Caring Confrontations for Education and Democracy makes a compelling case for redirecting current practices of education to focus on being educated rather than having an education. The book offers a detailed analysis of how an education for democracy must encourage commitment to important ideals and strengthen the vulnerabilities of people which make them easily manipulated by politicians and the media. It addresses the need for education that focusses on people’s mode of being, so that in addition to becoming knowledgeable and skilful, people develop the disposition that is more appropriate for democratic living. Through embodying this approach of authentic spiritual growth through education, this book explores the idea of caring confrontations and critical reflection to enable personal change and growth. Providing a thoughtful analysis of the role of education in democracy, the book will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and students in the fields of philosophy of education, educational theory and democratic education.

We live in challenging and uncertain times, with profound implications for the purpose and nature of education. The crises of the Anthropocene, with the related climate-related challenges, biodiversity loss, a global pandemic, and changes to the world of work driven by science and technology innovation and the ascendency of data and knowledge, pressure us to rethink how we prepare people for such futures. This, in turn, has changed the landscape of educational research, perhaps particularly in the areas of mathematics, health and environmental education research that are so central to responding to these global pressures and potential solutions. We need to think critically about education research design and practice as part of a considered and robust discussion of education research theory and practice that will inform and help shape education systems into the future. This volume responds to these challenges, casting fresh light on contemporary methodologies fit for reconsidering education into the future. Chapters explore post-qualitative inquiry, with overviews and practices, arts-based and interdisciplinary methodologies, self-study and auto-ethnography for the Anthropocene, co-design with teachers, researching for system change, the ethics of ‘netnography’, and principles and practices of literature review.

This book documents the political and economic ramifications of the policy impetus for a "science of education" and what this means for classroom teachers, their teaching practices and for the field of education. In a critical exploration of current research and policy articulations of the purposes of education, with attention given to Australia, the UK and the USA, this book delineates the evaluative mechanisms involved in the strategic science as method adoption of accountability, competitiveness and test-driven criteria used in major education policy. It brings together the disciplines of sociology and philosophy by drawing on the theoretical insights of Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu and John Dewey. In addition, the book argues for the deliberate use of the theoretical in education and is against the contemporary unquestioning advocacy that often accompanies a narrowly defined master narrative of a science of education. This book will be of special interest to post-graduate students as source material in general education courses and is also intended for academics with an interest in educational theory/philosophy and the sociology of education.

This book brings together a discussion of educational philosophy, nihilism and humanity to rethink education in times of crisis, with a particular focus on teaching and learning in universities. The book argues that an educational crisis manifests when the value of academic institutions come under attack, looking closely at how higher education practices have been devalued. The book is situated in the context of three intertwined crises; the coronavirus pandemic, economic decline resulting in poverty and unemployment, and the crisis of human migration. It questions what the role of education is, or ought to be, in times of crisis and how our humanity ought to be cultivated during such turbulent times. This novel and timely text will be of great interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the fields of educational philosophy, higher education and international education.

The ecological university takes its interconnectedness with the world seriously. This is challenging, for the world is in difficulty and is shot through with antagonism. The university is partly culpable for those difficulties and so has responsibilities towards the world. Realizing the Ecological University spells out this thesis by charting the university's entanglements with eight ecosystems – knowledge, learning, persons, social institutions, culture, the economy, the polity and nature. The book identifies ways in which each of the eight ecosystems is impaired and points to possibilities through which universities can help in repairing those ecosystems. This book also sets out broad principles in helping to realize the ecological university in each of the eight ecosystems. Wearing his scholarship lightly, Ronald Barnett draws widely from philosophy, social theory, comparative higher education and ethics, and advances a particular form of the philosophy of higher education, at once realist, societal, critical, worldly and Earthly. Written with wit and lots of examples – actual and fictional – the text has a compelling vibrancy, made manifest in its concluding Manifesto.

It is widely accepted that the machinery of multicultural societies and liberal democratic systems is dependent upon various forms of dialogue - dialogue between political parties, between different social groups, between the ruling and the ruled. But what are the conditions of a democratic dialogue and how does the philosophical dialogic approach apply to practice? Recently, facing challenges from mass protest movements across the globe, liberal democracy has found itself in urgent need of a solution to the problem of translating mass activity into dialogue, as well as that of designing borders of dialogue. Exploring the multifaceted nature of the concepts of dialogue and democracy, and critically examining materializations of dialogue in social life, this book offers a variety of perspectives on the theoretical and empirical interface between democracy and dialogue. Bringing together the latest work from scholars across Europe, Democracy in Dialogue, Dialogue in Democracy offers fresh theorizations of the role of dialogue in democratic thought and practice and will appeal to scholars of sociology, political science and social and political theory.