This book explores the symbiotic relationship between philosophy and culture. Every philosophy emerges as a reaction to, or as justification for a particular culture and it is for this reason that philosophy may differ from one culture to another. It argues that philosophy is an essential part of every culture. Philosophy is the means by which every culture provides itself with justification for its values, beliefs and worldview and also serves as a catalyst for progress. Philosophy critically questions and confronts established beliefs, customs, practices, and institutions of a society. As reflective critical thinking, philosophy is linked to a way of life; a form of enquiry intended to guide behaviour; a form of thinking that sharpens and broadens our intellectual horizon, scrutinizes our assumptions, and clarifies the beliefs and values by which we live. Philosophy helps to liberate the individual from the imprisonment of ignorance, prejudice, superstition, narrow-mindedness, and the despotism of custom. Culture constitutes the raw data, the laboratory from which philosophers do their analytic experimentation. Culture is considered as philosophy of the first order activity. The book maintains that any genuine global philosophy must include philosophical traditions from all cultures and regions of the world, as it is by seeking alternative philosophical answers to some of the thorniest problems facing humanity that we are most likely to find more lasting solutions to some global problems. In this commitment to a universal humanity, we cannot afford to depend on solutions from a single culture or from the most influential cultures.

Education students are continually asked to reflect upon their own philosophy of education and how it relates to their teaching practice. Philosophy of Education in Historical Perspective: Third Edition focuses on major educational philosophies that have had an impact on Western education and helps the reader to make sense of past and current trends and to place them in a historical context. This third edition is updated to correspond with the increasingly swift changes that have been taking place in education. As we move forward into the twenty-first century, it is hard to recall that only twenty years ago, computers were not part of standard classroom equipment. This widely-accessible edition will update the second with another look at postmodernism as it has continued to develop in the past fifty years.

This open access book addresses how to help students find purpose in a rapidly changing world. In a probing and visionary analysis of the field of global education Fernando Reimers explains how to lead the transformation of schools and school systems in order to more effectively prepare students to address today’s’ most urgent challenges and to invent a better future. Offering a comprehensive and multidimensional framework for designing and implementing a global education program that combines cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political perspectives the book integrates an extensive body of empirical literature on the practice of global education. It discusses several global citizenship curricula that have been adopted by schools and school networks, and ties them into an approach to lead school change into the uncharted territory of the future. Given its scope, the book will help teachers, school and district leaders tackle the change management needed in order to introduce global education, and more generally increase the relevancy of education. In addition, the book offers a “bridge” for more productive collaboration and communication between those who lead the process of educational change, and those who study and theorize this important work. At a time when the urgency of our shared global challenges calls for more understanding and collaboration and when the rapid transformation of societies requires that we help students develop a clear sense of relevancy and purpose, this book offers a way to pursue deep and sustainable change in instruction and school culture, so that students learn that nothing human is foreign and that they can find meaning in lives aligned with audacious purposes to make the world better.

Drawing on John Dewey and the later Ludwig Wittgenstein, this book employs philosophy as a conceptual resource to develop new methodological and analytical tools for conducting in situ empirical investigations. Chapter one explores the philosophies of Wittgenstein and Dewey. Chapter two exposits Deweyan ideas of embodiment, the primacy of the aesthetic encounter, and aesthetically expressive meaning underdeveloped in Wittgenstein. Chapter three introduces the method of practical epistemological analysis (PEA) and a model of situated epistemic relations (SER) to investigate the learning of body techniques in dinghy sailing. The concluding chapter introduces a model of situated artistic relations (SAR) to investigate the learning of artistic techniques of self-expression in the Swedish sloyd classroom.

First Published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Currents such as epistemological and social constructivism, postmodernism, and certain forms of multiculturalism that had become fashionable within science education circles in the last decades lost sight of critical inquiry as the core aim of education. In this book we develop an account of education that places critical inquiry at the core of education in general and science education in particular. Since science constitutes the paradigm example of critical inquiry, we explain the nature of science, paying particular attention to scientific methodology and scientific modeling and at the same time showing their relevance in the science classroom. We defend a universalist, rationalist, and objectivist account of science against epistemological and social constructivist views, postmodernist approaches and epistemic multiculturalist accounts.