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This paper addresses the discussion on the Anthropocene in environmental education research. It aims to enrich and widen the debate about the appropriateness of humanist approaches to environmental education and sustainability. In response to criticism about anthropocentric responses to human-made environmental destruction, the authors introduce a version of Eastern humanism: Tu Weiming's 'Anthropocosmism'. This idea of a non-anthropocentric humanism embedded in the cosmic order is strikingly different from the anthropocentric separatism typical of Western humanism. Moving beyond a blanket condemnation of humanism, this paper explores what a specific, non-Western form of humanism may have to offer in response to anthropogenic ecological crises. The argument is developed that Anthropocosmism can help us fully recognize humans' exceptional ethical responsibility in light of these crises without falling into the mistake of Western humanism's dominant discourse that connects this exceptionalism to forms of human superiority over and domination of other-than-human nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an earlier paper, it was shown that John Dewey rejected what Wilfrid Sellars called 'the Myth of the Given' (Garrison, 2019). The question remains: What, if anything, does Dewey think is given? The answer is as easily stated as it is difficult to understand: What is most primordially given is the noncognitive, unanalyzed, immediate qualitative experience of existence. All the rest is taken or made. Among things taken or made are such analytical distinctions as organism/environment, subject/object, knower/known, and such. Likewise, mediating signs including data for inferences, habits, linguistic meanings, and logical essences are also taken or made from immediately given qualitative experiences. Keywords: John Dewey, Wilfrid Sellars, Anoetic, Appearance, Existence, Experience, Givenness, Immediacy, Parmenides, Quality, Reality., 'The existential starting point is immediate qualities' (LW 1: 226) In an earlier paper, it was shown that John Dewey rejected what Wilfrid Sellars called 'the Myth of the Given' [...]

Let me begin by thanking the members of the George F. Kneller Advisory Committee and you the members of the American Educational Studies Association for inviting me to give the annual Kneller Lecture on this the fiftieth anniversary of the Association.The present phase of rising nationalism and growing global xenophobia does not suggest this is the season for the integration of international thought. Nonetheless, my lecture focuses on an instance of a nascent integration of Eastern and Western philosophical and educational ideas.

Hager and Beckett assert that a 'characteristic feature of ... assorted co-present groups is that their processes and outputs are marked by the full gamut of human experiences involved in their functioning'. My paper endorses and further develops this claim. I begin by expanding on their emphasis upon the priority of relations in terms of Dewey and Bentley's transactionalism and Buddhist dependent co-origination and emptiness. Next, I emphasize the importance of embodied perspectives in acquiring meaning and transforming the world. Here, too, we will find surprising Buddhist connections. Finally, I examine the primacy of practice: how we acquire our minds and selves by participating in shared social practices. This stance is shared by philosophers as diverse as Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Dewey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay by Dirck Roosevelt and Jim Garrison seeks to reclaim the lost soul of teaching by examining distortions wrought upon or threatening it by practice-based teacher education (PBTE) and like developments. The notion that teaching centers upon mastery of "core" practices understood as routinely skilled performance is inadequate to the almost intractable complexity of teaching. After critiquing PBTE and associated forces, especially the performance assessment edTPA™, Roosevelt and Garrison turn to John Dewey's notion of the teacher as "inspirer and director of soul-life." Among other important attributes involved in forming the soul of inspirational teaching, the authors discuss moral perception of the needs, desires, and interests of unique individuals participating in specific situations, and also moral imagination, which allows teachers to see beyond the actual to conceive better possibilities. Roosevelt and Garrison conclude with depictions of two student-teachers, one troubled by her inability to hear the souls of students and another experiencing the loss of his teaching soul.

In this article, we investigate 'no touch policies' as a practical teacher concern that includes the body as a location, a source and a means in educational activity. We argue that to understand issues regarding physical touch within school practice we must conceive it as deeply associated with specific teaching techniques. Thus, the didactical challenge is not found in argumentations about the pro and cons of physical touch, but through analysis of how teachers handle student interaction and teaching intentions. We consider teaching as a "caring profession." Caring, as a practical teacher concern, requires wisdom regarding the right time to use bodily touch and to refrain from such use. This wisdom involves the ability to discern people's needs, desires, interests and purposes in particular situations and act appropriately. From a body pedagogical perspective we approach intergenerational touch not only as a discursive and power-related question but as "an essential tension" in the intersection of the; "ambiguity" attendant to any intentional act such as teaching, the "conflict" between the ethics of care and the ethics of justice, and finally, the "paradox" of caring. We draw on interviews with PE-teachers in Swedish primary, secondary and upper-secondary schools and analyses of a collection of techniques of bodily touch that are established and practiced with specific pedagogical purposes. The results shows PE teacher's competence in handling different functions of intergenerational touch in relation to three different techniques of bodily touch; (1) Security touch, which is characterized by intentions to handle the fragile; (2) Denoting touch, which is characterized by intentions to handle learning content and (3) Relational touch, which is characterized by caring intentions. Each of these is of importance for the teachers in carrying out their call to teach and each of these relies on professional assessments whether or not it meets its intended purpose.

