Search

In this programmatic essay, I approach the question "What is open-mindedness?" through three more specific questions, each designed to foreground a distinct dimension along which the analysis of open-mindedness might proceed: When is open-mindedness? What is not open-mindedness? and, Where is open-mindedness? The first question refers to the temporal dimension of open-mindedness, which I analyze in terms of Dewey’s distinction between recognition and perception and the psychoanalytic concept of disavowal. The second question refers to the dialectical dimension of open-mindedness, to what the many aspects of closed-mindedness reveal about open-mindedness. Here I recall Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean. The third question refers to the dimension of scale, asking what open- and closed-mindedness look like on the interpersonal and social levels. To bring out this third dimension, I draw on Jonathan Lear's reading of the Republic and psychoanalytic group dynamics theory. Through these three related inquiries I show the range of this central intellectual virtue and bring out its connections to two central, related features of the moral life: the need for integration and the need for openness to newness and complexity.

Action research began as an ambitious epistemological and social intervention. As the concept has become reified, packaged for methodology textbooks and professional development workshops, it has degenerated into a cure that may be worse than the disease. The point is not the trivial one that action research, like any practice, sometimes shows up in cheap or corrupt forms. The very idea that action research already exists as a live option is mystifying, distracting us from the deep challenge that action research ultimately represents. Though Joseph Schwab is sometimes credited as a forerunner of action research, it is likely that he would see the new talk of ‘the teacher as researcher’ as indicative of the very epitomization of which he warned. Dewey’s new conception of knowledge, action, and communication – and the vision of the teacher as learner it entails – requires nothing short of a radical rethinking of teaching and inquiry, schooling and teacher education. This essay recalls the promise of...

Action research began as an ambitious epistemological and social intervention. As the concept has become reified, packaged for methodology textbooks and professional development workshops, it has degenerated into a cure that may be worse than the disease. The point is not the trivial one that action research, like any practice, sometimes shows up in cheap or corrupt forms. The very idea that action research already exists as a live option is mystifying, distracting us from the deep challenge that action research ultimately represents. Though Joseph Schwab is sometimes credited as a forerunner of action research, it is likely that he would see the new talk of ‘the teacher as researcher’ as indicative of the very epitomization of which he warned. Dewey’s new conception of knowledge, action, and communication—and the vision of the teacher as learner it entails—requires nothing short of a radical rethinking of teaching and inquiry, schooling and teacher education. This essay recalls the promise of action research, exploring its pitfalls, and attempts to get clear on the ongoing challenge it represents.

In “The Humanist Moment,” Chris Higgins sets out to recover a tenable, living humanism, rejecting both the version vilified by the anti-humanists and the one sentimentalized by the reactionary nostalgists. Rescuing humanism from such polemics is only the first step, as we find at least nine rival, contemporary definitions of humanism. Which movement or theory is the real humanism? Higgins contends that we can reconstruct a critical, dialectical humanism from the very tensions in these conceptions. On this view, humanism is neither a theory nor a movement, but a moment, a specific intervention evincing characteristic sensibilities, enabling us to navigate through one of a number of recurring dead spots in the life of culture. Higgins outlines four ongoing human dialectics whose vibrant center the humanist helps us regain: genuine hope/acceptance in the face of both fantasy and cynicism; combined awareness of our connectedness and distinctiveness rejecting both dogmatic universalizing and particularizing discourses; and humane learning as distant from scholasticism as it is from anti-intellectualism. An entire section is devoted to the fourth dialectic, showing how humanism has appeared as a corrective both to historicism and to presentism, helping us reconnect with the untimely, living voice of tradition.

In this paper, I reconstruct Alasdair MacIntyre's aretaic, practical philosophy, drawing out its implications for professional ethics in general and the practice of teaching in particular. After reviewing the moral theory as a whole, I examine MacIntyre's notion of internal goods. Defined within the context of practices, such goods give us reason to reject the very idea of applied ethics. Being goods for the practitioner, they suggest that the eudaimonia of the practitioner is central to professional ethics. In this way, MacIntyre's moral theory helps us recover the untimely question, how does teaching contribute to the flourishing of the teacher?

When we defend aesthetic education in instrumental terms or rely on cliches of creativity and imagination, we win at best a pyrrhic victory. To make a lasting place for the arts in education, we must critique the transmission model of education and the instrumentalist view of life that undergirds it. To help us perceive anew the nature and value of the aesthetic, I explore John Dewey's distinction between recognition and perception. Through a series of examples drawn from painting and poetry, I embody Dewey's theory and describe a number of artistic strategies for interrupting recognition and cultivating perception.