In this article, the author looks to the work of Jacques Rancière to engage the possibilities in dissensus in queer theory in education. Fatigued of Foucault, bored with Butler, disdainful of Derrida and dumbfounded by Deleuze and Guattari, and just generally tired of feeling bullied into citing particular people and not others, the author…

This article chronicles the creative life of Ken McCluskey, the Dean of Education at the University of Winnipeg in Manitoba, Canada. He looks beyond the ivory tower and, indeed, reshapes the tower. Fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration are evident throughout the life and work of Dean McCluskey. He creates an innovative environment and…

By virtue of his "Essays" Montaigne is rightly regarded not only as a radically modern philosopher but also as a transformative educational innovator. He confronted the extent to which pedantry and acculturation can justify cruelty by developing a conception of liberal arts education as the arts of liberation, and at the core of this…

This article focuses on the structures of humor and joke telling that require particular kinds of attentiveness and particular relationships between speaker and audience, or more specifically, between classmates. First, I will analyze the pedagogical and relational preconditions that are necessary for humor to work. If humor is to work well, the…

A review of the literature in philosophy in the past 20 years indicates that relatively little has been written on the connection between friendship, intimacy and humor. This article is intended to begin to address the neglect of this topic among philosophers by focusing on some interesting aspects of the relationship between friendship, intimacy…

In this article I try to conceive a new approach towards laughter in the context of formal schooling. I focus on laughter in so far as it is a bodily response during which we are entirely delivered to uncontrollable, spasmodic reactions. To see the educational relevance of this particular kind of laughter, as well as to understand why laughter is…

This article begins by examining the bad reputation humor traditionally had in philosophy and education. Two of the main charges against humor--that it is hostile and irresponsible--are linked to the Superiority Theory. That theory is critiqued and two other theories of laughter are presented--the Relief Theory and the Incongruity Theory. In the…

This interview was recorded in November 2012 in Jonathan Z. Smith's Hyde Park graystone. Professor Smith offers insights into how he thinks about his classroom teaching and his students' learning through descriptions of various assignments and classroom activities he has developed over more than forty years of teaching. The discussion…

Parody involves creating humor through "imitating a style or genre of literature or other media" (Buijzen & Valkenburg, 2004, p. 154). More specifically, Bush, Bush, and Boller (1994) argued that parody involves both imitation of an original text, and discrepancies from the original that create humor and insight. The discrepancies…

Despite the importance of the non-task interactions in computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments as emphasized in the literature, few studies have investigated online behavior of people in the CSCL environments. This paper studies the pattern of non-task interactions among postgraduate students in an Australian university. The…

Humor and language play have been recognized as important aspects of second language (L2) development. Qualitative studies that have documented the forms and functions of language play for adult and child L2 users have taken place largely in classroom settings. In order to gain a fuller understanding of such creative manipulations by L2 users, it…

One of the fastest-growing subpopulations of nontraditional college students is military veterans who enroll in institutions of higher education following their returns from deployment. Although much research has been conducted on veteran-students, much of that work has focused on issues such as veterans' finances or academic achievement,…

Social deficits are a hallmark characteristic among adolescents with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), yet few evidence-based interventions exist aimed at improving social skills for this population, and none have examined the maintenance of treatment gains years after the intervention has ended. This study examines the durability of the Program…

This article explores how ethnography allows for an understanding of the way children are empowered through the use of popular culture during sociodramatic play. The study discussed was conducted in an inner-city Primary school in regional New South Wales, Australia. The participants were a composite fifth-to-sixth grade class, and the research…

College and university lawyers must be prepared to address legal matters that range from the kinds one might expect to those that are unanticipated, even unbelievable. It's all in a day's work--and there's no such thing as a typical day in the life of a higher education attorney. The complex legal and regulatory issues facing…