Michael Peters

This paper, based on an invited Thesis Eleven presentation (8 August 2019), provides a ‘map of technopolitics’ that springs from an investigation of the theoretical notion of technological convergence adopted by the US National Science Foundation, signaling a new paradigm of ‘nano-bio-info-cogno’ (NBIC) technologies. This integration at the nano-level is expected to drive the next wave of scientific research, technology and knowledge economy. The paper explores the concept of ‘technopolitics’ by investigating the links between Wittgenstein’s anti-scientism and Lyotard’s ‘technoscience’, reviewing the history of the notion in the work of the Belgium philosopher Gilbert Hottois. The ‘deep convergence’ representing a new technoscientific synergy is the product of long-term trends of ‘bioinformational capitalism’ that harnesses the twin forces of information and genetic sciences that coalesce in the least mature ‘cognosciences’ in their application to education and research. The map of technopolitics systematically identifies the political relations between Big Tech and ‘new digital publics’ to reveal that the new paradigm is based on the supreme value of cognitive efficiency. There are a closely-knit cluster of concerns that frame a map of political issues about the fifth-generation technological impacts on human beings, their bodies and minds, and public institutions, not least the logic of the distribution and ownership of data, information and knowledge, and its effects on democracy.

Philosophers of education have always been interested in epistemological issues. In their efforts to help inform educational theory and practice they have dealt extensively with concepts like knowledge, teaching, learning, thinking, understanding, belief, justification, theory, the disciplines, rationality and the like. Their inquiries have addressed issues about what kinds of knowledge are most important and worthwhile, and how knowledge and information might best be organised as curricular activity. They have also investigated the relationships between teaching and learning, belief and opinion, knowledge and belief, and data and information. For some a key issue has been how students can become autonomous knowers. This issue has often been bound up with questions about what count as appropriate standards for reasonableness or rationality, and the conditions under which we can properly regard understanding as having occurred. During the past decade renewed interest has been shown in what is involved in becoming an authority, expert or competent performer in a given area of knowledge, as well as in how we evaluate and critique different or competing beliefs, theories, points of view or paradigms.

Within the rough ground that is the field of education there is a complex web of ethical obligations: to prepare our students for their future work; to be ethical as educators in our conduct and teaching; to the ethical principles embedded in the contexts in which we work; and given the Southern context of this work, the ethical obligations we have to this land and its First Peoples. We put out a call to colleagues whose work has been concerned with the pedagogies of professional ethics, the ethical burdens of institutional injustice, and the application of ethical theory to education’s applied fields. In the responses we received it can be seen that ethical concerns in education are broad ranging, covering terrain varying from the preparation of preservice teachers, ethics in higher education, early childhood and care, educational leadership, relational and communicative ethics. Perhaps it could also be argued that this paper demonstrates Gibbon’s observation that ‘Assumptions about the particularity of this time as new and ripe with opportunity to make a difference through philosophy of education are not new and there’s much to learn from the persistence of wanting to imagine that they are’. However, while the field of ethics is perennially concerned with human relations and pedagogical interventions to improve these, the responses collected here show that educational ethics is far from static. Educational ethics is a field that continues to develop in response to changing contexts.

Poststructuralism--as a name for a mode of thinking, a style of philosophizing, a kind of writing--has exercised a profound influence upon contemporary Western thought and the institution of the university. As a French and predominantly Parisian affair, poststructuralism is inseparable from the intellectual milieu of postwar France, a world dominated by Alexandre Kojève's and Jean Hyppolite's interpretations of Hegel, Jacques Lacan's reading of Freud, Gaston Bachelard's epistemology, George Canguilhem's studies of science, and Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism. It is also inseparable from the structuralist tradition of linguistics based upon the work of Ferdinand de Saussure and Roman Jacobson, and the structuralist interpretations of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, and the early Michel Foucault. Poststructuralism, considered in terms of contemporary cultural history, can be understood as belonging to the broad movement of European formalism, with explicit historical links to both Formalist and Futurist linguistics and poetics, and with aspects of the European avant-garde, especially André Breton's surrealism. Each essay in this unique collection by and for educators is devoted to the work and educational significance of one of ten major poststructuralist philosophers.

Public intellectuals today must be understood in relation to the concept of ‘viral modernity’, characterised by viral and open media and technologies of post-truth that reveal the dramatic transformations of the ‘public’, its forms and its future possibilities. The history, status and role of the public intellectual are constituted by both the network of law in liberal society and above all the primacy of the concept of freedom of expression. The task of public intellectuals was to define, analyse and protect these rights by speaking truth to power. Both Wittgenstein and Foucault as exemplary intellectuals distinguished themselves by problematising truth and showing that truth-telling is an aspect of self-transformation and the intellectual form of life.

This collection is the first book devoted to Paulo Freire's ongoing global legacy to provide an analysis of the continuing relevance and significance of Freire's work and the impact of his global legacy. The book contains essays by some of the world's foremost Freire scholars - McLaren, Darder, Roberts, and others - as well as chapters by scholars and activists, including the Maori scholars Graham Hingangaroa Smith and Russell Bishop, who detail their work with the indigenous people of Aotearoa-New Zealand. The book contains a foreword by Nita Freire as well as chapters from scholars around the world including Latin America, Asia, the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia. With a challenging introduction from the editors, Michael A. Peters and Tina Besley, this much-awaited addition to the Freire archive is highly recommended reading for all students and scholars interested in Freire, global emancipatory politics, and the question of social justice in education.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Citation Information -- Introduction -- 1 Philosophy and Performance of Neoliberal Ideologies: History, Politics and Human Subjects -- 2 Neo-Liberal Education Policy and the Ideology of Choice -- 3 Varieties of Neo-Liberalism: a Foucaultian Perspective -- 4 The Labouring Sleepwalker: Evocation and Expression as Modes of Qualitative Educational Research -- 5 The Learning Society, the Unfinished Cosmopolitan, and Governing Education, Public Health and Crime Prevention at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century -- 6 What Were You Thinking? A Deleuzian/Guattarian Analysis of Communication in the Mathematics Classroom -- 7 (Re)Visioning the Centre: Education Reform and the 'Ideal' Citizen of the Future -- 8 Biopolitical Utopianism in Educational Theory -- 9 A Place Pedagogy for 'Global Contemporaneity' -- 10 Antonio Gramsci and Feminism: The Elusive Nature of Power -- 11 Foucault, Educational Research and the Issue of Autonomy -- Index.

While traditionally identified as a practice-based endeavour, the many dimensions of teacher education raise important philosophical issues that emphasise the centrality of ethics to questions of relationality and professional practice. This second volume of the Educational Philosophy and Theory reader series demonstrates the continuing relevance of philosophical approaches to the field of teacher education. The collection of texts focuses on a wide range of topics, including teacher education in a cross-cultural context, the notion of unsuccessful teaching, democratic teacher education, the reflective teacher, the ethics and politics of teacher identity, and subjectivity and performance in teaching. Chapters also explore teacher education based on experiential learning as 'experience', demonstrating the continuing relevance of philosophical approaches to the field. In Search of Subjectivities will interest academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, philosophy, education, educational theory, teacher education, experiential philosophy, ethics, policy and politics of education, and professional practice.

This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, ‘As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch’, gathers wider philosophical considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, ‘Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?’, looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, ‘If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you’, focuses to Greta Thunberg’s messages and their responses. The last section, ‘Towards a new normal’, explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles’ parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic education.