Rethinking Education – serie

This book promotes adult education in a university setting as cultivation and the inculcation of culture, democracy, and ethics beyond and through lived experience. It draws on theories from across disciplines, bringing together Aristotelian and post-structuralist thought. This includes Fernando Pessoa’s notion of ‘erudition’ as culture and ‘disquiet’ as a mode of contemplative living, with Fernand Deligny’s ‘wanting’ as manifestation of life. Liana Psarologaki addresses the pathologies of life and higher education in advanced capitalist societies and creates a manifesto for a new type of university pedagogy.Liana Psarologaki is an architect, artist, educator, and creative scholar based in the UK.

Bringing different cultural perspectives on creativity with them, teachers and children in two early childhood education sites in Aotearoa New Zealand were using museum visits as jumping off places to hone their creative capacity building. As a contribution to Tim Ingold’s discussion of anthropology and/as education, and also finding John Dewey’s writing valuable (specifically his framing of ‘enduring attitudes’), the authors employ a navigation metaphor throughout the discussion. They describe a coming together of four Cultural Anchors (thinking from materials) with four Coordinates (creative capacity builders) to describe ways in which the children were making creative sense of the museum exhibits, while at the same time gathering information about them. They take these travel metaphors from a star cluster in the southern hemisphere night sky, Matariki, which provided early sea-going Māori with guidance as they navigated wide stretches of ocean in their sea-going canoes to reach Aotearoa New Zealand. A Māori immersion early childhood centre and school, and a New Zealand kindergarten provided lively examples of children’s and teachers’ responses to the treasured artefacts (taonga) in their local museums. The book describes an ecosocial framing, from ‘little to big’, and illustrates the different cultural perspectives on creativity. The Mana Tamariki kaiako (teachers) gifted us a title—He taonga, he rerenga arorangi (Where there are treasured objects, the spirit is nurtured and creativity will be inspired).

This book promotes adult education in a university setting as cultivation and the inculcation of culture, democracy, and ethics beyond and through lived experience. It draws on theories from across disciplines, bringing together Aristotelian and post-structuralist thought. This includes Fernando Pessoa’s notion of ‘erudition’ as culture and ‘disquiet’ as a mode of contemplative living, with Fernand Deligny’s ‘wanting’ as manifestation of life. Liana Psarologaki addresses the pathologies of life and higher education in advanced capitalist societies and creates a manifesto for a new type of university pedagogy.Liana Psarologaki is an architect, artist, educator, and creative scholar based in the UK.

Bringing different cultural perspectives on creativity with them, teachers and children in two early childhood education sites in Aotearoa New Zealand were using museum visits as jumping off places to hone their creative capacity building. As a contribution to Tim Ingold’s discussion of anthropology and/as education, and also finding John Dewey’s writing valuable (specifically his framing of ‘enduring attitudes’), the authors employ a navigation metaphor throughout the discussion. They describe a coming together of four Cultural Anchors (thinking from materials) with four Coordinates (creative capacity builders) to describe ways in which the children were making creative sense of the museum exhibits, while at the same time gathering information about them. They take these travel metaphors from a star cluster in the southern hemisphere night sky, Matariki, which provided early sea-going Māori with guidance as they navigated wide stretches of ocean in their sea-going canoes to reach Aotearoa New Zealand. A Māori immersion early childhood centre and school, and a New Zealand kindergarten provided lively examples of children’s and teachers’ responses to the treasured artefacts (taonga) in their local museums. The book describes an ecosocial framing, from ‘little to big’, and illustrates the different cultural perspectives on creativity. The Mana Tamariki kaiako (teachers) gifted us a title—He taonga, he rerenga arorangi (Where there are treasured objects, the spirit is nurtured and creativity will be inspired).

