Outline of Jie Lu’s Education Thoughts

As a famous contemporary educator and educational theorist in China, Jie Lu has always been concerned about people and their lives and moral conditions since the 1970s and 1980s. With this as the center, a systematic “human understanding” pedagogy and moral education were constructed. His thoughts reflect the times’ distinctive characteristics, and scholars have widely praised his noble research quality and scholarly ideological state. Given this, this paper reviews Jie Lu’s moral education thoughts based on the research on Jie Lu’s education thoughts and feelings to make a more comprehensive and systematic review of Jie Lu’s moral education thoughts.

The Hope of Something Different. Eco-centricity in Art and Education

Educational theorist Gert Biesta proposes that we need to be “in the world without occupying the centre of the world.” (Biesta, 2017, p. 3). This injunction provides a frame with which to interrogate the hybrid practice of ecoart. This practice can be characterised by a concern for the relations of living things to each other, and to their environments. Learning in order to be able to act is critical. One aspect is collaboration with experts (whether those are scientists and environmental managers or inhabitants, including more-than-human). Another is building ‘commons’ and shared understanding being more important than novelty. Grant Kester has argued that there is an underlying paradigm shift in ‘aesthetic autonomy’, underpinned by a ‘trans-disciplinary interest in collective knowledge production’. (2013, np). This goes beyond questions of interdisciplinarity and its variations to raise more fundamental questions of agency. Drawing on the work of key practitioner/researchers (Jackie Brookner (1945-2015); Collins and Goto Studio, Helen Mayer Harrison (1927-2018) and Newton Harrison (b 1932)) and theorists (Bishop, Kester, Kagan) the meaning and implications of not ‘occupying the centre of the world’ will be explored as a motif for an art which can act in public space.

Anthropocene terror in two girl-centred narratives: The leitmotifs of mythological time, colonisation and monstrosity in the films Whale Rider and Moana

The place of children in societies is a question that we have been grappling with in many forms, maybe nowhere more creatively and visibly than in the products of our imaginary complexes, such as films. Educational theorist and cultural critic Henry Giroux (2012) describes a contemporary crisis about youth and considers youth as potential cultural and pedagogical 'border-crossers or outlaws'. Our complex contemporary engagement with the concept of youth coincides with an increasing awareness of, firstly, the genderedness of our world and, secondly, of anthropocene planetary ecological states of crises. In this article I consider two girl-centred films, both with young female protagonists, where the convergence of these discursive forces is depicted in the narrative context of the current renewed appreciation for indigenous cultures, particularly those of the global south. The films are New Zealand director Niki Caro's Whale Rider (2002) and Disney's animated film Moana (2016). There are clear similarities between the films, and the Disney creators have openly credited Whale Rider as influential in their creative process. I particularly consider how these two films, when read together, engage with ideas of cyclical mythological time, the leitmotifs of exploration, gender and colonisation, and with the trope of monstrousness or monstrosity as metaphors for paradoxical and complex living in an age of increasing complexity and anxiety.

Neoliberalism and the weaponising of language and education

This forceful piece by a leading educational theorist, examines the ways in which democracy is under attack in the US by a combination of neoliberalism and white supremacist Trumpism. What we are witnessing is a mode of governing fuelled by fantasies of exclusion accompanied by a full-scale attack on morality, thoughtful reasoning and collective resistance rooted in democratic forms of struggles. As more people revolt against this dystopian project, neoliberal ideology and elements of a fascist politics merge to contain, distract and misdirect the anger that has materialised out of legitimate grievances against the government, controlling privileged elites and the hardships caused by neoliberal capitalism. The current crisis of agency, representation, values and language demands a discursive shift that can call into question and defeat the formative culture and ideological scaffolding through which a savage neoliberal capitalism reproduces itself.

Dewey, John (1859–1952)

John Dewey was an American philosopher, educational theorist, and one of the three major pragmatists, along with William James and Charles Saunders Peirce. After obtaining a doctorate at Johns Hopkins, he began his academic career at the University of Michigan, where he established a psychology laboratory that studied stimulus reflexes. Later, at the University of Chicago, he turned to the reform of primary and secondary education and founded programs that could better integrate immigrants into American culture. He defended democracy, envisioning it as a sense of community in which the individual interests of all could eventually be understood. Individualism necessitated the appeal to mutual dependence and institutions, which were tested and constantly changed over time for the greater good, in a kind of perpetual scientific experiment. Central to his thinking on education was the notion of experience. Knowledge, he held, was always obtained after reflection upon concrete experiences. In this model, called the "Dewey flux," one generates abstractions (mental ideas) after having concrete experiences. These abstractions in turn then have to be rendered material—Dewey’s version of the "hermeneutic circle." The mission of progressive education, for Dewey, was to get students to become conscious of this perpetual "flux" between concrete experiences and abstractions.

