Reconsidering the Necessary Beings of Aquinas’s Third Way

Surprisingly few articles have focused on Aquinas’s particular conception of necessary beings in the Third Way, and many scholars have espoused inaccurate or incomplete views of that conception. My aim in this paper is both to offer a corrective to some of those views and, more importantly, to provide compelling answers to the following two questions about the necessary beings of the Third Way. First, how exactly does Aquinas conceive of these necessary beings? Second, what does Aquinas seek to accomplish in the third stage of the Third Way? In answering these questions, I challenge prominent contemporary understandings of the necessary beings of the Third Way

Do pride and prejudice stand in the way of persuasion? Embracing other disciplines for the advancement of advocacy teaching

This paper considers the importance of advocacy teachers adopting a multi-disciplinary approach to the teaching of advocacy and suggests how this can be acieved

Unsettling the Trump Baby: Learning from values and pedagogy in the early childhood nursery

The 2018 anti-Trump protest in London is dominated by an effigy, in the form of a balloon, that morphs President Donald Trump and childhood. Whilst this can be interpreted as a humorous act to ridicule Trump, a critical reading of the scene through a postmodern lens suggests that the image is an appropriation and manipulation of childhood. Trump masquerading as a baby becomes the ‘vagabond’ who is denied citizenship; she is a focus for negativity and fears, symbolising the values of hate and intolerance. The Trump Baby is vexing in the way it obscures knowledge of the agentic and competent child known within the nursery. The protesters exercise power as they mock and humiliate the Trump Baby in the protest and on social media. Such actions legitimatise hostile acts against children and prompt questions about the interdependency between children and adults in the both the construction of values and the realisation of children’s citizenship. This paper considers a range of positions that adults could adopt in order to co-construct values with children and respect their status as citizens. In this way, nurseries can become forums where children’s citizenship is both defended and nurtured

Participatory pedagogy for values education in early childhood education

Practitioners working with young children in the provision of early childhood education (ECE) are often directed by state governments to mediate specific values through their pedagogical practice. This paper reports the findings from a small scale empirical research study exploring the pedagogy applied by ECE practitioners in this context. I argue that moral pedagogies, where children are positioned as constructors of knowledge about values, have the potential to support ECE practice in ways that respect and uphold children’s rights. Such an approach requires practitioners to adopt a critical stance and consider their epistemic beliefs about how children learn. I suggest that this process may be enhanced by practitioners’ reflecting on the positioning of children within pedagogical relationships through the lens of child rights

Word and spirit in Ezekiel.

Two fundamental experiences of Yahweh in the Old Testament are an encounter with the 'word' of Yahweh and an encounter with the 'spirit' or 'wind' or 'breath' (rüah) of Yahweh. This thesis explores 'word', ruah, and their relationship in the book of Ezekiel. It argues that the relationship between Yahweh's rüah and Yahweh's word is to be understood not so much in terms of the inspiration and authentication of the prophet but in terms of the transformation of the book's addressees. According to the dominant paradigm for explaining the emphasis on ruah and its relation to Yahweh's word within the book of Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel is recovering from the pre-classical prophets, or even pioneering, an emphasis on ruah in prophecy that is conspicuously absent from the classical, writing prophets. This reading interprets the emphasis on ruah in Ezekiel in terms of the self-authentication of the ministry of the prophet. This thesis examines the relationship between ruah and prophecy in Ezekiel and in the rest of the Old Testament, and shows that the dominant paradigm requires modification. The emphasis on Yahweh's ruah in Ezekiel, even the 'prophetic spirit', is best understood in relation to the book's concern for the transformation of its addressees. The prophet Ezekiel's experience of Yahweh's ruah and his own obedience to Yahweh's call are clearly contrasted with the disobedience of the prophet's addressees in order to present Ezekiel as a model for the addressees of the book. His experience illuminates for them how the dramatic vision of the future can become a reality in their experience. This provides a different perspective on the conundrum of the presence in the book of calls to repentance alongside declarations of Yahweh's unilateral salvific actions. Further, it provides an integrated account of the different occurrences of ruah in relation to the rhetorical function of the book. Yahweh's ruah has a fundamental role in the envisaged obedient response to Yahweh's word, both of Ezekiel and of the book's addressees

How do practitioners in early years provision promote Fundamental British Values?

