Should education serve external goals, or should it be non-instrumental? In this paper, I recognize a tension between these two views with respect to the question of the end and the means in education, and I suggest conceptual and practical ways to handle this tension. The paper comprises two parts: the first part discusses the problem, and the…

This essay begins with the story of Vincent Lloyd who recounts a disturbing experience he had while teaching a course to a group of students of color. What does pedagogical uptake under conditions of systemic oppression require of educators? In the first section, I explore philosopher Nancy Potter's (Nancy Potter. "Giving Uptake".…

In this paper, I consider pedagogical moments when the project of pedagogy is to "not understand," as understanding would entail complicity with dehumanization. I explore the slipperiness of understanding and parse when understanding is helpful and when it reinscribes structures of dehumanization. I examine when it might be important in…

The harmful effects of COVID-19 on children living in poverty have refocused attention on the complex nature of child poverty and the vexed question of its relationship to education. The paper examines a tension at the heart of much discussion of child poverty and education. On the one hand, education is often regarded as essential for children's…

In this paper, we will propose an idea of education as conversations between friends on matters of common concern. In a scholarly and pedagogical climate of competition, testing and accountability, there seems to be little room for true pedagogical and scholarly conversation. What we aim to develop here, is a vocabulary that is able to capture…

This paper utilises selective writings by John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the conceptual basis for considering how an enhanced synergistic focus on habit and embodiment could support practice gains in schools. The paper focuses on Dewey's belief that established habits can help students to incorporate experiences into evaluations of…

This paper seeks to reconceptualise the basis for trusting teachers in current educational discourses. It proposes moving away from trust based on 'absolute accuracy' to trust as encapsulated in the practice of parrhesia. On the surface, parrhesia appears to be the opposite of Sartre's concept of 'bad faith'. Paradoxically, however, our attempts…

This article assesses Bernard Stiegler's critique of infantilization. Contemporary education--and society in general--would no longer develop children into adults, but would keep them in their childish state. Stiegler's critique is explicitly inspired by Enlightenment ideals, characterized by a positive notion of maturity and a negative notion of…

This essay analyzes Derrida's questioning of the relationship between "Theory and Practice" in his recently published seminar of 1976-1977 of this same title. It traces Derrida's reading of this relationship in Marx and Marxism, beginning with various interpretations (such as Althusser's) of the famous line from Marx's "Theses on…

This paper explores how touch is key to understanding education--not as an achievement or an instrument of acquisition, but as a process through which one becomes a subject capable of both living and leading a life that matters for ourselves and others. As a process, it is concerned with how we encounter things and others in the world and not…

In this paper, I set an aspect of what it is to live a flourishing life against the backdrop of neo liberal trends that continue to influence educational policy across the globe. The view I set out is in sharp contrast to any narrow assumption that education's main task is the measurement of high performing individuals who will thus contribute to…

Here we reconsider teachers' changing subjectivities as autonomous agents whose practices acknowledge risk as an essential element in intellectual inquiry. We seek alternative descriptions to the limiting language of teachers' current practices within the primacy of the market. We are convinced by Levinas's claim that ethics is the first…

In this paper I draw apart two different contexts of Freirean pedagogical practice that I label interactional and institutional. The interactional refers to the immediate learning environment with relation to the interaction between the students and the teacher. In contrast, the institutional refers to how the institutions of education are…

This work relates L. S. Vygotsky's theory to the rhetorical and poetic pedagogy, which is a set of educational ideas and practices derived from the philosophical-educational tradition initiated by the Sophists. It is verified that the Vygotskyan concepts contribute to broaden the foundations of poetic and rhetorical pedagogy, presenting a…

African philosophy of higher education and its concomitant link to teaching and learning on the continent, is a concept that remains contestable, as much about African thought and practice is presumed to exist in narrative form. However, even if African thought and practice were to have existed in narrative form only, it would not necessarily be…