The number of homeschooling families in the United States has been growing at a steady rate since the early 1990s. Attempts to make sense of homeschooling—including research—are inherently political. These attempts are, therefore, highly contested. It is impossible to provide an agreed-upon definition of homeschooling, much less a precise number of families that homeschool, why they homeschool, or what the learning outcomes of that homeschooling might entail. Instead, homeschooling is best understood as a set of educative practices that exists in and between institutional schooling and family life. As families and schools evolve and change, so will the meaning and significance of homeschooling.
Article
Homeschooling in the United States
Kyle Greenwalt
Article
Imaginaries of Inclusion in Swedish Education
Gunnlaugur Magnússon and Daniel Pettersson
Traditionally, Swedish education has been built on, and enhanced by, notions and priorities of democracy, equity, and inclusion. In fact, Sweden’s education system has often, during the 20th century, been raised as a beacon of inclusion. However, from the 1990s onwards Swedish education is gradually transmogrified into a heavily marketized system with several providers of education, an emphasis on competition, and an escalating segregation, both as regards pupil backgrounds, need for special support, educational attainment, and provision of educational materials and educated teachers. This shows that traditional educational ideals have shifted and been given new meanings.
These shifts are based on desires to improve performance and new ideas of control and predictability of educational ends. The historical development of education reforms illustrates how priorities have shifted over time, dependent on how the public and private are conceptualized. In particular, education reforms from the 1990s and onwards have gradually been more attached to connotations on market ideals of competition, efficiency, and individualization, making inclusion a secondary and de-prioritized goal of education, creating new educational dilemmas within daily life in schools.
An empirical example of principals’ experience—seen as mediators of educational desires—illustrates these dilemmas and how the marketization of education affects both the political understanding of how education is best organized and the prioritization of previously valued ambitions of coherence and inclusion.
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Immigrant Teachers in Israel as Newcomers and Educators (1949–1966)
Tali Tadmor-Shimony
Most research on education and the migration question assumes that schools function as the social agents of the host society. Teachers are supposed to disseminate their society’s dominant norms to influence future generations. Ever since the implementation of compulsory education laws, teachers have been asked to function as social agents of two major processes: nation-building and the integration of new immigrants. An interesting situation arises when the teachers are newcomers, as was the case during the nearly two decades of compulsory education law in Israel (1949–1966). Immigrant teachers comprised more than a fifth of the teachers during the 1950s. They worked in an educational system where over two-fifths of the students were immigrants who had arrived during the mass migration. Due to the need to address the shortage of teachers, the Ministry of Education lowered the professional standards and employed a lower proportion of certified teachers. The teachers’ training program was drastically shortened, and its level of standards was reduced to crash courses, which the Ministry of Education initiated in the early 1950s, as it was necessary to recruit many teachers in a short time.
The entry of immigrants into the ranks of teachers slowed down the process of feminization in primary education for a few years because the male share among the immigrant teachers was almost twice that of old-time teachers already there. The teaching profession assisted the immigrants in improving their economic status compared to their immigrant colleagues. The immigrant teachers were placed in a unique situation. On the one hand, they were newcomers who struggled with the difficulties of integration, while on the other hand, they were supposed to serve—as did their colleagues—as representatives of the state.
Many studies have shown the cultural conflict between society and immigrant students through the curricula. In the Israeli case, some of the immigrant teachers shared this conflict too. The immigrant teachers had to deal with the experiences of immigrating, just like other immigrants, while teaching in a language that was not their mother tongue, as many were not fluent in Hebrew. The lack of social workers and consultants resulted in many immigrant teachers working as social workers. These teachers had to impart knowledge and provide support for their students’ families. One way to understand the immigrant teachers’ activities is by applying the analytical tool of teacher empowerment. This empowerment, the appreciation of their functioning by their surroundings, in some way compensated for their difficulties. The research argues that the teaching profession was a key element in the social mobility of immigrant teachers and enabled them to become a part of the host society.
