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Writing from the perspective of both an instructor in a teacher education program at University of Toronto and more importantly as a mentor for teacher candidates in the classroom, hosting for over twenty years student teachers from six universities in Ontario and New York, the paper explores the master-apprentice relationship within the practicum placement in schools – drawing philosophically on Martin Heidegger’s reflections on apprenticeship, Donald Schön’s pragmatic emphasis on studio work and Lee Shulman’s focus for training on developing subject related pedagogical-content-knowledge, to resituate the significance of what many educators and student-teachers say forms the core of teacher education. Subtle changes in teacher education over the last thirty years, set against dominant themes of professional autonomy and agency within sweeping educational and economic reforms such as the neo-liberal accountability and austerity movements, are sketched in order to follow their arc or trajectory into possible futures. Using a Foucauldian genealogical approach, the author aims to show how we could think and act differently in our practices and governance of teacher education.

Taking an approach Michael Peters referred to as ‘Writing the Self’ (2000), I deconstruct and reconstruct an investigation into reading silence in the classroom that I presented in Kyoto in 2008. The case I was focusing on then was how a non-Asian teacher like myself could read various performances of silence by his Asian students, who were mostly second and sometimes first-generation immigrants in Canada. Writing during the launch of a character education initiative in Ontario (2008), my concern was that in promoting the Western virtue of ‘courage’ (e.g., to speak in public), educators were simultaneously engaging in a process of effectively closing off space for performances of humility—often considered a virtue among Asian peoples. Harboring similar concerns twelve years later, now with assessing participation of my Teacher Candidates during discussions or seminars at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, I come at this question from another angle, using the same philosophical lens of Wittgenstein and Foucault’s genealogical approaches but this time with more self-scrutiny or examination of my own social-linguistic location. I return to Jose Medina’s work (2006) to pick up a line I wish I had pursued further in 2008, of more actively bridging the hermeneutical divide I was essaying and then cultivating practices that constructively respond to silence.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was a reclusive and enigmatic philosopher, writing his most significant work off campus in remote locations. He also held a chair in the Philosophy Department at Cambridge, and ...

Resumo: Convidado a examinar meu trabalho em filosofia da educação relacionada à filosofia do último Ludwig Wittgenstein, primeiro investiguei como se tornou um pensador significativo neste campo. Ao afirmar esta conexão após algumas observações parciais, e ao esclarecer o propósito das frequentes observações de Wittgenstein sobre aprendizagem como filosóficas ao invés de pedagógicas, a seguir revisito minha discussão com Michael Luntley a respeito da interpretação de observações de Wittgenstein sobre treino. Ao evitar Abrichtung, leitura de ‘treinamento animal’, alinho-me com a perspectiva social-normativa de José Medina de gradativamente alcançar (por meio da formação), autonomia e domínio das regras. Seguir a leitura social-normativa amplamente compartilhada abre, então, uma perspectiva para diversas aplicações relevantes da filosofia pós-fundacional de Wittgenstein na educação. Uma questão é o desvio da regra nas reformas curriculares em que, ao invés de padronização e consenso, encontramos múltiplas interpretações de normas curriculares. Outra pergunta incômoda é como julgamos com algum grau de certeza a eficácia ou a lucidez de práticas pedagógicas variadas, como ao pesar os méritos da descoberta versus abordagens fundamentais no treino em matemática. Ao reconhecer como as pessoas podem ser potencialmente cegadas por reações antigas habituais e pressupostos ‘consolidados’, e também com base em Foucault, considero aplicações a questões de justiça social em termos de como, em geral, consideramos os outros: diagnosticar estudantes com TDAH ou superdotados, usar linguagem abusiva nas escolas, reconhecer reivindicações de indígenas pela soberania em um processo de decolonização da educação, e considerar árvores e outros seres não-humanos como algo mais do que recursos imóveis.

