Theme: Creativity, Enterprise and Policy - New Directions in Education
Papers from 2007 conference:
Proceedings are published on CD (ISBN: 978-0-909009-90-8)
CD 1: Abstracts for all papers (available at the conference).
CD 2: Full papers that have been refereed
Bagnall, Richard G
Some conditions for creative partnerships in education
The Hong Kong Institute of Education
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
This paper focuses on the use of partnerships in education as a means of facilitating the development of creativity in and through education. The literature on partnerships suggests a wide diversity of arrangements under the title and a mixed bag of successes and failures under different criteria. The paper is an attempt to clarify that diversity through focusing analytical attention on: (1) different partnership relationships to learning; (2) the minimal conditions governing those partnerships; (3) the general conditions and nature of creativity in and through education; and (4) the relationships between the likelihood of successful creative partnerships in education and the conditions governing the partnerships. Educational partnerships may be understood as varying in their relationship to intended learning – in the extent to which they are partnerships directed towards learning, partnerships for learning, or partnerships in learning. These types of relationship suggest a range of minimal structural realities through which a partnership of a given type might successfully operate. Partnerships that are directed towards learning indicate a minimal requirement of only aggregated realities with agreed role differentiation. Partnerships for learning similarly indicate a minimal requirement of aggregated realities, but with the negotiation of structural relationships. Partnerships in learning indicate the requirement that the partnership realities be both generated and negotiated. The three types of relationship between a given partnership and intended learning are also linked to minimal ethical and political requirements of partners, if the partnership is likely to be successful. Partnerships that are directed towards learning indicate a minimal ethical requirement only of mutual tolerance and a minimal political requirement of the (negative) freedom of engagement in and disengagement from the partnership. Partnerships for learning indicate a minimal ethical requirement of mutual respect and a minimal political requirement of the (positive) freedom to engage with the curriculum or the learning tasks involved. Partnerships in learning indicate a minimal ethical requirement of a situational approach to ethics and an assumption of autonomous equality on the part of the (learner) partners. The extent to which these minimal conditions for each type of partnership are not satisfied may be seen as indicative of the likelihood of the partnership not achieving its purposes, including that of providing a creative educational outcome. Creativity in and through education may be considered in two broad categories: (1) creative responses to educational situations; and (2) learning through education to be creative. The conditions for learning to be creative may be drawn from appropriate learning theory, and they may also intersect with the types of and minimal conditions for educational partnerships identified here. Conditions governing creative responses to educational situations, however, may be drawn more directly from these types of and minimal conditions for educational partnerships. Each of the general conditions of creativity and creative outcomes – but especially the intelligence condition – is likely to be more fully satisfied by more endogenous structural realities, more integrated ethical realities, and higher partner autonomy. Accordingly, the likelihood of achieving (more) creative responses to educational situations may be expected to be greater according to the extent to which the minimal conditions are realized or exceeded in each type of partnership. They may also be expected to be greater across the sequence of partnership types (toward, for, and in learning) – although the achievement of other intended outcomes of the activity clearly may not follow that sequence. These relationships may point to reasons why some educational partnerships are more productive of creative outcomes than are others. They may also be used in the planning and management of particular creative partnerships in education, to ensure that the minimal structural realities and ethical and political requirements of the partnership, if it is to be successful, are satisfied.
Balakrishnan, Vishalache
The use of theory of constraints (TOC) in teaching of moral education: Malaysia
Victoria University of Wellington
Download full paper (non-refereed)>
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Moral Education has been in existence in Malaysia for the last ten to fifteen years. In fact during pre and post independents days, Moral Education was taught as ethics in almost all missionary schools in Malaysia. Since the subject was formally introduced as a core subject for non Muslim students, various methods have been introduced to teach the subject in educational institutions, right from Pre School up to the university. This paper looks into one of the latter method introduced to teach Moral Education that is the use of Theory of Constraints (TOC).
Barrett, Jonathan
Neither consumers nor instruments: re-imagining students as citizens
School of Business
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
During the period 1984-1999, a neo-liberal model of tertiary education was introduced in New Zealand, which envisaged students as entrepreneurial consumers or autonomous choosers. Since 1999, tertiary education strategy has moved towards a communitarian model.
In this paper, I argue that the communitarian model implemented in New Zealand instrumentalises education, so that students are imagined as instruments for achieving preordained economic goals. Development of the human subject is not considered an end in itself; rather education is valuable only when it clearly leads to particular economic outcomes. Both neo-liberal and communitarian models for tertiary education jeopardise students’ potential for achieving autonomy and full human flourishing.
In contrast, I argue that tertiary education policy should be founded on recognition of students’ human dignity and expectation of full human development so that students are envisaged as citizens of a fully inclusive, discursive democracy. In this way, students are more likely to realise their potential for autonomy and full human flourishing (including social responsibility), and society as a whole will be enhanced.
Benade, Leon
Enterprise in the New Zealand curriculum and its challenge to ethical teacher professionality
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The traditional role played by schools and teachers is now seriously challenged as the Ministry of Education urges schools to ‘embed’ enterprise values and methodologies in curricula school communities will develop locally in line with the new Curriculum. The tensions that arise from this challenge are magnified by factors such as inadequate resourcing in low socio-economic status schools and the perceptions of students in such schools who frequently grow up in welfare-dependant homes or working-class homes where values of entrepreneurship and risk-taking with capital are foreign concepts. This paper is based on research in a low-decile school whose staff includes several teachers hostile to the 2006 Draft Curriculum and whose student body is made up of largely working-class children of Pacific Island origin. It is of interest to establish whether enterprise for education is actually for the already affluent who are able to relate to the values of enterprise and to access the resources required to mobilise such a programme or whether enterprise is open to all.
Besley, Tina & Peters, Michael A
Academic entrepreneurship and the creative economy
California State University, San Bernardino
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The paper explores the relationships among several notions: the ‘creative economy’; New Growth Theory and the primacy of ideas; academic entrepreneurship; and the new paradigm of cultural production. Broadly conceptualised, the creative economy links the primacy of ideas in both arts and sciences in a more embedded and social framework of entrepreneurship which positions education as central, since its institutions are the primary knowledge institutions that provide the conditions for the transmission and development of new ideas. Entrepreneurship develops within networks that use new information and communication technologies. The role of the arts, humanities and social sciences becomes re-profiled as crucial in the generation of new ideas within the creative economy, moving discussion and analysis away from a single focus on STEM and the hard sciences such that the redesign of institutional/ academic environments is necessary in order to capitalize on ideas and move from creativity to systems of innovation.
Bolaji, Stephen Dele
Evolving creativity in Nigeria Education: A philosophical paradigm
Department of Educational Foundations
Michael Otedola College of Primary Education
Nigeria
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The acquisition of appropriate creative skills, abilities and competence both mental and physical as equipment for the individual to live in and contribute to the development of the society’ is one of the cardinal objectives of national policy on education by the Federal Government of Nigeria. It suffices to say, that Nigeria educational system is presently at a cross-road, in a juxtaposed state when compared with what is obtained in a developed nations. That the system is in state of doldrums is not an understatement. This is a system that places more premiums on certification and theoretical epistemology than innate abilities. What becomes imperative is the process of advocating empirical knowledge evolving creative skills, innovative ideas in salvaging the sector from this comatose state. It is against this background that the paper focuses on the philosophical paradigm of evolving creativity in Nigeria education.
Blenkinsop, Sean & Beeman, Chris
Dwelling-telling diversity: Initial key to an ecological worldview
Queens University
Canada
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
In considering ecology, comparatively little attention has been turned to the mode of thinking that may lead to uncovering new ideas or to the ecological nature of the philosophical underpinnings requisite for such a project. Our work examines several principles inherent in successful (“sustainable,” “resilient”) ecosystems and posits that any learning, but especially ecologically oriented learning, will have the best chance of success if it makes use of these. We examine what would constitute an ecological mode for teaching and learning through one particular lens, that of the state of being of attentive receptivity, as reported in interviews with several Temi-Augami Anishinaabe elders of the middle Ontario region in Canada. A consideration of this state of being suggests that learning, especially ecologically learning, might be considered as ontological shift; one such shift might entail an ecological positioning consistent with the principles inherent in successful ecological systems.
Boone, Danielle Jay
A Picasso or a pre-schooler?: Ways of seeing the “child as artist”
Queensland University of Technology
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Children’s art is a commonly featured in early childhood classroom and care centres. Adults readily display the art of young children in prominent locations for others to admire. This practice of displaying young children’s visual art poses several questions about the child and his or her artistic expression. Are these children likened to professional artists? How do children feel about their own art being displayed? What methods of display are appropriate, if any? A review of early childhood art education literature offers ways of seeing the “child as artist.” Artistic learning is complex in and of itself, and to complicate matters art education has not progressed in a linear fashion and lacks a unified organizational structure. However, the place of art in the curriculum and the best way of teaching art to young children are central debates within the field of early childhood art education. This paper draws on doctoral research that attempts to explore ways of seeing the “child as artist” within the context of early childhood art education and presents an argument for new understandings of young children’s experiences with the display of their own visual artwork.
