There is renewed interest in what can be called an "experimentist" approach to education research. The claim is that if researchers would focus on experiments and "evidence-based" policies and practices, irreversible progress in education can be achieved. This experimentist approach cannot provide the understanding of knowledge and human beings…

This article relates the philosophical and conceptual study of educational institutions with educational policy. I argue that both the descriptive and prescriptive answer to "what a school is" should focus on the school that is important, which is the central case. This central case of a school should embody an ethos of openness towards the basic…

The end of the Cold War ushered in a paradigmatic shift in international development discourse whereby a human rights-based approach to development was generated. This shift has stimulated the pegging of international development policy to the objectives of the human rights regime. However, in attempting to unify development and human rights…

In this article, the author explores an East-West epistemological convergence of humanism illuminated in three main themes in the works of Confucius (551-479 BC), Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871-1944), and John Dewey (1859-1952): "human-nature interconnection," "associated self-cultivation," and "value creation." She contends that these thinkers'…

Although the concept of human potential accurately reflects central features of human nature, its current use perpetuates traditional myths of fixity, harmony, and value, calculated to cause untold mischief in social and educational practice. This book aims to demythologize the concept of potential. It shows its roots in genuine aspects of human…

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…

This paper begins from a position of critique of the dominant neo-liberal, human capital framing of education policy today. However, unlike most critiques of this kind, the paper argues that schooling's role in the preparation of workers and consumers is nonetheless important. Education does, of necessity, have economic purposes. To this end, the…

The aim of this article is to outline the basis for a comprehensive account of educational rights. It begins by acknowledging the difficulties posed by diversity, and defends a conception of universal human rights that limits parental educational discretion. Against the backdrop of the literature of public reason and fair equality of opportunity,…

This paper explores the prospects of using critical realism as a guiding philosophy for critical inquiry in the field of educational administration. A relatively recent philosophy in the social sciences, critical realism offers an alternative framework for researchers engaged in empirical work that is aimed at transforming undesirable social…

Considerations arising in the context of burgeoning concerns about the environment can provoke an exploration of issues that have significance both for environmental education in particular and education more generally. Notions of the "greater whole" and "systemic wisdom" that feature in some strands of environmental discourse are a case in point.…

The Russian Revolution of February 1917 displaced the autocracy of the Romanov royal family and aimed to establish a liberal republican Russia. The Bolsheviks, who came to power a few months later in the revolution of October 1917, announced that their new policy in education "had no analogy in history." Their reforms sought to establish…

Moral education is not included in the curriculum, but the history of Chile shows the influence of European culture. Therefore a philosophy of education which promotes an autonomous human being has usually underlined educational policy. The influence of Catholicism has been very strong both in school curriculum and parent attitudes. (Author/SJL)

In this paper I draw some distinctions between the terms "cultural diversity" and "plurality" and argue that a radical conception of plurality is needed in order both to re-imagine the boundaries of democratic education and to address more fully the political aspects of conflict that plurality gives rise to. This paper begins…

In this paper the authors focus on the consequences of economies and cultures of speculation in the field of education. Education is one of the arenas where the logics of speculation are being played out. It is argued that the major shifts in educational policy over the past decades in Sweden derive from what Ian Baucom aptly called…

This paper suggests that, in contrast to the great reports such as Crowther, Newsom Robbins and Plowden, recent government papers relating to education in England pay little attention to values that should shape the standards to be achieved, the knowledge to be transmitted and the virtues to be nourished. Whilst legislation over the past 60 years…