In 2015 the United Kingdom government harnessed early childhood education and care (ECEC) providers to its anti-terrorism strategy by placing them within the scope of the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (Great Britain Parliament, 2015). They became subject to the ‘Prevent Duty’ which requires them to have due regard to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism. However, the promotion of Fundamental British Values (FBV), as a specific measure to prevent young children being drawn into terrorism, has raised questions about the role of the ECEC sector as an instrument of counter terrorism policy. This paper analyses the ways in which early childhood practitioners mediated the requirement to promote FBV through their pedagogical practice. Although practitioners are commissioned to mediate specific values formulated in the political arena (Eirnarsdottir et al, 2015) their response was complex and multi layered. Whilst a public display of compliance to FBV was performative (Butler, 1997) values education was an everyday pedagogical practice unconstrained by the instituted definitions of FBV. Practitioners deployed a contextual moral pedagogy (Basourakos, 1999) where children construct understandings of moral values and practices characterised by rich democratic dialogues

Existence of subgame perfect equilibrium with public randomization: A short proof

Consider a multi-stage game where each player has a compact choice set and payoffs are continuous in all such choices. Harris, Reny and Robson (1995) prove existence of a subgame perfect equilibrium as long as a public correlation device is added to each stage. They achieve this by showing that the subgame perfect equilibium path correspondence is upper hemicontinuous. The present paper gives a short proof of existence that focuses on equilibrium payoffs rather than paths.Existence

Understanding practitioners’ responses to inequality and breaches of human rights

My thesis arose from a sense of frustration that the inequality and breaches of human rights experienced by children and young people were unaddressed within the education settings in which I work. Using Mills' (1959) notion of connecting the 'personal troubles of the milieu' and the 'public issues of the social structure’ I explore my own, and other’s practice, to achieve a range of alternative responses to inequality and breaches of human rights. Exploration of theoretical perspectives shows that different conceptual positions (e.g. equality of condition, Baker et al 2004; capability equality, Sen, 1999; social justice Gewirtz, 1998 and Gerwirtz and Cribb, 2002) can be used to reduce inequality and promote human rights. Human rights can be viewed as ‘complex problems’ (Freeman, 2002) in the way they relate to human needs; they are seen as entitlements or obligations and viewing rights as universal is conditional on the nature of an acceptable ethic (Sen, 1999) or a person’s moral nature (Donnelly, 2003). Human rights can be realised through the social relations and struggles to overcome oppression (Landmann, 2006). Such conceptualisations support practitioners in understanding the operation of human rights. Using qualitative research methodology I conduct a series of case studies that emerged from the dilemmas within my own practice. As an 'insider researcher' (Costley, Elliott and Gibbs, 2010) I use interview and participant observation as tools to collect data revealing multiple narratives and perspectives on each case (Holliday, 2007). Through a journal I explore the tensions in the relationship between researcher and practitioner; I analyse experiences by considering them as ‘problematic, routine or ritual like’ (Denzin, 1989) and this brings new perspectives on my struggles to address injustice. My findings suggest that practitioners display a sense of ‘moral ambiguity' (Bauman, 1993) or ‘moral stasis’ (Mills, 1959). I argue discourse obscures and validates (at an institutional level) inequality and breaches of human rights. Some practitioners resisted the dominant negative discourses and presented alternative responses; others retreated into their personal space where they protected the familiar and struggled to challenge a negative discourse. They positioned the unfamiliar as the ‘other’, the ‘stranger’ or the ‘vagabond’ (Bauman 1993, 1997). Alternative responses could be formed through opportunities for debate and discussion by moving from the ‘mass’ to the ‘public’ (Mills, 1956). Practitioners' engagement in narratives of injustice (Osler and Zhu, 2011) enables greater understanding of injustice, inequality and rights. As a result practitioners problematize issues and identify actions realisable within their own realm of practice (Gewirtz and Cribb, 2002 and Sen, 2009)