Briefly discussing Wittgenstein’s own elementary teaching experience to provide background, contrast is drawn between issues of efficacy in teaching and normative training into regular patterns or customs of usage. Wittgenstein attended teacher training in Vienna in 1919 and taught in Austrian rural village schools until 1926 when he abruptly resigned after an incident involving hitting a pupil that led to a court trial that lasted several months. The judge called for a psychiatric examination of Wittgenstein, a report that has gone missing. The so-called ‘Haibauer incident’ constitutes a central and smouldering episode in Wittgenstein’s own psychological make-up and ethical self-development—one that he returns to many years later as the basis for his ‘confession’. The effect of this historicist approach is to relativize Wittgenstein’s teaching and his ‘discipline’ to the cultural context of his time—1920s Austria dominated by the Glockel educational reforms that introduced pedagogy based on social democratic principles. We then examine some of the boundaries Wittgenstein drew between empirical studies, including pedagogy, and conceptual ones. In Wittgenstein’s later writings, he occasionally notes (parenthetically) that his remarks pertain to grammatical problems instead of psychological or causal ones (Z §§318 and 419). Finally, following Jose Medina, we bring home a point of particular significance to analytic philosophy of education concerning adept initiation into practices: what Wittgenstein refers to as ‘mastery of techniques’ (PI §199) requires facility and autonomy within the rules not explicable on causal terms, nor diminished by its origins in normative training. Realizing this avenue through training does not however undermine the rational elements of teaching and learning—the space of reasons—sought by the analytic school. Etiological problems connected to teaching and learning are then distinguished from philosophical issues surrounding ranges of meaningful use and degrees of arbitrariness in relation to rule-following. The conclusion earlier articulated by Standish (Philosophy and education: Accepting Wittgenstein’s challenge. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp 143–158, 1995) is that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy draws a sharp distinction between any possible ‘science’ of education and his therapeutic concept of philosophy as the dissolution of grammatical problems. Pulling from work developed over the last two decades, we then present Peter’s signature theme of Wittgenstein as a ‘pedagogical philosopher’, a picture he developed along with James Marshall, Paul Smeyers and Nicholas Burbules.

Here, we examine two caricatures of Wittgenstein in order to show in relief a more accurate portrait of his later philosophy and its significance for education. Curry’s attempt to appropriate Wittgenstein to Philosophy of Geography backfires but gives occasion to explore his geographic metaphors in relation to his ambling method of philosophical investigation. Learning is shown to be the gradual absorption of rich cultural surroundings or background for going on as others do, knowing one’s way about but also sharing in the genius loci of one’s place. Friesen’s attempt to portray Wittgenstein as a ‘tragic Philosopher of Education’ based on a ‘German-first reading’ of his use of the word Abrichtung (training) also dissembles under closer scrutiny. Friesen’s apparent tribunal of Wittgenstein makes it seem like philosophers drawing on him for progressive purposes in education are somehow naive or duped in overlooking the dictionary definition of Abrichtung. Exonerating colleagues from disparagement, we show how closer reading of Wittgenstein’s remarks on training, teaching and learning take us not into pedagogy but into deeper aspects of post-foundational epistemology, where meaning no longer hinges on correspondence with an external reality.

Drawing on experience teaching secondary philosophy students, I investigate meaningful engagement with Wittgenstein in a Grade 12 epistemology unit. The premise is that without some introduction to landmark philosophers of the early twentieth century, students are left out of many contemporary philosophical conversations: linguistic idealism or relativism, and nominalism versus realism. Wanting to share with students Foucault, Rorty, and Hacking, I need expedient avenues of approach. Using Wittgenstein's methods I offer practical, ‘shallow grounds’ for an eclectic syllabus conveying post-foundational epistemology, justifying Wittgenstein's inclusion in a textbook written for diverse teenagers. Acknowledging teens’ marginality, I draw on Hekman and Scheman's appropriation of Wittgenstein to advance feminist critiques of enthralling traps in [masculinist] language: exploring nature/nurture boundaries (ferals, cyborgs, and ‘gender performativity’) toward combating discrimination in schools. Heeding Cavell, I...

