Pádraig Hogan

Communicative Competence and Cultural Emancipation: reviewing the rationale for educational studies in teacher education

Abstract The numerous changes and improvements which have been wrought in teacher education courses in the last two decades have not, apparently, satisfied the critics. Ironically, the reverse seems to have occurred, as recent events on both sides of the Atlantic testify. This essay argues that the developments of the last two decades in educational research and teacher education, which have yielded a wealth of new ideas and procedures, have also yielded a confusing proliferation of educational ideologies. In short, it suggests that the ascendancy of a diffuse, unselfcritical, and often combative discourse within educational studies has effectively eclipsed the more important question which must first be tackled if educational studies are to have a coherent, robust focus. This question, which is pursued in the second section of the paper, asks: is the educational enterprise, properly conceived, a distinctive, autonomous or sui generis enterprise with purposes of its own which are universal, or is it essen...

The central place of prejudice in the supervision of student teachers

This paper addresses itself to the thorny question of validity in the appraisal of student teachers by their supervisors. The new light thrown by educational research in recent decades on the process of teaching and learning is considered but it is also noted that this research has failed to establish agreement on what constitutes good teaching. The paper argues that disagreement on this question persists because peoples perceptions of education and of teaching are almost invariably bound up with their own ideologies or undisclosed prejudices. An attempt is then made, by concentrating on the form of the educational enterprise, to free our understanding of education and teaching from ideological influences. It is proposed that prejudgement of one kind or another has an ineradicable place in human understanding and judgement. Hence a positive role for a non‐partisan ‘prejudice’ is suggested with a view to helping us to identify good teaching and providing us with a valid basis for its evaluation.

Europe and the World of Learning: Orthodoxy and Aspiration in the Wake of Modernity

If Rome was for centuries the centre of power and influence for Christendom and the European world of learning associated with it, Brussels can claim to be such a twofold centre in the late twentieth century. The radical pluralism and postmodernist orientations which are now part of the Enlightenment legacy becloud the point that a new uniformity of belief and outlook - mercenary rather than spiritual - furnishes the context for most educational policy-making in European countries. Far from calling for a return to a patriarchal past, the paper attempts to sketch an understanding of education as a universally defensible practice, while addressing the challenges of both postmodernism and the new uniformity.

The ethical orientations of education as a practice in its own right

This article is the second of a two-part investigation, the first part of which was published in Ethics and Education, vol. 5, issue 2, 2010, under the title ‘Preface to an ethics of education as a practice in its own right’. Although it builds on the arguments of that ‘preface’, this second part of the investigation can be read as a stand-alone essay. It begins with a brief review of a new subordination of educational practice achieved by a neo-liberal tenor in international educational reforms in recent decades in Western societies. The practical context for the essay however is that failure of many of these reforms, like the failure of neo-liberal dominance in socio-economic policy, has given rise to emergent opportunities where inspirations for educational debate and policy-making are concerned. Arguing for the uptake of such opportunity, the ethical tenor of education as a practice in its own right is explored under four headings: (1) review and clarification of the inherent purposes of education as a practice; (2) investigation of educationally productive pathways that are characteristic of education as a practice in its own right; (3) elucidation of a recognisable family of virtues that arise from that practice itself; (4) exploration of the kinds of relationships through which these virtues, and their educational fruits, are nourished.

Preface to an ethics of education as a practice in its own right

Education as a practice in its own right (or sui generis practice) invokes quite a different set of ethical considerations than does education understood as a subordinate activity – i.e. prescribed and controlled in its essentials by the current powers-that-be in a society. But the idea of education as a vehicle for the ‘values’ of a particular group or party is so commonplace, from historys legacy as well as from ongoing waves of educational reforms, as to appear a quite natural one. So much is this case that the idea of education as a sui generis practice may seem a bit eccentric at first sight. Some preliminary work is called for then to render intelligible the claim that education is indeed a practice in its own right, and to illustrate the original starting point this gives for an exploration of educational ethics. In undertaking this preliminary work, central themes from two major sources are explored and reviewed: Richard Peters’ well-known study Ethics and education and MacIntyres After virtue. The suggestive merits of both works for advancing a sui generis understanding of education and its conduct are identified. But crucial occlusions are also highlighted in the arguments of both authors, the recognition of which might have enabled their thinking on educational matters to venture onto a different plane. The kind of thinking that emerges from these investigations as most promising for educational ethics is seen to differ in its key features from what the various branches of academic philosophy have to offer by way of ethical theory.

