Papers by Barbara Stengel
For more than 100 years, philosophers have been coming to grips with the reality that the atomist... more For more than 100 years, philosophers have been coming to grips with the reality that the atomistic (paradigmatically male) human, willing and acting heroically or poorly, is a fiction. Samantha Deane-following John Dewey, Donna Haraway, and Barbara Stengel-takes us a long step past that insight to suggest that we won't make any sense of sociopolitical-or ethical-issues that arise until we acknowledge that action and agency are never individual but always relational through and through. That is, we are always acting-with ("com-posting with") animate and inanimate entities who are acting with and enabling us! When we create a model-or tell a story-that has explanatory power with respect to guns and the ways they are (mis)used, that model must be "agentbased" to be useful. That is, all the tokens in the story, even the non-human, are construed as agents-including, in the story Deane invokes, guns, mansions, and man cards. All confer on each other vitality of a kind that grounds agency. That is, all have the potential in interaction to enable others to be and act in certain ways. A gun enables me to be a killer, a hunter, or otherwise a threat in ways that my natural endowments generally would not. A person in a murderous rage or an even-the-score gang fight invites and enables a gun to be an instrument of murder, while a hunter culling a deer herd with a rifle in hand becomes a steward of the environment and a provider for her family. Guns, even if never used, can confer manliness and confirm certain political commitments. On the other hand, association with guns can render persons "guilty," or in the case of Sarah Winchester, crazy. With Haraway, Deane maintains that we can no longer think through stories that are not thoroughly agent-based. There is no such (instrumental)
Philosophy of Education Archive, 1998
What does it mean to teach a "methods course" when student learning is a matter of personal and s... more What does it mean to teach a "methods course" when student learning is a matter of personal and social construction of meaning? When "communities of learners" are the pedagogical vision? When the moral contours of teaching are garnering deserved attention? When schooling is being called to reflect the democratic ideal in form and substance? When the conduit metaphor for teaching is widely questioned? As teaching and teaching institutions are being reconceptualized, teacher education is irrevocably altered. A cursory examination of most methods texts (both "general" and "special") reveals a fairly common set of chapter headings and topical arrays: instructional planning, setting objectives, motivation for learning, classroom management, teacher-centered instruction, student-centered instruction, cooperative learning, inquiry approaches, literacy skills, individual differences, and assessment. As this list suggests, methods courses typically involve the study of planning for, delivery of, management of, special problems regarding, and professional concerns implicit in instruction. How is this taken-for-granted view changed as we take seriously what we know about the nature of human learning and the demand for teaching that is morally defensible, effective, and democratic? What is the meaning of method in teaching? As with so many educational issues, John Dewey provides timely assistance.
Philosophy of Education, Jun 1, 2022
Are teachers care workers? I am not suggesting teachers don't care nor am I suggesting that carin... more Are teachers care workers? I am not suggesting teachers don't care nor am I suggesting that caring-for is not part of the relational work that is teaching. If teaching is a relation rather than an action or activity-and I accept that it is-then caring as an ethical practice is surely one important element of teaching. But are teachers care workers? I think the answer to this question matters for the sense we are able to make of Bing Quek's argument. Can teaching be reduced to care work? Or do teachers inhabit a distinctively different role that folds care into its practice? Let me illustrate with some examples. My younger sister, Ellen, is unfortunately afflicted with a rare form of Alzheimer's Disease, a "visual variant" that results in deterioration in the back of the brain impacting sense perception, proprioception, speech production, and especially vision. Like so many others with similar disorders, she is unable to prepare her own food or dress herself. She has lost control of her limbs, sees sporadically, and struggles to find the words to express the thoughtssophisticated thinking about financial matters, for example-that seem still to be present to her. Until recently, her husband filled in the gaps. He cared for her. At our urging, he hired a live-in caretaker, Regina, who is a care worker, but wants to be thought of as a caregiver. She has no other calling but to ensure that Ellen-impaired but still very much alive-is clean, safe, and well fed. Justin is a student at my university with a progressive neurological disorder who seeks to become a teacher. He is wheelchair bound and requires assistance in virtually all the quotidian tasks of living, including dressing and toileting. A shortage of care workers, persons willing and able to provide the care he needs (including hoisting him from here to there), prevented him from returning to school in person, and he is completing his degree and licensure
SAGE Publications Ltd eBooks, 2010
Educational studies, Mar 1, 1990
Sending you to a new session
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, Feb 23, 2021
Sex/gender and affect/emotion mutually implicate one another in any theory, research, or practice... more Sex/gender and affect/emotion mutually implicate one another in any theory, research, or practice with respect to education. It is important to examine these two elements together because the emergent focus on affect since the early 1970s is not an accident of thought but tracks the interest in sex/gender as an object of study and tracks as well the increased and increasing visibility of scholars who are not male, cisgendered, and heterosexual. Two overlapping but distinguishable approaches to the study of affect and emotion—affect theory and the feminist politics of emotion—have contributed to changing conceptions of sexuality and gender with respect to educational purposes and pedagogies. Affect theory begins and ends in lived experience; a feminist politics of emotion begins and ends in the press for active response that accompanies that lived experience. Nonetheless, there is a common concern with how power circulates through feeling and how ways of being and knowing come to be through affective relations and discourses. Moreover, there is a shared commitment to understanding affects not as constraints on rationality and hurdles to ethical action, but as the potential to think, act, and live differently.
