Showing papers in "Theory and Research in Education in 2006"

Three models of education Rights, capabilities and human capital

Abstract: This article analyses three normative accounts that can underlie educational policies, with special attention to gender issues. These three models of education are human capital theory, rights disc...

Habituated Reason Aristotle and the 'Paradox of Moral Education'

Abstract: R.S. Peters coined the term ‘paradox of moral education’. In this article, the author identifies two subordinate paradoxes: how habituated reason is psychologically possible and how heteronomously ...

Gender equality, pedagogy and citizenship Affirmative and transformative approaches in the UK

Abstract: This article explores the relationship between gender equality, pedagogy and citizenship. It locates the analysis of education within the gender dilemmas associated with liberal democratic citizens...

The Professional Identity of Secondary School Teachers in Spain: Crisis and Reconstruction.

Abstract: This article examines the problems of lower secondary education in Spain (ESO, or compulsory secondary education), in view of the implementation of several education reforms, focusing on their effe...

Signs of progress: The debate over civic education

Abstract: In this reply to my critics, I begin by clearing away some misunderstandings: I do not reject autonomy and critical self-reflection as possible bases for political judgment and action; I do not dissent from the standard view that some civic education should be mandatory; and I claim neither that each citizen need possess civic virtue nor that there is a one-size-fits-all conception of pro-civic traits within a liberal society. I do endorse the idea of a ‘civic core’ - beliefs, skills and traits of character that ideally every citizen would possess. I then distinguish civic from philosophic education, characterize liberal civic virtues as instrumentally rather than intrinsically valuable, and clarify the relation between these virtues and the idea of limited government that lies at the heart of liberalism. I defend my account of civic education against the claims that it cannot justify citizens’ resistance to unjust or immoral government policies and that it safeguards neither the basic needs nor the meani...

Third Way: Values for Education?.

Abstract: This article explores some features of an international 'third way' movement which, in theory and in practice, impacts on centuries-old traditions of communal life and the belief in autonomous agency - traditions which motivate individual participation in society and underpin liberal conceptions of education. The article uncovers some of the hopes and aspirations of third way discourse by examining the work of one of its leading proponents, Anthony Giddens, and reviewing related social policy implementation in the United States, Britain and especially New Zealand. The following are argued as problematic for education: the nature of 'community' that underpins commitment to third way values; the way in which individual subjectivity is shaped in response to that community; and the diminishing of the social space in which such changes might be meaningfully critiqued. With a particular focus on New Zealand's policy environment, the article argues that third way is an intensification of neoliberalism under the rhetoric of social democracy, and concludes with a vision of a different kind of third way - not a singular path to a predefined destination, but a journey that embraces difference and antagonism as an essential feature of social life.

Taking the right to exit seriously

Abstract: Both diversity and autonomy liberals agree that adults have the right to exit from voluntary associations. As children do not have this right, the paradoxical character of the upbringing of childre...

Religious freedom vs. sex equality

Abstract: This essay examines Susan Moller Okin’s writing on conflicts between religious freedom and sex equality, and her criticism of ‘political liberal’ approaches to these conflicts, which I take to be a...

Principles, feelings and reality:

Abstract: Two of Susan Moller Okin’s articles are discussed:‘Reason and feeling in thinking about justice’, Ethics 99(2), 1989: 229-49 and ‘Mistresses of their own destiny: group rights, gender, and realistic rights of exit’, Ethics 112(2), 2002: 205-30. Her argument on the foundation necessary for Rawls’s original position is accepted and extended. Her argument on the handling of illiberal groups in a liberal society is largely accepted, but a question is raised on how to address First Amendment precedents.

Educating for a just world without gender

Abstract: In this article we examine Okin’s ideal of a ‘gender-free society’ and its relations to central educational values and practices. We suggest that this ideal pervades her work on the family, culture...

Does Curriculum Matter?: Revisiting Women's Access and Rights to Education in the Context of the UN Millennium Development Targets.

Abstract: This article discusses the relevance of curriculum to current UN Millennium targets to extend access to education and equality in education for women. It argues, firstly, that it is contradictory to be concerned about women’s access to education but leave curriculum out of the discussion; secondly, that curriculum is not adequately seen as a choice between imposing new universal values or leaving cultural traditions untouched, but is about choices within a situation where cultural traditions are neither untouched nor monolithic; and, thirdly, that attention to who speaks and who is heard in developing and assessing new practices remains important in any initiatives to extend education rights for women.

