For some time there has been debate about differing perspectives on musical gift and musical intelligence. One view is that musical gift is innate: that it is present in certain individuals from birth and that the task of the teacher is to develop the potential which is there. A second view is that musical gift is a complex concept which includes…

This paper discusses the phenomena of performativity and aestheticization and their implications for education. The forces of performativity pose a threat to music and the other arts, even though some advocators try to justify music education by appealing to their alleged performative results. At first sight, aestheticization seems to accord much…

Subjectivity and identity are newly configured within cyberspace and technologically mediated environments. The global musical subject is thus defined and framed within global empires and techno-culture in ways not unrelated to political interests. "Being musical" becomes a critical issue. The New Zealand music curriculum resonates with…

In this paper I examine Peirce's epistemological and ontological theories and indicate their relevance to educational practice. I argue that Peirce's conception of Firsts, Seconds and Thirds entails a fundamental ontological realism. I further argue that Peirce does have a theory of truth, that it is a particular non-traditional "correspondence"…

In this paper, we explore Peirce's work for insights into a theory of learning and cognition for education. Our focus for this exploration is Peirce's paper The "Fixation of Belief" (FOB), originally published in 1877 in "Popular Science Monthly". We begin by examining Peirce's assertion that the study of logic is essential for understanding…

The main aim of this article is to describe central elements of, and the relationships among, three interrelated domains of inquiry. The first domain is Charles Peirce's semiotic theory which offers five concepts of special relevance to the other two domains: (a) primary components of the triadic sign, including the object, representamen, and…

Although we all learn differently, we all need to be able to engage certain fundamental reasoning skills if we are to manoeuvre successfully through life--however we define success. Peirce's philosophy provides us with a framework for helping students (and ourselves) develop and hone the ability for making deliberate and well-considered choices.…

The author suggests that educational philosophy should benefit from addressing questions traditionally asked within discourse in the philosophy of mind, namely: the relation between the mind and world and the problems of intentionality (or aboutness), meaning, and representation. Peirce's semiotics and his category of creative abduction provide a…

Taking as its exegetic point of departure Peirce's outline of a semiotic theory of cognition from the mid 1890s, this paper explores the relevance of this outline to a theory of learning and also to a broader, normative vision of education. Firstly, besides providing for fallibilism in philosophical inquiry Peirce's outline accords with critical…

This paper notes how Jim influenced my own use of Foucault and also focuses on two of James Marshall's New Zealand oriented texts. In the first, "Discipline and Punishment in New Zealand Education" (Marshall & Marshall, 1997) he provides a Foucauldian genealogy of New Zealand approaches to both punishment and discipline, in particular corporal…

In this paper the authors take up James Marshall's work on the individual and autonomy. Their suggestion is that although the liberal notion of the autonomous individual might give us a standard of reference for the freedom of persons, the liberal tradition also circumscribes that freedom by prescribing it both as an attribute of persons and as a…

A paradox seems to exist where a child, of compulsory schooling age, is excluded from a school. The practice of exclusion has evolved over the almost two centuries of compulsory schooling. Abolition of corporal punishment in Western Australia and elsewhere has tended to focus attention on exclusion and the grounds justifying such action by school…

Marshall's (1999 ) article used Wittgenstein to argue that self functions as an explanation for a name rather than a referent. This brief response tries to rescue Marshall from an apparent reduction of self to material body without returning him to the mind/body dualism that he, with Wittgenstein and Dennett, seeks to avoid. It treats "I" as an…

It is taken for granted that the complexity of the information society requires a reorientation of our being in the world. Not surprisingly, the call for lifelong learning and permanent education becomes louder and more intense every day. And while there are various worthwhile initiatives, like alphabetisation courses, the article argues that the…

I will argue in what follows, following the insights of James Marshall on busno-cratic power, that resistance to this new power is already well underway, and that this resistance is potentially problematic and potentially transgressive (in Marshall's words "a reflective reconstitution"). The self is not only a chooser in busno-cratic land, it is…