that it is the teacher’s job to become committed to students and their achievement. I believe that children learn in a variety of ways and that as a teacher. I will be aware of my classroom’s needs and modify and adjust to the classroom demands. I intend to be knowledgeable of the social and personal development of the children in my classroom and incorporate that information into lessons. I will use a variety of instructional strategies and become passionate about what I am teaching as well as enrich the subject matter. I intend to become creative when creating authentic

Philosophy as Education

The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education

We don't have satisfactory answers to questions that ask what we must share with our neighbor for our common good and the rights we retain in the process. Yet such answers will be the legacy of our age. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/U0piYSt35YU is a video segment in which author David Alan Grier expands on his Errant Hashtag column, in which he discusses how the idea of "smart cities" makes more sense than the idea of "smart homes."

For the Common Good

This paper explores the question what kind of educational work can be done in attempts to reclaim or reinvigorate the public sphere. Through a discussion of the intersection of public sphere and public space, it engages with the work of Hannah Arendt in order to outline a conception of the public sphere as a space for civic action based on distance and the conservation of a degree strangeness rather than on commonality and common identity. The discussion of the educational work that can be done to support the public quality of common spaces and places focuses on three interpretations of the idea of public pedagogy: that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy for the public, that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy of the public and that of public pedagogy as the enactment of a concern for the public quality of human togetherness. The latter form of public pedagogy neither teaches nor erases the political by bringing it under a regime of learning, but rather opens up the possibility for forms of human togetherness ...

Becoming public: public pedagogy, citizenship and the public sphere

The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better for Everyone

In this essay Sarah Galloway considers emancipation as a purpose for education through examining the theories of Paulo Freire and Jacques Ranciere. Both theorists are concerned with the prospect of distinguishing between education that might socialize people into what is taken to be an inherently oppressive society and education with emancipation as its purpose. Galloway reconstructs the theories in parallel, examining the assumptions made, the processes of oppression described, and the movements to emancipation depicted. In so doing, she argues that that the two theorists hold a common model for theorizing oppression and emancipation as educational processes, distinguished by the differing assumptions they each make about humanity, but that their theories ultimately have opposing implications for educational practices. Galloway further maintains that Freire and Ranciere raise similar educational problems and concerns, both theorizing that the character of the relations among teachers, students, and educational materials is crucial to an emancipatory education. Galloway's approach allows discussion of some of the criticisms that have been raised historically about Freire's theory and how these might be addressed to some degree by Ranciere's work. Taking the two theories together, she argues that the possibility for an emancipatory education cannot be ignored if education is to be considered as more than merely a process of passing down the skills and knowledge necessary in order to socialize people into current society.

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Reconsidering Emancipatory Education: Staging a Conversation between Paulo Freire and Jacques Ranciere.

This writing critiques the idea that literacies education can and should empower adult learners. The ideas of Pierre Bourdieu and James Paul Gee are analysed with reference to how power and empowerment are understood and what this means for the concrete practice of adult literacies education by educators and students. My concern is that their understandings of an ‘empowering’ education represent limited and limiting ways of discussing and practising education. While acknowledging that empowering literacies encompasses important aspects of education, it might be more useful to move away from the discourse of power towards wider understandings of an emancipatory education if students, educators and researchers are to continue to take responsibility for the purpose and repercussions of adult literacies education.

What's Missing When Empowerment Is a Purpose for Adult Literacies Education? Bourdieu, Gee and the Problem of Accounting for Power.

This paper takes up an existing discussion around critical perspectives on adult education, in particular how empowerment and emancipation have been understood. Previously in this journal, concern ...

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Flowers of argument and engagement? Reconsidering critical perspectives on adult education and literate practices

Adult education is a very diverse arena of practice internationally, operating across the public, private and non-profit sectors, with educators and learners coming from all walks of life. In many countries there is no formal route to becoming a qualified adult educator as there is in relation to school teaching, or the qualification of Higher or Further education professionals. Many experienced, knowledgeable and competent adult educators have no formal teaching qualification which in varying situations is a matter of concern for policy-makers and organisational managers, as well as the practitioners themselves. One way of addressing this lack of qualification is through processes of recognition of prior learning (RPL). This article reports on the work of the REAL Project which aimed to enable adult educators to formatively assess the possibility of making a claim for academic credit against adult education qualifications, through the creation of an RPL toolkit. The REAL Project approach was to c...

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Co-producing a Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) Toolkit for Adult Educators: Reflections on the REAL Deal?

The objective of this theoretical article is to critique the notion that adult education, in its current marketised formations, might serve the purpose of rehabilitating learners. To date there has been no detailed interrogation by educationalists of the desirability of rehabilitation as an overarching aim for prison education, or to consider the existing educational philosophies that notions of rehabilitation might cohere with. This article begins to address this gap by engaging with the idea of rehabilitation from a critical adult education perspective. The conceptual framework informing the analysis is critical adult education theory, drawing tangentially on the work of Raymond Williams. The overarching assumption is that education might be understood as the practice of equality, which I employ alongside conceptualisations of empowering adult literacies learning as drawn from writings in the field of New Literacies Studies (NLS). These approaches enable the critique of criminological theory associated with prison learning, alongside the critique of assumptions traceable to NLS. The analysis focuses more specifically on Scotland’s prison system, where the criminological theory of ‘desistance’ currently holds some sway. I observe that whilst perspectives of criminologists and educationists draw upon similar sociological assumptions and underpinnings, different conclusions are inferred about the purpose and practice of adult learning. Here criminologists’ conceptualisations tend to neglect power contexts, instead inferring educational practices associated typically with early years education. I also demonstrate the importance of equality in the context of adult education, if educators are to take responsibility for the judgements they make in relation to the education of socially excluded groups.

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Sarah Galloway

Papers

Reconsidering Emancipatory Education: Staging a Conversation between Paulo Freire and Jacques Ranciere.

What's Missing When Empowerment Is a Purpose for Adult Literacies Education? Bourdieu, Gee and the Problem of Accounting for Power.

Flowers of argument and engagement? Reconsidering critical perspectives on adult education and literate practices

Co-producing a Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) Toolkit for Adult Educators: Reflections on the REAL Deal?

Unseen roots and unfolding flowers? Prison learning, equality and the education of socially excluded groups