Abstract:The chapter that John Dewey dedicates to consideration of play and work in the curriculum in Democracy and Education echoes his thoughts on the same subject in How We Think, which preceded Democracy and Education by six years. Dewey closes How We Think with a more expansive treatment of the topic and is keen not only to recast the traditional dichotomy of work and play as distinct kinds of educational activity but to challenge the hierarchical status of the accompanying mental states of seriousness and playfulness. Dewey argues that a combination of playfulness and seriousness represents the ideal mental attitude of the artist: teaching is an art, therefore the teacher is an artist and the ideal mental attitude of the teacher to his or work combines the playful and the serious. It is the task of the teacher to inculcate such habits of mind in his or her students for whom it is implicitly the ideal mental state for learning. It is in the light of this that we should understand what characterises play and work as features of educational activity. Consideration of what Dewey meant is accompanied by an example from contemporary educational practice intended to illustrate Dewey's sense of purposeful activity in which a playful approach creates the kind of embodied experience that will help students to achieve desired educational outcomes. This will lead to reflection on how the role of the teacher as an artist might be conceived, resisting both the temptation towards an instrumental characterisation of playfulness derived from the application of discoveries in cognitive science to classroom practice and goal-directed notions of seriousness. I will argue that alongside the conventional classroom skills of the teacher, what is required is an authentic presence that is attuned to the nature of what is being taught, together with a concern for the outcomes to be achieved. Such an attunement would allow for playfulness and humour as well as seriousness. It is an attunement between both the individual and others in mutuality and with him or herself. These thoughts will be developed via extended reflection upon two scenes from Alan Bennett's The History Boys (2006). These scenes draw attention to the importance of conversation for both the teacher/student relationship and as a medium for playful and serious exploration of academic content. If we only think of the Deweyan attitude of the artist in an impersonal sense then the kind of seriousness that is internal to the personal expression of claims about art, ethics, morality, politics, even history, remains unheard, at least in an educational context. It is to this that I turn through consideration of conversation and mutuality in the work of Stanley Cavell via Michael Oakeshott's observations about seriousness and playfulness in conversation and further comments offered by Paul Standish on what it means to say something.
The Editor's Introduction sets the stage for this Special Issue with calls for action in light of the climate crisis and other environmental problems sweeping our planet. It then offers a brief overview of the topics our contributors address, and in some cases the philosophical sources they brought into this conversation. It then surveys the background literature on 'transformative' environmental education, the topic being problematised and developed by our contributors. This review of the literature reveals a wide range of interpretations, but also shows some productive hybrids in terms of transformation and transgression: seen as opportunities for effecting the changes in attitude, values and behaviours we need for our collective survival. Questions of efficacy are briefly discussed, although it was not the purpose of this Special Issue to decide which are the most effective eco-pedagogies. In closing, we remark on the need for foresight in educational planning and policy, as in government generally, to address the magnitude of problems threatening all life on this planet.
Listen to the scientists.' It is a refrain that Greta Thunberg has used on a number of occasions to impress upon us that we are running out of time if we want to halt the slide towards catastrophe. Now is the time to discuss the findings of science, and science education is the natural place to do so. And yet, there is no obvious, designated place for serious discussion about its findings. What is it that makes the appeal to science so powerful and yet makes discussion of meaningful action so difficult? Bruno Latour has problematised the self-understanding of science and how it has removed itself from our capacity to express our interest in the world and what matters to us. However, one of the significant features that is emerging from the climate crisis is that science is once again enabling us to do so. The terms in which we express our understanding of the world are being rethought. Taking this further, I turn to Stanley Cavell, for whom our capacity to word the world is tied to our capacity for expression and the animation of language. Cavell offers us a means of understanding how and why our words matter. For young people, it is crucial that they believe their voices can be heard if the kind of transformation needed to avoid environmental catastrophe is to take place. The role of educators is to support them in this. In order to do so, education itself may need to be transformed. And what is the point of learning facts within the school system when the most important facts given by the finest science of that same school system clearly mean nothing to our politicians and our society. Greta Thunberg: No one is too small to make a difference.
Section 4 begins with Carl Anders Säfström and Leif Östman's challenge to the role of the school as the best place for responding to the climate crisis in the form of education for sustainability. How can we be sure that this education does not founder on the rocks of inaction, a risk that Säfström and Östman characterise in terms of reduction, instrumentalisation and normativisation? If that response is to be informed, how can this be possible when schools expunge the political dimensions from what is taught, when they instrumentalise both students and the complexities of environmental knowledge in fact-based pedagogy, and when teachers avoid moral and affective attention by redirecting it towards epistemological considerations? Katrien Van Poeck and Leif Östman draw on pragmatist traditions to encourage democratic practices in education and open up new possibilities for how educators approach the climate crisis and other environmental challenges. The question is not whether to engage with real-world issues but how to do so. Van Poeck and Östman see the teacher's task as setting the environmental stage for students in order, first, to focus their inquiry and, second, to prompt them to act in response to what they discover. Conceived as such, environmental education is transformed into a place of both judgment and action. Viktor Swillens and Joris Vlieghe conclude this section by bringing together Hannah Arendt and Bruno Latour to scope out a space for education in addressing the climate crisis: the resulting account reimagines Latour's politics as a task of education in the light of Arendt's attention to the fate of our common world and the possibility of renewal. Through scholarly practices in what Latour calls the 'critical zones', we find the means to invest our care for the world with the kind of attentive investigation that offers hope of renewal and sustainability.
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