The purpose of this paper is to define and describe the 'Telos' or purpose of special education. We argue that special education has three main (tripartite) functions: (a) research, (b) a distinct system, and (c) special instruction. The overall Telos of special education is to provide an educational service to better serve students whose…

We overview several key issues of the past, present, and near future of special education for students with severe disabilities. We contextualize the Telos of special education by briefly remarking on its historical roots in the United States, then delve into several issues we believe are critical for advancing toward better outcomes for students…

Many political and economic forces are driven by the desire to eliminate democratic plurality in today's political juncture. Democratic republicanism itself in its contemporary forms has failed to address many of the daunting moral, political, economic, social, technological, and ecological challenges we face today. It is argued that to fulfill…

Background: Makerspaces are proliferating U.S. public schools and libraries. Few studies, however, take an "in situ" view on the pedagogical moves of mentors, and fewer still engage with ideologies of race and class therein. Without this, principles of pedagogy or design that build toward expansive learning for racially minoritized youth…

Predicates like "coloring-the-star" denote events that have a temporal duration and a culmination point ("telos"). When combined with perfective aspect (e.g., "Valeria has colored the star"), a culmination inference arises implying that the action has stopped, and the star is fully colored. While the perfective aspect…

This forum essay offers reflections on the theme of the 2021 annual meeting of the Religious Education Association--"Gender, Sexuality, and Wholeness: Religious Education for Confrontation and Healing." Pondering the melancholy of violence inflicted upon racialized, sexualized, and queer bodies in the United States, the author invites…

This paper addresses a problem that greatly complicates the implementation of dialogic educational approaches in schools: the dilemma between driving children's talk towards normatively accepted conceptions and, at the same time, avoiding the introduction of these normative conceptions into the dialogue by the teacher. I argue that this dilemma is…

The implementation of genre theory in the business communication classroom could lead to the cultivation of critical thinking skills in students. The lack of a common definition of critical thinking skills across academia and the workplace creates a difficult end goal to pursue; therefore, teachers should consider explicitly teaching to the…

In recent years, as evidenced in the transnational proliferation of codified competence frameworks for teacher education purposes, we have seen the increased politicisation and regulation of the task of teaching and what it means to be a teacher. Making the case for an ethico-political conceptualisation of teacher identity and, using a…

Higher education continues to face an uncertain future, not only through demographic shifts, rising costs, and a competitive marketplace, but also through dissonant visions for the telos of education. In this context, Christian institutions have the opportunity to carve out a distinctive niche, provide answers about the purpose of a liberal…

This article explores ways pre-service teachers learn to work upon their positive emotional conduct during an initial teacher education course. The article argues that education practice today promotes the acting out of positive emotions, creating conditions within which pre-service teachers ethically shape their emotional conduct. Utilising…

This exploratory qualitative study addressed the need for more research on identity construction in pre-service content-area teachers of emergent bilinguals (EBs). A deductive thematic analysis was performed on the coursework of a pre-service teacher of Hispanic descent enrolled in an online course at a Hispanic-serving university in the…

This article reviews the Montessori literature through the lens of leadership, using Maria Montessori's writings for a perspective on leadership aligned with her principles and practices. Dr. Montessori was a strong leader who argued that adults, as leaders, should take direction from children as the spiritual builders of human beings. Her concept…

Humility is widely regarded as a moral excellence and telos, hence, openly inculcated-instructed. Character education in and for humility, however, sits uncomfortably against today's pedagogical maxims such as self-esteem and self-assertiveness. This article looks into this and other tensions from the perspective of humility as experience…

In this article, we reflect on our experiences teaching and learning in a digital course for PhD students, Oxford-UNISA Decolonising Research Methodologies. The aim of the course was to 'gesture' beyond the coloniality of knowledge by thinking 'otherwise' about research methodologies. As a decolonial teaching praxis, gesturing embraces…