In conversation with colleagues, it has been repeatedly addressed that the field of education research, whether philosophical, historical, or political, can be wildly depressing. One source of frustration is the subject content. Discussing historical and contemporary injustices in education, such as forced assimilation through residential schools,…

This article presents a challenge to notions of clarity--and its relation to understanding--within the college composition classroom by relying on Lacanian pedagogical theory. While the field of composition has issued criticisms against clarity in student writing, there has been less emphasis on interrogating clarity in instruction. By delineating…

In this article, the author animates a different kind of telling and knowing for critical scholarship. Recognizing an unknowable reality through a journey to a mythical past, the author imagines an "ontology of the serpent," a radical interdisciplinary, incantation for the future. This sorcerous evocation re-animates ancient mythical…

The present article continues my work in logomachy and the philosophy of education. It turns to Bernard Stiegler's concept of the 'idiotext' as the means of terming what I have previously called 'particular sets of sense'. The gambit of the article is that 'intropy' (uncertainty provoked by informational complexity) provides a very useful concept…

While templates for academic writing, like those offered in the popular textbook "They Say/I Say," have been embraced by some, others still question the extent to which an emphasis on form comes at the expense of substance. But ancient rhetoricians offer a theory of rhetoric that unites style and substance, and Jeanne Fahnestock's modern…

In the academic literature, private supplementary tutoring is widely called shadow education because much of its content mimics that of schooling. The author of this paper wrote the first global study of the phenomenon, which was published in 1999 and set the agenda for much subsequent research. The present paper considers research emphases over…

The paper suggests that 'language change' might hold an important key to aspects of educational reform and to the betterment of teacher education. The language we identify as contributing the most to the ineffectiveness of educational reform is the educational language impregnated by psychologised metaphors, which dominate educational discourses…

There is an urgency for compelling new narratives of ecological survival that draw on Indigenous and 'othered' millennial intelligences and agencies. With a focus on the lifegivingness and sacredness of water, this paper is a call for collective inter-cultural cross-species oral-performative, recuperative conversations for re-learning to care for…

Building on Carini's idea of works bearing the imprint of their makers and using an example from my work in educator education that illustrates how Descriptive Inquiry can be a means of making and remaking a body of thought and practice, I explore the large idea of schools as made work. Through the exploration of the college faculty into race, I…

The scientific study of religion has steered toward materiality. Herein, researchers have highlighted the intricate role of the human body and its sensorium for perceiving objects. With this trend, a text-based approach to religion has become less prominent. However, parallel exploratory efforts have been underreported for religious education…

In this book, Robert Nelson reminds us that one of the most important elements of teaching and learning is to inspire and to be inspired. Given that inspiration itself has evolved through metaphor, the inquiry distinguishes inspirational learning by its peculiarly metaphoric character. We acknowledge that students respond to passion and…

To teach about race is to recognize how there are communities whose worlds are shaped by violence, death, and resurrection, such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, George Floyd, and the many unnamed. Resurrection invokes the zombie figure. Zombies are iconic, and as implemented in an interdisciplinary course, a means to foster…

In this paper I suggest a pragmatic model for the notion of 'information' used in molecular biology in the description of protein synthesis. Discarding any ontological commitments of the term 'information', I propose a view of information based on an analogy with communication. This view could at least supplement the existing information-metaphor…

Ecologically, lichen plays a significant role in the formation of flourishing ecosystems by breaking apart rock formations using small fungal threads to form fertile soil which supports a growing complexity/diversity of life. This essay uses lichen as a metaphor to describe fossilized constructs (colonial epistemologies and ontologies,…

Meeting the psychological, social, and economic challenges of career transitions requires people to be increasingly flexible and hardy. In this article, we propose that envisioning one's life as a game can foster well-being, coping strategies, and success with career transitions. The SuperBetter approach (McGonigal, 2015. "Superbetter: A…