Philosophy of education not only forms the background for curriculum construction and pedagogy but there is a connection between epistemology and education within the economic power structure of society in the United States (Aronowitz & Giroux, 1993/1991, p. 88). Public education in the United States often functions as a propaganda delivery system which conserves the economic power structure by use of a conservative and objectivist philosophy of education which instrumentalizes education into vocational preparation, compliance to a governing ideology and uncritical acceptance of knowledge as absolute truth (Aronowitz & Giroux, p. 22). This project aims to construct a philosophy of education which could transform the education system into a counter-propaganda institution with the potential to transform the power structure of society. A critical postmodern philosophy of education which synthesized critical and postmodern philosophies of education would emphasize epistemological skepticism, counter-propaganda knowledge construction and social transformation (Aronowitz & Giroux, p.22). In addition, the project contains a literature review of critical theory, postmodern theory and critical postmodern theory on education as well as theory on a critical postmodern philosophy of history education, philosophy of correctional education and ideas for the implementation of the philosophy of education into specific pedagogical and curricular practices. Attached to this manuscript is a PowerPoint presentation focused on stimulating discussion of this philosophy of education.

Flipped Classroom (flipp) is described in both school and scientific contexts as a new teaching method where the individual pupil and her active learning is placed at the center and where lesson time to a greater extent is used for discussion and laboratory work, while information gathering takes place outside lesson time via ICT. Flipp has in recent years become widely spread in Sweden, which is why it is interesting to investigate flipp in a Swedish context. This has so far been made to a very limited extent. This study aims to deepen the understanding of flipp as a teaching method as the method appears in the speech and actions of upper secondary school teachers who claim they use flipp when they teach. The study addresses three general issues. First, teachers' purposes with flipp are explored, second, the roles that emerge in flipped teaching is investigated and third, individualization in teaching where flipp is applied. The study is a case study based on interviews and observations with three upper secondary school teachers who flip their teaching. The study is based on social constructivist theory formation and Dewey's progressivist philosophy of education is the discussion partner in this study. Previous research suggests that in the development of flip, inspiration was drawn from pedagogical ideas from the early 1900s, which makes it advisable to discuss possible points of contact between flipp as expressed in the case study, and progressivism. Previous research presents flipp as a method for creating flexibility and individualization as well as a method that helps the teacher and students spend more time together for laboratory work and discussions. The teachers express that flipping helps the students to become active during lessons. Observations, however, show that there are significant problems with the students not preparing for the lesson to the extent that was expected, which will have negative consequences for the opportunities to work and discuss during lessons as intended. The study thus shows evidence that there is a discrepancy between the image that the teachers produce and the image of the flip that has been observed. / Denna licentiatuppsats handlar om hur gymnasielärare som flippar uppfattar och  tillämpar undervisningsmetoden. I studien undersöks vilka syften lärarna har med att flippa, vilka roller lärare och elever har när man flippar och i vilken mån flipp kan bidra till att individualisera undervisningen. Tre verksamma gymnasielärare har deltagit i studien och de har intervjuats och observerats vid flera tillfällen. Flipp beskrivs av lärarna som har deltagit i studien som en undervisningsmetod som kan bidra till att de kan göra undervisningen mera individualiserad och flexibel. Studien visar även att den omdisponering av tid, som flipp syftar till, innebär att lärare ger elever ansvar för att på egen hand arbeta med grundläggande kunskapsinhämtning, vilket i kombination med andra bärande element i flipp, kan missgynna elever som av olika anledningar har svårigheter i skolan. Karen Stormats är verksam som lärarutbildare vid Högskolan Dalarna. Hon har tidigare erfarenhet av undervisning i historia och samhällskunskap på gymnasiet. Under tiden som forskarstuderande har Karen ingått i forskarskolan Skolnära, ett samarbete mellan Pedagogisk utveckling Dalarna (PUD), Högskolan Dalarna och Karlstads universitet.

