S. L. Gray

The phenomenon of digital differentiation, or stark variations in ability to access Internet hardware and/or infrastructure, has been a feature of provision since its early days. This article explores the impact of digital differentiation on two groups of young people, in England and Germany. It is based on fieldwork that took place during the academic year 2018-2019, just before the global pandemic threw the issue of equality of Internet access into sharp relief. The article begins by describing the empirical design of the My Life Online project, including background, sampling, instruments, ethical aspects and the initial data analysis approach taken to ensure reliability and validity. It then develops a further analysis drawing on Halford and Savage’s hybrid Bourdieu/Actor Network Theory model (2010) to map out the socio-technical network surrounding the young people in our study. In this way we identify areas of change and conflict that compound existing social deprivation. We conclude by making a case for a better education policy awareness of the key issues, and more equitable distribution of national infrastructure moving forwards.

This article argues that emotional governance has become a defining mechanism of control in English schools. By this we mean the expectation that teachers and pupils render themselves emotionally legible through digital and managerial systems. Drawing on Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian frameworks (Ball, Rose, Berlant), we show how affective norms are embedded in institutional life through platforms, biometrics, and managerial discourse. We identify three mechanisms – affective visibility, emotional calibration, and infrastructural emotional labour – through which mood and resilience are mobilised as proxies for coherence, and classify this as a form of ideological soft governance.

This article develops sapience as a distinct educational capacity, separating it from intelligence and learning. Drawing on Brandom’s inferential pragmatics, Wittgenstein’s reflections on rule-following, and Murdoch’s and Arendt’s accounts of moral attention, it argues that education should be understood as the cultivation of interpretive judgment rather than procedural efficiency. Under conditions of acceleration and datafication, sapience names the human ability to dwell within the space of reasons, namely to act reflectively and responsibly within shared norms of meaning. The article reconstructs the historical marginalisation of sapience through Enlightenment rationalism and platform governance, then introduces an ethics of attention as the ground of educational judgment. It outlines the temporal, pedagogical, and curricular conditions required for sapient learning and redefines educational freedom as the capacity for interpretive delay and moral responsiveness. The argument situates sapience as a normative ideal for education in an age where speed, prediction, and optimisation have displaced reflection and care.

This essay explains how, from the theoretical perspective of Basil Bernstein's three “conditions for democracy,” the current pedagogy of artificially intelligent personalized learning seems inadequate. Building on Bernstein's comprehensive work and more recent research concerned with personalized education, Natalia Kucirkova and Sandra Leaton Gray suggest three principles for advancing personalized education and artificial intelligence (AI). They argue that if AI is to reach its full potential in terms of promoting children's identity as democratic citizens, its pedagogy must go beyond monitoring the technological progression of personalized provision of knowledge. It needs to pay more careful attention to the democratic impact of data-driven systems. Kucirkova and Leaton Gray propose a framework to distinguish the value of personalized learning in relation to pluralization and to guide educational researchers and practitioners in its application to socially just classrooms.

In this essay I analyze two emerging theistic accounts of the laws of logic, one precipitated by theistic conceptual realism and the other from an archetype-ectype paradigm in Reformed Scholasticism. The former posits the laws of logic as uncreated and necessary divine thoughts, whereas the latter thinks of those laws as contingent, accommodated forms of a pre-existing archetypal rationality. After the analysis of the two accounts, I offer an explication of the theological rationale motivating the archetype-ectype model of the laws of logic, and apply that model to recent discussions on theological paradox, abstract objects, and the function of natural-theological argumentation in apologetics. Finally, I respond to three anticipated objections against the archetype-ectype model.

Does theology belong within the academy or the church? How do Christian teachings - on God, revelation, and humanity - contribute to the activity of knowing? This volume offers a fresh reading of Bavinck's theological epistemology and argues that his Trinitarian and organic worldview utilizes an eclectic range of sources. Sutanto unfolds Bavinck's understanding of what he considered to be the two most important aspects of epistemology: the character of the sciences and the correspondence between subjects and objects. Writing at the heels of the European debates in the 19th-20th century concerning theology's place in the academy, and rooted in historic Christian teachings, Bavinck's argument remains fresh and provocative. He argued that because the universe was created by the God as described in Christian thought as the Trinity (One God in three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and thus a God who is absolute unity-in-diversity) knowledge of the universe can be characterized as a singular organism. This volume, exploring archival material and heretofore untranslated works, then applies this reading to current debates on the relationship between theology and philosophy, nature and grace, and the nature of knowing.

The central claim of a Consummation Anyway model is that God could bring about eschatological consummation sans the fall—the intended telos of created humanity—apart from the incarnation of Christ. As such, the CA model is an alternative to an Incarnation Anyway model, according to which Christ’s incarnation is a necessary means by which a state of eschatological glory would be achieved sans the fall. This essay seeks to propose an argument for the CA model by drawing from the covenant theology of the Reformed tradition, and it moves in four steps. Firstly, I shall summarize Marc Cortez’s recent arguments for IA, homing in on the major moves that are most relevant for sketching a CA model. Secondly, I will highlight the challenges Cortez has offered against those interested in defending a CA model. Thirdly, I shall sketch a Reformed account of the CA model that seeks to address Cortez’s objections. Fourthly, then, I’ll consider two potential objections against the sketch I have offered for CA, inspired by a recent argument offered by James T. Turner. Finally, I close with a brief conclusion that summarizes some salient features of the proposed thesis. This paper thus proposes at least one way in which the CA thesis could remain a real and live option within this debate.

The recent discovery and translation of Herman Bavinck’s (1854–1921) Reformed Ethics and the ongoing work on the sources and contours of his organic ontology create the impetus to relate these two trajectories together. The twin questions this article will be asking, precisely, are these: what is the logical relationship between Bavinck’s organic whole federalism, where ethical ties are ontologically constitutive, with his claim in the Reformed Ethics that sin’s organizing principle is the prioritization of the ego above all else? Further, how does that organic whole anthropology inform his vision of renewal and the subsequent ethical imperative that flow from the Spirit’s regenerative work? This article traces Bavinck’s logic through the Ethics on these twin questions, while being cognizant of the rest of his oeuvre. With this exposition in hand, this article then relates Bavinck’s outlook to current discussions in Protestant theological ethics.

In this essay the Co-chair of Ethics Working Group 17 of the Health Care Task Force discusses the formation, organization processes and activities of the group, and provides an analysis and critique of the experience. It is suggested that the creation of the group and its inclusion in the process made a social statement which legitimized ethics as a significant part of public policy deliberations. At the same time, major questions are raised about the role of ethics in public policy arenas in which strategic compromise becomes the order of the day. Balanced and objective involvement may be illusory. Ethics, like informed consent, is a process, not an event and is ever evolving. Those who attempt to bring ethical considerations to the world of public policy have an obligation to think carefully about what should constitute an appropriate theoretical framework, make efforts to determine what is unique about ethics, and consider mechanisms for the various ethics disciplines to work effectively together. From this experience, the author developed a personal commitment to focus upon the critical importance of universal coverage for all Americans. Keywords: Clinton health plan, health care reform, universal access CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?