“Catching Sight of the Permanent Possibility of War:” Images of Totality and Words of Peace

In Totality and Infinity (1969), a landmark critique of the Western philosophical tradition, Emmanuel Levinas poses the provocative question: Does not lucidity, the mind\u27s openness on the true, consist in catching sight of the permanent possibility of war (21)? Levinas asks, in other words, whether knowledge of the truth as truth has been seen” in the western philosophical tradition? is in some fundamental way related to the war

Waldenfels’ Responsive Phenomenology of the Alien: An Introduction

Merleau-Ponty has famously said of phenomenological reflection that it “steps back to watch the forms of transcendence fly up like sparks from a fire; it slackens the intentional threads which attach us to the world and thus brings them to our notice” (1962, p. xiii) Bernhard Waldenfels, whose notion of responsivity forms the focus of this reflective review, studied under Merleau-Ponty at the Collège de France in the early 1960s. Waldenfels has characterized his own work as “a further development of the existential-structural phenomenology in Merleau-Ponty’s sense” (1997, p. xvii). At the same time, Waldenfels diverges in fundamental ways from Merleau-Ponty and thus from a number of phenomenological doxa. For example, he characterizes his own “responsive phenomenology” as an open and adaptable form of phenomenology… in which intentionality (intending, grasping something as something) is transformed into responsivity (responses to claims). What we respond to is always more than the answer we give under certain circumstances and within certain orders. Rationality can thus be understood as responsive rationality stemming from the creative answers themselves… (as quoted in Waldenfels 1997, p. xvii) This précis, quoted at the outset of Waldenfels’ first book in English translation, raises any number of questions: How can intentionality, which Waldenfels himself characterizes as the “shibboleth” of phenomenology (2011, p. 21), be “transformed” into something else? And how could this “something else” then be described in terms of a response to “claims”? Going further, how could this responsivity, this type of intentionality, be characterized as a “rationality?” And finally, what does this have to do with the special theme of this issue, “being online?

Learning Analytics: Readiness and Rewards

This paper introduces the relatively new field of learning analytics, first by considering the relevant meanings of both “learning” and “analytics,” and then by looking at two main levels at which learning analytics can be or has been implemented in educational organizations. Although turnkey systems or modules are not yet available for review, specific technologies for analyzing online student activities have been implemented and piloted. As a result, this paper recommends an incremental approach to institutional preparedness

A Brief History of the Lecture: A Multi-Media Analysis

The lecture has been much maligned as a pedagogical form. It has been denigrated as a «hot ‎medium» that has long been «superseded» by the cooler dialogical and televisual forms. Yet the lecture ‎persists and even flourishes today in the form of the podcast, the TED Talk, Kahn Academy and the «smart» ‎lecture hall (outfitted with audio, video and student feedback technologies). This persistence ‎should lead us to re-evaluate both the lecture and the role of the media that have been related to it over time. This paper examines the lecture as a site of intersecting media, as «a site where differences between media are negotiated» as these media ‎evolve (Franzel 2010). This study shows the lecture as bridging oral ‎communication with writing and newer media technologies, rather than as being superseded ‎by newer electronic and digital forms. The result is a remarkably adaptable and robust form ‎that combines textual record and ephemeral event. It is that is capable of addressing a range of ‎different demands and circumstances, both in terms of classroom pragmatics and more abstractly, of the circulation of knowledge itself. The Web, which ‎brings multiple media together with new and established forms and genres, presents fertile ‎grounds for the continuation and revitalization of the lecture as a dominant pedagogical form.The lecture has been much maligned as a pedagogical form. It has been denigrated as a «hot ‎medium» that has long been «superseded» by the cooler dialogical and televisual forms. Yet the lecture ‎persists and even flourishes today in the form of the podcast, the TED Talk, Kahn Academy and the «smart» ‎lecture hall (outfitted with audio, video and student feedback technologies). This persistence ‎should lead us to re-evaluate both the lecture and the role of the media that have been related to it over time. This paper examines the lecture as a site of intersecting media, as «a site where differences between media are negotiated» as these media ‎evolve (Franzel 2010). This study shows the lecture as bridging oral ‎communication with writing and newer media technologies, rather than as being superseded ‎by newer electronic and digital forms. The result is a remarkably adaptable and robust form ‎that combines textual record and ephemeral event. It is that is capable of addressing a range of ‎different demands and circumstances, both in terms of classroom pragmatics and more abstractly, of the circulation of knowledge itself. The Web, which ‎brings multiple media together with new and established forms and genres, presents fertile ‎grounds for the continuation and revitalization of the lecture as a dominant pedagogical form

Despite Predictions of Their Demise, College Textbooks aren’t Going Away

While textbooks have been said to be on their way, they are still a mainstay in higher education

