This paper provides examples of how a teacher and a principal construct their "ethical selves". In doing so we demonstrate how Foucault's four-part ethical framework can be a scaffold with which to actively connect emotions to a personal ethical position. We argue that ethical work is and should be an ongoing and dynamic life long process rather…

The present research paper approaches homosexuality from a Foucauldian perspective. Foucault's place and standing in a postmodern historical and cultural context will be explained. The paper outlines how homosexuality has been historically constructed and socially constituted. How sexuality became understood as a particular form of discourse, that…

"Bildung," a German pedagogical term with the sense of "educating oneself" refers to some of the most complex human activities. It is constitutive for human existence, because it is related to the characteristic of meaning. Because of the great relevance of Bildung for people, education is essential for furthering it. The two purposes of this…

An intensification of interest in early childhood by government, parents, and employers, focuses primarily on the provision of private early childhood education services outside of the home. With a focus on New Zealand, the paper argues that the form of early education now promoted is a particular form of care and education that moves children…

While the concept of internationalization plays a key role in contemporary discussions on the activities and outcomes sought by universities, it is commonly argued that it is poorly understood or realised in practice. This has led some to argue that more work is needed to define the dimensions of the concept, or even to plot out stages of its…

The article explores the need to eat as a biological and social practice among children in a preschool in Norway. The children in this preschool are aged from one to two years of age, and some of them have just started there. Different events from mealtimes relate to Derrida's concept of touch and Grosz's notion of bodies in-place and…

Dewey proposed a new theory of language, in which the form (such as symbols) and content of language are not separated. The content of language includes the physical aspects of the world, which are purely quantitative: the life process, which involves functional responses to qualities, and the human life process, which involves the conscious…

This paper critically examines the materialism that Gilles Deleuze espouses in his oeuvre to the benefit of educational theory. In "Difference and Repetition", he presented transcendental empiricism by underwriting Kant with realism (Deleuze, 1994). Later, in "Capitalism & Schizophrenia I & II" that were co-written with Felix Guattari (1984, 1988)…

The idea of transformative and troublesome "threshold concepts" has been popular and influential in higher education. This article reports how teachers with different disciplinary affiliations responded to the "concept of thresholds" in the course of a cross-disciplinary research project. It describes how the idea was territorialised and enacted…

This article proposes a reading of the lives of teachers through a Deleuzian-Guattarian materialistic approach. By asking the question "what kind of life do teachers live?" this article reminds us that teachers sometimes welcome the imposed policies, procedures and programmes, the consequences of which remove them from students. This desire is…

This article argues against the doxa that Foucault's analysis of education inevitably undermines self-originating ethical intention on the part of teachers or students. By attending to Foucault's lesser known, later work--in particular, the notion of "biopower" and the deepened level of materiality it entails--the article shows how the earlier…

As a means to challenge and diminish the hold of mainstream curriculum's claim of being a colorblind, politically neutral text, we will address two particular features that partially, though significantly, constitute the hidden curriculum in the United States--race and class--historically studied as separate social issues. Race and class have been…

In this paper, the author maps three radically different visions of Marxism in educational philosophy. Each "register" contains insights but also contradictions that cannot easily be resolved through internal modifications of the theory or through theoretical synthesis with other registers. The radical function of Marxist pedagogy is to create a…

This paper highlights the philosophical and educational significance of expression in Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. When the role of expression is highlighted, we will be better able to appreciate Stanley Cavell's insistence that: (i) Wittgenstein offers ways of responding to, though not a refutation of, the problem of…

This article examines constructivism, a paradigm in qualitative research that has been propagated by Egon Guba, Yvonna Lincoln, and Norman Denzin. A distinction is made between whether the basic presuppositions of constructivism are credible compared to those of a competing paradigm and whether constructivism's beliefs are internally consistent.…