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This article shares reflections from members of the community of philosophers of education in the United States and Canada who were invited to express their insights in response to the theme ‘Snaps...

In this paper I draw on the concept of Confucian self -cultivation to strengthen John Dewey’s democratic education project. For Dewey, democracy is primarily a form of associated living, marked by the broad sharing of interests and rich communication among social groups. In appealing to Confucian philosophy to bolster Dewey’s educational project I adopt the framework of global Intercultural philosophy, placing philosophical approaches from different cultural traditions together to augment intellectual resources and advance philosophical understanding. This approach initially dictates a comparative method: “setting into dialogue sources from across cultural, linguistic, and philosophical streams” (Littlejohn, n.d.). I draw particularly upon the Analects of Confucius, the collected works of John Dewey, and standard interpretive works. But I go beyond mere comparison, to argue for an enriched form of democratic education, bolstered by Confucian insights, and suitable for contemporary Western democracies.

In this paper I account for the role of guiding intuitions in teaching, focusing on the intuitions formed in the process of lesson planning. I start (in section one) by reviewing some research on lesson planning to locate the role of intuition in the process. I then turn to Wertheimer’s and Kohler’s gestalt psychology (section two) and Dewey’s theory of consummatory experience (section three) further to clarify and explain the process of lesson planning as the formation of guiding intuitions. I conclude that gestalt psychology is a less promising framework for explaining guiding intuitions than Dewey’s theory of experience.

In this chapter, I examine potential contribution of massive open online courses (MOOCs) to universities and their students. Rather than speaking about MOOCs in the abstract, I examine actual MOOCs that point to future developments. I locate three areas where MOOCs can make positive contributions: return on investment, new revenue streams, and revolutionary new course and credential formats. The first two contribute to university students, faculty, and administrative leaders within the entrenched university. The new formats indicate a shift from that paradigm to a “Higher Education 2.0” paradigm—the revolution of access to online learning where outcomes can be documented through badges, certificates, and nanodiplomas. Higher Education 2.0 offers a pathway to employment that by-passes conventional universities and their degree programs.

While John Dewey wrote relatively little about higher education, he had a well-developed and largely unexplored conception of the university, grounded in his three- stage account of thought or inquiry as developed in Studies in Logical Theory and further developed in Logic: Theory of Inquiry. The first stage is antecedent to inquiry proper, residing in the situations of living that evoke thought. The second is inquiry proper, where data or immediate materials are subjected to systematic thought to yield judgment. The third is the moment after thought has considered its data and reached its result and brought it forth in situations of living as transformed by this new element. This final stage, is the “objective of thought” but lies outside of the context of inquiry proper. This chapter, building on the Dewey corpus, explains that conception, with close attention to university-based research, teaching, and service.

John Dewey's Democracy and Education is the touchstone for a great deal of modern educational theory. It covers a wide range of themes and issues relating to education, including teaching, learning, educational environments, subject matter, values, and the nature of work and play. This Handbook is designed to help experts and non-experts to navigate Dewey's text. The authors are specialists in the fields of philosophy and education; their chapters offer readers expert insight into areas of Dewey work that they know well and have returned to time and time again throughout their careers. The Handbook is divided into two parts. Part I features short companion chapters corresponding to each of Dewey's chapters in Democracy and Education. These serve to guide readers through the complex arguments developed in the book. Part II features general articles placing the book into historical, philosophical and practical contexts and highlighting its relevance today.

The New York Times declared 2012 ‘The Year of the MOOC’; 2013 was the year of the rebound – when criticisms mounted and the MOOC hype balloon burst. Critics claimed that MOOCs were worthless both in narrowly educational terms and as credentials for the job market. This chapter examines four educational criticisms of MOOCs: that (1) MOOCs have low completion rates, (2) MOOCs cannot replace essential teaching functions, (3) MOOCs are isolating while good learning situations are social and (4) at their best, MOOCs merely reproduce the widely rejected top-down methods of conventional college courses. Selected examples of cutting-edge MOOCs are then examined to show how, and why, these early critiques can no longer in general be sustained.

1. A Travelling Classic On the centennial anniversary of the publication of Dewey’s Democracy and Education (New York, Macmillan, 1916) this symposium (including contributions from European and non European scholars) explores both the epoch-making significance and the topicality of the ideas in Dewey’s masterpiece for the development of European educational reflection. Democracy and Education has frequently been represented as a turning point in educational discourse, inaugurating a radically...

The term ‘educational value’ may be used to refer to several distinct kinds of value, which fit together in a complex pattern. This chapter reviews the most important kinds of value and then constructs a conception of educational value suitable for assessing the value of MOOCs as educational instruments. The key kinds of value of enduring importance in education are technical value – being good at various intellectual and practical arts, and use value – being good for some end. One subspecies of use value – beneficiality or being good for the good of a being – is of particular importance. Good education conduces to technical goodness that benefits learners. The book then addresses the twin questions: can MOOCs contribute to goodness at intellectual and practical arts, and are MOOCs beneficial – in the broadest sense – for learners?

MOOCs can add value to higher education in three ways. First, MOOCs can benefit students and their families by improving the ‘value proposition’ of the investment in higher education. Second, MOOCs can help colleges and universities cut costs and generate additional revenues, and thus improve their financial condition. Third, MOOCs contribute to the shift from the conventional paradigm of higher education to a ‘Higher Education 2.0’ paradigm where outside-the-system learning, documented by badges, certificates and nano-diplomas, and other verifiable experiences are packaged in searchable digital portfolios. Higher Education 2.0 offers a revolutionary pathway to employment that augments or even bypasses conventional universities and their associated costs – and MOOCs can play a significant role in this higher education revolution.