In an effort to disrupt the hegemonic dominance of learning theory, in this article Tyson Lewis explores the unique educational logic of studying. Drawing on the work of Giorgio Agamben, we can understand the operation of study as one of suspension through three modes: preferring not; no longer, not yet; and as not. But the relationship between…

Empathy is a necessity in our multicultural world. Modern democratic societies are home to communities with the most diverse religious, political, and moral convictions, and these convictions often directly, even perilously, contradict one another. Educational theorists differ on how empathy can be taught in the face of these contradictions. Does…

Although much has been written about Friedrich Nietzsche's views on education over the years, and much has also been written about Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy, very little attention has been given to the meaning of, and need for, Dionysian education. In this article, Sean Steel attempts to begin that project. Drawing Nietzsche's…

In this analysis Jane Blanken-Webb extends Elliot Eisner's account of how learning in the arts contributes to the creation of mind. Drawing on the psychoanalytic theory of D. W. Winnicott, Blanken-Webb argues that the acts of meaning making to which Eisner attends rely on a prior developmental achievement--namely, the establishment of…

On grounds of autonomy, is comprehensive education -- an approach to education that attempts to facilitate the acceptance of certain beliefs and ways of life as being correct, and refuses to sympathetically expose students to contrary beliefs and ways of life -- ethically suspect? Recently, Bryan R. Warnick has argued that it is. In this essay,…

In this essay Nicholas C. Burbules reviews his experiences and the lessons he learned as editor of "Educational Theory" for more than twenty years, and he explores some of the normative choices that are inevitably made by any editor in carrying out his or her role. Burbules examines the relationship of a journal to its intellectual…

In this article, Stephanie Daza draws on Gayatri Spivak's theorizing to help make visible how education is shaped by an elusive conceptual apparatus of neoliberal scientism. She begins with an example of high-stakes learning and global competition as commonsensical policy practice at an elementary school. Then Daza develops an analysis that…

Recently, a range of educational theorists have explored and extended upon popular currents in political theory through articulating "open" and "unknowing" pedagogies. Such contributions represent a radical turn away from the presumed "universals" found in proclamations of justice and emancipation and, ultimately, the centering of class analysis.…

In this review essay, K. Peter Kuchinke uses three recent publications to consider the question of how to educate young people for work and career. Historically, this question has been central to vocational education, and it is receiving renewed attention in the context of concerns over the ability of schools to provide adequate preparation for…

A blue-ribbon panel convened by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) concluded in 2010 that teacher education in the United States must be "turned upside down," with practical experience at its center and academic content woven around the practical. It might seem that the new clinical model based on medical…

The question whether the study of education and teacher education belong at a liberal arts college deserves careful consideration. In this essay Bruce Kimball analyzes and finds unpersuasive the three principled rationales that are most often advanced on behalf of excluding educational studies, teacher education, or both from a liberal arts…

In this article Morwenna Griffiths argues that teacher education policies should be predicated on a proper and full understanding of pedagogical relations as contingent, responsive, and adaptive over the course of a career. Griffiths uses the example of the recent report on teacher education in Scotland, by Graham Donaldson, to argue that for all…

Contemporary educational reformers have claimed that research on social class differences in child raising justifies programs that aim to lift children out of poverty by means of cultural interventions. Focusing on the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), Ruby Payne's "aha! Process," and the Harlem Children's Zone as examples,…

In this essay, P. Taylor Webb and Kalervo N. Gulson argue that educational policy is a spatial process and that implementation processes in particular produce crucial emergent geographies for policy research. Webb and Gulson describe how emergent geographies are produced when policy "folds" actors through senses and enactments of policy. The idea…

In this essay Gregory Bynum seeks to show that Immanuel Kant's thought, which was conceived in an eighteenth-century context of new, and newly widespread, pressures for nationally institutionalized human rights-based regimes (the American and French revolutions being the most prominent examples), can help us think in new and appreciative ways…