In his later lectures, published as The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Michel Foucault surveys different modalities of obtaining ‘truth’ about one's self and the world: from Socrates to the Cynics, Stoics, Epicureans and early church writers. Genealogically tracing this opposition between knowing self and world, he occasionally invites phenomenological enquiry into how this epistemic couplet bears on education. Drawing on three vignettes familiar to educators, my investigation explores modes of discovering self and world through counselling (truth-telling), distributed governance in the classroom and the arts of writing. In each case we confront a paradox of freedom, in that agency is needed, already, to liberate the self from the world. An exegetical task is to show how Foucault worked through this philosophical problem, of relevance to many situations in education, by re-reading Kant, Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Wittgenstein’s rule-following argument draws considerable attention: its policy significance for education , very little. Confronted with rule deviation, what justifies claims to ‘sound’/‘unsound’ implementation of curricular reforms, or reasonable adaptation? Playing on John Mighton’s Possible Worlds scenario, I probe these questions on different planes of inquiry through similar vignettes, focused on his ethically aimed math training program (JUMP). Surveying the topic space, I first touch on fervent debate between Rorty and his critics, Putnam and McDowell , over ‘solidarity’ grounding judgment. Must ‘soundness’ claims be ‘answerable to the world,’ and if so, how do we justify our educational practices ? Is sharing a ‘sense’/‘sensibility’ (a fact/value) of ‘pedagogic soundness’ sufficient to uphold its veracity? I then explore the controversy between contending paradigms of discovery learning and Mighton’s guided training in math fundamentals, illustrating opposition between liberal-analytic definitions of teaching with training . In terms of student diversity, which possible worlds beckon account? Finally, drawing on Medina , we see the problem of encountering alien practices through the lens of ‘logical insanity.’ Faced with seemingly ‘unsound’ reforms, teacher resistance acts as healthy, conservative brakes; alternately, recalcitrance can normatively blind teachers to innovation, effectively stalling improvement in learning . Not an either/or in terms of grounding, balance is advocated between the need for (a) faithful immersion in demonstrative practices in order to understand (immanently) their sense within the flow of classroom life; and, (b) the professional need for reasons or warrants—liberal-analytic , rational justification motivating the exertion of energy needed to sustain change initiatives.

In this introductory chapter, the co-editors, Jeff Stickney and Michael Peters, first survey the background of Wittgenstein scholarship in philosophy of education. Their hope is that these snapshots of earlier writers, movements and themes in the literature will provide context for better receiving the wide array of work contributed to the present volume. As a qualifier, the authors note that the review of this previous literature is not comprehensive but sufficiently complete to assist in the appreciation of how we have come to where we are today, seeing also in this family history the earlier contributions of some of our more distinguished authors in the book. The second section of the Introduction then provides an overview of the organization of the book into its other four parts, summarizing briefly the chapters we have gathered and continuing to link some of the themes or topics to previous literature on Wittgenstein and education.

Over a decade after publication of Thinking Again: Education After Postmodernism (1998) contention still emerges among Foucaultians over whether discursively made‐up things really exist, and whether removal of the constituent subject leaves room for agency within techniques of caring for the self. That these questions are kept alive shows that some readers have not rethought Foucault, finding what possibly comes after postmodernism. Using Wittgenstein to ‘reciprocally illuminate’ Foucault (after Tully and Marshall), I open teacher inspection and reforms to problematization, as relations to bedrock rules governing games of truth. ‘How, upon entering classrooms, do inspectors know “teaching” is taking place and not crazy and fuzzy things in its name?’ Taking up Hirst's vexing question, I move beyond liberal‐analytic concept‐mapping and neo‐liberal individualism to more fully assay the political ground for judging teaching practices through genealogy. Epistemological, political and ethical concerns intersect...

When assessing North American students’ oral participation in classes, should all students be subject to the same evaluation criteria or should teachers make reasonable allowances for Asian students practicing humility? How do we weigh the promotion of ‘courage’ through character education initiatives with traditional Asian dispositions? Viewing Asian humility in Western classrooms and as it rubs up against liberal principles of equality or justice, and a virtue ethic raises a number of philosophical questions around authenticity, polyvalence, and relativity. I approach first through the lens of liberal philosophy as the ‘dilemma of diversity’ meets a boundary with communitarianism, and then through the contextualist lenses of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Foucault. Drawing on Tully's political philosophy, I inspect humility as embedded in language-games and then open it to revision through comparative history, inviting participants in the teacher's game of assessment to renegotiate the rules: a process co...