Bryant, Sandra
The Council of Elrond challenges the Sylvia Plath Effect: Authenticity and values in creative endeavour
Faculty of Education
Queensland University of Technology
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
Many people experience deep satisfaction and a sense of meaningful accomplishment through creative work. The desire to live a meaningful life will undoubtedly call many people to creative careers and efforts in the current climate of commercial interest in creativity. While opportunities to undertake creative work are bound to increase, pressure to perform creatively may bring unfamiliar stresses. What, then, makes the difference between a desirable and fulfilling creative life, and an attempt that crumbles into emotional instability or even tragedy? Creativity researchers have demonstrated the importance of authenticity and integrated values in maintaining persistence, generative thinking, vitality and satisfaction in creative effort (Ryan & Deci, 2000). This paper discusses instances of creative life and work, such as that of scholar-author JRR Tolkien, in connection with findings from social psychology and neuroscience, in order to show how a person’s values can function to enable or inhibit personally meaningful creative endeavour. The indication that high suicide rates in some creative populations such as female poets, may have a great deal to do with failure to maintain authenticity in creative life (Kaufman & Baer, 2002), only serves to emphasise that in a creative economy people will benefit from developing integrated systems of values from which to act authentically. Recommendations of creativity researchers regarding values development in educational settings are presented.
Cannatella, Howard
Dewey’s art as experience: the phenomenon of cultural achievement and social life
Canada
This paper will not be presented.
Discerning from the beginning to its end, Art as Experience is one of the most comprehensive challenging thesis for art educators and policy makers alike. Testing, questioning and tough, it examines what embodies a thriving and healthy creative society. Dewey claims correctly that art education can never be a literal experience, a leveler, a rule, a matter of reason alone or a moral aim and cannot be governed by charts, restrictions, bureaucracy, conventionality and statistics. For education this has major consequences about how art should be taught. Dewey is adamant; art is in the lead in what constitutes new vision. To be able to pluck the benefits of this art for our social system of education, Dewey maintains, as this paper will explore, that teaching must revolve around what Art as Experience evokes in its nature.
Claiborne, Lise Bird & Cornforth, Sue
Troubling practices and the academy: Dialoguing educational and clinical supervision
School of Education Studies
Victoria University of Wellington
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
This paper is concerned with the unacknowledged 'pastoral' work of academics that has complex ethical implications and receives little reflexive consideration. We draw on the differing discourses of educational and clinical supervision. Educational supervision of new teachers or of student researchers has resonances with more clinical supervision practices. Both are widely perceived as beneficial and are argued on ethical grounds. However, a comparison foregrounds supervision’s problematic association with a neo-liberal economic agenda. Following a desire to speak the unspeakable in academic spaces, we apply a critical, discursively informed analysis to describe supervision as an affluent, professional response to an increasingly restrictive individualism, which compounds the isolating function of an unsustainable regime. We explore the possibilities that supervisory practices offer as an organisational space in the domain of power, locating untapped potential in their ambivalence. We invite a radical revisioning of supervision as a platform that might have potential for an increasingly subversive and inclusive voice.
Cranley, Elizabeth
Teaching ethics in the creative industries: A new theory of creative integrity
Creative Industries Faculty
Queensland University of Technology
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
In this paper I will explore the philosophical relationships between ethics and aesthetics in order to construct a new theoretical framework for teaching ethics to students in the creative industries. I will briefly outline and problematize the methods traditionally employed to teach applied ethics. I argue that the classical ethical theory has only limited applicability for students whose careers will unfold at the intersection of creative practice and commercialization. In the second part of this paper I will develop a new theory of ‘creative integrity’ as a model for students to respond to the tensions between their personal values and professional environment. I will conclude by highlighting a number of the specific changes I have made in a third year advertising ethics course using this theory of ‘creative integrity’.
Davies, Martin & Devlin, Marcia
Interdisciplinary higher education and the Melbourne Model
Faculty of Economics and Commerce
The University of Melbourne|
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The Melbourne Model has recently been adopted by University Council after a long consultation process and widespread media attention. It proposes design of new subjects which offer: "different ways of knowing" from their "home" disciplines, and 'the delivery of breadth subjects that are interdisciplinary in character'. This paper investigates "interdisciplinary higher education". The paper first covers definitional issues associated with the terms "academic disciplines", as well as the newer terms "interdisciplinary", "pluridisciplinary", "cross-disciplinary, "trandisciplinary" and "multidisciplinary". Second, the paper overviews the methodological issues in any move from a traditional form of educational delivery to that underlined by the Melbourne Model.
Devine, Nesta
Changing the subject
University of Waikato
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
A number of research projects have been called for, and written, under the general heading of ‘The experience of….’ I have been involved in one myself -‘The experience of Pasifika teachers….’. There are some assumptions built into this format, or formula, concerning the nature of experience, the validity of narratives concerning experience, and the significance of telling those narratives. At a number of points these assumptions can be questioned. In interrogating the nature of ‘experience’ as a focus of research I draw upon the phenomenological writing of RD Laing, on what he sees as the important task of academics in relaying the ‘experience’ of those whose voices are not usually ‘heard’ to those who, presumably, ought to be ‘hearing’ them. Laing’s account suggests that the narrative of experience forms a connection between the suffering and those who do not suffer, and seems to be the basis for the numerous academic studies which take the form of ‘grounded theory’ or ‘empirical’ studies of various sorts. However, some questions can be asked about how the subject manages to sort out the components of ‘experience’. To begin with there is the question of the correspondence between the subjective experience and ‘truth’. But even within this subjective experience there are other questions. Obviously not everything that the person has undergone is included in the narratives. To a certain extent the narratives are constructed by the question, by the questioner, and by what the subject regards – for historical or political reasons – as appropriate to this particular narrative. What is left out? Is it merely irrelevant detail or is something else of importance here? At this point, ‘memory’ becomes significant, and here I draw on Nietzche’s view that what is important in cognitive work is not what we remember, but our skill in forgetting. What are the principles of forgetting that make these narratives possible?
Di, Xu & Ericson, David
The interplay of creativity and policy: Quality and equality in teacher education
Department of Educational Foundations
College of Education
University of Hawaii-Manoa
Download part paper, Di (non-refereed) >
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
What is the relationship between creativity and policy in higher education? How does this relationship shape the educational outcomes and impact educational quality and equality? This paper examines the definition of creativity, its connection with higher education and policy in the course of history, and illustrates the complex interplay of creativity and policy. At the same time, it explores the impact on quality and equality with an example of an admission policy for teacher education programs at the College of Education, University of Hawaii – Manoa.
Engels-Schwarzpaul, A-Ch (Tina)
Traversing the distance between the known and unknown: Fastening one’s seatbelt in postgraduate creative-practice research supervision
Auckland University of Technology
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
Practice-based research in art and design is only partially amenable to discursive explication. In an educational framework that relies on notions of master/student relationships, in which the former is supposed to pass knowledge on to the latter, this fact often creates anxieties for both. From Jacques Rancière’s point of view, the master’s ignorance is important for the student’s emancipation. In his book on The Ignorant Schoolmaster, Joseph Jacotot, he claims that learners become emancipated through their own activities of observing, retaining, repeating, verifying, doing, reflecting, taking apart and combining differently. In support of this method of the riddle, the supervisor can teach best by not knowing the subject matter but, instead, providing positive constraints to help keep the researcher on her own path, acknowledging that no two orbits are alike. For any researcher to be able to discover anything new, she has to learn the different languages of theories, things and media. The foundation of such knowledge is, however, not the supervisor/master. Her role, in contrast, is to claim the equality of each intelligent being, to discourage false modesty in students, and to encourage them to make discoveries through experiment and experience: to be attentive and use their own intelligence. For this to happen, master and student need a thing in common that establishes an egalitarian intellectual link between them. In practice-based research in design and art, the thing in common emerges largely through non-discursive media and modes of thought. Here, what can be seen, what can be thought about it, and what it can mean is also matter of translation, which Walter Benjamin, in The Task of the Translator, described as a mutually complimentary relationship between the languages of original and translation. No language in itself can give form to truth – and the task of a translation is to reveal what remains repressed in the original. In the many forms of translation involved in creative-practice research, candidate and supervisor work ‘between the lines’, in the interstices between the unknown and known, translating and re-translating. This paper explores, drawing on concepts by Benjamin, Rancière, Dewey, Wittgenstein and Kleist, which aspects help or prevent a situation in which students can respond to someone speaking to them, rather than examining them, under the sign of equality.
Farquhar, Sandy
Learning - a creative enterprise
Faculty of Education
University of Auckland
Session 6
2.45 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Inherent in early childhood curriculum documents such as Te Whariki and Kei tua o te pai is a humanist tradition of the creative individual engaged in free play and exploration. This child-centred pedagogy appears to be at odds with increasing regulatory requirements occurring in the sector. Business and technology metaphors increasingly underpin teaching and learning within the sector: characterized in terms of quality criteria and minimum standards. The policy shift towards this instrumental view of early childhood care and education is examined in this paper in terms of the creative individual of curriculum documents and the creative individual in an enterprise culture.
Fielding, Julie M
‘Knowing the self’ through creativity: Is education about students understanding and knowing the self?
ICT Professional Learning Team
Department of Education
Howrath
Tasmania
Download full paper (non-refereed)>
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
Is education about teaching students ways of finding and interpreting information and then preparing them for the workforce...or is it more than that? If it is more, what does the 'more' include? Many philosophers have considered that 'knowing the self' is an essential part of growing, pivotal to becoming a moral human being. Some believe this 'knowing the self' may be achieved through creativity, through expression in one or more of the Arts. In this paper I will explore the interconnection between the arts and creativity described through specific instances of lived experience in education. I will inquire how this interconnection might give students the opportunity to understand themselves as people in relation to others and how this maybe central to all aspects of education.
