Since public schooling was introduced in the nineteenth century, teachers in many western countries have endeavoured to achieve professional recognition. For a short period in the latter part of the twentieth century, professionalism was seen as a discourse of resistance or the "enemy" of economic rationalism and performativity. However,…

In this article, I try to make sense conventional notions of "premodernism", "modernism" and "postmodernism" as ways of relating to reality, and apply them to education. I argue for the additional notion of "neo-premodernism" to make sense of recent attempts to engineer social reality. Each of these four…

This short note takes two quotations from Snooks' recent editorial on neuroeducation and teases out some further details on the philosophy of neuroscience and neurophilosophy along with consideration of the implications of both for philosophy of education.

This article argues that Macmurray's work on education is deserving of serious consideration, because it offers an account of the person that highlights the significance of the emotions and the arts. In particular, the article examines and teases out the areas of Macmurray's concept of the person that are pertinent to the philosophy of…

This article draws on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to consider, from an ethical perspective, the current transparency and accountability agenda in Australian schooling. It focuses on the case of the "My School" website and the argument that transparent publication of comparative performance data via the website provides a basis for…

The introduction of new accountabilities and techniques of government for the purposes of educational reform have created new complexities and tensions for school leadership. Policies such as the publishing of league tables in the UK, high stakes testing in the US and the introduction of the "My School" website in Australia are…

"Cruel optimism" is a term coined by Lauren Berlant. In conceptualizing this term, Berlant draws on the resources of critical theory to interrogate people's desires for things they think may improve their lot, but actually act as obstacles to flourishing. This notion may be useful for analysing the current state of education in…

This article takes the role of provocateur to "queer(y)" the rules of intelligibility surrounding new schooling accountabilities. Butler's work is seldom used outside the arena of gender and sexualities research. A "queer(y)ing" methodology is subsequently applied in a context very different to where it is frequently…

Drawing on the theoretical constructs of Pierre Bourdieu, this article explores implications of the Australian "My School" website for schools located in disadvantaged communities. These implications flow from the legitimisation of certain cultural practices through the hidden linkages between scholastic aptitude and cultural heritage…

This article responds to and reflects upon the articles in this special issue. Specifically, it deals with the usage of theory in each of the articles, what we might see, as examples of re-descriptive usage in autonomous theorizing. The articles utilize different theories and varying intellectual resources--Foucault and Deleuze (Richard Niesche),…

In much theory there is a tendency to place thought above action, or the opposite, action over thought. The consequence of the first option is that philosophy or scientific evidence gains the upper hand in educational thinking. The consequence of the second view is that pragmatism and relativism become the dominant features. This article discusses…

This article argues that Buddhist philosophy offers a plausible theory of the education of the emotions. Emotions are analyzed as cognitive feeling events in which the subject is passive. The education of the emotions is possible if and only if it is possible to evaluate one's emotional life (the normative condition) and it is possible to…

The concept of empathy in history education involves students in the attempt to think within the context of historical agents' particular predicaments. Tracing the concept's philosophical heritage to R. G. Collingwood's philosophy of history and "re-enactment doctrine", this article argues that our efforts in history…

"Raising aspirations" for education among young people in low socioeconomic regions has become a widespread policy prescription for increasing human capital investment and economic competitiveness in so-called "knowledge economies". However, policy tends not to address difficult social, cultural, economic and political…

This article explores Lyotard's notion of performativity through an engagement with McKenzie's analysis of performance as a "formation of knowledge and power" that has displaced the notion of discipline as the tool for social evaluation. Through conditions of "performance" capitalism, education is to conform to a…