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Inclusive and Special Education in Asia
Maya Kalyanpur
Any analysis of inclusive and special education in Asia, past and present, must account for the immense variation in what constitutes Asia and recognize that finding patterns in the development of inclusive and special education across this vast continent is difficult. The variations relate to geographic topography, historical experiences, and cultural values, as well as to contemporary socio-economic and political conditions. For example, although both Oman and Timor Leste struggle with issues of accessibility and providing services in remote areas, Timor Leste’s mountainous terrain presents very different challenges from Oman’s desert conditions. Similarly, the different cultural influences of, say, Hinduism in Nepal, Islam in Jordan, and Buddhism in Cambodia have significant implications for attitudes towards disability, while differences in economic development between Japan and Bangladesh, for instance, have rendered the former a donor of international aid that sets the inclusive education agenda and the latter a recipient of both aid and agenda. While efforts to identify patterns in inclusive education globally have also attempted to define the nature of development in Asia, these analyses do not always account for the unique intra-continental variations.
Overlooking these variations in socio-political and economic contexts becomes problematic when attempting to find solutions towards providing culturally responsive and culturally specific services appropriate to these unique circumstances. Additionally troubling is the more recent development of a geopolitical climate which assumes that inclusive and special education could and should, in fact, be the same, whether in Bangladesh or in Japan. Embodied by international aid agencies, such as the World Bank, the United Nations International Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), these expectations have been captured within global policies, such as the 1994 Salamanca Statement on Inclusive Education, the 2008 UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and more recently, the 2015 Millennium Sustainable Goals, and furthered through UNICEF’s and UNESCO’s curriculum packages and professional development training on inclusive education. There is a nascent body of scholars in some Asian countries that is beginning to identify indigenous alternatives, which, if allowed to thrive, could contribute to the development of an amalgamated structure of services that would be more appropriate to the individual contexts.
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Inclusive Educational Principles, Policies, and Practices in Italy
Paola Aiello and Erika Marie Pace
The Italian education system has gained prominence worldwide thanks to its pioneering history in initiating the process of mainstreaming students with disabilities, in providing educational plans tailored to students’ needs, and in the gradual broadening of the vision of inclusion as a means to guarantee quality education for all. At the same time, teacher education programs have reinvigorated their key role in preparing and supporting teachers who are inclusive of all students. Several factors over the past 50 years have been fundamental in shaping the way inclusion is perceived in the 21st century. First, the theoretical frameworks underpinning pedagogy and teaching practices have undergone a complete paradigm shift from an individualized-medical model to a biopsychosocial model, bringing about a new challenge for all stakeholders involved. Second, in line with this evolution, latest reforms and ministerial provisions in initial teacher education and continuous professional development are evidence of the change in perspective regarding the teachers’ pivotal role in promoting and facilitating inclusive practices. However, this shift has not only called for a rethinking of the teachers’ pedagogical and didactic stances. It has also entailed a reconsideration of the necessary professional competencies, understood as a complex interplay of pedagogical knowledge, values, attitudes, and skills to be able to implement effective teaching methods and strategies that favor inclusion. Thus, it has placed a heavy responsibility on teacher education institutions to ensure that current and future teachers are ready, willing, and able to face the complexity characterizing 21st-century classrooms. Italian schools have also been doing their utmost to ensure better school experiences for all their students. An array of projects, both ministerially funded and school-based schemes, have been designed and implemented to create universally functional curricula to meet all the students’ learning styles and promote inclusion. One of the most important lessons to be learned from these intricate developments and initiatives is that collaboration among all stakeholders on micro, meso, and macro levels lies at the heart of effective and sustainable inclusive education.
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Indigenous School Education in Brazil
Roseli R. Mello, Marcondy M. de Souza, and Thaís J. Palomino
Self-determination of the original peoples of any nation, preservation of their territories, preservation of traditions, and negotiation of customs facing national cultures are central themes in the debate about and among indigenous peoples in the world. School education is directly linked to such themes as an instrument of acculturation or self-determination and emancipation. As in other countries of the globe, throughout history, what happened and is happening in Brazil is not isolated fact. Current conditions are the product of colonization processes, the development of industrial society, and more recently of globalization. Such historical processes bring struggles, confrontations, transformations, and solidarity. In the legal sphere, international conventions, declarations, and treaties have influenced more or less directly the norms and laws on the subject: from the papal bull and treaties between colonizing kingdoms, to the Declaration of Human Rights, to Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization, the Brazilian indigenous issue, like that of many other countries, is also based on, supported by, or held back by actions, debates, and international interests.