Fitzsimons, Peter
Social capital and education
Education & Management Services (NZ) Ltd
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Social capital is usually characterised in terms of patterns of cooperation and trust among social networks, concepts that fit squarely within the traditional scope of education. Curiously vague, the concept of social capital is now being harnessed to the OECD definition of human capital, the latter having assumed dominance as the overarching rationale for educational policy in western economies. This paper explores the impact on social and creative aspects of education, as human capital is measured in terms of ‘the quality of the workforce’ (OECD, 2007). Exploring the relationship between the two forms of capital, the paper argues that economic productivity is insufficient as the main driver for education.
Floden, Robert E & Chang, Kuo-Liang
Interpreting a jazz score: a metaphor for creative teaching in contexts with strong instructional guidance
Michigan State University
Download full paper (non-refereed)>
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
To call a teacher, “creative,” has usually been a term of praise. In the current education system in the US (and likely elsewhere), however, teachers are expected to stick closely to a prescribed curriculum, perhaps even to a prescribed script. A metaphor has been proposed that would give a place for creativity in teaching, within the confines of instructional mandates. Some now say that the teacher’s job is to play from a (jazz) score, rather than working as a composer. This paper will explore this metaphor, with attention to the extent that it gives a positive place to teacher creativity.
Glade-Wright, Robyn & Cole, David R
The creative processes of design and writing in education
University of Tasmania
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
Recognising the significance of a created object is a critical moment that brings together numerous concerns of the artist. This presentation will look at this process in light of recent approaches to teaching creative writing and design. For example, the designer will develop a highly insightful perceptivity that will mould future projects. What is this perceptivity and how can we explain it? What uses does it have in education? The creative writer will enter a self-reflective labyrinth of memories, imagination and language that generates further possibilities for their work. This paper will debate the non-assuredness of the creative processes in design and writing to produce a philosophy of education.
Golding, Clinton
Pragmatism, constructivism and Socratic objectivity: The pragmatist epistemic aim of philosophy for children
University of Melbourne
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
It will be shown in this paper that the epistemic aim of Philosophy for Children should be understood in pragmatist terms. It argues that Philosophy for Children, as a practice of dialogical inquiry, falls in the middle of a continuum from constructivist through to Socratic objectivist epistemic aims. Philosophy for Children shares the constructivist aim of creation but it also shares the Socratic aim of discovery. The epistemic aim of P4C however, is not to discover the objective truth or to construct subjectively acceptable views, but to discover and create tentative, fallible views that make sense of philosophical problems we currently face. As such, Philosophy for Children is best described as pragmatist. The epistemic aim of Philosophy for Children is to create and discover views that work to resolve philosophical problems.
Gould, Elizabeth
Critical interventions in music education: creative engagements and exclusions
Faculty of Music
University of Toronto
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Music education in North America is a commodity sold not to pre-secondary students, but primarily to pre-service and in-service music teachers. Like all mass-produced consumables, it is valuable to the extent that it is not creative, that is, to the extent that it is reproduced and reproducible. Demonstrated in curricular materials, notably general music series textbooks and band, orchestra, and choral method books available from a rapidly shrinking cadre of publishers, it also impels pedagogical practices that have come to be known as ‘methodolatries’ (Regelski, 2004). The economy of music teacher preparation, then, distributes resources and techniques that produce predictable, consistent, and repeatable goods and services, leaving it musically and educationally impoverished. I argue that engaging political necessities of difference through exclusions in music education creates its ontological materiality, enriching its creative reality.
Graham, Linda J
Liberal doses of in/equality: Advance Australia where?
The University of Sydney
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The relationship between social background and achievement has preoccupied educational researchers since the mid-20th century with major studies in the area reaching prominence in the late 60s. Despite five decades of research and innovation since, recent studies using OECD data have shown that the relationship is quite possibly stronger now than in the early post-war period. This speaks in part to the philosophical foundations now underpinning the provision of public education in Australia and the erosion of a once proud egalitarian state. Whilst Australian culture may never have been as “other-regarding” as the Nordic cultures, the ethos of a “fair go for all” was, until recently, an enduring faith subscribed to by many. In this paper, the systematic destabilisation of public education in Australia is examined as a philosophical problem stemming from a fundamental shift in political orientation which has changed how this contemporary society views and attempts to distinguish “desert”.
Grierson, Elizabeth
Creativity and the return of a political will: Art, language and the creative subject
RMIT University
Melbourne
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
The globalised economies led by industrialised nations proclaim the fundamental importance of creativity for the making of the entrepreneurial self and innovative nation of the 21st century. Creativity and creative enterprise might be politically positioned as key drivers of globalised economies, but does this mean that the subject of creative discourse is equally proclaimed and fostered in education and the public sphere? This paper is concerned with the creative subject, the way creativity is positioned, understood and valued, and the processes in art and language whereby the creative subject becomes apparent or dies within the text of entrepreneurial discourses. The discussion draws from Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes and Hélène Cixous, and the work of art and language to call for a more critical awareness of the subject and the need for a political will in the discourses of creative knowledge economies.
The paper is divided into three sections. The first is concerned with creativity, its definitions and political applications; the second addresses the subject of discourse through art from 14th century Italy to 21st century Bondi Beach; and the final section performs a creative analysis of language and difference. Ultimately the paper calls for a political will to be exercised in understanding and framing the creative subject and its reinscription as an ‘entrepreneurial self’.
Hager, Paul
Can teaching be a practice? Does it matter?: A critique of MacIntyre’s arguments
University of Technology
Sydney
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
According to Alasdair MacIntyre’s influential account of practices, “teaching itself is not a practice, but a set of skills and habits put to the service of a variety of practices”. Various philosophers of education have responded to and critiqued MacIntyre’s position, most notably in a Special Issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Education in 2003. However this paper maintains that this debate remains inconclusive and argues that aspects of MacIntyre’s position require more elucidation and discussion. In seeking to provide this, the paper attempts to clarify further the issues surrounding the question of whether teaching is a practice and the advantages or otherwise of so conceptualising it.
Hailwood, Kim & Clark, John
Financial literacy and the curriculum: Compulsory, optional or not at all?
Reserve Bank of New Zealand
Wellingon
School of Educational Studies
Massey University
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The Retirement Commissioner has suggested that financial literacy should be taught to all children in primary schools; the new National Curriculum will allow schools to consider incorporating financial literacy into their programmes; an NZEI spokeswomen is sceptical about more being forced on teachers, particularly something people learn from experience. Given the options – compulsory, optional, not at all – we argue for the inclusion of financial literacy as a compulsory element in the school curriculum. Our justification for compulsion is grounded in autonomy, and is twofold. First, we begin with a brief outline of what financial literacy is. Second, we argue that the knowledge gained by becoming financially literate makes an important contribution to intellectual autonomy and the ability to make important decisions about one’s life and welfare. Third, just as importantly, financial literacy is the key to children becoming materially autonomous adults able to provide for their own (and their family’s) resources and manage these in ways that sustain a quality of life above that which no citizen should fall below.
Haynes, Bruce
History teaching for patriotic citizenship in Australia
Edith Cowan University
Perth
Session 6
2.45 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
This paper is one of a number from a range of countries being prepared for publication under the title of Patriotism and Citizenship. The Australian Commonwealth government is seeking to draft a national school curriculum for Australian history and thus overturn State, Territory and Catholic authorised curricula. The Prime Minister has particular ideas as to what schools should teach to encourage patriotic citizenship. Over the past 200 years, what being a patriotic Australian citizen has changed and how and what schools have taught in this regard has likewise changed. Whether schools should teach patriotism and whether history teaching should encourage patriotism are controversial issues. Brighouse’ argument against patriotic history teaching is rejected as is the Prime Minister’s view of teaching Australian history. The paper leaves open the question as to who should decide the curriculum and the grounds upon which such a decision should be made.
Haynes, Felicity
Creativity, the arts and toxic institutions
The University of Western Australia
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
In 1997, Singapore mandated creativity in all schools in an effort to increase national entrepreneurial activities in a resource-poor nation. Ramachrandran (2007) and Gardner (2003) assume that creativity, being neurophysiological, has little to do with the artistic process but can be trained in schools. I will argue that their conception of creativity is inimical to the artistic process. Their naturalised conception of creativity is part of a conservative (and I will claim toxic) educational ideology which aims at control rather than participatory engagement in change. This paper will then elaborate on the relationship between creativity and poetry, and metaphor/symbol as agents of meaning in particular, in order to explain why it is so difficult to raise the status of the arts in some forms of outcomes-based education.
Henry, Martin
Policy, evidence and practice: The three legged stool and the ethics of the sitter
Ministry of Education
Wellington
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
This paper is designed to explore the space between policy, evidence and practice. How do they intersect in the self of decision makers? What considerations are brought to bear and how are the needs and perspectives of the participants filtered in an ethical way? Policy making is not a fixed, but a creative process. Philosophical questions have to be asked at every stage and the ethics of the sitter are critical in finding processes which enable everyone to have a say, but lead to robust decisions. This paper will be based on the questions to be asked and the ethical considerations which guide the creativity of the policy maker. Practical examples will be discussed in a philosophical way.