Education and Culture, 2008
ABSTRACT John Dewey calls Ralph Waldo Emerson "The Philosopher of Democracy" in... more ABSTRACT John Dewey calls Ralph Waldo Emerson "The Philosopher of Democracy" in an essay of the same title (1903/1977). In making his case that Emerson is a philosopher, Dewey acknowledges that some (including Emerson himself) might be inclined to see him as a poet rather than a philosopher. Dewey goes on to discuss the difference between the poet and the philosopher. The poet is maker rather than reflector. The poet discerns and uncovers rather than analyzes and classifies. The poet evidences a "natural attitude" where the philosopher relies on reasons for believing. However, the distinction is not hard and fast; in Emerson's case at least, one can be both poet and philosopher. Dewey's description of Emerson as poet and philosopher of democracy holds, I suggest, for Jane Addams as well, but it is, perhaps ironically, as poet that Addams impacted the philosophy of John Dewey. Addams is unquestionably a maker of democratic community and pragmatic education; Dewey is just as unquestionably a reflector. Through her work at Hull House, Addams discerned the shape of democracy as a mode of associated living and uncovered the outlines of an experimental approach to knowledge and understanding; Dewey analyzed and classified the social, psychological and educational processes Addams lived. As I will demonstrate below, Addams's "natural attitude" brought Dewey up short in a situation in which he could, by his own admission, only rely on reason. In this essay, I claim that Dewey became Dewey in the last decade of the nineteenth century and that Jane Addams was present as poet to his philosopher. When I say that Dewey became Dewey, I mean that he let go of religious practice and theological language, focused a conception of democracy as a mode of associated living, shifted from Hegelian dialectic to pragmatic experimentalism, acknowledged the relational nature of the self and found a way to think about thinking rooted in human action, thus acknowledging the unity of human experience. Dewey's interaction with Addams, again by his own admission, forced a reconsideration of his thinking, a reconstruction that led to the very elements (noted above) that have rendered Deweyan thought useful to us in the early twenty-first century. I make my case by focusing here on just one significant instance documented in Dewey's correspondence and described—in various ways—in contemporary Dewey biographies. Jane Addams was not, of course, the only one who shaped Dewey's thinking in this period. His wife Alice, his colleague George Herbert Mead, the idealist T. H. Green, the antidemocratic political theorist Sir Henry Maines, and "weirdo" Franklin Ford headline a list of others whose relations with Dewey were influential, positively or negatively. What seems clear to me, however, is that Dewey was searching for a way to instantiate his thinking about democracy, about Christianity and about experimentalism. His involvement in the ill-advised Thought News episode can be read as part of this search. But it was at Hull House in the company of Jane Addams that Dewey found what he was looking for. My "text" for this essay comes from two letters John Dewey sent to his wife Alice in October, 1894 describing a conversation he had with Jane Addams after she participated in a program at the University of Chicago regarding the proposed University Settlement House. In what follows, I offer a detailed rendering of that correspondence, analyze the way this incident is represented in the biographies penned by Robert Westbrook (1991), Steven Rockefeller (1991), Alan Ryan (1995) and Jay Martin (2003), and then claim a "poetic" role for Jane Addams in influencing Dewey's philosophy. On Sunday, October 7, 1894, a meeting was held at the University of Chicago to promote the University Settlement House. Jane Addams spoke regarding the point of philanthropy as practiced in the settlement house. John Dewey was present (Levine 2005). On Tuesday, October 9, 1894, Dewey noted in a letter to wife Alice that he had just finished preparing a talk on Epictetus to be delivered at Hull House that evening. He went on to describe the meeting at the University two days prior: I came near forgetting the chief thing that's happened since I wrote...