But what makes the case of Brazil worthy of relevance for thinking about indigenous education? Two elements make up an answer: the specific way the governors establish relations with the original peoples, and the fact that Brazil has the greatest diversity of indigenous communities.
Article
Institutional Dis/Continuities in Higher Education Changes During the Soviet and Post-Soviet Periods in Kazakhstan
Gulzhan Azimbayeva
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) higher education system has undergone radical change since the perestroika period—the Gorbachev period (1985–1991). Perestroika means restructuring in Russian. In this period, the institutional context of higher education was fundamentally transformed by the major upheavals of the political and socioeconomic institutions of the USSR. The changes in the USSR higher education had a major impact on the higher education of Kazakhstan—a former Republic of the USSR. Thus, to understand the changes in higher education in Kazakhstan, it is important to locate them in the stages of the collapse of the USSR. It could be argued that the “institutional dis/continuities” theory would allow a careful examination of the educational changes in the postsocialist context. The “institutional dis/continuities” of the perestroika period draw on path-dependency and critical juncture concepts within historical institutionalism theory. Perestroika period can be seen as a critical juncture in the historical development of higher education. Also, the policy choices which were made during the perestroika period could establish further path-dependencies in policy-making.
Article
Jan Amos Comenius
Stephen Tomlinson
Jan Amos Comenius (b. 1592) is widely recognized as a pivotal figure in the history of educational thought. Living during a period of great turmoil he promoted universal schooling as the means to engineer a perfectly harmonious world. His argument turned upon claims to scientific knowledge and a didactic method that could instill truth in all minds. As the ever expanding scholarship on Comenius demonstrates, many still find inspiration in this visionary project. But Comenius’ work must be read in the context of Early Modern thought. Convinced that life was situated in the divinely crafted cosmos pictured in the Book of Genesis, his overarching goal was to restore “the image of God in man” and realize the Golden Age depicted in prophecy. The school was to be a workshop for the reformation of mankind, a place to manufacture of right thinking and right acting individuals. I explore these epistemological and pedagogic arguments and demonstrate their role in his hugely successful Latin primer, Orbis pictus (1658). Comenius, I conclude, was a revolutionary thinker who married subtle observations about the process of learning with sophisticated instructional practices. However, given current views about human nature and the social good, these principles cannot be applied uncritically to contemporary educational problems.
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John Dewey and Teacher Education
Margaret Schmidt and Randall Everett Allsup
John Dewey’s writings on schooling are extensive, and characteristically wide-ranging: teachers are expected to think deeply about knowledge construction, how we think and learn, the purpose of curriculum in the life of the child, and the role of school and societal reform. He worked throughout his life to develop and refine his philosophy of experience, describing all learning as defined by the quality of interactions between the learner and the social and physical environment. According to Dewey, teachers have a responsibility to structure educational environments in ways that promote educative learning experiences, those that change the learner in such a way as to promote continued learning and growth. The capacity to reflect on and make meaning from one’s experiences facilitates this growth, particularly in increasing one’s problem-solving abilities.
While Dewey wrote little that specifically addressed the preparation of teachers, his 1904 essay, “The Relation of Theory to Practice in Education,” makes clear that he grounds his beliefs about teachers’ learning in this same philosophy of experiential learning. Dewey argued that thoughtful reflection on previous and current educational experiences is especially important in teacher preparation; teacher educators could then guide beginners to examine and test the usefulness of the beliefs formed from those experiences. Teacher educators, therefore, have a responsibility to arrange learning environments for beginning teachers to promote sequential experiences leading to increased understanding of how children learn, “how mind answers to mind.” These experiences can then help beginning teachers grow, not as classroom technicians, but as true “students of teaching.”