This thesis aims to show how the secondary teacher in New Zealand was constituted in discourse through an examination of two major recontextualisations of education, the changes resulting from the Thomas Report (1944), and the Picot Report (1988), and of the collective identity of secondary teachers. Both reports redirected government education policy and regulation and had fundamental implications for teachers' work and the role they were expected to play in education. Secondary teachers resisted both reforms, and in doing so they revealed elements of their conservative, pragmatic and defensive collective identity, which changed in only one significant respect in the time period considered in this study. It took twenty years before the central tenets of the Thomas Report were even close to being universally accepted. Even then, the child-centred philosophy and practice propounded by the Thomas Report, supported by the Currie Report in 1962 and supervised by the gentle discipline of the Department of Education, was likely to have been more honoured in the breach than in the observance by many New Zealand secondary school teachers. In more recent times, the 'neo-liberal', market-driven view of education and teachers, as expressed in the reforms which followed the Picot Report, were stoutly resisted despite the much more rigorous disciplinary techniques employed by the Ministry of Education. This thesis will show that the dominant discourses which constituted the secondary teacher were those of the collective identity of secondary teachers and that these effectively frustrated attempts to impose change on New Zealand secondary teachers and on secondary education.

<p>This paper studies the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein during his years (1920–26) as an elementary school teacher in remote Niederösterreich, Austria. The paper gives a survey of his life, and also a brief account of three of his main works: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Attention is given to his alphabetical word list, Wörterbuch für Volksschulen, published for educational use in elementary schools. The study is focused on Wittgenstein’s educational practise, and establishes a connection between his experience as a teacher and his late philosophy.</p>

The aim of this dissertation is to map and analyse planned responses to expressions of racism in upper secondary schools. Three questions are in focus: (1) What courses of action, in response to expressions of racism, are advocated in philosophical texts and equal treatment plans for upper secondary schools? (2) What consequences have these courses of action for the formation of the mission of schools, the responsibility of teachers, and the limits of free speech? (3) What kinds of expressions of racism are these courses of action intended to be a response to? The study takes its point of departure in two theoretical traditions: Pierre-André Taguieff’s categorisations of racism are used to define the problem in the dissertation, while John Dewey’s moral philosophy provides the methodological base. From an analysis of equal treatment plans four temporal phases are identified. In the first phase, preventive measures, the purpose is to prevent students from developing racism. In phase two, limitations in schools, the dominant course of action is to prohibit violations in schools. The third phase, corrective measures, is concerned with how to handle situations that are contrary to the limitations in schools. The final phase, limitations on schools, relates to when schools are required to transfer responsibility for action to the social services, work environment or police authorities. The results indicate that the national laws (since 2006) have a strong impact on equal treatment plans, and that ‘non-violation’ becomes a dominant moral principle that displaces or subsumes other views of morality. How the non-violation principle is applied also affects the space for political conversations on topics that can be hurtful. Finally, the analysis indicates that equal treatment plans are mainly concerned with expressions of racism among students, and pay little attention to expressions of racism that occur in the organization of schools. The plans thus describe schools as a force for good that seeks to combat (potential) racism among students.

This paper studies the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein during his years (1920–26) as an elementary school teacher in remote Niederösterreich, Austria. The paper gives a survey of his life, and also a brief account of three of his main works: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Philosophical Investigations and Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. Attention is given to his alphabetical word list, Wörterbuch für Volksschulen, published for educational use in elementary schools. The study is focused on Wittgenstein’s educational practise, and establishes a connection between his experience as a teacher and his late philosophy.

During the Progressive Era, literary writers such as Abraham Cahan, Willa Cather, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman engaged with ideas emerging from the newly consolidated educational profession about art's capacity to mediate between individual and social development. These ideas varied widely in their philosophical, pedagogical, and political implications, but all reinforced the authority of professional educators at the expense of democratically elected boards of education. Novels working through these ideas can be usefully theorized as Bildungsromane if the definition of the Bildungsroman is refined to be more sensitive to the wide range of educational philosophies that can inform it, and to the range of attitudes, from critical to worshipful, that it can assume toward these philosophies. This reimagining of the genre opens up the possibility that the Bildungsroman, and the Bildung idea more broadly, can have a more positive political valence than most scholars have acknowledged. In particular, a viable project of aesthetic education can be discerned in the philosophy of John Dewey, although it lacks a clear literary corollary.