Heraud, Richard & Gibbons, Andrew
Creativity, enterprise and the absurd: education, fast capitalism, and the Myth of Sisyphus (a challenge to an educator)
Department of Theory and History of Education
University of Barcelona
New Zealand Tertiary College
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
Albert Camus explores the imagery of Sisyphus’ infinite, unending labour, rolling a boulder up a hill for eternity, in portraying the absurdity of human being. This paper draws upon the Myth of Sisyphus, and Camus’ notion of the absurd as a challenge to the purpose of education in a paradigm of fast capitalism. Fast capitalism (the accumulation of capital made rapid by the supposed importance of the knowledge economy) requires fast capitalists, a species of agent who cannot be supplied without the fabrication of human capital. The paradigm of fast capitalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand contributes to an absurd educational game in which educators engage in a never-ending play of problem solving. Although these are problems that may be solved through their subjection to the confines of a deliberate pathway, we wonder what form has been promised to and for the human being whose pathways are predetermined by this pantomime. How then might the educator invest in different purposes for education, creativity and enterprise? This paper argues that educators require a familiarity with the absurdity of both their role as educator and the situation the student finds herself in, in any contemporary or future educational terrain. The Myth of Sisyphus provides a rich metaphor for exploring the ups and downs of such terrains.
Hornblow, David
The missing universities: Absent critics and consciences of society?
School of Business
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
With few exceptions, universities have become ineffective in their role as critics and conscience of society. Support for this contention is provided in this paper by addressing the questions: What is the evidence that universities are failing to act as critics and conscience of society? In what ways should universities continue to be the critics and conscience of society? Exemplars and examples of what has been, what is, and what might be are provided. It is posited that as a good critic, a university as a community of learners and leaders should identify and challenge assumptions, be aware of context, seek alternative ways of interpreting situations, remain sceptical about what is seen and heard, and pronounce judgement as appropriate. As a conscience, the university should take into account and articulate the moral quality of the actions and motives of both itself and society, approving the right and condemning the wrong. Also, it is argued that it is essential to have an underpinning philosophy. This could be, for example, social constructivism. Without a philosophy, there can be no conscience. Without a conscience, criticality is of little worth. From a logical perspective it is possible for an institution to be neither critic nor conscience, critic but not conscience, conscience but not critic, or critic and conscience. The point is made that the first two of the four options are unacceptable for a university; the last two apply according to the circumstances.
Horton, Eleanor
Neoliberalism and the Australian healthcare system (factory)
Queensland University of Technology
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
Neoliberalism and the Australian Healthcare System (Factory) This paper will examine the interrelationship between categorising the neo-liberal perspective and the term ‘consumer.’ My explicit concern is the likely intrusion of the neo-liberal mindset onto what is essentially the ‘social nature of identity’ (Billington, Hockey & Strawbridge 1998, p. 56). By locating the discourse of consumerism within the broader political framework, I am able to examine the neoliberalist view and its positioning of marginalised groups with the aim of attempting to focus attention to the potentially negative consequences of the consumer label.
Irwin, Ruth
After neoliberalism - environmental education to education for sustainability
Department of Philosophy
University of Auckland
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
Education for Sustainability is presented as a swish alternative to old fashioned pessimistic Environmental Education. ‘Sustainability’ takes a position ‘after’ Neoliberalism, that purports to absorb and resolve some of the critiques of Neoliberalism, such as too great an emphasis on rational individualism, and a theological faith in God’s Invisible Hand for ‘balancing’ the Market. The Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark stated in her State of the Nation speech in 2007, “The invisible hand of the market doesn't deliver a sustainable nation, as an earlier era of New Zealand politics showed only too well.” Yet, they can only present themselves in this manner because ‘sustainability’ itself, does so much work for them. The market no longer needs emphasis because it is embedded in the meaning of sustainability. ‘Sustainable development’ has been described by Anthony Giddons in his book on The Third Way as encouraging efficiency. Efficiency might be admirable in economic terms, but has little to do with conservation, or reducing consumerism. Sustainable ‘development’ links economic growth to environmental measures. It allows the metaphors of market liberalisation to overtake each and every environmental issue, even of such immense proportions as human extinction through greenhouse gas emissions and resultant climate change. ‘Sustainability’ is a key measure to the deployment of expanding markets into areas which hitherto remained ‘external’ to the cost-benefit exercises of Pareto optimality. Sustainability introduces new measures of surveillance over businesses and individuals that enable the deepening of governmentality (Foucault) and enhance the ability for tax revenue. It also serves multiple purposes by addressing, albeit in very limited fashion, environmental concerns, and at the same time, allowing politicians to distance themselves from long held, and sophisticated critiques of the principles of Neoliberalism. At the same time, sustainability removes all of the unpopular consequences of deeply understood environmental concern so that the consumerist lifestyle is able to continue unchecked. The consequences of the rhetoric of sustainability is the continuation of modern culture and an ability to keep ignoring the scientific evidence that modernity is resulting in radical climate change, pollution, deforestation, and extinctions.
Javidi, Tahereh
The functions of elementary school teachers of Mashhad City in developing students’ creativity
Faculty of Education and Psychology
Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
Iran
Download full paper (non-refereed) >
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
This study examines Primary school principals’ activities about fostering Students’ creativity in Mashhad. Attention to this point that nowadays, in the world totally and in Iran especially, people emphasis on raising students creativity, this research is so important, because I want to know, in Iran education that is a centralized education, all education policies, plans and methods is sending out from government to schools and is almost a closed system and has centralized planning, can the schools principals foster students creativity? And the principals how do this and exactly what activities they do for fostering students’ creativity in the schools. Totally, whether in a centralized education that ordinarily invites students to having common qualities, can the principals foster creativity or divergent thinking in students? In this study data gathering instruments are interview and questionnaire with opened and closed responses.
Jiang, Xiaoping
Towards the internationalisation of higher education in the New Zealand context
Guangzhou University
China
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
This paper discusses the concept and development of, and the rationales for the internationalisation of higher education. In particular, the impacts of globalisation and the knowledge economy upon the internationalisation of higher education are examined. Furthermore, a practice model is provided for analysing the internationalisation of higher education. The paper chooses New Zealand for a case study to exemplify the current trend in the internationalisation of higher education – a shift from aid to trade. The results of the theoretical and case study suggest that the internationalisation of higher education is becoming increasingly dominated by economic imperatives and ‘internationalisation’ is occurring not only beyond but also within national borders.
Kapitzke, Cushla & Hay, Stephen
"Smart" states: reconstituting creativity
Queensland University of Technology
Griffith University
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
This paper argues that discourses of "creativity" currently driving educational policy and practice within so-called knowledge economies are neoliberal, governmental rationalities for the production of student subjectivities needed by global capitalism. Using Larner and Le Heronâ (2002) concept "global imaginaries", it describes a public private partnership in curricular innovation between an Australian state education system and a transnational corporation, namely, Boeing Incorporated, and argues that industry-driven curricula comprise intelligibilities for conduct of the self as human capital. As process and product, the Aerospace Studies curriculum constitutes a creative manifestation of the increasing corporatization of schooling through de-bureaucratized learning spaces and increasingly individuated, entrepreneurial student subjectivities. The paper rejects the epistemological realism sustaining common sense narratives of "school reform through innovation" by positioning the project within a critical interpretive space between the "creative" as empirical fact, economic aspiration, discursive (re)construction, and material reconfiguration of the self, the school, society, industry and the state.
Keating, Ross
Creativity and the artwork: the perspectives of a painter and a philosopher
School of Education
ACU National University Ltd
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Creativity in Robert Henri’s view is a gratuitous act, shot through with mystery; what is left after such an act is the artwork itself as concrete evidence that such a heightened state of consciousness has been achieved. Behind this view is the notion that once an artist reaches a certain “state of high functioning”, as Henri calls it, then creativity is inevitable: creativity is what happens, while reflection, seen as a secondary act, follows. This paper will examine Henri’s understanding of the nature of creativity from his perspective as a modernist New York painter, in conjunction with Eliot Deutsch’s theoretical insights as a philosopher deeply interested in the nature of the experience of an artwork. Deutsch’s investigation of the experience of an artwork calls upon his understanding of a broad range of Western and Eastern philosophy – approaches that include Plato, Croce, Vedanta, and Rasa theory. In his Essays on the Nature of Art (1996) Deutsch presents the view that the experience of an artwork involves the assimilation of the work’s aesthetic force, the recognition of its meaning, the discernment of its formal dimensions, and “calls for a special appropriation that yields an integrated wholeness” (p.31). This paper presents commonalities between Henri’s and Deutsch individual perspectives and discusses some general educational implications which could be drawn from these commonalities.
Lines, David
Affects and percepts: challenging ‘machinic’ education through art
University of Auckland
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Contemporary education functions in a ‘machinic’ discursive environment closely aligned to global neoliberal economic, cultural forces. Within such an environment, dominant political agendas such as economic use and competitive innovation can obscure or minimise minoritarian knowledge, conflict, complexity and new territorial possibilities in both teaching and learning. Drawing from Deleuzian and arts-inspired thinking, this paper seeks to uncover instances and ‘affects’ of such domination, and further, develop ways of thinking about pedagogy that disconcert normative conditions that subscribe to machinic learning processes and outcomes in classroom and studio contexts. Pedagogies of affect are actions and functions in education that can be enabling or disabling depending on the particular configuration of forces in an educational event. The intersection of art(artistic practices and thinking) and philosophy(pedagogical thinking), in a Nietzschean sense, injects a critical and aesthetic element into the linear rationales of economic driven pedagogical endeavours.