Dewey’s ideas remain relevant, but must also be viewed in historical context, in light of his unfailing belief in education and the scientific method as ways to promote individual responsibility and eliminate social problems. His vision of a democratic society remains a fearless amalgam of human adaptation, continuity, change, and diversity: public schools are privileged locations in a democracy for the interplay and interrogation of old and new ideas. Teacher preparation and teacher wellbeing are crucial elements; they can provide experiences to educate all children for participation in their present lives in ways that facilitate their growth as citizens able to fully participate in a democracy. Despite criticism about limitations of his work, Dewey’s ideas continue to offer much food for thought, for both research and practice in teacher education.
Article
Learning in History
Liliana Maggioni and Emily Fox
At first glance, learning in history might be characterized as committing to memory sanctioned stories about the past. Yet a deeper consideration of this process opens up several questions about the specific features that make the generation of shared knowledge about the past possible and meaningful. Some of these questions regard the very object of such learning: What makes specific aspects of the past historically significant? What relations among people, events, and phenomena are especially salient in fostering understanding of the past? Another set of questions regards the affective and cognitive traits and abilities that characterize a successful learner in history. Researchers from different countries have worked at the intersection between history, history education, and educational psychology, and have investigated how experts and novices address historical questions on the basis of sources provided to them, identifying certain differences in their strategy use, their ability to contextualize information gleaned from the sources, their use of prior knowledge, and their ideas about the nature of historical knowledge and historical evidence. Researchers have also studied the influence that learners’ epistemic beliefs, school curricula, pedagogical practices, testing, and classroom discourse may have on student learning in history. By their variety, these studies have illustrated the complex nature of learning in history and evidenced several tensions among educational goals and between these goals and educational practices in the 21st century.
Article
Multilingualism in Monolingual Schools and the German Example
Ingrid Gogolin
The majority of European countries consider themselves as monolingual nation-states. Some exceptions are countries composed of different linguistic territories, such as Belgium and Switzerland. Another form of exception is countries where certain territories are inhabited by linguistic minorities who are granted particular linguistic rights. Monolingualism with exceptions for special constellations or cases is therefore considered the “linguistic normality” in European nations. This understanding of normality is also reflected in the nations’ public institutions and is particularly pronounced in the national education systems.
The linguistic reality in Europe, however, contrasts with this notion of normality. Since time immemorial, the regions that have become European nation-states have been characterized by linguistic diversity, not only across but also within their boundaries. Since the second half of the 20th century, however, the number of languages that are vital and used daily has considerably increased. The most important driver of this development is international migration. Some European countries—Germany in particular—belong to the most attractive immigration destinations of the world. Despite of this reality, European national education systems largely persist in their monolingual mindset—or in other words: in a monolingual habitus.
This ambiguity can be amply illustrated by the example of the German education system. Education research shows that it belongs to the causes of educational disadvantage for children from immigrant families. This is precisely why innovation initiatives have been launched to mitigate the risks to teaching and learning associated with multilingualism, while making the best use of the resources offered by linguistic diversity to all children—be they growing up in monolingual or multilingual families.
Article
Navigating Change: Pacific Islanders, Race, Sport, and Pipelines to Higher Education
Keali'I Kukahiko
Tagata Pasifika (Pacific People) is a transnational affiliation whose collective colonial experiences provide island nations of Oceania a means for contestation over local discourses of power and race. Employing the principle of Tagata Pasifika within higher education necessitates recognition of how postsecondary institutions are significant sites of conflict that engender the collective resistance among Pasifika communities for the following reasons: (a) to close the educational opportunity gap between Pasifika communities and spheres of influence—positions of power that dictate policies, social circumstances, and human living conditions; (b) to affirm Pasifika participation in the knowledge production process by developing ontological self-efficacy and decolonizing spaces in higher education that erase and marginalize Pasifika ontologies; and (c) to engage action research as opportunities that enact various forms of sovereignty, such as the ability to participate in cultural practices as authentic and legitimate ways of knowing and being or recognizing Pasifika intellectual participation as a process of action, or inaction, informed by cultural and experiential values. A salient college access point for Pasifika communities is the phenomena of college athletics because Pasifika college football players are 56 times more likely to matriculate to the National Football League. However, low graduation rates—only 11% of Pasifika college football players graduated from the Football Championship Series college division in 2015—have made this “untraditional” pathway an extractive pipeline that provides the National Collegiate Athletic Association membership institutions with athletic labor. Although college athletes continue to have the conditions of their admissions leveraged against them to prevent student resistance/activism, student-athletes have an unprecedented potential for influence in the “post-COVID” landscape of college athletics.
