In this article, I respond to the work of Gert Biesta regarding the question of what education should be for. He maintains education ought to be oriented towards the "good" rather than measurement, accountability and efficiency. While sympathetic to such claims, I nonetheless question his avowal that discussion of the purposes of…

Evaluating a school system requires benchmarks of success. In order to know whether it is successful we need to know not only what is happening, but what should be happening. This paper interprets, and comments on, the aims California has for its public school system, and offers ways of thinking about the evidence in the light of those aims, and…

This issue of the "Bank Street Occasional Paper Series" seeks to grapple with the complexity of patriotism, particularly in relation to its workings in the lives of teachers and students in schools. Like it or not, schools teach (about) patriotism implicitly if not explicitly. Therefore, much consideration needs to go into what schools…

This paper studies transformations in the role of higher education in Russia as represented in official Soviet and post-Soviet policy documents between the 1950s and 2013. The focus is on the categories defining the purposes and tasks of higher education in the larger context of society and economy. There is a basic dichotomy in relation to the…

Success in developmental education contexts requires support not just in cognitive skills, but also in affective areas. One approach showing promise in supporting students in affective areas is mindfulness training. Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) can support affective needs and provide coping strategies in general as well as in some…

Through an analysis of school uniform policies and theories of social justice, Samantha Deane argues that school uniforms and their foregoing policies assume that confronting strangers--an imperative of living in a democratic polity--is something that requires seeing sameness instead of recognizing difference. Imbuing schooling with a directive…

The multitude of philosophies that currently exists in workforce education in China makes it difficult to decide on a singular theoretical foundation. Therefore, it seems most prudent to begin with those theories that align with Confucian values as well as include humanistic, pragmatist, behaviorist, and other elements. Such a theoretical base,…

The aim of this article is to pinpoint some of the features that do--or should--make Aristotelianism attractive to current moral educators. At the same time, it also identifies theoretical and practical shortcomings that contemporary Aristotelians have been overly cavalier about. Section II presents a brisk tour of ten of the "pros":…

There is a new myth of the heterogeneous that is reducing the concept of humanity to a sinful enlightenment. In this article I investigate the contribution that a renewed understanding of liberal arts education might offer for the idea of a humanist education and for the concept of humanity; and this at a time when not only the concept of humanity…

What methods do graduate students take up for their dissertation projects? This article shares findings from distant reading of 2,711 abstracts, suggesting that humanist approaches predominate within the Consortium of Doctoral Programs in Rhetoric and Composition, but not without some methodological pluralism. A large number of studies outside the…

The relevance of the problem under study is based on the society's need for educating an integral person who is able to solve ecumenical project tasks. Currently this problem (as natural order from the society) is emerging in the educational system and social practices but has yet to obtain substantial scientific and theoretical justification. The…

Turkey witnessed many educational and cultural policy innovations between 1938 and 1950. Realising strictly secular practices against religion and traditional culture pre-1946, political elites of the time aimed to construct a "humanistic culture" unique to Turkey. Educational policies were considered the most efficient tools in reaching…

In light of growing critique of human rights and human rights education, this article explores ontologies of human rights, the possibilities they present for dissensus and how this could influence human rights education in post-conflict education contexts towards reconciliation. We draw on Dembour's (2010) categorisation of the different schools…

China is trying to develop better outcomes for students, build world-class institutions and ascend global university rankings. Beijing also wants to jettison the notion it is the workshop of the world and embrace a culture of innovation. Peter Jarvis thinks the world would be a better place if ordinary people were given convivial spaces wherein…

Lecturing can be positively regarded as a practice by which students can be treated with respect in educational processes which grant them freedom to pursue and acquire new knowledge that meets their needs. Lecturing can also be negatively conceived as a practice which others students and positions them as people who deserve to be chided and…