Despite much debate in the literature, accrediting agencies continue to require that teacher education programs demonstrate that candidates possess requisite sets of dispositions deemed necessary for licensure. At least three unresolved and important questions remain unanswered that directly affect programs’ abilities to do so: Are dispositions immutable aspects of character or are they learned through experience and as such, are they subject to revision through education? How does the larger context of a program affect the development of dispositions? What is the link between observable actions and dispositions? While seemingly disparate questions, this article argues that John Dewey’s discussion of habits offers a theoretical framework that points to answers that respond to mandates and also open avenues for complex educational engagement. To make the case, the article presents a theoretical response to questions about dispositions grounded in Dewey’s conception of habits and then uses that conception to address each of the three proceeding questions in turn. The article’s central argument is that teacher educators should conceptualize dispositions as being comprised of clusters of habits. Habits describe our predispositions to draw upon modes of response to situations and problems that arise within specific contexts. Furthermore, the article concludes that regardless of the type of disposition involved, teacher education programs must create contexts that encourage the development of intelligent habits to inform intelligent dispositions.
This paper argues for a conception of autonomy that takes social oppression seriously without sapping autonomy of its valuable focus on individual self-direction. Building on recent work in relational accounts of autonomy, the paper argues that current conceptions of autonomy from liberal, feminist and critical theorists do not adequately account for the social features of belief formation. The paper then develops an alternative conception of relational autonomy that focuses on how autonomy contains both individualistic and social epistemic features. Rather than consider autonomy to reside in an impenetrable inner citadel, a place immune from external influences, the paper argues that we must acknowledge the hermeneutic relationship between individual and social processes of belief adjudication. Taking such an argument seriously results in the need to alter our conception of autonomy and the schooling needed to foster its growth.
While Democracy and Education is often cited within the scholarship on and teaching of social justice education, it and Dewey's work generally remain underutilized. Peter Nelsen argues in this essay that Deweyan pragmatism offers rich resources for social justice education by exploring how Dewey's three-part conception of growth has both analytical and normative force. Nelsen makes this case by examining student resistance to engagement with social justice issues, and concludes from this analysis that resistance is an opportunity for growth. Furthermore, rather than being a precursor to critical engagement with ideas, Nelsen contends that creating collaborative environments that foster interdependence across group memberships might be as important as the critical engagement itself. EDUCATIONAL THEORYVolume 66 Number 1-2 2016
While discussions of the moral dimensions of the caring relation and their implications for teaching and learning are well developed within the literature, there has not been much analysis of the place of inquiry within our understanding of caring and the education inspired by it. Previous discussions offer important insight into what care‐inspired education might entail, but they do not address how inquiry itself may be enhanced by an ethic of care. After arguing that we should consider reason to be more central to the caring relation than has been previously recognized, Peter Nelsen seeks to ameliorate the apparent rift between reason and the affective dimensions of caring through what John Dewey described as the body‐mind. According to this view, reason and affect are inseparable aspects of the process of inquiry; they are both always present in our caring encounters. Nelsen then explores the educational implications of envisioning the caring relation as body‐mind grounded inquiry.
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