Center for Dewey Studies

The nationalization of industry and education in the early 1970s resulted in the deterioration of private sector with minimal investment in this field. This continued into late 90s with Pakistan recording comparatively low public spending on education as a percentage of GDP 1 . Thus the government of Pakistan, in an effort to enhance intellectual capital and enrollments, established the Higher Education Commission (HEC) assigned to evaluate, improve and promote the higher education and research culture in both public and private sectors in Pakistan. Since its establishment in 2002, the HEC has "undertaken a systematic process of implementation of the five-year agenda for reform outlined in the HEC Medium Term Development Framework (MTDF) 2 . Thus, with the inception of HEC, the number of private sector universities has surged from 25 (2001) to 53 (2010) 3 and the private sector enrolments in higher education institutions increased from 43,873 a 15.8% of the total enrolment of 276,274 (2001) to 115,369 a 14% of the total enrolment which is 803,507(2009) 4 .

Teaching practice is the core component of all pre-service teacher education programs. Through teaching practice, a novice teacher is assumed to have inculcated a supposedly viable pedagogic experience to transfer the core competency of the subject knowledge to students in real classroom situation. This study encompasses the challenges and issues that the novice teachers experience at post-training level of their B.Ed programme of studies. The investigations also enlighten the gaps that the trained teachers have shared with the researchers. The study highlights the extent to which the on-training components of teaching practice is reflected in the attitude of the trained teachers while implementing the set of learned skills in real classrooms.

ABSTRACT
Philosophy was once considered as an authority that could guide and command people in various
spheres of life. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, philosophy no longer enjoyed the
place of an authority and science replaced it as the new authority. Nietzsche has criticized this
change and asserted that philosophy as the study of whole being, should be restored to its proper
place. Nietzsche expressed his ideas about the role of a philosopher in guiding a civilization, a
century ago. His ideas about the role of a philosopher, who a philosopher is, what kind of
difficulties lie between him and his tasks and what eventually is the task of a philosopher are very
much needed in the 21st century and bear a universal meaning. This article reviews Nietzsche’s
ideas on philosophy and philosopher in general.
Keywords: philosophy, Nietzsche’s ideas,

Abstract

Creativity is identified as a major aim of education throughout the world. Dewey identified the development of the skill to form proper judgments as a major aim of education, thus, though indirectly, clubbing the two aims. This aim, however, cannot be achieved without a proper organization of educational experience. In traditional schooling- prevailing throughout the developing world, and also in developed countries to a certain extent- educational experience is planned under the sway of behaviorism. Dewey reckons such an organization of experience as defective and insufficient to achieve proper educational aims. This article argues that the development of creativity is closely related to the development of the skill to form proper judgments in different situations. The article also argues that behaviorism , as the philosophy underlying traditional schooling(though it might appear to a few as an anachronism), develops responses in learners through a process that does not significantly improve creative powers. The article also reviews Dewey's position on different relevant issues and concludes , through a discussion on how educational experience should be planned, that Dewey's ideas are really helpful in developing creativity in learners

Although, phenomenological method in its spirit and assumptions is entirely different from Aristotelian method, the need to juxtapose these philosophies is justified on the ground that the two should be properly differentiated from each other, and their differences and similarities should be brought to light. For at times the homonymy of the terms used in two methods creates a conceptual error in the mind. These terms include among other knowledge. The article gives a brief overview of Husserl's phenomenology and its parallels in Aristotle's philosophy.

Abstrakt: In Nietzsche's thought the criticism of the concept of ego occupies a dominant position. In Nietzsche's philosophy, the ego-both as a moral and as an epistemological subject-has received a serious criticism. Nietzsche views that the concept of ego, reason and consciousness have resulted from the breakup of human existence from a more natural state-a state in which instinctual activity dominated the human life. Nietzsche's concept of ego is closely related to his understanding of human instincts. The following article is an attempt to see the connection between the concept of ego and human instincts in Nietzsche's philosophy.

It is a bitter reality that the curricula and traditional pedagogy prevailing in public schools of Pakistan in general and Sindh in particular do not incorporate the algebraic concepts properly. Both the content and the presentation therein cannot be considered up to the mark, thereby making "Algebra" a tough and dry subject. This quasi-experimental study focused to find out the effect of teaching algebra through social constructivism on the students learning outcomes of 7 th graders in public schools of District Jamshoro Sindh. For this purpose two existing intact sections of grade 7 (7 th A, and 7 th B) of a government high school of district Jamshoro were selected as quasi control and treatment groups. The pre and posttest analyses were carried out. The first pattern t-test analysis revealed that both groups were parallel, however, the latter posttest analysis revealed that treatment group that was taught through social constructivist approach excelled in achieving statistically significant learning outcomes than that of control group that was taught through traditional one-way teaching.

Although, phenomenological method in its spirit and assumptions is entirely different from Aristotelian method, the need to juxtapose these philosophies is justified on the ground that the two should be properly differentiated from each other, and their differences and similarities should be brought to light. For at times the homonymy of the terms used in two methods creates a conceptual error in the mind. These terms include among other knowledge. The article gives a brief overview of Husserl's phenomenology and its parallels in Aristotle's philosophy.

