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4Can Virtue be Measured?Theory and Research in Education 3 (12): 266-283. 2014.This paper explores some general considerations bearing on the question of whether virtue can be measured. What is moral virtue? What are measurement and evaluation, and what do they presuppose about the nature of what is measured or evaluated? What are the prospective contexts of, and purposes for, measuring or evaluating virtue, and how would these shape the legitimacy, methods, and likely success of measurement and evaluation? We contrast the realist presuppositions of virtue and measurem…Read more
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1A Neo-Aristotelian Account of Education, Justice, and the Human GoodTheory and Research in Education 3 (11): 232-250. 2013.
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2Friday Night Lights Out: The End of Football in SchoolsHarvard Educational Review 2 (88): 141-162. 2018.
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48Patriotic Education in a Global AgeUniversity of Chicago Press. 2018.The central question for this book is whether schools should attempt to cultivate patriotism, and if so why, how, and with what conception of patriotism in mind. The promotion of patriotism has figured prominently in the history of public schooling in the United States, always with the idea that patriotism is both an inherently admirable attribute and an essential motivational basis for good citizenship. It has been assumed, in short, that patriotism is a virtue in its own right and that it is a…Read more
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13Living Well Now and in the Future: Why Sustainability MattersMIT Press. 2017.The main focus of this book is the normative or ethical aspects of sustainability, including matters of justice in governance that is important to sustainability. The idea of sustainability is widely perceived as having a normative dimension, often referred to as equity, but the character of this normative dimension is seldom explored. The book aims to fill this gap in the literature of sustainability. It proposes a conceptualization of sustainability that is geared to clarifying its essentia…Read more
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10Justice, instruction, and the good: The case for public education in Aristotle and Plato's LawsStudies in Philosophy and Education 12 (2-4): 103-126. 1993.This paper develops an interpretation and analysis of the arguments for public education which open Book VIII of Aristotle's Politics, drawing on both the wider Aristotelian corpus and on examination of continuities with Plato's Laws.Part II: Sections IV–VII examine the arguments for the first of the two conclusions which Aristotle advances in VIII. 1, namely that education is important enough to merit the legislator's attention. It is shown, through a development of links between Politics V and…Read more
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7In Their Best Interest? The Case Against Equal Rights For Children (review)Thinking: The Journal of Philosophy for Children 12 (4): 44-45. 1996.
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36Preserving Opportunity: A Précis of Living Well Now and in the Future: Why Sustainability MattersEthics, Policy and Environment 20 (3): 227-239. 2017.This article is a précis of the book, Living well now and in the future: Why sustainability matters. It provides an overview of the book, focusing especially on its conceptualization of the nature...
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487Why character education?Impact 2017 (24): 1-44. 2017.Character education in schools has been high on the UK political agenda for the last few years. The government has invested millions in grants to support character education projects and declared its intention to make Britain a global leader in teaching character and resilience. But the policy has many critics: some question whether schools should be involved in the formation of character at all; others worry that the traits schools are being asked to cultivate are excessively competitive or mil…Read more
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Towards a Theory of Moral ResponsibilityDissertation, University of Pittsburgh. 1985.This work consists of three connected essays on moral agency and responsibility. The first focuses on the Kantian conception of moral agency, in investigating the origins of the notion that moral responsibility presupposes radical freedom, or what Kant calls the freedom of absolute spontaneity. I argue that the need to postulate radical freedom was created by the problem of evil and by an associated difficulty for moral theory, which I call "the problem of moral license." I also attempt to show …Read more
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35Connected Learning and the Foundations of Psychometrics: A RejoinderJournal of Philosophy of Education 40 (1): 17-29. 2006.This paper continues an exchange between its author and Andrew Davis. Part I addresses the attribution and ontological status of mental constructs and argues that philosophical work on these topics does not undermine high stakes testing. Part II examines the significance for testing of the connectedness of meaningful learning. Part III addresses the high stakes in high stakes testing in connection with the risk entailed by limited scoring reliability. It concludes that there is no straightforwar…Read more
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Fred D. Miller, Jr., Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics , xvii + 424 pp., Cloth $49.95, Paper $24.95 (review)Reason Papers 22 144-153. 1997.
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38Aristotle on the Necessity of Public EducationRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2000.Aristotle regarded law and education as the two fundamental and deeply interdependent tools of political art, making the use of education by the statesman a topic of the first importance in his practical philosophy. The present work develops the first comprehensive treatment of this neglected topic, and assesses the importance of Aristotle's defense of public education for current debates about school choice and privatization, and educational equality
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31Justice, instruction, and the good: The case for public education in Aristotle and Plato's LawsStudies in Philosophy and Education 11 (4): 293-311. 1993.This paper develops an interpretation and analysis of the arguments for public education which open Book VIII of Aristotle's Politics, drawing on both the wider Aristotelian corpus and on examination of continuities with Plato's Laws. Part I: The paper opens with the question of why Aristotle would say that no one will doubt that education should be the concern of the legislator, and Sections I–III identify the nature of his enterprise in the Politics, the audience he wishes to address, the conc…Read more
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3Cultivating the intellectual and moral virtuesIn David Carr & J. W. Steutel (eds.), Virtue Ethics and Moral Education, Routledge. pp. 67--81. 1999.
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40Good Friendships among Children: A Theoretical and Empirical InvestigationJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 46 (3): 286-309. 2016.Ethical dimensions of friendship have rarely been explicitly addressed as aspects of friendship quality in studies of children's peer relationships. This study identifies aspects of moral virtue significant for friendship, as a basis for empirically investigating the role of ethical qualities in children's friendship assessments and aspirations. We introduce a eudaimonic conception of friendship quality, identify aspects of moral virtue foundational to such quality, review and contest some groun…Read more
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574Philosophy of Education: An Anthology (edited book)Wiley-Blackwell. 2006.Philosophy of Education: An Anthology brings together the essential historical and contemporary readings in the philosophy of education. The readings have been selected for their philosophical merit, their focus on important aspects of educational practice and their readability. Includes classic pieces by Plato, Aristotle, Isocrates, Locke, Rousseau, Mill, and Dewey. Addresses topical issues such as teacher professionalism and accountability, the commercialization of schooling, multicultural edu…Read more
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28The Idea of Popular Sovereignty Two Hundred Years After BastilleSocial Philosophy Today 3 119-137. 1990.
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Moral educationIn Lawrence C. Becker & Charlotte B. Becker (eds.), Encyclopedia of Ethics, Routledge. pp. 1127--1131. 2001.
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110Education as a Social Right in a Diverse SocietyJournal of Philosophy of Education 43 (1): 45-56. 2009.The aim of this article is to outline the basis for a comprehensive account of educational rights. It begins by acknowledging the difficulties posed by diversity, and defends a conception of universal human rights that limits parental educational discretion. Against the backdrop of the literature of public reason and fair equality of opportunity, it sketches arguments for the existence of rights to education of some specific kinds. Those rights, and associated educational purposes, are systemati…Read more
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45A Causal Theory of NegligenceSocial Philosophy Today 7 111-124. 1992.The aim of this paper is to outline a novel rationale for the negligence standard of liability in tort law. On this view, the negligence standard has a causal character which is seldom recognized, but which was recognized by Aristotle, who first formulated the standard. The proposed rationale is extracted from its Aristotelian roots and presented as an alternative to the two others which have been discussed in recent years, both of which are widely regarded as flawed.
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Pragmatist philosophy of educationIn Harvey Siegel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, Oxford University Press. 2009.
Rochester, New York, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy |
Moral Psychology, Misc |
Areas of Interest
Normative Ethics |
Philosophy of Education, Misc |