Post-Domicide Artefacts: Mapping Resistance and Loss onto Palestinian House-Keys

This article is concerned with the experiences of domicide—that is, the suffering caused by the deliberate destruction of home by human agency in pursuit of certain objectives—faced by Palestinians as a legacy (as well as in the present) of the ongoing conflict with Israel. Existing scholarly and activist research provides some essential data about these experiences, but intellectual contributions remain primarily focused on the act of demolition or displacement. This act alone does not constitute ‘domicide’. What must follow is an attempt by the displaced to grapple with the whole affective dimension of being forcibly separated from home and the symbolic and creative responses that it begets. The significance house-keys have acquired within Palestinian inter-familial and communal customs, as well as within cultural (re)production, provides insight into this suffering. Attachment to the house-key is viewed as emblematic of feelings towards the lost home—a continuation of that connection by other means. This article explores the range of ways ation of the key’s symbolic value has been reconfigured as it permeates different arenas of cultural production and activity, and how the keys have come to embody both loss of home and resistance of the goals of Israeli domicide

Spirituality : providing guidance through uncertainty ®

Spirituality has all too often been neglected by both the practices and the profession of education. In these times of great uncertainty the spiritual dimension needs to be developed in order for people to more effectively navigate their way. This paper specifically examines what is understood by \u27spirituality\u27 and argues why and how it should be developed. Briefly, this dimension refers to what the meaning of life and one\u27s self-identity are understood to be. Every person can therefore be considered to be spiritual to some extent, not just the religious.Furthermore it considers that meaning-making, self-identity, choices, decisions and motivation, largely emerge from one\u27s spirituality. By developing this dimension, personal well-being is enhanced and people can gain a more effective understanding of themselves and their world, elucidating what purposes are worthwhile for them to pursue. There is an increasing interest being given to spirituality mainly from the fields of psychology, the work-place, some aspects of the New Age movement (especially self-help courses) and now also by education. It is argued that spiritual development, which is claimed to be facilitated by philosophical approaches within communities of inquiry, benefits both the learners of educational programmes and also ourselves as researchers

Is education becoming irrelevant in our research?

It is argued in this paper that in a culture of ‘performativity’ research into ‘education’ is often avoided. It is observed in many research publications that attention is given to techniques of learning, teaching, management, social equity, identity formation, leadership and delivery of the curriculum, without a justification being offered as to why such instrumental approaches should be regarded as being ‘educational’. Often research quite unproblematically adopts rational economic justifications couched in terms of ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’. Such approaches are however identified as nihilistic and not educational (Blake et al., 2000)

Existentialism : providing an ideal framework for educational research in times of uncertainty ®

Issues such as anxiety, alienation, crises and concerns over self-identity typify this era of uncertainty. These are also recognised themes of Existentialism and have implications for educational practice and research. The purpose of this paper is threefold. Firstly, it aims to clarify Existentialism, as too often it is mistakenly assumed to refer to an atomistic view of the individual, who is able to exercise absolute freedom. This clarification refers primarily to the works of Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger. The second purpose is to present an outline of a particular existential framework. This is mainly structured around the notion of the learner, who is characterised as being in relation, culturally embedded, alienated and a meaning-maker. These attributes have direct implications for the ideal of \u27the educated person\u27 - an often-articulated \u27aim\u27 of education programmes. Becoming educated, according to this framework, means becoming authentic, spiritual, critical, empathetic, and having personal identity.A third purpose is to argue how educators may usefully employ such a framework. By engaging with it, educators are able to examine effective pedagogical approaches using notions of \u27the existential crisis\u27 and anxiety. In this way, educational curriculums, programmes and policies can also be critiqued using this framework

Personal identity : moving beyond essence

Education\u27s ancient and profoundly important pursuit to \u27know thyself\u27, is often realised through engaging with the question \u27who am I?\u27 In order to the identify who in this search, it is argued in this paper that personal identity should be understood to be embedded in the purposes one has for one\u27s life through how one relates, and is therefore spiritual. This spiritual quality of personal identity is therefore existential in character - not essential. However, often when children respond to this question \u27who am I?\u27, they rely upon socially constructed categories and labels such as religious, feminine, cool, punk and the like. The application of such labelling assumes that meaningfulness lies in their essence; that is, they identify what is. This can become most problematic when individuals accept and apply such essentialist labelling to themselves, because such a process can only answer \u27what am I?\u27 and not the educationally more important question of \u27who am I?\u27 This paper therefore challenges the inadequacy of such an approach and offers a conceptualisation of personal identity which is spiritually embedded in a purpose for one\u27s life

Aiming for world peace by promoting \u27violence\u27 in education

In order to contribute towards UNESCO’s goal of pursuing world peace, aims of education must transcend the limited scope of national self-interest which has dominated schooling systems in the West for the last two centuries and further back when the survival of each polis in Ancient Greece was of paramount importance. Aims must therefore become different and the environment that is thought best for this to occur is a democratic one. The case is made that such a democratic environment should involve opportunities to evaluate the value of current aims of education and to explore others in light of the pressing need to pursue peace on a global scale. In order to promote such a democratic environment of discussion and debate the notion of ‘violence’ is considered as a potential framework for such a re-evaluation. The sort of ‘violence’ that is called for is in reference to its use by Emmanual Levinas who employed it emotively to misinterpret Kierkegaard. The use of this misapplied term ‘violence’ may nevertheless be of use in initiating the sort of inquiry of a Deweyean type regarded here to be necessary to improve aims of education democratically in order to pursue world peace

A Deweyan education as a spiritually creative enterprise

John Dewey was very much against dividing the spiritual from the material and claimed that both are present in action, typically through the notion of ends-in-view. He argued that genuinely creative actions require individuals with “significant conscious desires”. However this sort of creativity does not often occur due to our “intellectual laziness” which detracts us from making the effort to truly uncover ultimate and significant desires in our lives. It will be argued in this paper that the creativity promoted through a Deweyan education encourages individuals to face their fear of inner freedom and actively inquire into the spiritual dimension of life which is existential rather than idealistic. The case will be made that educated persons should be enabled, through experience, to actively and freely inquire into ends-in-view, including the ultimate and significant issues regarding the meaning and purpose of life

Why educators should bring an end to pedagogy

As Australia is moving towards a national curriculum there are also activities to nationalise teacher education. This involves various departments of state and federal governments, third-party bodies funded by government such as the Curriculum Corporation and Teaching Australia, and non-government organisations such as the Business Council of Australia. These agencies are producing models and principles which aim on establishing standards of best practice for how they want teachers to teach. Within all of this activity the term ‘pedagogy’ is often employed to represent aspects of these best practices. Examples include ‘productive pedagogies’, ‘new pedagogies’, ‘pedagogical content knowledge’ and ‘pedagogical strategies’. However these are all means only without any end purposes which identify them as being valuable for education. In this paper I will argue that in order to have educative value teachers themselves must exercise a degree of professional autonomy to bring their own end purposes to their choice of pedagogy