Full Description
Across the globe educators are being required to respond to a changing political environment. New nations emerge out of the collapse of old empires; new democracies struggle out of old structures of oppression. Driven on by the fierce competitiveness of the 'tiger economies' of the east, old social welfare[1]based democracies are transformed into new market led enterprise societies. The essays in this international collection are a response from twenty-two educators to these changes and to the reassessment that they provoke of some of the fundamental principles which shape educational thought and practice. They focus in particular on four key clusters of issues to do with the role of education in cultivating: • national identity Authors from political settings as culturally distant as Lithuania and Taiwan consider what role, if any, nationalistic education might play in the context of a democratic liberal education. • market principles Contributors offer different perspectives on the internationally pervasive application of the principles of the market economy to education and the consequent 'commodification' of learning. • personal autonomy Different dimensions of the contested notion of autonomy are examined along with the related discourses of 'edification' and 'empowerment'. • democratic citizenship From post-Soviet Russia to the new South Africa, in schools and in the context of professional training, educators examine what education for democratic citizenship might mean in practice and tease out some of the conflicts of principle which are raised in its implementation. The contributors are distinguished scholars drawn from every continent. They write consciously for an international readership and there is constant cross reference to developments in different parts of the world. All are practitioners in education sharing an interest in the philosophical issues underlying social change. The philosophical discussion is clearly rooted in and referred back to the world of educational practice and its political context.
Contents
John White, University of London Institute of Education, UK; Terence H. McLaughlin, University of Cambridge, UK; Palmira Juceviciene, Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania; Ching-tien Tsai, Institute of Education at the National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan, ROC; David Bridges, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK; Felisa Tibbitts, Human Rights Education Programmes, Netherlands Helsinki Committee, Utrecht, Netherlands; Robert Cowen, University of London Institute of Education, UK; James Tooley, University of Manchester School of Education, England; Geoff Whitty, Institute of Education, London, UK; Terry Hyland, University of Warwick, UK; Colin Wringe, University of Keele, UK; Richard Smith, University of Durham, UK; James Kaminski, Auburn University, USA; Gaye Heathcote, Manchaster University, UK; Michael Fielding, University of Cambridge Institute of Education, UK; Akilu Sani Indabawa, Bayero University, Nigeria; Ken Fogelman, University of Leicester, UK; Nikolai Nikandrov, Russian Academy of Education, Moscow, Russia; Penny Enslin, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa; Terry Phillips, Univeristy of East Anglia, UK; David Aspin, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia; John Arul Phillips, University of Malaysia, Malaysia
