In the context of the ongoing debate on the ontology of education, where instrumentally defined functions and aims are seen as external to what education is and the focus is on defining "the educational," Tomasz Szkudlarek explores a reverse route in an attempt to see, first, what is "the instrumental" before asking how it…

In this essay, Tyson Lewis theorizes current lockdown practices, zero-tolerance policies, and No Child Left Behind initiatives in U.S. schooling by drawing on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's analysis of the concentration camp and the state of exception. Agamben's theory of the camp provides a challenging, critical vantage point for looking…

Specifying criteria is a complex problem comprising three phases: valuation, criterion identification, and prescription. Criteria are useful for making, and necessary for substantiating, value claims but to specify in advance a set of criteria upon which to judge is self-limiting. Complete prior specification is undesirable in principle. (MT)