Facing up to civic pluralism A friendly critique of Galston

Abstract: Beginning with the publication of Liberal Purposes in 1991, William Galston has developed an appealing theory of liberal pluralism that entails strong commitments to expressive liberty, political p...

Galston on liberal virtues and the aims of civic education

Abstract: This article examines Galston’s account of civic education in light of the understanding of liberal virtues that partially informs his educational recommendations. It argues that the main limitations of Galston’s account have their origin in a mistaken view of the traits of character that are essential to good citizens. Historical examples are presented in criticism of Galston’s pedagogy, and in support of the need to develop an alternative account of civic virtues that incorporates critical reflection as a core component. The article concludes that the reflective and deliberative capacities of citizens, rather than being a threat to the just functioning of social and political institutions, are one of their main sources of support.

Galston’s dilemmas and Wisconsin v. Yoder

Abstract: William Galston posed two dilemmas about parental rights and education in Liberal Purposes.The first of these arises from conflict between the proper ends of civic education in a liberal society and the values that some parents will want to honor in the way they rear their children; the second arises from conflict between how the basic interests of the child are understood by the wider society and the dissident views of some parents. Galston’s approach to the dilemmas strongly emphasized deference to parental choice. Galston returns to these dilemmas in his recent Liberal Pluralism and endorses the approach he had earlier defended within the context of a theory of the ethical foundations of liberal politics. He uses the US Supreme Court’s decision in Wisconsin v.Yoder as a test case for his argument. This article offers an internal critique of Galston’s treatment of the two dilemmas in Liberal Pluralism and finds it unsatisfactory in some respects.

Discussion of Fullinwider and Lichtenberg's Leveling the Playing Field.

Abstract: This article emphasizes the diversity argument for affirmative action and seeks to build on the discussion of it by Fullinwider and Lichtenberg. I try to defend a view of affirmative action that depends on the notion that what is required by justice is restoration of voice to those whose voices were unfairly excluded, and I claim that such a view does not presuppose perspective unity or depend on the idea that affirmative action benefits the education of all. I also take up what Fullinwider and Lichtenberg call the legitimacy argument. I claim that the legitimacy of American society does not depend on the representation of diverse groups in positions of leadership per se. It depends on not unfairly excluding people from positions of leadership. When a group has been unfairly excluded, affirmative action can be an effective tool for restoring legitimacy.

Leveling the playing field : A response to brighouse and strike

Abstract: Responding to Brighouse's comments, we discuss ways that institutions of higher education themselves can increase access for low-income students.We argue for the important role of community college...

Book Review: Consulting Pupils: What's in it for Schools?:

Abstract: thinking and practice. I know of no other book that will be so helpful to anyone wanting to make sense of, and to evaluate, three decades of British educational innovation. It should be widely read, and I anticipate a less expensive paperback edition. Understanding how things have gone wrong does not ensure that we can put them right. Educational change is too complex and unpredictable for that. But confronting the bleak scene that Pring reveals we rightly ask ‘What can be done?’ Pring himself makes some institutional recommendations but reading the researches and policies he quotes I continually found myself asking ‘What sort of person wrote this?’ Perhaps our guiding motto here should be ‘Never mind the methodology, worry about the researcher’; for things get said that no educated person would or could say. In one paper, ‘The virtues and vices of an educational researcher’ Pring takes us a step towards thinking about the kinds and fitness of people who inquire into education and shape policies. Unfortunately he attends only to their moral and intellectual virtues. These are important but not central here. Earlier he speaks of teaching as ‘a social practice with its own principles of conduct and values’ (p. 16). So there must be specifically educational virtues to be sought and encouraged in all educators: teachers, administrators, publishers, researchers, reformers and the rest. To adumbrate what these virtues are is too big a task to attempt here, so I conclude by suggesting that one important but neglected educational virtue is synoptic understanding, a kind of understanding that involves not just breadth of awareness of things and their inter-connections but depth of appreciation of their sources and motivations – an educational virtue that is rare in educational writing but splendidly evident in this volume.