I argue for taking John Dewey's pluralistic ethics as a starting point, or embedded practice, from and in which technological innovations are conceptualized, critiqued, designed, tested, and eventually implemented. Dewey reconstructs human reason into operational intelligence where all behavior becomes gradually imaginative. I take Dewey's view of…

In this essay, I reflect on the need for an activist notion of hope as an antidote to the social, political, and educational challenges we face in our current times. I first discuss some of these challenges as well as emergent signs of hope based upon different ways of telling the stories of our present. I then define hope as a way of being and…

How can and will educators in any setting work with young people of all ages to enable them to develop the ability to interrogate--without denigrating--the claims of candidates, the newsmaking of media, the needs of their neighbors, and the fears of their family members? The answer I offer and defend here involves two dispositions--creative…

This article explores the contours of the Indian pragmatist Bhimrao Ambedkar and his reconstruction of Buddhism in the 1950s. As a student of John Dewey at Columbia University, young Ambedkar was heavily influenced by the pragmatist ideas of democracy and reconstruction. Throughout his life he would continue to evoke Dewey's words and ideas in his…

In this paper, we explore the degree to which the Buddhist mindfulness practice and the habits of democratic citizenship can be reconstructed in light of each other. We ask what mindfulness is, seeking to first understand it in its Buddhist context. Then we turn to the work of John Dewey in order to seek possibilities for mutual reconstruction.…

Two artist-educators analyzed their creative process informed by John Dewey's concepts regarding the act of expression. The essay interweaves a description of their performance piece with a discussion of conceptual processes, including intermediality and collaboration as crucial in art making, learning, and pedagogical efficacy. Both the creation…

This article opens by raising a need to examine today's moral education for a new century. John Dewey insists that "arts are educative," so that "they open the door to an expansion of meaning and to an enlarged capacity to experience the world." This insight retains remarkable implications for today's moral education. Aesthetic experience is…