This article describes Mikhail Bakhtin's 20th century work on dialogue as it may serve one engaged in teaching as a vocation and existential pursuit rather than as a job or profession. Dialogue, as theorized by Bakhtin, within the pedagogical real, potentially becomes a mode of being through which the individual engages in the project of selfhood,…

In this paper I explore different ways to understand the idea of community. Using the work of Alphonso Lingis, I make a distinction between the rational community and the community of those who have nothing in common. The latter community is the community in which we are all strangers for each other. I argue that the language of the latter…

This article reflects on Peter Mayo's synthesis of ideas from two key figures in critical educational studies: Gramsci and Freire. The author identifies a number of distinguishing features of Mayo's work and considers some of the implications of his analysis for our understanding of transformative intellectual activity.

This essay reviews the principles motivating contemporary"critical mathematics" discourses. Drawing from varied critical discourses including ethno-mathematics, critical theory, post-structural theory, and situated and ecological cognition, the essay examines the pragmatics of critiques to the privileged role of school mathematics in the era of…

The article deals with the question of living with others, one of the most significant relationships of human life, and challenge the common understanding of the origins of living with others, where a human being is not just becoming a social but also a moral being through social institutions of societies. This common understanding of a social…

The tendency to generalize from specific experiences leading to new, more abstract concepts is a natural aspect of human thought. Generalizations are the end result of an inductive process that begins with the identification of similarities in seemingly disparate situations. It is the existence of such generalizations that makes it possible for us…

This paper draws on the philosophical works of Emmanuel Levinas--namely, his notion of "useless suffering"--in order to open up questions of learning and community beyond typical configurations that structure (and sometimes limit) social attachments according to a requisite degree of commonality. It is argued that while discourses of knowledge and…

The objective of this study is to provide in-service teachers an opportunity to become familiar with the controversial nature of progress in science (growth of knowledge) and its implications for research methodology in education. The study is based on 41 participants who had registered for a nine-week course on Methodology of Investigation in…

Disciplinary and professional psychology have exercised considerable influence over the ways in which Western individuals and societies understand what it is to be a person. During the last half of the 20th century, educational psychologists advanced scientific and humanistic conceptions of the self that removed personhood from the historical,…

In spite of the growing body of research on loneliness, the relationship between the phenomena of loneliness and boredom has not been sufficiently addressed, especially in respect to children. The question, "How does the child's experience of boredom stand phenomenologically in relation to the experience of loneliness?" is explored from a…

This paper offers an assessment of the efforts to de-Arabize the Bedouin Arab youth of the Negev. We show that despite the extensive efforts to achieve this goal, they have become pronouncedly alienated from the State of Israel, and are increasingly perceiving themselves as an integral part of Israel's Palestinian Arab national minority. The…

The characteristics of contemporary societies are increasingly theorized as global, fluid, and networked. These conditions underpin the emerging knowledge economy as it is shaped by the societal and technological forces of late capitalism. These shifts and developments have significantly affected the communicational landscape of the 21st century.…

This chapter is about culture and mathematics teaching and learning. The authors' goal is to offer a thoughtful treatment of the role of culture in the teaching and learning of mathematics and to synthesize literature that is relevant to this concern from multiple subdisciplines in education, including math education, educational anthropology,…

This article engages in the debate about what counts as professional knowledge from the perspective of improving outcomes for diverse learners. The authors begin by highlighting the importance of assumptions about appropriate roles for teachers and how those assumptions have shaped the debate about what teachers need to know. Then, they consider…

Two major reform efforts in K-12 science education have taken place during the past 50 years. The first was the 1950-1970 curriculum reform efforts motivated by the launching of Sputnik and sponsored by the newly formed National Science Foundation (NSF) in the United States and by the Nuffield Foundation in the United Kingdom. The signature goal…