Locke, Kirsten A
Aesthetics, politics, and public pedagogy: let me sing you gentle songs
University of Auckland
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
This essay considers artistic modes of subjectification as a requirement of equality and democracy in public pedagogy. Through bearing witness to the childhood of thought, Lyotard explains that like the pupil, writers, artists, scholars, and novices must enter into retreat in order to learn what they will have to say to others. In counterpoint to this, Rancière offers an ‘aesthetic of politics’ that positions a notion of democracy as the specific ‘mode of symbolic structuring’ of the individual living with a common language. This paper is a brief exploration of the lessons instilled within the thought of these two men, with an ear to an emerging pedagogy that pays attention to what is silenced and forgotten when we turn to educating the child, and ourselves.
Maruyama, Yasushi & Ueno, Tetsu
Ethics education for professionals in Japan: A critical view
Hiroshima University
Download full paper (non-refereed)>
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Ethics education for professionals has become popular in Japan for last two decades. Many of professional schools, especially those of engineering and of nursing, require students to take an applied ethics or professional ethics course these days - very few courses of professional ethics of teaching, on the other hand, have yet been taught in Japan, though. While various programs for professionals have offered ethics courses, it seems to us that students' outcomes are insufficient. Students may learn ethical theories and ethical codes, but not obtain their own ethical judgement through the course. What kind of difficulties in teaching professional ethics do we have? How can we improve ethics courses for professionals? In order to answer these questions, we will review and examine practices of ethics education in each area of engineering, nursing, teaching and business in Japan, in terms of historical backgrounds, teaching methods and training instructors.
McCarthy, Christine
Art and the creation of mind
Educational planning and leadership studies
University of Iowa
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Harth (1999) argues that both Art and Language emerged in the human species as the eventual externalization of certain previously evolved internal cognitive abilities, viz., abilities to form images and symbolic representations in the brain, in an “internal sketchpad.” Bennett and Hacker (2003) argue, in contrast, that the very conceptions of images and symbols “in the brain” are incoherent. I examine the conundrum, employing Deweyan conceptions of the nature and function of Art, Language and Mind. I argue that deliberate and overt activities of representation, by organisms, of abstract qualities of the world, via manipulation of material forms, i.e., Art and Language, are fundamental and conceptually necessary conditions of Mind, and draw implications for education via the creative arts.
McEwan, Hunter
Dewey's idea as the teacher as artist
University of Hawaii
Manoa
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
In a recent work, “The Primitive Artist and the Lover” (Educational Theory, 2003), I argued that Dewey presents a view of teaching as an art—a power to combine aspects of informal and formal education into a new synthesis. This synthesis, I argued, involves engaging students as if they were participating directly in social life. I compared this activity to the work of the primitive artist whose task is the imitation of the primitive. The creative demand that this places on teachers, requires them to employ the educative power of the social environment within formal settings, such as the classroom. In this paper, I propose to explore this argument in more detail focusing my attention particularly on Dewey’s Chapter on Interest and Discipline in Democracy and Education and on Dewey’s aesthetics (Art as Experience).
McLellan, Simon
Maori education
Download full paper (non-refereed)>
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Two ways of dealing with cultures in schools are blind acceptance or critical examination. In this essay blind acceptance means, proselytising aspects of a minority culture into schools, interpreting an understanding of that culture from a dominant viewpoint, or claiming insight into bridging cultural differences. On the other hand, critical examination means examining a wide range of cultures and their values, comparing and contrasting their strengths and weaknesses and using that to reflect more deeply on wider humanity. In New Zealand, teachers and students reflect on aspects of Pakeha culture critically in school classrooms. It is the dominant means that underpins many of the assumptions on which decisions are based. By contrast Maori culture is reflected on, but not critically examined. While it is important to incorporate aspects of a minority viewpoint, in the most part it is blindly accepted. The result is that many schools have aspects of Maori culture that has been accepted without question. They were included for many reasons, such as reflecting community or meeting bi-nationhood agendas. It was assumed that it would be appropriate to resolve many of the cultural issues that divide these two cultures in schools. Blind acceptance is the main one. In my essay, I resolve these two opposites of relativism, and argue for an authentic place for Maori in schools today.
Milligan, Andrea
Texting: a window into representing our learners' social worlds
Social Sciences
College of Education
Victoria University of Wellington
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Appealing to texting and wider sociological literature, this paper illuminates the hitherto unexamined social theory implicit in current New Zealand social studies curricula. A restrictive view of the social world is revealed; society is represented as static, ordered and predictable. This social theory contrasts starkly with the society of our learners’ experience; one that is rapidly changing, and marked by flux, fluidity and indeterminacy. I urge that the social theory of New Zealand social studies curricula become the subject of rigorous, sustained and open debate, in order that our rising generations are permitted to think critically about, and respond creatively to, society as it is and might be.
Moylan, Philippa & Beckett, David
Lost in the forest - Finding the light: Research students and their creativity
Melbourne Education Research Institute
Faculty of Education
The University of Melbourne
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
Emotional intelligence is embedded within authentic, holistic and creative human experiences. In the 1990s, Hillman (e.g. The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling 1996) prefigured these, and Goleman has made EQ a best-seller. We explore a pedagogical version of emotional intelligence, taking ontology seriously (cf Beckett 2007, Moylan 2003), that is, personhood and identity formation, in the particular case of postgraduate students’ research practices. How are these formed by particular engagements, and to what extent do they generate a person’s ‘researcher’ identity? We develop our analysis with a case study: A student who is in the middle of a research degree and hasn't met the progression hurdles. She identifies the difficulty of being a researcher and of finding a focus in her reading. Through this case study we show the kind of creative learning research students in this situation can undertake to generate 'illumination'.
Musgrave, Alan
Keynote address
Realism and surrealism about science: Opening Address at the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia Conference, Wellington, New Zealand, December 2007
Alan writes: Born England, educated at the LSE (BA Honours Philosophy and Economics, PhD). Karl Popper supervised my PhD and I worked as his Research Assistant, then as a Lecturer there. Appointed Professor of Philosophy at Otago in 1970, at the tender age of 30 - those were the days! - and have been here ever since. Also a colleague and friend of Imre Lakatos, and edited with him Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (CUP, 1970), the best-selling record of the Popper/Kuhn confrontation at the famous 1965 London Conference that Lakatos and I organised. (Its proceedings ran to 4 volumes, but that is the only famous one.) Also published Common Sense, Science and Scepticism (CUP, 1992; also in German, Italian) and Essays on Realism and Rationalism (Rodopi, 1999), plus lots of articles etc. There recently appeared a Festschrift in my honour: Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave, edited C.Cheyne & J. Worrall (Springer 2006). I built up a good department at Otago. In the first PBRF exercise, it was ranked the top research department of any subject in the whole of New Zealand. In the second PBRF exercise, just completed, it was again ranked the top research department of any subject in the whole of New Zealand. My main research interest has been to defend commonsense and science against the ravages of scepticism, irrationalism, idealism and its modern incarnation, 'constructivism' or 'post-modernism' or whatever it is called.
Natanasabapathy, Puvana
Towards self-sustainability in education
School of Information and Social Sciences
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
Education is an empowering method of causing change. It plays a significant role in personal human development by developing the learning capacity of individuals. However, personal development tends to be perceived as a separate discipline on its own. This paper points out that education is actually for personal development. It argues that knowledge associated with personal development such as wisdom related knowledge should be embedded in courses more actively to draw desired behavioural patterns for self-sustainability and survival in this rapidly changing world. Self-sustainability is addressed from a behavioural perspective where desirable behavioural patterns that allow individuals to be retained or sustained for longer periods are considered sustainable qualities. Research is overwhelmingly in support of new ideals for workers to achieve long term sustainability in order to face the challenges in the 21st century. Emerging trends are explored and the development towards self-sustainability is discussed.
Naughton, Christopher
Creative arts as a service industry
School of Education
University of Auckland
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
In the United Kingdom the creative arts education enterprise is underway. Rival creative arts organizations now offer schools something they feel that they cannot – a worthwhile experience of the arts. If the trend in New Zealand continues, whereby any substantial preparation for teachers in the arts is abandoned, it won’t be long before schools in this country seek visiting troupes of ‘artists’ to do the same. The political divide between these arts specialists and full time arts educators is demonstrated by the extent to which the two sides are ideologically separated. While the talk might be of fostering the local through popular styles and or indigenous music, the reality is that the rationalist creative arts education industry sees little value in such posturing. Currently in New Zealand the new commercially focused creative arts establishment is intent on providing a service industry approach to arts education, not a provision that is of benefit to the community. It is as if rationalist philosophy, dressed in today’s new fashions of ‘intelligent choices,’ according to supra–cultural practice, can ignore teachers seeking solutions to the many broader community based issues of students and the culture of the school. With reference to Heidegger’s fourfold and Nietzsche’s concept of community, the arts can operate not as an adjunct, to the totalizing effect of the neo-liberal curriculum, as in ready made packages for consumption by the students, but as a space in which community, in Nietzsche’s disindividuated interpretation, can occur. The concept of the creative arts would not then be withheld in a space of individual accomplishment, as in industry individualized ‘excellence,’ but in a space where the wealth of a community of learners can be celebrated. In providing such experiences and outlook, a process of regeneration in arts education might yet save this critically important sphere of education from the ‘pay’ and ‘play’ traveling circus.
