Special Forum on the Philosophy of Teaching Education as Communication: The Pragmatist Tradition

We take the basic course in communication to be a site where associated living is experienced, and where individuals practice the democratic art of referencing and articulating their own behaviors and beliefs to those of others. This democratic practice is associated living is, as American pragmatist and educational philosopher John Dewey insisted, communication itself -- conjoint communicated experience. In this essay, we provide an overview of this pragmatist educational metaphysic and discuss a few consequences of metaphysical beliefs about education

The Democratic Public To Be Brought into Existence and Education as Secularization

The paper tackles the fundamental question of whether democracy has by now been turned into a meaningless liturgy of a past religion and proposes a Deweyan answer which points to the need to fully realize modernity in order to bring into existence a genuine democracy. By deploying an archaeological reading of The Public and Its Problems and, in particular, of the key notion of the ‘official,’ it is shown how giving birth to an authentically democratic public demands coming to terms with a re-signification of the idea of transubstantiation, fully valorising education as communication and promoting a ‘secularized’ community. This Deweyan perspective can help us avoid the modern dichotomies that risk haunting even some of the most advanced contemporary educational proposals, which currently struggle against the rationalist outcomes of modernity by invoking ‘other communities.

From traditional essay to 'Ready Steady Cook' presentation: Reasons for innovative changes in assignments

The prose essay, case study and laboratory report, composed by individual students in isolation from their peers, used to be the mainstay of undergraduate writing. However, in recent years an array of alternative assignment types such as blogs, letters and e-posters have widened the repertoire of texts expected. This article attempts to describe the reasoning behind changes in assignment types at undergraduate and master’s level at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Data from 58 semi-structured interviews with lecturers in three UK universities is used together with course handbooks and some clarifications with lecturers via email. Suggested reasons for new assignment types are grouped into three categories: external, lecturer-driven and student-driven. The article surmises that, because of these pressures, students are now expected to produce a wide variety of text types, and greater attention should be paid to guidance in new assignments for both native and non-native speaker students

Navigating global-local tensions in accountability/autonomy policies: Comparative case studies in 'Asian' universities

The twin policy domains of accountability and autonomy have featured in recent education reforms in many countries, signalling new relationships between governments and educational institutions. Despite different national and localised contexts, a number of common 'global' trends have been identified. However, simultaneously context-specific differences are also evident. For us, the concept of 'globalisation', when it implies policy homogenisation, is too blunt an instrument to critically analyse these major reforms. We would argue that there are still too few studies on globalisation processes grounded in detailed examinations of particular historical times and geographical spaces. Our research is located within the tensions between global commonalities and localised differences. This paper reports research on changing accountability and autonomy in higher education in three 'Asian' countries. Empirical data has been collected in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and Singapore in an attempt to begin to redress a 'Western' hegemony in such research. Within each national context two different types of universities became case study sites for the analysis of both commonalities and differences in accountability and autonomy policies and practices. The current paper focuses in particular on the conceptual and methodological framings of the research and presents some preliminary findings

Education (Bildung) for Values

The article develops the thesis that a universal value basis for holistic education (Bildung) is provided by a plural moral system in which various ethical discourses are constructively interwoven. This is more successful for education and allows the individual a broader evaluation of alternatives in moral action. The plurality of a moral system supposes the presence of various ethical discourses, including the ethics of human rights (liberal discourse), the ethics of the common good (communitarian discourse) and the ethics of interpersonal relations (the ethics of care). In interweaving all three of these discourses in education, the teacher should use common sense, which we define as the power of judgement and a sense of community. This is followed by views on how to model organise educational practices that stimulate the creation of an ethically plural educational environment in open communication, where the learner develops the ability to make judicious decisions with regard to moral action without having to submit passively to common norms

Small Group Test of the Personal Response System (PRS) in a Behavioral Science Graduate Research Methods Course

Personal response system (PRS) is an infrared frequency “clicker” system which promotes active, engaged learning in the classroom while collecting individual student responses to questions and statements electronically. The purpose of this study was to describe the use of the Personal Response System in a behavioral sciences graduate research methods course. The study explored how the use of PRS as game-based learning increases students’ engagement. Qualitative and quantitative data are collected. The following elements are analyzed: engagement in research topics, participation, perceptions, opinions, and grades of 29 participants. The results are reported and discussed in the context of student engagement