My article is a rejoinder to Gert Biesta's, '"This is My Truth, Tell Me Yours". Deconstructive pragmatism as a philosophy of education.' Biesta attempts to place Jacques Derrida's deconstruction in 'the very heart' of John Dewey's pragmatism (710). My article strives to impress Deweyan pragmatism in the heart of Derridian deconstruction. It does so by offering Dewey's denotative, naturalistic, empirical perspectivalism as an alternative to Derrida's anti-empirical quasi-transcendentalism for understanding otherness and difference. The first section of my article shows Biesta offers a catastrophically mistaken and confused argument. The second section imprints Deweyan pragmatism in the heart of Derrida's deconstruction. Dewey specifically makes philosophical use of a version of the genetic method he calls the 'empirical denotative method' to trace the exclusions as well as the inclusions of our perspectival selections driven by our finite embodied needs, interest, desires, and purposes. We may derive the trace of quasi-transcendental "différance" from the trace of empirically perspectival inclusions and exclusions. Specifically, "différance" is a reified hypostatic abstraction. Next, I respond to Biesta's claim that since the metaphysics of presence still entangles Dewey, he cannot appreciate the fact that presence depends on absence. Actually, presence in Dewey always depends on absence. Finally, we will find that Biesta's own deconstructive pragmatism flounders on his commitment to self-refuting relativism.

Against the background of the Deweyan tradition of "Democracy and Education," we discuss problems of complexity and reductionism in education and educational philosophy. First, we investigate some of Dewey's own criticisms of reductionist tendencies in the educational traditions, theories, and practices of his time. Secondly, we explore some important cases of reductionism in the educational debates of our own day and argue that a similar criticism in behalf of democracy and education is appropriate and can easily be based on Deweyan terms. Thirdly, we draw some more general conclusions about complexity and reductionism as challenges for democracy and education. Among other things, we argue that powerful social tendencies of capitalist competition and social Darwinism support reductionisms in education and put the democratic project at risk. The tensional relation between democracy and capitalism constitutes a major challenge for educational philosophy in our own time as much as in Dewey's.

Recently, there has been increasing pedagogical interest in the qualities and characteristics of movement. This article examines these qualities and characteristics in terms of John Dewey's distinction between abstract, linguistic "significant" meanings and concrete, embodied "imminent" meanings. Imminent meanings are comprised of intuitive qualities, feelings, selective attention, and habits. We examine each of these in turn in hopes of better understanding the learning of "body techniques" while illuminating some important aspects of body pedagogics.

Our paper addresses the emergence and evolution of values in educational settings. It builds upon and extends earlier work on companion meanings to develop a theory of the creative use of companion values and meanings in education. The recognition of companion values in educational practices highlight epistemological, ethical, and aesthetic transactions that occur in ways we characterize as "other than modern." Introducing the idea of educative moments allows us to identify situations where value spheres interpenetrate and interrogate each other in the meaning-making of students and teachers. These moments occur when students suddenly experience companion meanings and values such that teacher and student must deliberate together rather than the teacher dictating some dominating epistemological, ethical, or aesthetic value. This way, it is possible to accommodate critical and creative reflection in education where new values can emerge or evolve. We illustrate the theory by empirical examples from classroom conversations.

Philosophical anthropology is philosophical inquiry into human nature that seeks to answer the fundamental question of what generally characterizes human beings and differentiates them from other creatures and things. Political theories considerably influence educational theories. We call attention to the fact that the three main political theories currently influencing education (liberal, neo-liberal, and neo-conservative) each have a distinct philosophical anthropology. This fact has especially significant implications for pedagogical social constructivism since it influences the kind of individual and society they strive to construct. We will propound a version of social constructivism we call "critical constructivism."