An important and yet unresolved question has concerned the educational community for generations: what is the role of student agency and how do educators take it into account? Traditionalists claim that students are incapable of true agency, not knowing where their interests lie yet, while progressivists argue that the students are the most…

Schools continue to purchase and install machines and practices from the world of communications technology. In turn, students and teachers are purported to be more "connected," and this connectivity is widely viewed as having a positive influence on teaching and learning. In this paper, however, the authors argue that not only are these…

In this paper, the author argues that the theoretical groundings of code-switching are flawed, in that they rely on a flawed understanding of language. For code-switching to function as described by sociologists and educators, language would have to be a skill--and particular languages and dialects to be discrete subsets of this skill--to be…

In the 2011-2012 school year, the teaching population was 82% white, a percentage that has barely changed in over two decades despite significant changes in the diversity of the student body. Considering this gap, as the demographics of students transform and representation in teaching remains largely homogenous, a conversation on pluralism and…

Kevin Gary, President of the Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society, argues that the standard conception of a liberal education espoused by sociologist Max Weber and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) is built on the illusions of personal autonomy, critical thought, and liberal neutrality. Gary turns to the wisdom…

Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman characterizes this era as a time of "liquid modernity." Rather than settled meanings, categories, and frames of reference, Bauman contends that meaning is always in flux, open-ended rather than closed. This flux is in large part driven and exacerbated by a culture of consumerism. This phenomenology of the…

As part of the sustained and growing resistance to narrow achievement-based approaches to (and measures of) inequality in education, educational researchers of various stripes are once again taking up both conceptual and practical questions concerning inequalities in educational opportunity. As Carter and Welner have noted recently,…

The words of W. E. B. Du Bois, in his widely-acclaimed work" The Souls of Black Folk," that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line" were a visceral attempt to illuminate the plight of the "Negro" in the United States of America. With this phrase, Du Bois positioned racial valorizations…

A university commitment to the liberal arts can take many forms, but more often than not it attempts to ensure that all students, regardless of direction or professed major, become educated in some form about the defining events of Western Civilization. There are many specialized History and Global Studies courses that educate students about…

The authors begin this essay by sharing excerpts taken from two events at their own liberal arts institution. One was from an opening convocation in 1967, and the second from an accreditation visit in 2014. The two episodes have been presented in order to illustrate the major differences in the ways university experiences have been thought about…

In this essay, the author proposes that the field of Philosophy of Education is in search of its own second wind and can find guidance in the work and life of William James. This paper is meant to invite conversation on the challenges faced and provide potential solutions in the field. The goal is to find the "cash-value" of the field…

In this article, John Covaleskie briefly sketches a set of interlocking propositions about democratic education. First, he argues that "democratic life places moral demands on those who hold the office of citizen": democratic citizenship requires a certain degree of particular virtues, where virtue requires the development of both…

The authors' life is inundated with children. She has always had an affinity for children insofar as they appear to her to be much more inquisitive and open-minded than the average so-called adult, and thus she enjoys springing big ideas on them to see what emerges. For instance, the author recently engaged in a twenty-minute-long conversation…

In this article, Austin Pickup centers Foucault's concept of "problematization" as an important methodological tool for displacing neoliberalism from its stable perch atop a perceived absence of other possibilities. According to Pickup, the genealogical analysis envisaged and practiced by Foucault opens up new avenues by indicating not…

In raising their children, parents confer certain advantages upon them. Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue that because these parental advantages increase inequality, parents should have the right to confer only advantages that are integral to the core good of the parent-child relationship: building an intimate relationship between parent and…