O’Loughlin, Marjorie
Dispositions, values and practices: Deweyan creative imagination as an educational goal
Koori Centre
Sydney University
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
At its most simply expressed education is seen as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and other human beings. The centrality of practice in Deweyan pragmatism means that dispositions may be described as demands for certain kinds of activity that over time come to constitute the self that is, in his terms, they form our ‘affective desires’ and furnish us with our working capacities. So we can think of habits as means, waiting like tools in a box, to be used by conscious resolve. But for Dewey they are something more - they are active means that project themselves, energetic and dominating ways of acting. However in understanding them we need to distinguish between materials, tools and means ‘proper’. Tools are merely potential means unless they are bodily co-ordinated in a specific operation. Dewey’s major point is that habits are rather a matter of practice not an intellectual proposition and they are always in a deep sense concerned with relationship not belief or purely intellectual conviction. In this paper I briefly examine Dewey’s understanding of disposition and habits and attempt to draw some insights regarding the development of the creative imagination as an educational goal.
Ozolins, John
Creativity, education and the subversion of the state
Australian Catholic University
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
Creativity is seen as valuable and rightly so, but the difficulty is that in recent times it has come to be defined narrowly as practically synonymous with what is economically valuable. While government initiatives to encourage creativity within educational systems is welcomed, the view that creativity will result if sufficient resources are allocated needs to be treated with caution. One aim of education is the development of human beings in all their capacities and talents, but this of itself does not involve the development of creativity. Moreover, since creativity involves not only what is innovative and new but also valuable, it is by no means clear how increased efforts to foster creativity will bring it about. The received view is that the logic of discovery and the logic of justification are not the same from which it can be concluded that there is no correlation between the resources allocated to a search for innovation and novelty and the outcomes of such a search. In addition, just because something is innovative and novel does not mean that it will be valuable, particularly because in the rhetoric of governments, this inevitably means what is of economic value. It is argued that a narrow concentration on technological innovation is the result of a lopsided understanding of what is good for human beings and that this is to the detriment of other more reflective forms of creativity which seek to locate the human in the arts, humanities and religion and not only in science and technology. Insofar as this runs against what is seen as valuable by the State, an education which encourages the development of the capacities of human beings in the arts and humanities will be subversive.
Peard, Robert
What constitutes quantitative literacy for pre-service primary teachers?
School of Mathematics, Science and Technical Education
Faculty of Education
Queensland University of Technology
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The author coordinates a Foundations Unit, Quantitative Literacy at Queensland University of Technology for pre-service BEd (primary) students of whom there are about 350 each year. There is no one single definition of or universal agreement on what constitutes quantitative literacy. However one major component requires to student to constantly question their beliefs and understanding of quantitative (mathematical and scientific) ideas. We ask “Why is it that in many school mathematics and science classrooms so many students suspend their beliefs and thinking?” Why are beliefs without foundation, misconceptions and prejudices so common? In the unit students examine the reasoning behind induction, deduction, hypothesis formation and the development of scientific theories. This paper examines the issues raised in the unit including: the nature of quantitative knowledge, and the bases of many of our beliefs, mathematical, scientific and everyday.
Peters, Michael
Education, creativity and the economy of passions: New forms of educational capitalism
Educational Policy Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The paper reviews claims for creativity in the economy and in education distinguishing two accounts: ‘personal anarcho-aesthetics’ and ‘the design principle’. The first emerges in the psychological literature from sources in the Romantic Movement emphasizing the creative genius and the way in which creativity emerges from deep subconscious processes, involves the imagination, is anchored in the passions, cannot be directed and is beyond the rational control of the individual. This account has a close fit to business often as a form of ‘brainstorming’, ‘mind-mapping’ or ‘strategic planning’, and is closely associated with the figure of the risk-taking entrepreneur. By contrast ‘the design principle’ is both relational and social and surfaces in related ideas of ‘social capital’, ‘situated learning’, and ‘P2P’ (peer-to-peer) accounts of commons-based peer production. It is seen to be a product of social and networked environments—rich semiotic and intelligent environments in which everything speaks. This paper traces the genealogies of these two contrasting accounts of creativity and their significance for educational practice before showing how both notions are strongly connected in accounts of new forms of capitalism that require a rethinking of the notion of creativity and its place in schools and institutions of higher education. The paper begins by providing a context in terms of a history of the knowledge economy and the historical tendency toward aesthetic or designer capitalism.
Pfeiffle, Horst
Entrepreneurship
Institute for General Education and Philosophy
Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration
Austria
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Already firmly established in common English usage by the late 19th century, the entrepreneur has since developed into a transnational linguistic neologism over the course of the 20th century. Yet the adding of “attractive” supplementary attributes to its meaning has lead to an overloading of the semantic field and a threat of loss of its specific economic connotation, almost raising the impression that some well-meaning educational planner will soon degenerate to the idea of describing any kind of cognitive action as entrepreneurial. The entrepreneur and his entourage seem to have become the Gods of modern political ideology, verbally burying the Schumpeterian machine of innovation as the centre of capitalist economics. When the labour society threatens to run out of work, entrepreneurship will hardly be in a position to halt rampant unemployment in a globally uncertain world. Likewise, entrepreneurship education should not promise more than it can deliver.
Pfeiler-Wunder, Amy
Let’s play: Dewey, aesthetics and the elementary art room
Art Education Department
University of Iowa
Session 6
2.45 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Paul Duncum's work moves our focus from the aesthetics of fine art to the aesthetics of the everyday. Utilitarian objects become art, fulfilling our human desire for innovative and interesting design. If we are to realize the "creative economy," art education is vital, and it is essential that each child realize the artist within. In this paper I explore the nature of children's fictive play, and their use of imagination and creativity in constructing their own aesthetic experience. I argue that children's reproductions of the imagery of popular culture are not mere copies, but constitute meaningful artistic endeavors, exercises in agency. I employ John Dewey's notion of aesthetics and the "work of art" to bring insight to the aesthetic nature of children's play.
Quay, John
Finding the unity in Dewey through Heidegger
University of Melbourne
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
Dewey openly admitted that he had not achieved systematic unity in his philosophy, even though it had been a goal of his to develop a coherent philosophy of experience. This lack of systematic unity is encountered in the equivocal nature of much of the interrelation amongst his many arguments and terms resulting in frustration for many, a frustration that may have hindered a deeper understanding of his efforts to promulgate a different way of conceiving our experience. Heidegger is another philosopher who brings frustration to many, especially in relation to his esoteric terminology. But beyond this frustration there are many similarities between the philosophies of Heidegger and Dewey. The efforts Heidegger made in his early work to describe the character of his philosophizing offer an insight into a method which maintains the unity from its beginnings. This beginning with unity that enables the preservation of unity is held up in contrast to Dewey’s philosophic method which, while professing the unity and integrity of experience, begins with a subtle distinction in experience that conceals the possibility of a unified beginning. Dewey is left to construct his system using the various fragments he has uncovered of a unity that Heidegger is able to maintain throughout his philosophizing.
Riquelme, Sergio
Slogans and common sense enterprise risk-taking and reception
Melbourne University
Session 6
2.45 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Education as an enterprise, students as risk takers and flexible individuals; and educators as entrepreneurs and leaders have become fashionable slogan systems underpinning the hypermodern society’s common sense. However, in assuming that any educational encounter is essentially a moral event impacting on those being educated, a theoretical examination of the entrepreneurial approach to education is indispensable. This paper discusses such a theoretical examination in light of the Levinasian ethics of reception (understood as a precondition for any pedagogical relation) and of the conception of the human being as a conversational, collaborative, and compassionate phenomenon. On these grounds, the entrepreneurial approach and its educational version will be explored as cultural artefacts of the long-term capitalist ethos. As part of the proposed analysis, narratives of Victorian teachers acting as school leaders and implementing the new Victorian learning standards will be considered. They help to identify to what extent and how the entrepreneurial approach is influencing situated curriculum practices.
Roberts, Peter
A new patriotism? Neoliberalism, citizenship and tertiary education in New Zealand
University of Auckland
Session 1
12.45 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
This paper argues that a new patriotism has emerged in New Zealand over recent years. This has been promoted in tandem with the notion of advancing New Zealand as a knowledge economy and society. The new patriotism encourages New Zealanders to accept, indeed embrace, a single, shared vision of the future: one structured by a neoliberal ontology and the demands of global capitalism. This constructs a narrow view of citizenship and reduces the possibility of economic and social alternatives being considered seriously. The paper makes this case in relation to tertiary education in particular. The first section outlines the New Zealand government’s vision for tertiary education, as set out in the Tertiary Education Strategy, 2007-12 (Ministry of Education, 2006). This is followed by a critique of the Strategy and an analysis of the model of citizenship implied by it. The paper concludes with brief comments on the role tertiary education might play in contesting the new patriotism.
Ryan, Ann
Where is our moral compass? The importance of thinking and ethical inquiry in our search for “new directions” in education
Faculty of Education
Monash University
Gippsland Campus
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
The search for new directions in education will be meaningless if we do not seriously challenge the underlying values in current school practice, where students are merely economic units in the sausage machine of the examination factory. The miseducative practices that are perpetuated in classrooms, under increasing pressure from systems driven by political and economic priorities, must be brought to account. These practices destroy individuality, creativity and the possibility of other ways of seeing our world, of real change. This paper discusses the need for children (and their teachers) to be encouraged to think. The fundamental objective of ethical inquiry is for students to think for themselves about matters which they, and members of their community, consider to be important. Ethical inquiry supports John Dewey’s notion of the educative experience and leads to understandings of how to behave responsibly with respect to self and others and the world around us.
