisms-these are examples of the scientific and technological innovations about which citizens must become familiar and whose impact upon society has yet to be fully determined. Science, Technology, and Society education (STS) is an educational innovation designed to promote responsible citizenship in this technologically dominated era (Waks, 1987). STS was born in the late 1960s and early 1970s as school and college educators at the grassroots level spontaneously responded to new problems of population explosion, resource depletion, industrial pollution, and the control of nuclear weapons. Funded by the National Science Foundation, Project Synthesis, which reconsidered the goals of science education and identified the need for a science, technology, and society goal cluster, was initiated in 1980. In the early 1980s STS was endorsed by both the National Science Teachers Association and the National Science Board as a curriculum emphasis appropriate for all learners. In 1985 a national task force composed of K-12 teacher leaders in science, technology, social studies, and English education, and college teachers representing several disciplines, met at the Pennsylvania State University to set forth a clear definition of STS. The meeting was organized by the Science Through Science, Technology, and Society Project at Pennsylvania State University and funded by the National Science

The STS education movement is identified and related to the critique of technology of the 1960s–1970s. The critics of technology included the system of education in their critiques. There is a practical tension or “contradiction” in attempting to develop their insights within the curriculum routines of the schools and colleges. This tension is explored under six categories: reductive knowledge, socialization of technical modes of thinking, technicalized processes of learning, the loss of meaning, radical monopoly over learning, and the socialization of secular values.