A major goal of critical pedagogy is to facilitate simultaneously individual development and social transformation for a more egalitarian and just society. As opposed to the reproductive role of ed...

YouTube, Critical Pedagogy, and Media Activism

ionism 40 advice 102, 116 aesthetic education 3–4 accountability 5, 16, 76, 116, 196, 205, 209 achievement 6, 7, 29, 75 action research 8 advising 8 aims of education 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 32, 33, 34, 53, 64, 65, 76, 82, 103, 110, 112, 116, 124, 145, 149, 158–159, 174, 178, 181, 183, 197, 199, 208, 213, 218, 222, 246 alienation 88 affirmative action 9, 10, 85 apprenticeship 14, 179, 182, 188, 201, 247 assessment 6, 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 27, 37, 111, 122, 133, 148, 197, 228 associationism 40 attention/attentiveness 17, 18 authority 5, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 54, 59, 64, 94, 116, 165, 183–184, 193, 214, 238 autonomy 13, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 29, 33, 34, 53, 65, 103, 113, 135, 165, 171, 174, 177, 182, 187, 199, 207, 220, 222, 237 behaviourism 4, 25, 26, 27, 29, 32, 57, 133, 171 care 97–98 censorship 28, 170 co-education 29, 158 cognitivism 29, 30, 31, 32, 42, 121, 132, 133, 143 common good 32, 169 common sense 33, 34, 41, 76, 140 communitarianism 34 compensatory education 35 competence 27, 36, 190, 203, 223, 238 competition and cooperation 37, 38, 39, 172 compulsion 39, 40, 65 concept formation 40, 121 conditioning 25, 36, 238 connectionism 32

Key concepts in the philosophy of education

In this article we develop a fundamental rationale for teaching science to all children. We justify the teaching of science by linking scientific ways of thinking with the advancement of democratic society. Rather than simply treating science education as a civics course, we take the strong view that science education should produce a population with the skills to critically analyze and change society. Science students must learn science, but they must also learn about science, they must develop a scientific view of the world, and they must adopt some of the creative and critical attributes of scientists. To achieve these outcomes, science educators must be clear about what view of science they reflect and, in particular, they must reject both positivist and postmodernist elements. Science education must reflect the way in which the theories and practice of science are constrained by the real world. In setting out a robust answer to the question of why teach science we provide three aims for science education. These aims can assist science educators to decide what and how they teach, and help us all to defend science education from antiscientific criticisms. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed83:473–492, 1999.

Why teach science? Setting rational goals for science education

This phenomenographical investigation explores conceptions of the communicative learner-centred approach (CLCA) held by a sample of Libyan English foreign language teachers (EFL) in relation to their implementation of an English language curriculum innovation in secondary schools. A mixed approach employing quantitative (survey questionnaire) and qualitative (semi-structure interview) research methods was used for data collection during the first phase of this research. Martons’ (1981)phenomenographical approach was employed for analysing the qualitative data and the
Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) programme was used for analysing the quantitative data. Content analysis was used for analysing qualitative data gathered through an open-ended questionnaire completed by ten English language inspectors during the second phase of this research.

Fourteen conceptions and misconceptions of the CLCA have been explored through this
investigation. School location and place of graduation did not have significant effect on teachers’ conception of the principles and practices of the CLCA and the teachercentred
approach (TCA). However, the less experienced teachers were more positive about those related to the TCA than were the experienced ones. Influential barriers related to individual, contextual and cultural considerations have been identified as responsible for limiting the success of the teachers’ attempts to implement this approach. Nevertheless, the majority of the participants (teachers and inspectors) were positive about the notion of implementing the CLCA for teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) in the Libyan context. However, the current conditions and realities in
Libya seem to fit a weak version of this approach but not a strong one.
i
This study is significant because it adds to the literature new insights about EFL teachers’ conceptions and practices of the CLCA as a Western teaching methodology for TEFL in developing countries and challenges the argument of considering this approach inappropriate in these contexts. The findings of this study also have potential implications for school reform, curriculum design, EFL teacher education and training and for developing the role of language inspectors in Libya. These implications may be applied in similar contexts. Moreover, this study provides empirical evidence for the possibility of employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches in phenomenographical investigations.