Article
NCPEA to ICPEL: Professional Organization of Educational Administration Leadership
Rosemary Papa, Theodore Creighton, and James Berry
The story of the creation of the field of educational administration, management, and leadership from the 19th to the 21st century is best understood through the lens of the first professional organization founded for school leaders, formerly known as the National Council of Professors of Educational Administration (NCPEA), now the International Council of Professors of Educational Leadership (ICPEL). The mission of the ICPEL is to advance the field of educational leadership/administration/management through research, teaching, and service as a means to better prepare aspiring and practicing educational leaders/administrators. The difference between the NCPEA of 1947 and the ICPEL of 2022 can best be summed up as the same intent to improve K–12 education by training school leaders but a different organizational structure to deliver member services.
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Negotiating Transnational Mobility and Gender Definitions in the Context of Migration
Asuncion Fresnoza-Flot
The rise of mobility and transnationalism perspectives in the social sciences has contributed to a burgeoning literature on the cross-border movements of people. Gender as a conceptual lens has increasingly taken a central stage in the analyses, unveiling unequal power relations as well as unmasking the often-hidden macro-social processes and structures that shape them. As a category of difference, gender influences individuals’ attitudes and behavior, including their decision to migrate or not across borders of nation-states. This raises the question of how transnational mobility and gender intersect in the lives of individuals. To shed light on this issue, this article takes stock of the literature on transnational migrations associated with social reproduction: labor, marriage, and reproductive migrations. Such research reveals individuals’ tactics to negotiate their transnational mobility and gender definitions: using the dominant gender scripts in the country of origin, reconciling the gender ideologies in their countries of origin and destination, or aligning their narratives to specific moral values. Transnational mobility acquires different social meanings at certain points in time and in varying contexts, whereas gender remains at large anchored to its heteronormative foundation. Finally, based on the analysis of existing studies, a more holistic approach to transnational mobility through a sexuality-inclusive, process-oriented, subjectivity- and agency-focused, and time-sensitive framework is called for.
Article
Open-Mindedness and Education
Susan Verducci
Open-mindedness disposes us to value and seek truth, knowledge, and understanding by taking a particular stance toward ourselves, what we know, new information, and experience. It aims to improve our epistemic standing, both individually and socially. Widely accepted as a valuable educational aim, scholarship on the nature and extent of open-mindedness’ epistemological and civic value is growing. Epistemological conceptions range from its role in rational inquiry to thinking of it as an attitude toward one’s self as a knower, or as an attitude toward individual beliefs. Conversations on its status as an intellectual virtue, its associations with personal transformation, and its role in aesthetic experiences are also on the rise. Of particular note for schooling are its connections to democratic citizenship. Theorists argue that open-mindedness operates in respecting others, tolerating differences in pluralistic contexts, and exercising autonomy.
Central challenges to its value, however, abound. They include the difficulty of pinpointing the line between open-mindedness and gullibility, and the ways that human cognitive limitations make open-mindedness more aspirational than possible. Its incompatibility with holding strong commitments serve as some of the most relevant challenges to its value. Are there any ideas or beliefs that we ought not be open-minded about? And if (and when) there are, can open-mindedness support structures of power and/or oppressive forces? Additional challenges come from those who explore how open-mindedness fares in posttruth and postfact conditions.
The educational discourse on open-mindedness shows that its objects, occasions, and processes have expanded over time and in response to new understandings of historical, social, and cultural conditions. In this light, educational philosophers may no longer be theorizing about a singular phenomenon with a set of agreed upon characteristics. Instead, open-mindedness may have become a constellation of related and overlapping epistemological phenomena with similar features, much like what Ludwig Wittgenstein calls family resemblances. If so, this constellation requires a conceptual framework, such as the one Jürgen Habermas laid out in Knowledge and Human Interests, to provide open-mindedness with theoretical and educational coherence.