Sankey, Derek
Education policy, research and neuroscience: The final solution (with a video)
Session 6
2.45 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Policy makers have often found themselves in something of a dilemma regarding educational research. On the one hand, much of it is directly or indirectly funded by government, and it is costly. On the other hand, it is seldom of any practical use. Taken as a whole, its findings are inconclusive; far too many competing ideas and thus difficult to decide what to believe, unless it happens to be saying what one really wants to hear. So, what to do with it? In the 1980’s Margaret Thatcher thought she knew; close it all down, along with the university faculties of education, and the teacher training courses from whence a lot of its government funding came. For her, and the right-wing Centre for Policy Studies, educational research was little more than ‘modish theory’ and left-wing theory at that! It contained no reliable data on which to erect policy and engage in responsible decision making. Luckily, for those in the UK with a vested interest in pursuing educational research, events intervened. An alternative, recent approach is not to seek help from education research, but rather from the much more ‘scientifically reliable’ findings of neuroscience. Perhaps, after all, this will provide a final solution, uniting education, policy and research. For example, it turns out that our ability to empathise, to think ourselves into another person’s situation and be considerate of their feelings, is a function of the brain. Some of us have that ability, because our brains are so constructed that they allow us to empathise, and some do not. Those who do not are likely to end up committing horrific crimes. Now, surely, that is useful knowledge. It means that it should be possible to scan the brains of children to see whether they are likely to become vicious criminals and so isolate them, before they commit crimes. Is this the final solution to the growing problem of children’s anti-social behaviour? Neuroscientist Professor Gerhard Roth, of Bremen University made just such a proposal in an interview for the international DWTV channel in autumn 2006. And in the UK, on 27 March 2007, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced a plan to introduce compulsory checks on children to discover whether they are at risk of turning into criminals. It would be nice to think that philosophers of education will be able to make an informed response to the evidence of neuroscience and its policy implications for education. There are, however, justified reasons for believing that their responses might be way off target. With the help of video, this paper will present some of the relevant neuroscientific evidence regarding empathy, truth and free-will, and engage in a bit of preliminary target practice.
Scholes, Vanessa
School of Business
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Session 2
2.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
One way of responding to the question of whether we should give some people access to free tertiary education is to start from a consideration of people’s rights. In the interests of bringing another perspective to bear on this question, we could approach it from the starting point of the State’s responsibilities. This paper addresses the following question: does the State’s general responsibility to provide education to support societal needs extend to providing any free education opportunities for adults? I start from the assumption that a democratic State has a responsibility for managing and encouraging the democracy of the society; the security of the society; the physical welfare of the society; and the cultural riches of the society. I suggest this assumption supports a claim of the State’s responsibilities to provide certain free education opportunities for children, then consider whether it suggests a responsibility to provide any free tertiary education opportunities for adults. I will argue that it does for some types of opportunities, including education for political awareness, and offer an example to indicate how the State could do this.
Schramm-Pate, Susan
Culture, regional identity, and the social studies in South Carolina: A popular textbook considered from a critical postcolonial perspective
College of Education
University of South Carolina
Session 6
2.45 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
The Carolinas located in the southeastern region of the United States is basically a European seetler colony like the rest of the country. From a postcolonial perspective, its main difference from the other regions of the USA lies in how it was both economically colonized and semiotically 'othered' in interconnected movements during the both the antebellum and postbellum periods. The struggle against a white cultural supremecy - colonial oppression - is not addressed adequately (if at all) in most social studies textbooks that have been adopted in the South. This paper is a postcolonial analysis (Bahba, 1994; McCarthy, 1998; Said, 1993) of the western historicism embedded in the text, South Carolina: the History of an American State. Specifically, the Reconstruction Era sections of the book (ie Freedman's Bureau; Black Codes; Radical Republicans; Carpetbaggers and Scalawags; KKK; and Jim Crow) are used to to illustrate the social studies textbook's disregard for colonial depersonalization, colonial alienation of the 'other' and political oppression
Semetsky, Inna
Educating for 3C: Critical, clinical, creative
The University of Newcastle
Session 8
11 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
What is the aim of education? This long-time controversial question renders multiple solutions. More often than not, education is reduced to some technical objectives, now and then returning to basic "3R". In this paper I propose education as critical, clinical, and creative. I will unpack the notion of "educating for 3C" by reference to the philosophical legacy of French poststructuralist Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) as well as to the latest book by Nel Noddings "Critical Lessons" (2006). I will argue that only as embodying all three "C" can education become genuinely moral and bring the missing element of values into quality teaching (cf. Lovat). A specific pedagogical model will also be suggested.
Shaw, Robert
The violence in learning
School of Business
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
This paper argues that learning is inherently violent. It does this by examining the way in which Heidegger uses – and refrains from using – the concept in his account of Dasein. Heidegger explicitly discussed “learning” in 1951 and he used of the word in several contexts. Although he confines his use of “learning” to the ontic side of the ontic-ontological divide, there are aspects of what he says that open the door to an ontological analogue of the ontic learning. In this discussion it emerges that what precludes “learning” behaving as does “willing”, “waiting” and “thanking”, is something that derives from the relatedness of Dasein. The paper finally examines violence within the process by which truths are disclosed.
Small, Robin
Conservative schooling for radical philosophy? The case of Nietzsche
University of Auckland
Session 4
9 am
Saturday 8 December 2007
Nietzsche's expressed views on education are hard to reconcile with his image as the most radical of thinkers, whose aim (congenial to many recent commentators) is the destruction of all stable categories and identities. Can his assertion that "The schools have no more important task than to teach rigorous thinking, cautious judgment, and consistent inference" be passed off as belonging to a 'positivist phase' in his development? Such a response prevents us from seeing that 'realistic' ideas run through his work, especially where educational themes are concerned, but occur within a context that gives them a different meaning.
Smeyers, Paul
Keynote address:
The entrepreueurial self and informal education:
On government intervention and the discourse of experts
University of Ghent &
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Belgium
Paul Smeyers is Full Professor at the University of Ghent (Research Professor of Philosophy of Education) and part-time professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (where he teaches philosophy of science, more in particular of educational research), both in Belgium. Until 2007 he taught at K.U.Leuven philosophy of education and methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften (Qualitative Research Methods).
He has a wide involvement in philosophy of education (more than 200 publications, nearly half of them in English). He holds, or has held several positions in the International Network of Philosophers of Education (President since 2006). He chairs the Research Community Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education: Evaluation and Evolution of the Criteria for Educational Research established by the Research Foundation Flanders, Belgium (Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek - Vlaanderen). Together with Nigel Blake, Richard Smith and Paul Standish he co-authored Thinking Again. Education after Postmodernism (Bergin & Garvey, 1998), Education in an Age of Nihilism (Falmer Press, 2000) and The Therapy of Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and co-edited The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Education (2003). Together with Marc Depaepe he co-edited Beyond Empiricism. On Criteria for Educational Research (Leuven University Press, 2003) and Educational Research: Why 'What works' doesn't work (Springer, 2006). With Michael Peters and Nick Burbules he co-authored Showing and doing. Wittgenstein as a pedagogical philosopher (Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
Snook, Ivan
Learning styles and other modern myths
Massey University
Session 6
2.45 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Despite the widespread claims among teachers and teacher educators that education is a researched based profession, unsubstantiated myths are rather more typical in the profession than carefully interpreted research. Among modern “myths” are those relating to “multiple intelligences” “emotional intelligence,” “brain research” (as relevant to educators), and “learning styles”. This paper will 1. Briefly explore each of the above concepts and their use in educational discussion. 2. Examine in some depth the claims made by those who advocate “learning styles”. 3. Relate the discussion to the political and ideological role played by these fashionable concepts in educational discourse. Academics have made careers and publishers have made fortunes on “learning styles” and there are schools and tertiary institutions which proudly boast their distinctive commitment to different learning styles. Yet a team of researchers at Newcastle University, after analysing 69 studies, found that “research into learning styles is characterised as small scale, non-cumulative, uncritical and inward looking” and stated that “there has been a proliferation of concepts, resulting in a large number of dichotomies, symptomatic of conceptual confusion, and of a serious failure of cumulated theoretical coherence.” This is borne out by many other studies of “learning styles.” A search for validating studies convinced that there is not a shred of evidence for the existence of these “learning styles.” Are they and the other fashionable concepts mentioned above examples of modern myths in education and, if so, what role do they in fact play in the politics of education?
Sotheran, Joy
Creativity, the music industry and the competency paradigm: consonance or dissonance?
University of Technology Sydney
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
This paper presents preliminary project findings from a case study investigating the emergence of music in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. To the extent that the cultural industries in general have not been part of the traditional VET purview, they exemplify the fast changing expectations of the VET sector in expanding its role into new industry relationships as a response to momentous post-industrial transformation. This music industry case study takes in a range of contemporary issues for VET in relation to the music industry. Some of these may be a reflection of issues in other "creative" industries. In common with other industries, in the cultural sector at least, the music industry exemplifies, and to some extent embodies issues that are likely to apply more generally among industries that are new to the VET sector, and very likely even in those that have long been embraced within VET.
