Lessons from a new science? : on teaching happiness in schools

Recent media reports about new programmes for 'happiness lessons' in schools signal a welcome concern with children's well-being. However, as I shall argue, the presuppositions of the discourse in which many of these proposals are framed, and their orientation towards particular strands of positive psychology, involve ideas about human life that are, in an important sense, anti-educational. © 2008 Journal of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain

Combination inhaled steroid and long-acting beta2-agonist versus tiotropium for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Background Combination therapy (inhaled corticosteroids and long-acting beta(2)-agonists) and tiotropium are both used in the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). There is uncertainty about the relative benefits and harms of these treatments. Objectives To assess the relative effects of inhaled combination therapy and tiotropium on patients with COPD. Search strategy We searched the Cochrane Airways Group Specialised Register of trials (March 2010) and reference lists of articles. We also contacted authors of the studies.Selection criteriaWe included only parallel, randomised controlled trials comparing inhaled combination corticosteroid and long-acting beta(2)-agonist against inhaled tiotropium bromide. Data collection and analysis Two authors independently assessed trials for inclusion and then extracted data on trial quality and outcome results. We contacted study authors for additional information. Discrepancies were resolved through discussion. Main results One large two year trial (INSPIRE) and two smaller, shorter trials (Dawber 2005; SCO40034) were found. The results from these trials were not pooled. The number of withdrawals from each arm of the INSPIRE trial was large and imbalanced and outcome data was not collected for patients who withdrew, raising concerns about the reliability of data from this study.In INSPIRE, there were more deaths on tiotropium than on fluticasone/salmeterol (Peto OR 0.55; 95% CI 0.33 to 0.93). This was a statistically significant difference, however the number of withdrawals from each of the arms was eleven times larger than the observed number of deaths for participants on fluticasone/salmeterol and seven times larger for participants on tiotropium. There were more all cause hospital admissions in patents on fluticasone/salmeterol than those on tiotropium in INSPIRE (Peto OR 1.32; 95% CI 1.04 to 1.67). There was no statistically significant difference in hospital admissions due to exacerbations, the primary outcome of INSPIRE. There was no significant difference in exacerbations in patients on fluticasone/salmeterol compared to tiotropium. Exacerbations requiring treatment with oral corticosteroids were less frequent in patients on fluticasone/salmeterol (Rate Ratio 0.81; 95% CI 0.67 to 0.99). Conversely exacerbations requiring treatment with antibiotics were more frequent in patients treated with fluticasone/salmeterol (Rate Ratio 1.19; 95% CI 1.02 to 1.38). There were more cases of pneumonia in patients on fluticasone/salmeterol than those on tiotropium (Peto OR 2.13; 95% CI 1.33 to 3.40). Confidence intervals for these outcomes do not reflect the additional uncertainty arising from unknown outcome data for patients who withdrew. Authors' conclusions Since the proportion of missing outcome data compared to the observed outcome data is enough to induce a clinically relevant bias in the intervention effect, the relative efficacy and safety of combined inhalers and tiotropium remains uncertain. Further large, long-term randomised controlled trials comparing combination therapy to tiotropium are required, including adequate follow-up of all participants randomised (similar to the procedures undertaken in TORCH and UPLIFT). Additional studies comparing alternative inhaled LABA/steroid combination therapies with tiotropium are also required

Pedagogies of Indignation and "The Lives of Others"

Neel Mukherjee’s novel, The Lives of Others, which depicts characters dealing with a situation of extreme and violent oppression, is used as the basis for looking more closely at some of the theoretical assumptions about hope, agency and critical consciousness that underpin Critical Pedagogy. It is suggested that it may be educationally and philosophically valuable to reflect on the ethically troubling choices that individuals in extreme situations make in their fight against oppression, and to ask questions about the risks and the costs involved when people, through a process of critical consciousness, become fully free to claim their moral and political agency

Reflections on the "Counter" in Educational Counterpublics

In this essay, Judith Suissa draws on the tradition of radical and alternative education, and on some philosophical literature on democratic politics and the role of the political imagination, in order to suggest some ways of thinking about what constitutes an educational counterpublic that are different from those suggested in recent work by philosophers of education. Building on arguments by Nancy Fraser and others about the vital role of counterpublics in the political life of democracies, Suissa suggests that creating educational spaces where the formation, development, imagining, and nurturing of such counterpublics can occur is an important aspect of this role

Integral education and Pring’s liberal vocationalism

A central strand in Richard Pring's philosophical work has the rejection of the 'false dualism' between the liberal and the vocational. In examining dualism, Pring's work has oriented just to the world of academic philosophy of education, but to the world of educational policy and practice, particularly in relation to shifts and innovations in the area of vocational education and training. The idea of integral education was a central feature of the writings of leading nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century anarchist thinkers, and the educational experiments associated with the anarchist tradition. The anarchist ideal of integral education for all was an ideal of a 'respect for labour, reason, equality and freedom' intended just to articulate a philosophy of education that reflects a conception of the person, but to challenge a political and economic reality in which a whole class of children were excluded from academic education and condemned to a life of labour under conditions that threatened individual freedom and dignity