Transhuman education: Sloterdijk's reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism

Peter Sloterdijk presented a reading of Heidegger's Letter on Humanism at a conference held at Elmau in 1999. Reinterpreting the meaning of humanism in the light of Heidegger's Letter, Sloterdijk focused his presentation on the need to redefine education as a form of genetic ‘taming’ and proposed what seemed to be support for positive eugenics. Although Sloterdijk claimed that he only wanted to open a debate on the issue, he could not have been surprised at the level of opposition this suggestion aroused. In the weeks following, he blamed Habermas for raising this opposition and for refusing to engage with him openly. Although Luis Arenas has chronicled the aftermath of Sloterdijk's paper, it may be of interest to educators to examine how Heidegger's text is presented. What is this new humanism? If Heidegger's new humanism was based on a mystical attitude towards Being, so Sloterdijk's new humanism was to be based on the materialist principles of a biotechnological age. Unlike Heidegger who rejected technology as yet one further example of the forgetfulness of Being, Sloterdijk seems to embrace technology and the enhancement of the human body and mind as the next great step forward in educational theory. Could he possibly be right? Is education in these times a partner or an opponent of the technological enhancement of the human being? This article tries to identify Sloterdijk's disagreements with Heidegger on the question of the human

Blondel et Sénèque sur la divinisation

Ce chapitre détaille les parentes entre les philosophies de Sénèque et Blondel et surtout les tensions qui existent et les résolutions possibles entre les aspects nécessaires de l'action concrète et ceux qui sont contingents

Trials of the rhizomatic learner

How should educators respond to the whole phenomenon of ‘digital learning’? This question has been in vogue for the past twenty years or more and there is a need for a regular renewal of this question as societies change. This article will draw on some post-structuralist writing, particularly Deleuze and Guattari, to try to understand better the divide between the optimistic account and the pessimistic account of the effect of ICT on teaching and learning. It argues in particular 1) that ICT in its current form signals a paradigm shift in education—but this thesis is difficult either to prove or disprove; 2) that Deleuze and Guattari’s rhizome provides us with a theoretical tool for understanding the pedagogical nature of this shift; 3) that this change is wider than literacy itself and announces posthuman elements in the socio-cultural environment of learning

Hirst, Carr and Husserl: The Problem of Pure Theory

Hirst, Carr and Husserl: The Problem of Pure Theor

Mathematics as (multi)cultural practice: Irish lessons from the Polish weekend school

In this article, the authors challenge the erroneous assumption that mathematics is universal, and thus culturally neutral, by critically investigating diverse cultural meanings and “ways of knowing” that influence individual/social (affective) forms of identity. The authors begin by briefly detailing the structural features of a Polish weekend school and providing an overview profile of the Polish community living in Ireland. The rationale for the “weekend” school is then discussed from both Polish and Irish perspectives. Empirical data suggest a greater need for “parallel integration,” whereby two divergent education systems attempt to culturally coalesce at some level of school policy and/or mathematics classroom practice

Should teacher ignorance be cherished or denied? The case for collaborative learning

What role does real ignorance play in teaching and learning? As far as learning is concerned, we almost expect to find that real ignorance precedes learning and that this real ignorance disappears once something has been taught. It is a type of zero sum game where ignorance + knowledge describes the full set. The more ignorant you are, the less knowledge you have and vice versa. One might expect that teachers know what pupils come to learn and that once learners have learned what the teachers know, they can move on. Something is wrong with this ‘transmission’ model, however. Teachers too learn things when they teach. They sometimes come to understand what they teach much better than before and they learn how to teach. Indeed learning and teaching is not a static process because learning is an ongoing and lifelong activity. It implies the desire to understand, which Aristotle spoke about, and which is an imperative levied on all, no matter what their age or their level of knowledge. Even established experts learn items they may have overlooked or may only be coming slowly to understand in their attempts to explain them. On the other hand, if we think of learning as a static zero sum game, then we might come to think of teacher ignorance simply as a useful ploy, a clever trick to get learners involved or to raise the standard of engagement of the class group, a method of camouflage which allows them to construct questions that seem to be sincere but end up being only an introductory ploy prior to giving instruction to learners. This issue is identical to the problem of Socratic ignorance. Was Socrates really ignorant or was he simply pretending to be so? Commentators have differed on this point in the past

Learning to teach (LETS): developing curricular and cross curricular competences in becoming a 'good' secondary teacher: executive summary

The aim of this research, the Learning to Teach Study (LETS), the first of its kind on the Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) in Ireland, funded by the Department of Education and Skills (DES), was to develop and implement a study of initial teacher education in the PGDE in post-primary education, in the School of Education, University College Cork. Its aim was to identify the individual and contextual dynamics of how student teachers develop curricular and cross-curricular competences during initial teacher education (ITE). Within an overall framework that explores how student teachers develop their skills, competences and identity as teachers, it focuses on curricular competences in mathematics, science and language teaching, and on the cross-curricular competences of reading and digital literacy and the development of inclusive teaching practices. LETS is the first programme level research on the PGDE, familiarly known to generations of student teachers and teachers as ‘the Dip’ or ‘the HDip’. Drawing on research on teacher education both in Ireland and internationally, the LETS report is divided into six sections encompassing thirteen chapters. Section 1 includes the review of literature and study aims in Chapter 1 and the research methodology in Chapter 2. Adopting an interpretive approach, LETS involved the collaborative development of three interviews protocols and a survey by the research team. Seventeen (n=17) students were interviewed three times over the course of PGDE programme, and one hundred and thirty three students completed a detailed survey on their learning to teach experience (n=133, i.e. response rate of 62.7% of the 212 students in the PGDE 2008/09 cohort). The four chapters in Section 2 focus on professional identity as a central dimension of learning to teach. Among the dimensions of learning to teach addressed in this section are the role of observation and cultural scripts in becoming a teacher, the visibility/invisibility of PGDE students as learners and the relationships between emotions, resilience and commitment to teaching. The three chapters in Section 3 focus on mathematics, modern languages and science respectively in the context of conventional and reform-oriented visions of good teaching. A number of common as well as subject-specific themes emerged in this section in relation to subject matter teaching. Section 4 focuses on PGDE students’ experience of inclusion (chapter 10) and reading literacy (chapter 11) while learning to teach. Section 5 focuses on a key aspect of initial teacher education, namely, the school-university partnership. The final section provides a summary of the findings, identifies seven key issues emerging from these findings, makes Learning to Teach Study (LETS) recommendations under four headings (system, teacher education institutions, partnerships in ITE and further research) and discusses some implications for research, policy and practice in initial teacher education. Among the main findings emerging from the study are: (i) schools provide valuable support for PGDE students but this typically does not focus on classroom pedagogy, (ii) PGDE students typically felt that they had to be ‘invisible’ as learners in schools to gain and maintain authority and status, (iii) inherited cultural scripts about what it means to be a ‘good’ subject teacher shaped teacher identity and classroom practice, and (iv) as PGDE students begin to feel competent as teachers of maths, modern languages and science, this feeling of competence typically does not include their capacity to teach for inclusion and reading literacy within their subject teaching. In the context of research on teacher education, many of the findings are not unique to the PGDE or to UCC but reflect perennial dilemmas and emerging challenges in initial teacher education. This fact is important in setting a context for the wider dissemination2 of the Learning to Teach Study

The influence of Augustine on the philosophy of Maurice Blondel from 1893 to 1932

Thèse de doctorat -- Université catholique de Louvain, 198