Education and Culture, 2020
John Dewey went to China in 1919 and stayed for more than two years. He watched and learned. He w... more John Dewey went to China in 1919 and stayed for more than two years. He watched and learned. He wrote and spoke volumes both while he was there and after he returned. One hundred years later, we are unsurprisingly interested in whether Dewey’s time in China left a trace
Educational Theory, Feb 1, 2010
One has to read to the end of Alice Pitt's dense article to understand what is really bothering h... more One has to read to the end of Alice Pitt's dense article to understand what is really bothering her. There, for the first time, she refers to ''the public's anxieties over what it is that teachers do behind the closed doors of their classrooms,'' and expresses concern over ''the contemporary landscape that structures debate about what the Ontario Ministry of Education describes as public confidence in education.'' 1 Educators, those professionals whose work is the driving force of schools, are not trusted. Their knowledge and expertise is disrespected; their autonomy is threatened. It is for this reason that Pitt and her colleagues are conducting an empirical study of the profession of teaching, of teachers' perceptions of their influence, authority, and autonomy. And it is in one of the interviews conducted for that study that Pitt encounters a young teacher whose experience is emblematic of the conceptual and political ambiguity surrounding the very notion of autonomy. Pitt realizes that threats to autonomy and sources of disrespect arise within the profession as well as without. She sets out to consider the ''impossible profession'' of education, citing Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, Cornelius Castoriadis, Hannah Arendt, and Deborah Britzman as her companions. 1. Alice Pitt, ''On Having One's Chance: Autonomy as Education's Limit,'' in this volume, 15-16. This work will be cited in the text as HOC for all subsequent references.
Education and Culture, 2018
We must be on guard Against despair, against fear, Against bitterness, against self-seeking, And ... more We must be on guard Against despair, against fear, Against bitterness, against self-seeking, And have the tenacity and courage To think optimistically and act affirmatively-John McQuiston II, Always We Begin Again 2 Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Philosophy of Education, 2009
On the surface, Peter Nelsen seeks to rehabilitate Nel Noddings's care theory from a substantial ... more On the surface, Peter Nelsen seeks to rehabilitate Nel Noddings's care theory from a substantial objection: a carer must sometimes resort to "appeal to non-carebased resources for guidance" when the cared-for rejects the carer's attempts to care. He seeks to effect the rehabilitation from within care theory, thus doubly defeating the objection. Under the surface, Nelsen invites speculation about ethics as an enterprise involving bodies that think and feel. I will have something to say about both topics.
Philosophy of Education, 2017
Philosophy of Education, 2019
Educational Theory, Apr 1, 2017
Educational Theory, Sep 1, 2002
has a problem and the problem has moved him from dissatisfaction to action. In his essay "Why Are... more has a problem and the problem has moved him from dissatisfaction to action. In his essay "Why Aren't Philosophers and Educators Speaking to Each Other?" Arcilla follows the path of inquiry that John Dewey outlined, naming and interpreting the problem, hypothesizing solution-actions, and testing those hypotheses against likely predictable consequences.' Actually, Arcilla's problem seems to have three separable, though for him clearly related, layers. In the opening paragraphs, he sketches the outline of a personal, existential dilemma. He is experiencing a kind of identity crisis as a philosopher of 1. Rene Vincente Arcilla, "Why Aren't Philosophers and Educators Speaking to Each Other!" Educational Theory 52, no. 1 (Winter 2002). This article will be cited as PE in the text for all subsequent references.
Educational studies, Sep 1, 1988
Bloomsbury Academic eBooks, 2023
Studies in Philosophy and Education, Sep 2, 2010
Here I shine light on the concept of and call for safe space and on the implicit argument that se... more Here I shine light on the concept of and call for safe space and on the implicit argument that seems to undergird both the concept and the call, complicating and problematizing the taken for granted view of this issue with the goal of revealing a more complex dynamic worthy of interpretive attention when determining educational response. I maintain that the
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Papers by Barbara Stengel