From a political viewpoint, education in a modern society can be said to have two functions. On the one hand, it takes care of the social reproduction; on the other, it represents society's capacity for self-reflection and conscious (political) change. Therefore, when the members of a society deliberate on educational aims and their…

Ethnographic fieldwork is subject to a number of tensions regarding the position of the researcher. Traditionally, these are discussed from a methodological perspective, and draw attention to issues such as "objectivity" of the research and the supposed need for "distance" in the process of knowledge-building. Approaching the…

There is a globalization trend in teacher education, emphasizing the role of teachers to make judgments based on human rights in their teaching profession. Rather than emphasizing the epistemological dimension of acquiring knowledge "about" human rights through teacher education, an ontological dimension is emphasized in this paper of…

This article is an attempt to develop a theory of peace education through an examination of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. It examines why Japan did not avoid this terrible nuclear disaster. This is an educational issue, because one of the major impacts of Fukushima's catastrophe is that it indicates the failure of peace education.…

Most ethical considerations related to the activities of the professions, including that of social education, have been put forward using a set of professional ethics that are frequently associated with principles and imperatives that aspire to be universal but have little connection to real and specific situations. In this paper, we offer an…

This article seeks to elaborate the step of epistemological affirmation that exists within every movement of learning. My epistemological method is rooted in philosophical hermeneutics in contrast to empirical or rationalist traditions. I argue that any movement of learning is based upon an entry into a hermeneutical circle: one is thrown into, or…

The focus of this paper is on a variety of practices associated with the transfer of educational policy and practice from one national education system to another--practices sometimes referred to as "policy borrowing". Its concern is with the ethical and political issues raised by these practices. In particular, it discusses concerns…

Does the imperative that we ought to try to understand one another make any sense? Presumably not--"if" it is "correct" that there are indeed different truths, and that the quest for objectivity is appropriate only in certain cultural contexts. After carefully mapping out the epistemological and ethical terrain, with special…

As philosophers such as Fendler, Bauman and Young have shown, the concept of community poses significant challenges for diversity by reinforcing similarity, necessarily bracketing that which is viewed as outside, other or strange. In this paper, I interrogate the concept of community as it applies to Québec's intercultural context. I explore…

Based on the experiences of one of the authors teaching philosophy for children (P4C) in Iran, the paper asks whether respecting children's rationality, in the form of cultivating their ability and disposition to think critically, is in their best interest in an authoritarian context such as Iran. It argues that, in authoritarian contexts,…

The choice to undertake a PhD is essentially the choice of an individual to complete an individual task that carries the name of the researcher as the cognitive authority and reinforces the place of their respective University within the western academy, with all of the structure of power and authority that comes along with that. But what happens…

Schools in the UK teach pupils about Fairtrade as part of Religious Education, Personal and Social Education, Citizenship, Geography and so on. There are also Fairtrade Schools, where the whole school, including staff and parents, is committed to promoting the brand. It is argued here that promoting this commercial brand to schoolchildren and…

Professional ethics has currently raised its public profile in the UK as part of social anxiety around governance of health and social care, fuelled by catastrophically bad practice identified in particular healthcare facilities. Professional ethics is regulated by compliance with abstracted, normative codes but experienced as contextualised…

A case is made here for a secular interpretation of spirituality to place against more orthodox religious versions which are currently gaining ground in English education as part of the government policy designed to encourage schools to apply for "academy" status independent of local authority control. Given the rise of faith-based…

This paper returns to the theme of the academic turn to cosmopolitanism as a response to the challenges of globalisation, conflict, inequality and diversity discussed here previously. The discussion of cosmopolitanism here refers to the context of current policy relating to research and what it means to be a researcher in the European Union today…