In the light of the structural dangers of revolutionary change highlighted in the political theory of Giorgio Agamben, this book joins a lively debate in philosophy of education on weak utopianism as an approach that foregrounds and respects the educational potentiality of teachers and students. Utopian moves in education call for revolutionary changes in pedagogical practice in pursuit of a particular vision of the good. Whether grounded in emancipatory politics, technological enthusiasm, or another social movement, utopian moves are seductive in their promise of a better alternative. Weak Utopianism in Education draws together philosophy of education, political theory, scholarship of teaching and learning research, and utopian thought to advocate for a modest and humble approach to change. The theoretical foundation of weak utopianism opens space for educator’s personal convictions and teaching philosophies to tinker with their own pedagogical practices. The book creates a common conceptual meeting ground for philosophers and practitioners in education.

In the light of the structural dangers of revolutionary change highlighted in the political theory of Giorgio Agamben, this book joins a lively debate in philosophy of education on weak utopianism as an approach that foregrounds and respects the educational potentiality of teachers and students. Utopian moves in education call for revolutionary changes in pedagogical practice in pursuit of a particular vision of the good. Whether grounded in emancipatory politics, technological enthusiasm, or another social movement, utopian moves are seductive in their promise of a better alternative. Weak Utopianism in Education draws together philosophy of education, political theory, scholarship of teaching and learning research, and utopian thought to advocate for a modest and humble approach to change. The theoretical foundation of weak utopianism opens space for educator’s personal convictions and teaching philosophies to tinker with their own pedagogical practices. The book creates a common conceptual meeting ground for philosophers and practitioners in education.

Today’s learners are faced with an unprecedented set of global and local development challenges, yet so much of the education on offer is based on yesterday’s thinkers, yesterday’s ideas and yesterday’s lessons. A time of change requires new approaches to teaching and learning which have relevance to learners’ everyday lives now and in the future. This book argues that Development Education needs to be embedded into the curriculum, where it has the potential to strengthen democracy and create a more egalitarian society. It employs the concept of critical pedagogy as a teaching approach which has the capacity to impact on learners’ future decisions.The book offers a highly accessible and innovative approach to Development Education, challenging teachers to engage with global issues. It demonstrates how knowledge and content, teaching methodologies and global issues can be embedded in education programmes. Drawing on five years of research and practice by leading educators across twelve universities and colleges of education, the book demonstrates the innovative work of the Ubuntu Network project and places it in the international context of rethinking and reorientating education.

Ensuring quality in and through teaching and learning has become a fundamental global concern. Emanating from a colloquium on Quality Assurance and Teacher Education hosted by University College Dublin in 2010 and funded by the European Educational Research Association, this book interrogates how quality cultures can be fostered in the field of education. The volume brings together a series of background and case study chapters from leading scholars in the field of teacher education internationally.

Ireland is in the grip of a postmodern cultural deconstruction on many levels. The traditional ‘grand narratives’ are increasingly viewed with suspicion and disenchantment as Ireland struggles to understand its evolving identity. There is a growing need for comprehensive interdisciplinary research that will facilitate teaching and learning in this rapidly changing cultural and societal context.This book brings a fresh approach to Irish educational debates, in which qualified educational specialists engage collaboratively in interdisciplinary reflection on their own teaching and learning. The volume addresses a multiplicity of key issues in Irish education (with a particular focus on the primary sector), including teacher formation, curriculum development, teaching and learning methods, educational policy, philosophy, history, religious education, ethics, special needs education and transformative education. The book aims both to critique new educational policy and practice and to identify the key challenges in providing innovative, imaginative and cutting-edge teaching and learning in contemporary Irish schools.

This volume brings together research carried out in a variety of geographic and linguistic contexts including Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States and explores efforts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to ‘harness’ this diversity for learners’ benefit. It challenges the largely anachronistic ideology that promotes exclusive use of an educational monolingual standard variety and advocates the use in formal education of aboriginal/indigenous languages, minority languages, nonstandard varieties and contact languages.The contributors examine both historical and current practices for including linguistic diversity in education by considering specific bidialectal, bilingual and multilingual educational initiatives. The different geographical and linguistic settings covered in the volume are linked together by a unifying theme: linguistic diversity exists all over the world, but it is very rarely utilized effectively for the benefit of students. When it is used, whether in isolated studies or through governmental initiatives, the research findings point systematically to the many educational advantages experienced by linguistically-diverse students. This book will be of interest to teachers and language practitioners, as well as to students and scholars of language and education.

