In this paper we wish to argue that despite strong challenges to representational epistemology in the last two centuries, modern schooling is still organised around a representational view of knowledge. This is the case despite teaching practices being modified to accommodate different views of knowledge that have emerged in the last two…

This writing is structured around the question, "What is teaching?" Drawing on complexity science, we first seek to demonstrate the tremendously conflicted character of contemporary discussions of teaching. Then we offer two examples of teaching that we use to illustrate the assertion that what teaching is can never be reduced to or understood in…

Educational researchers have urged school practitioners to shift from isolated patterns of work to a communal negotiation of meaning in order to overcome problems in an uncertain environment. Nevertheless, researchers, in their inquiry processes, are still bounded within a net of epistemological premises (from objectivism on the one hand to…

This paper explores the public awareness that there presently exists a crisis in mathematics education and a "dumbing down" of the curriculum, examines the nature of this crisis and argues that there has been a lowering of cultural, pedagogical and cognitive expectations with respect to most learners. The notion of cognitive development in…

A novel "Whiteheadean" science program was initiated in England and Wales in September 2006. Following a critical House of Commons report in 2002, the government altered the National Curriculum targets and thus forced the Examination Boards to alter their specifications in order to come in line. Assessment at GCSE level (i.e., the 14-16 year…

The teaching of foundations courses, and in particular philosophy of education, is frequently under siege in teacher education programs across Canada, as these programs struggle to meet other demands on student teachers. This article results from a panel discussion addressing the context of a variety of undergraduate philosophy of education…

Princeton University Press recently published the American moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt's book "On Bullshit", which quickly made the New York Times best seller list. Originally published in the journal "Raritan" in 1986, Frankfurt's book has been heralded as an important theoretical development in the study of what he (and society)…

In this paper I propose that interest in "narrative" within the human sciences is comparable to interest in "chaos" within the natural sciences. In their respective ways, theories on narrative and theories on chaos are aimed at appreciating the dynamics of complex, multi-dimensional systems which otherwise resist our attempts to predict, measure,…

This paper explores how individuals and communities orient themselves to the future by the way they story the past. There is a persistent tendency to think of such narratives as factual and therefore stable. The mutability of such narratives is actually a key adaptive characteristic, ranging from complete repression of individual traumas to public…

Because of the way it prioritizes "interruption" and calls into question the very possibility of producing coherent, self-contained narratives, the deconstructive work of Jacques Derrida is often thought to be intrinsically anti-narrative in its very structure; and yet there are those who insist that, to the contrary, deconstruction is a narrative…

In this paper I will explore the implications of an analysis of two kinds of knowledge, the exercise of practical wisdom and the insights associated with narrative knowing, for "connected" teaching. My aim is to show that both kinds of thinking share important similarities insofar as they include the experience of openness and surprise of…

The article outlines a deficit in Holocaust education: The motives of the perpetrators and bystanders are often not dealt with. In order to explore these motives, interviews with former Nazis were conducted and evaluated in the "Geschichte und Erinnerung" (History and Memory) research project; two of the findings are presented here. Subsequently…

In this paper I examine the dilemma faced by reflexive narrative inquirers who write in the first-person "I" while advocating for a postmodern reading of the "self." This paper asks the question: How can the reflexive educational researcher craft a research narrative that, on the one hand, strives for self-presence, while on the other hand, denies…

This essay calls attention, first, to some of the significant discontinuities between life and literature, living and telling. Perhaps foremost among them is the fact that while living takes place now, in the present moment, telling must await the passage of time. This element of delay, it is argued, underscores the potential importance of…

In this article I discuss some problems concerning the truth value of narratives; more specifically as this problematic is played out in empirical, narrative research. My point of departure is Jane O'Dea's critique of Denis Phillips' views of the topic. While Phillips thinks that truth (in the correspondence sense) definitely should be a concern…