Utilizing elements of Lightfoot and Davis’s (1997) portraiture method and life history interviews, this qualitative research study explores the portraits of four Mexican-origin scholarship boys. Two Mexican-origin students and two professors were selected from a snowball sample. A snowball sample consisted of gathering referrals from graduate students and faculty who contacted me through email to comment on their personal identification with the scholarship boy themes discussed in the essay I authored, "Lost in Degree: a Chicano PhD Student’s Search for Missing Clothes" (2007). I use the term “Mexican-origin” as a concept that identifies the subjects of this study as being of Mexican descent. All of the participants were born and raised in low SES, urban settings in the United States and they are children of Mexican-born parents. Hoggart’s (1957/2006) scholarship boy framework serves as the primary theoretical lens guiding this work. Rodriguez’s (1982) seminal work on this topic, Hunger of Memory, enumerates how this concept may apply to Mexican-origin scholarship boys. This study also utilizes Dubois’s (1903) double consciousness and Anzaldúa’s (1999) mestiza consciousness to analyze the ways in which Mexican-origin scholarship boys used culturally situated constructions of giftedness, “ghetto nerd” (Diaz, 2007) masculinities, and philosophical perspectives related to “home” to pursue academic excellence and cope/challenge the microgressions they experienced in K-12 schooling and higher education. The scholarship boys in this research provide critical information germane to the struggles and strategies used by academically successful Mexican-origin students as they negotiate the experiences related to the contrasting working-class culture of their upbringing and the middle-class culture of academia. While studies often focus on academically low-performing Latino students, this work explores the narratives of working-class Latino students who attained a graduate level education. Moreover, this research complicates clean “victory narratives” by unearthing various aspects of loss and gain inherent to the Mexican-origin scholarship boy trajectory. Findings inform scholarship in the areas of pedagogy, education reform, philosophy of education, education policy, curriculum, and revisionist conceptualizations of giftedness and human development. / text

Arts education must continually provide justification for its inclusion in the K-12 curriculum. This dissertation utilizes philosophical and conceptual analysis to probe the tensions, ironies, and contradictions that permeate the arts education advocacy discourse. Using evidence from advocacy materials published online, scholarly critiques of themes in the advocacy discourse, and research reports describing school-based arts programs, I construct an argument that posits generative consequences for student learning when arts-centered inquiry is reimagined as pragmatic instrumentalism. Such a reimagining of arts-centered inquiry seeks to draw a distinction between utilitarian justifications for the arts and instrumental benefits the arts provide individual students in mediating complex and connected learning. In reclaiming the term “instrumental” for arts-centered inquiry, I offer a way to restore the notion of generativity to arts learning and a means to promote greater understanding among practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and advocates.

Focusing on a lived and practiced tolerance, this thesis sets out to explore questions concerning education for tolerance, and, specifically, how teachers and educators can prepare students to become tolerating subjects in their everyday encounters with others. Taking its point of departure in real and fictional classroom situations, the overall purpose of the study is to explore the ethical and transformative potential inherent in education for tolerance. The theoretical frame of the study is deconstruction and the philosophical writings of JacquesDerrida. The purpose of the thesis is accomplished in three movements. The first aims to show why teachers and educators need to redirect their attention in the classroom if the ethical and transformative potential that lies in education for tolerance is to be taken seriously. Instead of focusing on the tolerated and “deviating” other, it proposes that the tolerating subject should be the center of attention. The second movement aims to prepare the ground for a deconstructive reading by mapping different contemporary discourses of tolerance. Three distinct but interrelated dilemmas of tolerance are identified: the dilemma of welcoming, the dilemma of drawing boundaries, and the dilemma of bearing or enduring the otherness of the other. The third movement aims to show how a deconstructive reading of the dilemmas of tolerance can help teachers and educators to perceive and relate otherwise to the tolerating subject in education. For this, I turn to Derrida’s deconstructions of three concepts that are vital for our understanding of tolerance: hospitality, justice and mourning. The final section of the thesis discusses some educational implications deriving from the study. It is argued that if we look at the tolerating subject through the experience of its deconstruction, we also come to see education for tolerance otherwise. What this altered perspective can mean for education is articulated within the framework of what is calleda pedagogy of tolerance. / <p>Kommer ev. att publiceras på förlag.</p>