Making Sense of the World: Living, Learning and Teaching with Radical Philosophy of Education proposes that human knowledge arises from an integrated physical and metaphysical experience involving the continuing social acts of personal and community cultures and languages. It seeks to provide a means of thinking about and acting with the philosophical nature of human existence, so that the daily activities and achievements of all are respected and taken into account. Given the dominance of neoliberal politics and economics in many countries, it is unusual to find the work of educators and practitioners being framed generally by an explicit philosophy of knowledge.
Neil Hooley is Honorary Fellow in the College of Arts and Education, Victoria University, Melbourne, and is an experienced academic and researcher. Within a pragmatist and inquiry paradigm, he has expertise with qualitative methodologies including narrative inquiry, case writing and case study and participatory action research.
Oksana Razoumova is Lecturer in the College of Arts, Business, Law, Education and Information Technology, Victoria University, Melbourne. As a linguist, she has had extensive teaching and research experience regarding the nature of language teaching and learning and its application in educational, employment and community settings.
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables
About the Authors
1 Physics and Metaphysics: Understanding Truth, Reality, Values
1 Contrasting or Connecting Physics and Metaphysics
2 Everyday Metaphysics
3 Metaphysics and Learning
4 Truth, Reality, Values
5 Personal Metaphysical Inquiry: 1
6 Case 1: Ghost Riders in the Sky
2 Materialist and Pragmatist Philosophy
1 A Materialist View of Humanity
2 Pragmatism and Concepts of Being
3 Humans as Praxis-Beings
4 Implications for Praxis Schooling
5 Personal Metaphysical Inquiries: 2
6 Case 2: Of Waves and Thoughts
3 Consciousness, Subjectivity and Objectivity
1 Consciousness, beyond Reach
2 Interaction of Subjectivity and Objectivity
3 Dialectics of Knowing
4 Concepts of Abstract and Other Thinking
5 Personal Metaphysical Inquiries: 3
6 Case 3: Memories of Country
4 Extremities of Positivism, Postmodernism and Neoliberal Policy
1 Rise and Fall of Positivism
2 Postmodernism and Knowledge as Contingent
3 Neoliberalism, for Better or Worse
4 Policy and Schooling in the Real World
5 Decolonising Knowledge and Curriculum
6 Personal Metaphysical Inquiries: 4
7 Case 4: Knowledge and Numbers
5 Knowledge: Language and Mathematics
1 Thinking about Language
2 Mathematics and the Search for Certainty
3 Language and Mathematics, Forms of Knowing
4 Personal Metaphysical Inquiries: 5
5 Case 5: Cryptic Conversations at Camp
6 Knowledge: Music and Arts
1 Music to Think With
2 Arts and the Aesthetic Condition
3 Incorporating the Arts into the Matrix of Thinking
4 Modernity and the Arts
5 Personal Metaphysical Inquiries: 6
6 Case 6: In the Mood
7 Knowledge: Indigenous Meaning of Land
1 Spiritual Song of the Aborigine
2 Connections with the Land
3 Past, Present and Future, the Dreaming
4 Looking to the Skies
5 Experiential, Cultural and Metaphysical Understandings
6 Personal Metaphysical Inquiries: 7
7 Case 7: Imagining the World
8 Universal Coherence of Knowing: Society, Knowledge, Pedagogy
1 Metaphysics in the Modern World
2 Living Well for Education
3 Religion and Spirituality
4 Achievement
5 Knowledge, Ethics and Educational Acts
6 Epistemology, Perhaps
7 Personal Metaphysical Inquiries: 8
8 Case 8: That s Not Fair!
9 Human as Discursive Subject
1 A Metaphysical/Physical Life
2 Learning and Researching with Praxis Inquiry
3 Discursive Curriculum
4 Human as Discursive Subject, the Practice of Experience and Reason
5 Personal Metaphysical Inquiries: 9
6 Case 9: Talking into Thought
Compilation of Personal Metaphysical Inquiries (Abbreviated)
References
Index
Making Sense of the World will be of interest to academic scholars and researchers in philosophy and philosophy of education, graduate students researching philosophy of education, school teachers of all subject areas and educational policy makers. It relates to an integrated view of knowledge extending across the humanities, social sciences and physical sciences.