In Nietzsche’s thought the criticism of the concept of ego occupies a dominant position. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, the ego--both as a moral and as an epistemological subject--has received a serious criticism. Nietzsche views that the concept of ego, reason and consciousness have resulted from the breakup of human existence from a more natural state-- a state in which instinctual activity dominated the human life. Nietzsche’s concept of ego is closely related to his understanding of human instincts. The following article is an attempt to see the connection between the concept of ego and human instincts in Nietzsche’s philosophy.

I want to make plausible the following claim:Analyzing scientific inquiry as a species of socially distributed cognition has a variety of advantages for science studies, among them the prospects of bringing together philosophy and sociology of science. This is not a particularly novel claim, but one that faces major obstacles. I will retrace some of the major steps that have been made in the pursuit of a distributed cognition approach to science studies, paying special attention to the promise that such an approach holds out for bridging the rift between philosophy and the social studies of science.

In 1909, the 50th anniversary of both the publication of Origin of the Species and his own birth, John Dewey published "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy."  This optimistic essay saw Darwin's advance not only as one of empirical or theoretical biology, but a logical and conceptual revolution that would shake every corner of philosophy. Dewey tells us less about the influence that Darwin exerted over philosophy over the past 50 years and instead prophesied the influence it would (or should) take in the future.  I will discuss this landmark paper and the key lessons Dewey draws from Darwinism for philosophy, and give a preliminary assessment of how well we've done so far.  (Dewey would be largely disappointed.)

This paper addresses the political constraints on science through a pragmatist critique of Philip Kitcher’s account of “well-ordered science.” A central part of Kitcher’s account is his analysis of the significance of items of scientific research: contextual and purpose-relative scientific significance replaces mere truth as the aim of inquiry. I raise problems for Kitcher’s account and argue for an alternative, drawing on Peirce’s and Dewey’s theories of problem-solving inquiry. I conclude by suggesting some consequences for understanding the proper conduct of science in a democracy.

Common wisdom includes expressions such as “there is no accounting for taste'’ that express a widely-accepted subjectivism about taste. We commonly say things like “I can’t stand anything with onions in it'’ or “Oh, I’d never eat sushi,'’ and we accept such from our friends and associates. It is the position of this essay that much of this language is actually quite unacceptable. Without appealing to complete objectivism about taste, I will argue that there are good reasons to think that there will be fairly wide agreement between experienced palates on aesthetic preferences, and that this result will not necessarily agree with unexperienced and unreflective opinions on the matter. Subjectivism about aesthetic preference can be taken to justify the practice of picking eating (after all, who is better to say what I’ll enjoy than me?), while the position of this paper is that such picky eating is a moral failing. To be a picky eater is to have a significant lack of openness to new experiences. It involves an irresponsible level of fallibilism with respect to taste. Never venturing into new aesthetic landscapes leads to a sort of repetitiveness, which in turn leads to a life full of blandness and banality.

The framework of quantum frames can help unravel some of the interpretive difficulties in the foundation of quantum mechanics. In this paper, I begin by tracing the origins of this concept in Bohr's discussion of quantum theory and his theory of complementarity. Engaging with various interpreters and followers of Bohr, I argue that the correct account of quantum frames must be extended beyond literal space-time reference frames to frames defined by relations between a quantum system and the exosystem or external physical frame, of which measurement contexts are a particularly important example. This approach provides superior solutions to key EPR-type measurement and locality paradoxes.

Carlo Rovelli's relational interpretation of quantum mechanics holds that a system's states or the values of its physical quantities as normally conceived only exist relative to a cut between a system and an observer or measuring instrument. Furthermore, on Rovelli's account, the appearance of determinate observations from pure quantum superpositions happens only relative to the interaction of the system and observer. Jeffrey Barrett ([1999]) has pointed out that certain relational interpretations suffer from what we might call the ‘determinacy problem', but Barrett misclassifies Rovelli's interpretation by lumping it in with Mermin's view, as Rovelli's view is quite different and has resources to escape the particular criticisms that Barrett makes of Mermin's view. Rovelli's interpretation still leaves us with a paradox having to do with the determinacy of measurement outcomes, which can be accepted only if we are willing to give up on certain elements of the ‘absolute’ view of the world.

Ron Giere’s recent book Scientific perspectivism sets out an account of science that attempts to forge a via media between two popular extremes: absolutist, objectivist realism on the one hand, and social constructivism or skeptical anti-realism on the other. The key for Giere is to treat both scientific observation and scientific theories as perspectives, which are limited, partial, contingent, context-, agent- and purpose-dependent, and pluralism-friendly, while nonetheless world-oriented and modestly realist. Giere’s perspectivism bears significant similarity to earlier ideas of Paul Feyerabend and John Dewey. Comparing these to Giere’s work not only uncovers a consilience of ideas, but also can help to fill out Giere’s account in places where it is not fully developed, as well as helping us understand the work of these earlier authors and their continuing relevance to contemporary concerns in philosophy of science.

Keywords: Ronald Giere; Paul Feyerabend; John Dewey; Perspectivism; Pragmatism; Pluralism