This book critically examines the context, origins, development and implementation of successive primary school curricula in Ireland between 1897 and 1990. It focuses on three particular policy changes during the period: the Revised Programme of Instruction introduced in 1900, the curricular provisions implemented following the achievement of independence in the 1920s and the Primary School Curriculum of 1971. These three eras are distinctive by virtue of their philosophy of education, the content of the curriculum, the methodologies employed and the concept of the child inherent in the curriculum. The author analyses curricular changes within the complex web of wider educational and societal factors that influenced their devising and implementation.In this way, he locates curricular developments within the climate of thought from which these policies emerged. The philosophy and ideology underpinning successive curricula are examined, along with the successes and shortcomings of curriculum implementation in each period. This historical analysis of the evolution of the primary curriculum in Ireland has much to offer researchers and policymakers in the contemporary context, amid ongoing curriculum development.

Every educator will tell you about the importance of literacy. But what are the implications of digital literacy, participatory literacy and media literacy for teaching and learning? And can the use of technology be linked to social responsibility?This volume, with a range of international contributors, offers stimulating reading about ‘rethinking education’ in the light of new multimedia tools and platforms and the emergence of social media. It calls for twenty-first-century learners to develop digital, entrepreneurial, collaborative and group work competencies, along with creative and critical thinking. The affordances of digital technologies can offer all students the chance to create their own multimedia representations and become creators within their own education. In addition, eLearning tools can support innovative pedagogical approaches and open the way for research on the nature of teaching and learning experiences, and on how dialogue might be transformed through the use of digital communication technologies. The essays in this volume provide relevant current examples for education practitioners interested in research in this growing academic field.

This book uncovers an ancient Irish perspective of learning and reconfigures it to offer a vitality-restoring vision for education in our digital age. Its aim is to help re-engage learners of the Net generation meaningfully and with enjoyment in the learning process. The proliferation of new technologies in the classroom has generally not been accompanied by new pedagogical thinking and the discourse is still framed almost exclusively in terms of the utilitarian mindset of the Western world. Consequently, education is too often delivered within a context that is unfit for purpose. The author argues that we need to bring the wisdom of different cultural perspectives to bear on our understanding of the nature and purpose of learning, and on the role of technology in the learning process. She shares an energising vision of education based on the ancient Irish understanding of learning as nourishment for the human spirit, expressed as learning by wandering. Illustrating the universal and timeless relevance of this understanding, she demonstrates from personal experience how a synthesis of ancient wisdom and new technologies can transform the learning process. This book offers a new dimension to the ongoing debate on the future of education in the Western world.

Much has been written over recent decades about the impact of community conflict on Northern Ireland’s children and schools. There have been fewer attempts, however, to record and evaluate the experience of those who have worked to offset the negative impacts of these realities by developing educational programmes which encourage positive responses to diversity and promote mutual awareness, understanding and respect. This book shows how such processes, ideas and pedagogies have developed, evaluates their successes and failures, and proposes what can be learned from this experience for those undertaking similar work elsewhere.Commencing with a broadly-based rationale for Education for Diversity and Mutual Understanding, this book explores developments since the early days of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ to the present, noting the broader context of community relations over the period. The editors explore some of the pedagogical issues in more detail, including whole-school ethos, creating ‘safe space’, managing conflict and prejudice, group-work methodologies and teaching controversial issues. In conclusion the book brings the picture up to the present day. It offers further evaluation at a time when Northern Ireland’s diversity is taking new directions and presenting schools with a mixture of old and new challenges.