Education as a discipline of thought and action: a memorial to John Wilson

The late John Wilson has long been a champion of education as a human undertaking with an integrity of its own, as distinct from one that is essentially subordinate to extrinsic interests and influences (e.g. religious, political, commercial). He has also been a fearless critic of forms of thinking that he regarded as failing to articulate adequately that integrity. In keeping with this view he has boldly argued that the philosophy of education must be conceived and practised as a sui generis activity. In this memorial essay I am keen to show that Wilson is right, and crucially so, in arguing that education is a field of action in its own right and in maintaining that the philosophy of education is a sui generis activity. I am also keen to illustrate however, that Wilson is wrong in decisive respects in how he conceives of the sui generis character of the philosophy of education and in the restricted understanding of education as a practice that flows from this conception. Acknowledging a debt to Wilson’s writings, the essay seeks to pursue further some of his more incisive insights and to connect these to some promising inspirations for educational thought and practice that have their origins in the distinctive, but largely eclipsed work of the historical figure Socrates. To argue thus is to highlight the radical nature of the claim that educational thought and action constitute a sui generis undertaking and to call into question any claim that philosophy of education is ‘a branch of’ one or other form of academic philosophy.

Uncertainty, the mother of opportunity reviewing teaching as a way of life in Ireland in the early 21st century

Let me begin with a few reflections on the less than happy state of affairs in teaching in Ireland in the last few years. When we think of the contrasting responses among Irelands teachers to the developments that have taken place in the profession since the issuing of the 1992 Green Paper Education for a Changing World (Govt. of Ireland, 1992), the spectrum of belief, outlook and hope described above by Dickens springs to mind. Looking back over the history of Irish education, it is hard to recall a time when teachers took such fundamentally differing standpoints among themselves in analysing current developments in the profession and in discerning its future prospects.

Educational goals and the PISA assessments: introduction to symposium

At the European Conference on Educational Research in Budapest in September 2015, a joint symposium was hosted by two of the research networks of the European Educational Research Association (EERA): Network 9 ‘Assessment, Evaluation, Testing and Measurement’ and Network 13 ‘Philosophy of Education’. The three papers that follow this Introduction contain the Network 13 contributions to the Symposium, amended and expanded in the light of comments received during the Budapest conference. These contributions are by scholars whose research has been to the forefront in probing ethical and conceptual issues involved in the assessment of students’ achievements. The first paper is by Gert Biesta, Brunel University London and Artez, Institute of the Arts, Netherlands. The second is a joint paper by Andrew O’Shea and Francesca Lorenzi, Dublin City University. The third paper is by Andrew Davis, University of Durham, United Kingdom. A response from Network 9 was contributed by Eugenio Gonzalez, Director of the IEA-ETS Research Institute. This Introduction will outline the background to the symposium, illustrating the main reasons for hosting it as a joint initiative and identifying some of the key educational questions raised by the PISA assessments.

Difference and Deference in the Tenor of Learning.

The critical resources furnished bydeconstruction have more than occasionally beenturned with negative effect on traditional andmore recent conceptions of liberal learning,including the reaffirmation of the humanitiesassociated with philosophical hermeneutics. Thefirst two sections of the paper review thecontrasting and mutually opposed stancestowards learning represented by earlyformulations of deconstruction and ofhermeneutics. An exploration is thenundertaken in the later sections ofdevelopments that have taken place in bothdeconstruction and hermeneutics since theDerrida-Gadamer encounter in Paris in 1981.While not in any sense assimilatinghermeneutics to deconstruction or vice versa,this exploration identifies significant shiftsin later formulations of both which provide amore inclusive context for understandinglearning as a human undertaking, including theidentification of tensions that are morepromising than negative.

The Politics of Identity and the Experience of Learning: Insights for Pluralism from Western Educational History

The eight short explorations in the first part of this paper attempt to identify some crucial developments in the history of Western learning which eclipsed pluralist educational practices in their (Socratic) infancy and thereafter, and which contributed to the widespread employment of education as a force for cultural uniformity, or assumed superiority. Drawing together the lessons of the first part with contemporary insights from hermeneutic philosophy, the second part sets forth briefly the promising educational possibilities for human self-understanding and co-existence which are furnished by a newly-inspired reclamation of the long-eclipsed heritage.