An investigation of Libyan EFL teachers’ conceptions of the communicative learner-centred approach in relation to their implementation of an English language curriculum innovation in secondary schools

This article sets forward a new concept of reflection, to be contrasted with more usual reading of the concept for which we use the term `reflectivity'. The contrast is related to a distinction between normalizing education and counter-education. We claim that within the framework of normalizing education there is no room for reflection, but only for reflectivity. In contrast to reflectivity, reflection manifests a struggle of the subject against the effects of power which govern the constitution of her conceptual apparatus, her knowledge, her consciousness and her limitations and possibilities for successful functioning. Reflectivity re-presents the hegemonic realm of self-evidence and the productive violence of social and cultural order. Reflection, by contrast, aims to challenge the supposedly self-evident and the present order of things. Reflection aims at transcendence and represents a moral commitment in respect of the otherness of the Other, which power relations in every realm of self-evidence oblige us to neglect, to destroy or consume. Transcendence is a concrete utopia, and so is the subject in her nonrepressive communication with the Other: they are part and parcel of our present possibilities, sometimes in microscopic arenas, struggled for, and from time to time even realized.

Reflectivity, Reflection, and Counter-Education

Habermas's educational importance is usually misconstrued or underestimated, partly because the scope and implications of ideal speech conditions are generally misunderstood. These conditions are only relevant to discursive speech situations, but non-manipulative teaching need not be discursive. And not even discursive teaching is an appropriate occasion for ideal speech conditions. They properly apply to discourse institutions, at the ‘epistemic centre of modernity’. Thus, the concept of ideal speech conditions impinges on the relation of school to higher education and on curricular change as an agency of modernisation, and illuminates the need for access to discourse institutions, if personal autonomy is an aim for school children, students or adults. Neo-Marxists, traditionalists and progressives all misunderstand the importance of discourse institutions.

Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education

Postmodernism precludes philosophical justifications for democracy. This undermines the role of philosophy of education and leaves us with weaker reasons for educational democracy than we need. If the ‘postmodern challenge’ is as Wilfred Carr conceives it, Jurgen Habermas meets that challenge. His work rests on neither Enlightenment essentialism nor foundationalism. Habermas can accept and explain that consciousness is historically and socially situated in discourse, yet still argue to the possibility of emancipation. I defend his conception of rationality from charges of essentialism. Rational thinking can critique its own specific forms, so superior forms of rationality remain universalisable by rational means. A historicising account of such critique avoids situationist relativism. These considerations justify educational democracy and preserve a role for philosophy of education.

The Democracy We Need: Situation, Post‐Foundationalism and Enlightenment

A curriculum that reflects a pluralist, multi-cultural society in a characteristically ‘Western’ way may seem to militate against traditionalist sub-cultures, but this outcome is less ‘Western’ than ‘modern’, in Habermas's sense.‘Modernisation’, involving the institutionalisation of rationality and the decentering of consciousness, and thus acceptance of the ‘Western’ solution, is possible within any culture, regardless of its content. In a Western society all are economically compelled to a partial ‘modernisation’, and in Habermas's view all cultures in modern societies suffer erosion by the extension and intrusion of economic and administrative sub-systems. Cultural modernisation affords the strongest available resistance to this erosion. Thus, a supposedly ‘Western’ curriculum approach would strengthen sub-cultures, notwithstanding the demise of traditionalism [1].

Nigel Blake

Papers

Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education

The Democracy We Need: Situation, Post‐Foundationalism and Enlightenment

Modernity and the Problem of Cultural Pluralism

Church Schools, Religious Education, and the Multi-Ethnic Community: A Reply to David Aspin.

Peace Education and National Security