In this article, it is argued that the inordinate amount of time and attention given to the use of textbooks in education inadvertently leads to deadening miseducative experiences and creates a learning environment where what Dewey calls "consummatory experience" is thwarted. In order to unpack this thesis, Dewey's pragmatist…

Noddings's radical choice for a particular stance in life is both what makes "Happiness and Education" a thought-provoking book and what also leads me to have some reservations. First, I briefly outline some of these reservations and focus on what I think are two important difficulties "Happiness and Education" faces:…

Nel Noddings claims that there is an important normative element in happiness. For support, she points to the Aristotelian idea of the "eudaimonic" life, a concept that is often translated into English as "the happy life". However, in light of the wide divergence between the Aristotelian view of "eudaimonia" as a life…

In this short essay I express my own deep sympathy with Nel Noddings's ethic of care and applaud her stubborn resistance in "Happiness and Education" to what John Dewey would have called false dualisms, such as those between intelligence and emotion, theory and practice, or vocation and academic studies.However, I question whether…

Recent government attention to the coherence between early childhood and compulsory school curricula in Aotearoa/New Zealand has led to debates regarding the educational aims of different education sectors. Concerns regarding a "push-down" of compulsory school aims are highlighted in this article, with reference to Nel Noddings's…

As we speak about time in the context of everyday life, we have no problem with what we mean by time. We take time as given. Different kinds of theories of development rely on the ordinary concept of time. Time is a sequence of instants, and we are moving along from the past to the future, from birth to death. Moving in time also means…

Many science teachers are presented with the challenge of characterizing science as a dynamic, human endeavour. Perspectivism, as a hermeneutic philosophy of science, has the potential to be a learning tool for teachers as they elucidate the complex nature of science. Developed earlier by Nietzsche and others, perspectivism has recently re-emerged…

The main argument of this article is that science teaching based on a pedagogy of questions is to be modeled on a hermeneutic conception of scientific research as a process of the constitution of texts. This process is spelled out in terms of hermeneutic phenomenology. A text constituted by scientific practices is at once united by a hermeneutic…

Science teaching always engages a philosophy of science. This article introduces a modern philosophy of science and indicates its implications for science education. The hermeneutic philosophy of science is the tradition of Kant, Heidegger, and Heelan. Essential to this tradition are two concepts of truth, truth as correspondence and truth as…

The philosophy of science has witnessed continuous controversy since the mid-twentieth century regarding the justification of science's privileged position, and which has also reverberated in the philosophy of science education. This contribution brings to the discussion the viewpoint of Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. I…

This essay explores the question: Is Nel Noddings a visionary who sees past the constraints of contemporary education or is she, like Don Quixote, madly tilting at windmills in her description and defense of happiness as an educational aim? Viewing the educational aim of happiness as an ideal raises substantial challenges for the practicality of…

Following Aristotle's description of youth and brief discussion about indoctrination and parrhesia, the article historicizes Socrates' trial as the intersection of philosophy, education and a teacher's influence on youth. It explores the historic-political context and how contemporary Athenians might have viewed Socrates and his student's actions,…

Motivation is a concept more frequently found in venues concerned with educational psychology than in ones concerned with educational philosophy. Under the influence of psychology, and its typically dualistic way of making sense of the world, motivation in education has tended to be viewed in dichotomous terms, for example, as intrinsic or…

This paper outlines aspects and dimensions of my "relationship" with Richard Peters from 1966 onward. The underlying suggestion is that, while Peters' contribution to philosophy of education was undeniably of major proportions, both that contribution and his legacy are institutional rather than substantive. (Contains 15 notes.)

In this article, I argue that Paulo Freire's liberatory conception of education is interesting, challenging, even transforming because central to it are important aspects of education which other philosophers marginalise. I also argue that Freire's critics are right when they claim that he paid insufficient attention to another important aspect of…