I use Ian Hacking's views to explore ways of classifying people, exploiting his distinction between indifferent kinds and interactive kinds, and his accounts of how we "make up" people. The natural kind/essentialist approach to indifferent kinds is explored in some depth. I relate this to debates in psychiatry about the existence of mental…

Cognitive neuroscience aims to improve our understanding of aspects of human learning and performance by combining data acquired with the new brain imaging technologies with data acquired in cognitive psychology paradigms. Both neuroscience and psychology use the philosophical assumptions underpinning the natural sciences, namely the scientific…

Teacher identity is defined in its relations, on the one hand, to curriculum and, on the other, to students: to be identified as a teacher is to be taken by the latter as a bearer of the former. In this essay, I consider some variations on theorising teacher identity within these relational terms. Beginning with the educational task of cultivating…

Those who accept some responsibility for the young owe it to them to search for alternatives to punishment as a means of assisting the progress of their education. Alternatives are discussed. For example, one appropriate alternative is the separation of children from particular environments where they do not do well. (RM)