Stewart, Georgina
Science in the Maori-medium curriculum: Assessment of policy outcomes in Putaiao education
School of Education
University of Waikato
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Science and science education are related domains in society and in state schooling in which there have always been particularly large discrepancies in participation and achievement by Maori. In 1995 a Kaupapa Maori analysis of this situation challenged New Zealand science education academics to deal with ‘the Maori crisis’ within science education. Recent NCEA results suggest Putaiao (Maori-medium Science) education, for which a national curriculum statement was published in 1996, has so far increased, rather than decreased, the level of inequity for Maori students in science education. What specific issues impact on this lack of success, which contrasts with the overall success of Kura Kaupapa Maori, and how might policy frameworks and operational systems of Putaiao need to change, if better achievement in science education for Maori-medium students is the goal? A pathway towards further research and development in this area is suggested. Finally, recent personal experiences are used to illustrate the contemporary politics of Putaiao curriculum development.
Strongman, Luke
The creative industries and cultural value
School of Humanities
The Open Polytechnic of New Zealand
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
The Creative Industries are essentially pluralist and transformative in the manner in which they conceive of knowledge creation and the attribution of value. Situated in the apex of the knowledge economy they have a capacity to both educate and inform. If the Cultural Industries are concerned with encapsulating kinds of value in society which encompass educational, cultural wealth or social wealth (including intellectual property) how do the Creative Industries resist instantiating Horkheimer and Adorno’s vision of a culture as “[w] a commodity disseminated as information without permeating the individuals who acquired it”? Given the need to describe cultural capacity for creativity how do we account for values of potentiality and transformation within specific instantiations of cultural learning? How might we devise a descriptive assessment of qualities and conception which differentiate the Creative Industries from a process of reification and which attempts to reconcile the inherent disjuncture of the term?
Tan, Penny
The promotion of creativity and enterprise in the Singapore secondary school music curriculum
The University of Western Australia
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
Singapore, reliant on Human Capital, is constructing a knowledge-based economy. Its educational policy includes the following slogans “Thinking Schools, Learning Nation”, “Teach Less, Learn More”, “Desired Outcomes of Education”, “Ability Driven Education, “National Education”, “Innovation and Enterprise” and many others to encourage creative and independent life-long learners among young Singaporeans. This paper examines the government’s implementation of its policy to promote creativity and enterprise in the light of stakeholders’ perspectives with particular reference to music curriculum.
Thomas, Kerry
Can creativity be taught and learned?
School of Art History and Art Education
College of Fine Arts
The University of New South Wales
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
This paper draws on the author's ethnographic study of creativity in art classrooms in the final years of schooling. It is informed by Bourdieu's concept of misrecognition. The paper proposes that the most likely way of shoring up creativity is through repression of the evidential truths of practical exchanges in social transactions that are full of denial, open secrecy and euphemisation. Practical and inferential social reasoning of this kind is dependent on the micro-history of events and peculiarities of the cultural context. It is irreducible to step wise procedures or logical means ends relations commonly accepted as cornerstones of teaching and learning.
Thwaites, Trevor
The question concerning creativity
The University of Auckland
Session 6
2.45 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
At the UNESCO World Conference on Arts Education - Building Creative Capacities for the 21st Century, held in Lisbon 6-9 March 2006, delegates were reminded that “humans all have creative potential” and that to the present drivers of education - “literacy” and “numeracy” - creativity should be added. But what is creativity and how does it do what it does? Is creativity an intuition, a disposition, or simply the result of good tuition? What is its place in education, in the knowledge economy, in our individual lives? For this writer, the question of creativity is inextricably linked to an ontology of being as the history of philosophy frequently shows. This paper questions notions of ‘being creative’ on the way to opening up our relationship to the essence of creativity, taking Heidegger’s (1977) interpretation of essence as “the way something pursues its course” (p. 2).
Toia, Rawiri, Taiwhati, Marama & Te Maro, Pania
Ethical insider: an indigenous offering
Te Kura Maori
College of Education
Victoria University of Wellington
Download full paper>
Session 3
4.15 pm
Friday 7 December 2007
This paper looks to argue that concepts such as truth, rightness, and integrity from an indigenous perspective is less about the individuals practice in a scientific paradigm, but more-so the epistemological value-laden paradigm which links a person to her or his ancestral beginning. The paper will provide an indigenous ethical framework which relies on insider perspective and understanding of specific indigenous knowledge systems that are unique and authentic. The paper will examine these concepts not in relation to tribal boundaries or restrictions, but from a need borne out of co-located multi-tribe researchers engaged in the multiple faces of clustered research.
Waldock, Michelle
Hope: A silent music
Rokeby Primary School
Hobart
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
In this paper I examine the phenomenon called Hope and its effects in society and education. Drawing upon philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, Gabriel Marcel, Ernest Bloch, Josef Pieper and others, a distinction is made between ‘ordinary hope’ (espoir) and ‘fundamental hope’ (esperance). Other factors, like trust, love and faith, that coalesce to allow hope to manifest to its fullest extent, are also discussed. A discussion of Hope impinges on the religious experience, as well as a secular one, which leads me to briefly examine religion in society today. After applying this ‘macro lens’, I will shift my focus to the ‘micro’; the particular experiences of hope in education, and to my own teaching practice at this moment in time. I will argue that hope is the silent music of society; unable to be heard by the ear, only listened to with the mind and felt with the heart. I also posit that due to various societal factors, Hope is being backgrounded while its opposites, Despair, Fear and Death, are being foregrounded and that this has an impact on our societal discourse, particularly the discourse of children and young people.
Webster, Scott
A Deweyan Education as a spiritually creative enterprise
Faculty of Education
Monash University
Session 7
9 am
Sunday 9 December 2007
John Dewey was very much against dividing the spiritual from the material and claimed that both are present in action, typically through the notion of ends-in-view. He argued that genuinely creative actions require individuals with "significant conscious desires". However this sort of creativity does not often occur due to our "intellectual laziness" which detracts us from making the effort to truly uncover ultimate and significant desires in our lives. It will be argued in this paper that the creativity promoted through a Deweyan education encourages individuals to face their fear of inner freedom and actively inquire into the spiritual dimension of life which is existential rather than idealistic. The case will be made that educated persons should be enabled, through experience, to actively and freely inquire into ends-in-view, including the ultimate and significant issues regarding the meaning and purpose of life. I trust that this is in keeping with the conference theme and I look forward to hearing from you in due course.
White, Jayne
Teaching as aesthetic activity: A Bakhtinian approach
Victoria University of Wellington
Session 5
1.15 pm
Saturday 8 December 2007
Mikhail Bakhtin's ideas exist within the wider historical and political context of Soviet Russia which, over the era of his lifetime, saw Bakhtin living through pre-Marxist and post-Marxist epistemologies and their associated outcomes for the lives of their inhabitants. Influenced highly by 18-19th century German philosophy Bakhtin's ideas comprise the interplay of neo-Kantian inspired Russian orthodox morality in reaction to Marxist-Leninist ideologies of dialectical materialism. Bakhtin's central concern was to retain the spirit of pre-Stalinist Russian ideology (and associated emphasis on the moral aspects of humanity) in a society where knowledge was constructed around dialectic forms of scientific truth and associated rationalism by creating "an alternative to the imprisoning dialectic, a counter-theory provocatively called dialogism but mostly expressed in other words" (Chamberlain, p. 238-239). His work is therefore positioned within the social encounter of [Nietzchean] 'becoming' which suggests that knowledge is "merely an elaborate, double-layered pile of metaphors" (Hoover, 1994, p. 41). Bakhtin's central concern is to challenge dialectic notions of 'truth' which seek to homogenize other, in the same way as he experienced political regimes of hegemonic truth(s) in his own lifetime. For Bakhtin, interpetation is always an ethical encounter that strives to retain the uniqueness of 'other' and avoids finalization at all cost. It is therefore based on an aesthetic engagement which is mutually dependent on social partners who offer complementary, and different, visionary and perspectival fields to the encounter.
Based on preliminary findings from a pilot study, as part of her PhD, the author will engage the audience in an interpretative process by sharing footage and interview insights which have been developed around Bakhtin's notion of "surplus of seeing". In doing so, the audience will be invited to share in the aesthetic (and ethical) process of co-authoring the experience from multiple vantage points, using Menippeaic narrative as a frame. The associated complexity, and unfinalizability of the teacher's task in interpreting knowledge for the very young child will therefore be promoted as a central, and ethical, consideration for New Zealand education which is currently based on evidence-based outcomes for learning..
Zhang, Hong Juan (Jane)
Understanding Others: Enlarging Iris Murdoch's Idea of Moral Attention
OISE/ University of Toronto
Toronto
Canada
This paper will not be presented.
Iris Murdoch's moral philosophy is based on moral attention that is, the growth of moral consciousness through a just and loving gaze directed upon an individual reality. It appears, however, to have limitations. It is explained in terms of visual metaphors and, thus, places no value on dialogue, listening, or voice. It also insufficiently considers the social location of others and has little application to broader social concerns.Murdoch's concept can be enlarged in two ways: by utilizing verbal metaphors of listening and speaking, and by seeing the moral task as one of self-creation. These modifications allow moral attention to be expanded to the social and political spheres. Indeed, it is possible to show that some aspects of moral attention are reconcilable to existing explanations of social justice, such as those of Iris Young and her concepts of asymmetric reciprocity, wonderand communication as a gift.