Despite the growing incoherence of thinking about open-mindedness as a singular phenomenon, most educational theorists maintain a fundamental commitment to open-mindedness as an educational aim. Regardless of whether one considers open-mindedness to have essential characteristics, to be a constellation of epistemic phenomena with Wittgensteinian family resemblances, and/or a concept in search of a singular framework (such as Habermas’s), much of the educational discourse on open-mindedness will likely continue to be maintained as it improves our epistemic, moral, and civic standing. This line of thinking assumes and suggests that we simply need to educate for the right orientation, the right attitude, the right sort of openness, and the right skills to attain these goods. However, increasing exploration of the political nature of open-mindedness and emerging perspectives from critical theory seem to be coalescing into a second strand of counterdialogue. Examination of “the goodness” of open-mindedness in contexts of oppression, intolerance, closed-mindedness, and posttruth/postfact conditions provide increasingly serious challenges to open-mindedness’ secure status as an educational aim.
Article
The Palestinian K-12 Education System: History, Structure, Challenges, and Opportunities
Anwar Hussein, Shelley Wong, and Anita Bright
The Palestinian education system in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) reflects a long and complex history of control by other countries: the colonial British Mandate over historic Palestine (1917–1948); the Jordanian government over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem (1948–1967); the Egyptian government over the Gaza Strip (1948–1967); and the Israeli occupation (1967–1993). This external control has resulted in multiple forms of apartheid, including restrictions on freedom of movement as a means of control over Palestinian lands and people. Beginning in 1967 at the end of the Six-Day War, the Israeli government took control of Palestinian educational systems, controlling the entire educational experience of Palestinian students, including curriculum, construction, and maintenance of schools, and employment of educators. In 1993, after the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Authority took charge of the Palestinian education system. Although with the development of the first Palestinian curriculum, the Palestinian Authority has made many innovative breakthroughs in education, they are severely restricted by the Israeli occupation. They do not have the right to build or renovate schools (or other buildings) without Israeli building permits. The current apartheid system is a multifaceted economic blockade, with walls, checkpoints, and armed military guards denying Palestinian students and teachers access to a range of essential services, such as education and healthcare. All of these restrictions of movement and encroachments by the Israeli government and military represent violations of the United Nations human rights conventions.
Given its history, the Palestinian educational system faces many challenges, including the marginalized status of the teaching profession, the quality of teacher education programs, implementation of the education strategic plan, and others. Despite the numerous systemic challenges and obstacles under occupation, Palestinian educators continue to demonstrate tremendous tenacity, creativity, innovation, and optimism.
Article
Parties in Privatizing American Public Education
Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. Owings
The education privatizers (school choice advocates) see public education as a resource-rich marketplace, with charter schools and voucher programs as ways to redirect public dollars to support private ends. By contrast, privatization opponents believe this approach does not improve student outcomes while it undermines public schools and democratic citizenship. Understanding the education privatization agenda and recognizing the political forces shaping it, the players at national and state levels advancing it (often without public awareness), and the research findings on charter school and voucher effectiveness can help educators identify education privatization proposals and comprehend their implications for public schools and communities.
In 1999, The Economist touted education as the next big investment zone, “ripe for privatization,” similar to private takeovers in the defense and healthcare industries. Likewise, in his 2012 annual report, Pearson CEO John Fallan asserted, “education will … be the great growth industry of the 21st Century.” It is easy to see why. American public schools spent over $600 billion for the 2013–2014 school year, representing 9% of the U.S. economy. From 2005 to 2011, private venture capital in the education market grew from $13 million to $389 million. With so much public money on the table, investors find tapping into education dollars—with little oversight or liability—an attractive prospect.