Comparing the early, analytic attempt to define “sound” teaching with the current use of criteria-based rating schemes, Jeff Stickney turns to Wittgenstein’s holistic, contextualist approach to judging teaching against its complex “background” within our form of life. To exemplify this approach, Stickney presents cases of classroom practice (reexplanation), auditioning dance students, teacher inspection, and mentoring student teachers. These examples highlight problems with the epistemological and criterial construal of teaching, in that both sets of rules tend to constrict unnecessarily the ranges of “reasonable” practice. Shifting to the contextualist approach, according to Stickney, reveals these occluded, political aspects of assessing the “soundness” of teaching and invites a renegotiation of arbitrary limits.

Taking Wittgenstein's love of music as my impetus, I approach aporetic problems of epistemic relativity through a round of three overlapping (canonical) inquiries delivered in contrapuntal (higher and lower) registers. I first take up the question of scepticism surrounding ‘groundless knowledge’ and contending paradigms in On Certainty (physics versus oracular divination, or realism versus idealism) with attention given to the role of ‘bedrock’ certainties in providing stability amidst the Heraclitean flux. I then look into the formation of sedimented bedrock knowledge, or practices of knowing, by comparing Wittgenstein's remarks on animal habituation and initiate training into human forms of life. In the latter case, mastery of techniques—our common education—secures agreement in judgment. Finally, I entertain Wittgenstein's obscure references to Einstein's Relativity in Zettel, showing initiate training as a way of ‘setting the clocks’ with variable degrees of certainty, relative to the language‐games p...

Responding to Michael Luntley's article, ‘Learning, Empowerment and Judgement’, the author shows he cannot successfully make the following three moves: (1) dissolve the analytic distinction between learning by training and learning by reasoning, while advocating the latter; (2) diminish the role of training in Wittgenstein's philosophy, nor attribute to him a rationalist model of learning; and (3) turn to empirical research as a way of solving the philosophical problems he addresses through Wittgenstein. Drawing on Jose Medina's analysis of the fundamental role of training in Wittgenstein's later philosophy, the paper offers a tour of key passages in the Investigations and other works to develop an understanding of what Wittgenstein meant by ‘mastery of techniques’. In opposition to Luntley's liberal‐individual, or his subject as rational agent, the author explores Wittgenstein's non‐foundationalist, forms of life approach to how we act with agreement. More effort must be given to differentiating Wittgens...

In Wittgenstein’s later writings , he occasionally notes (parenthetically) that his remarks pertain to grammatical problems instead of psychological or causal ones (Z §§318 & 419). Briefly discussing Wittgenstein’s own elementary teaching experience to provide background , contrast is drawn between issues of efficacy in teaching and normative training into regular patterns or customs of usage. Following Jose Medina , I bring home a point of particular significance to analytic philosophy of education concerning adept initiation into practices : what Wittgenstein refers to as ‘mastery of techniques’ (PI §199) requires facility and autonomy within the rules not explicable on causal terms, nor diminished by its origins in normative training. Realizing this avenue through training does not however undermine the rational elements of teaching and learning —the space of reasons—sought by the analytic school. Etiological problems connected to teaching and learning are then distinguished from philosophical issues surrounding ranges of meaningful use and degrees of arbitrariness in relation to rule-following . The conclusion, earlier articulated by Standish (1995), is that Wittgenstein’s later philosophy draws a sharp distinction between any possible ‘science ’ of education and his therapeutic concept of philosophy as the dissolution of grammatical problems.

Offering a cautionary tale about the abuses of paradigm‐shift rhetoric in secondary school reforms, the paper shows potential misuses and ethical effects of the relativistic language‐game in post‐compulsory education. Those initiating the shift often shelter their reform from the criticism of non‐adepts, marginalizing expert teachers that adhere to ‘antiquated’ or ‘folk’ pedagogies. The rhetoric herds educators uncritically into the citadel of new discourses and policies that often lack practical foundations; consequently, teachers often dissimulate compliance to the reform in order to evade surveillance within such disciplinary apparatuses as teacher training and regimes of inspection. Turning to Foucault, the author views education reforms in terms of power relations within a form of governance: ‘games of truth’, or political and veridical discourses in which dividing practices for sorting out ‘sound’ and ‘unsound’ teaching practices become institutionalised. Wittgenstein's attention to initiate trainin...