Conclusion

This conclusion considers the border-crossing process involved as women come together as a community, applying educational theorist Etienne Wenger's ideas about learning as engaged by a community of practice to musical activity—specifically to the musical activities of professional women musicians both inside and outside institutions. By contrasting practices within and beyond the Uzbek State Conservatory and by putting the rhetoric surrounding each of these musical styles into conversation, the diverse nature of women's musical contribution to the Uzbek national project comes into sharper focus. The more everyday context of a social gathering allows not only border crossing, but also an emphasis on the pleasure of music making and the joy of singing along. Institutions define musical genres, not musical experience. The conclusion emphasizes the complex relation of national identity to individual feminine experiences.

John Dewey in Italia. L’operazione de La Nuova Italia Editrice: tra traduzione, interpretazione e diffusione

The essay reconstructs the various phases of the discovery of John Dewey’s ideas on Education and the spread of their influence throughout Italian pedagogical circles from the end of the Second World War to the 1970s. Several Italian intellectual pioneers discerned within Dewey’s theories significant overtones of democratic political activism, and the potential for developing innovative practices by which the obsolete education system of the day could be modernized, and the demands for better schooling being put forward by many could be met. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, one such pioneer was Ernesto Codignola, a shrewd educational theorist who used the journal «Scuola e Città» (Schooling and the City), published by La Nuova Italia publishing house, as a mouthpiece for his ideas. Once the American philosopher’s ideas had been rediscovered, his most significant works were quickly translated and published, and then subjected to a flurry of detailed critical analysis and interpretation. During the 1960s and ‘70s, much of the research into Dewey’s theories was carried out in Florence, in particular by Lamberto Borghi, who interpreted them as the blueprint for a secular, democratic system of education that could be applied across the Italian peninsula.

Basedow på dansk. En 200-årig misforståelse i pædagogikkens historie

The educational ideas of the Enlightenment gained marked acceptance in Denmark towards the end of the 18th century in the form of the so-called philanthropic movement.The dominant figure in this movement was the German educational theorist Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–90), and since the 19th century it has been generally believed that Basedow’s book entitled Effective guidelines for the optimal education of children was a telling expression of the movement’s influence in Denmark. This work has in reality nothing to do with Basedow, but is rather a translation of a 17th century French educational handbook. Contrary to what has hitherto been believed, a Danish translation of Baselow could not therefore be helpful in raising interest in philanthropism.

Implementing a ‘pedagogy of interruption’: worth the risk

This paper explores the work of the educational theorist Gert Biesta in a setting outside of the context where it was originally developed. It aims to address how Biesta’s approach can help educators and policy makers question the philosophical underpinnings of education in the UAE and thereby start a conversation that is currently absent in this context. The paper comprises three elements: first, an overview of Biesta’s educational theory is given with a focus on ‘subjectification’ and his self-titled “pedagogy of interruption”. Secondly and in brief, I use Biesta’s framework of educational dimensions to analyse the philosophy underlying education in the United Arab Emirates using published government documents and media sources. Thirdly, I report a small-scale qualitative analysis of a specific educational space, three General Studies Courses in a UAE tertiary institution, to investigate the ‘risky’ possibilities involved in implementing a pedagogy of interruption. I find that despite a dominant policy discourse that discounts subjectification, there are significant opportunities for students to develop a strong sense of self. These opportunities are created by a small but strongly motivated group of teachers and taken up, on the whole enthusiastically, by students. However, my assertions are limited by a number of challenges which warrant further research. This paper hopes to provide a meaningful contribution to the limited discussion regarding the aims and expectations of education in the Middle East, and finds a pertinent philosophical grounding for liberal studies teaching in a tertiary context. As such the paper will be of value both to policy and decision makers in the Middle East and to teachers and trainers who teach in multi-cultural and international contexts.