Mollenhauer & Forgotten Connections: An Intellectual/Biographical Sketch

Klaus Mollenhauer was born in 1928 in Berlin. Like other Germans born at the end of the 1920s (e.g., Jürgen Habermas), Mollenhauer was forced to join the German army as a teenager at the end of the Second World War. After he was captured by the Soviets and imprisoned for almost seven weeks by British forces, Mollenhauer returned to school in 1946. Then he attended the College of Education in Göttingen in what was then West Germany. When asked about an underlying theme in his life’s work, Mollenhauer responded by re-stating a question originally formulated by hermeneutician Friedrich Schleiermacher: “I can only say [or ask], with Schleiermacher: ‘What does the older generation want with the younger?’” (as quoted in Friesen, 2014, p. xvii). The passing on of language and culture, of course, is common to all human societies, making this question one relevant to any reflection on “being human.” At the same time, this process is highly political – questions about exactly what is passed on and why it is being passed on are paramount. Such questions are especially important in the intergenerational strains characteristic of rapidly changing modern societies. This question of the relationship between older and younger generations, and by implication, between the needs of the present and the claims of the past, is also central to Mollenhauer’s thought and life. The purpose of this short paper, then, is to provide a brief sketch of Mollenhauer’s thought and life, highlighting the political and historical dimensions of his book, Forgotten Connections

Lost in Translation: Wittgenstein as a Tragic Philosopher of Education

As a landmark philosopher of language and of mind, Ludwig Wittgenstein is also remarkable for having crossed, with apparent ease, the “continental divide” in philosophy. It is consequently not surprising that Wittgenstein’s work, particularly the Philosophical Investigations, has been taken up by philosophers of education in English. Michael A. Peters (1999), Christopher Winch (2002), Smeyers & Burbules (2010), and others (e.g., Aparece 2005) have engaged extensively with the implications of the later Wittgenstein’s philosophy for education. One challenge they face is Wittgenstein’s use of the word “training.” It appears throughout his discussions of language learning and in his periodic references to education. This is made all the more problematic by realizing that the German term Wittgenstein uses consistently is Abrichtung, which refers exclusively to animal dressage or obedience training, and which connotes also the breaking of an animal’s will. I argue that this little-recognized fact has broad significance for many important Wittgenstinian insights into education. I conclude by considering how an unflinching recognition of the implications of Wittgenstein’s word choice might cast him as a pessimistic or tragic philosopher of education and upbringing –following “pessimistic” German-language traditions– rather than as one compatible with “progressivist” Anglo-American orientations

Telepresence and Tele-absence: A Phenomenology of the (In)visible Alien Online

“The problem, actually, does not lie in telepresence, which amplifies our own possibilities to the level where distance is abolished; but in tele-absence, which withdraws from its own access.” (Waldenfels, 2009, p. 110) Proliferating media forms, from tablets to Twitter, are changing communicative practice, delimiting new experiential horizons, and thus providing phenomenological research with novel variations on the experience of self and other. Videoconferencing via Skype or FaceTime offers prominent examples of these changing forms. Despite the use of these communication technologies in both educational contexts and everyday life, educational videoconferencing has been described in the research literature as “a hidden mode of delivery, employing invisible pedagogical techniques.” In this study I address this situation of simultaneous familiarity, invisibility and uncertainty by focusing particularly on the lived experience of space, the body and eye contact in videoconferencing contexts. This study suggests that the disruption of spatial coherence and power of gaze and mutual gaze are all but unavoidable features of this experience. It concludes by emphasizing the importance forms or expressions of absence, such as the diminution of eye contact, or the importance of not always being perceived as performing or “on” in videoconferencing contexts

The Genealogy of the Textbook as an Educational Form: Orality and Literacy in Education

In this paper, I provide a short but broad history of the textbook as a multimedia pedagogical and cultural form. In doing so, I pay particular attention to the interrelationship of oral and textual media and cultures, highlighting the ways that these two communicative modes are reconfigured over the history of this pedagogical form. I also situate the textbook in the context of changing instructional methods and practices, and demonstrate that instructional forms and practices have neither progressed along with new technologies nor gradually evolved from a primitive orality to sophisticated literacy. Instead, I show that these practices as well as textbook media change much more in synchrony with larger cultural and epistemological developments—such as those identified by Michel Foucault, Friedrich Kittler and other historians of media and culture

Continuing the Dialogue: Curriculum, \u3cem\u3eDidaktik\u3c/em\u3e and Theories of Knowledge

Joseph Schwab’s famous remark, that the field of curriculum is ‘moribund’—no longer able ‘to …contribute significantly to the advancement of education’—has long echoed in curriculumstudies. Although its specific meaning has certainly changed, it still rings in our ears today. It now applies as much to discussions in the US and UK as it does to those in Northern Europe—where the cognate field of General Didaktik has been described as ‘quiet’ (Terhart, 2003, p. 25), or more recently, ‘dead’ (Zierer & Seel 2012, p. 16). This ‘virtual issue’ of the Journal of Curriculum Studies brings together five articles of direct relevance to the contemporary ‘crisis’ in transatlantic studies of curriculum and instruction that also share a common focus on the question of curricular content. ‘None of the many traditional American educational approaches have paid serious attention to the “school subject” or “instructional content,”’ as Westbury and Doyle have pointed out (1992, p. 137); and others in curriculum studies see this as the underlying reason for its ongoing crisis. This introduction provides an overview of each article included and concludes by outlining a few of the possibilities and challenges presented by questions of ‘content’ and ‘knowledge’ in curriculum studies