Article
Peace and Curriculum Studies
Molly Quinn
To contemplate the question or concern of peace in curriculum studies, and as has been taken up in the field, is to traverse terrain neither simple nor singular. Peace as a concept, and an ideal, is itself complex and contested, elusory even, and approached in manifold ways, often in relation to other equally intricate and disputed ideas, like violence, war, justice, freedom, hope, and love (as well as human rights, hospitality, citizenship, and cosmopolitanism)—historically informed and context-specific as well. The challenges, too, in undertaking such a task are further compounded as concerning curriculum studies, where there is neither a clearly established nor a cohesive body of work upon which to turn or draw here, where no formalized attention has been given systematically to the study of peace, peace education, or peace studies in relation to such. Nevertheless, one could argue that the field of curriculum from its inception, and enduringly so, has been implicitly and integrally connected to the interest of peace and point to a diversity of work therein, of some breadth and depth, to support this claim and examine this interest. The contemporary scholarship that has emerged in the field and explicitly addressed matters of peace and nonviolence, as well as the work of peace advocates and educators, portends further advancement of this line of inquiry—particularly in response to the growing threats and realities of inequality, conflict, violence, war, ecological devastation, and genocide worldwide—in the hopes of creating a more beautiful world of justice, harmony, and human flourishing via education.
Article
Pedagogical Renewal and Teacher Training in Spain in the Early 20th Century
Jordi Garcia Farrero and Àngel Pascual Martín
What type of institutions prevailed in teacher training in Europe during the first decades of the 20th century? What was the reception of the German, French, or English models in Spain? What type of dialogue did Spanish teachers establish with the Escuela Nueva movement? What pedagogical elements were adopted to configure a new type of teacher, accounting for the different situations of the time? There is no doubt that teacher training, throughout the period mentioned, became one of the main educational and political issues. Teachers were among the fundamental actors, together with the pupils and the contents to be transmitted; the aim was that educational practices typical of the pedagogical renewal movement would take place in schools. Thus, a generation of innovative teachers had the opportunity, thanks to a scholarship from the Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas (1907–1939), to attend different teacher training colleges in Europe. This is fundamental for understanding the creation of the Escuela de Estudios Superiores del Magisterio (1909–1932) and, of course, the Plan Profesional of the Republican government (1932–1939). In short, the main innovations coming from the European movements of pedagogical renewal in the field of teacher training are those related to the incorporation of a non-encyclopedic general culture and pedagogical training, either theoretical, as in the history of education courses, or practical, by learning a wide range of new teaching methods.
Article
Philosophical Issues in Critical Thinking
Juho Ritola
Critical thinking is active, good-quality thinking. This kind of thinking is initiated by an agent’s desire to decide what to believe, it satisfies relevant norms, and the decision on the matter at hand is reached through the use of available reasons under the control of the thinking agent. In the educational context, critical thinking refers to an educational aim that includes certain skills and abilities to think according to relevant standards and corresponding attitudes, habits, and dispositions to apply those skills to problems the agent wants to solve. The basis of this ideal is the conviction that we ought to be rational. This rationality is manifested through the proper use of reasons that a cognizing agent is able to appreciate. From the philosophical perspective, this fascinating ability to appreciate reasons leads into interesting philosophical problems in epistemology, moral philosophy, and political philosophy.
Critical thinking in itself and the educational ideal are closely connected to the idea that we ought to be rational. But why exactly? This profound question seems to contain the elements needed for its solution. To ask why is to ask either for an explanation or for reasons for accepting a claim. Concentrating on the latter, we notice that such a question presupposes that the acceptability of a claim depends on the quality of the reasons that can be given for it: asking this question grants us the claim that we ought to be rational, that is, to make our beliefs fit what we have reason to believe. In the center of this fit are the concepts of knowledge and justified belief. A critical thinker wants to know and strives to achieve the state of knowledge by mentally examining reasons and the relation those reasons bear to candidate beliefs. Both these aspects include fascinating philosophical problems. How does this mental examination bring about knowledge? What is the relation my belief must have to a putative reason for my belief to qualify as knowledge?
The appreciation of reason has been a key theme in the writings of the key figures of philosophy of education, but the ideal of individual justifying reasoning is not the sole value that guides educational theory and practice. It is therefore important to discuss tensions this ideal has with other important concepts and values, such as autonomy, liberty, and political justification. For example, given that we take critical thinking to be essential for the liberty and autonomy of an individual, how far can we try to inculcate a student with this ideal when the student rejects it? These issues underline important practical choices an educator has to make.
