Educational Foundations

The purpose of this investigation was to explore elementary teachers' beliefs about data and data use. Archived data from 2 research projects were used to address the following research questions: What are kindergarten and fifth-grade literacy teachers' beliefs about data and data use? What functions do the beliefs serve in teachers' actual use of data? Using a multicase study approach, 2 research teams carried out qualitative data analysis. Findings revealed that kindergarten and fifth-grade teachers held similar "macro" beliefs, and these beliefs were shaped and contextualized in response to their settings.

Classroom tests provide teachers with essential information used to make decisions about instruction and student grades. A table of specification (TOS) can be used to help teachers frame the decision making process of test construction and improve the validity of teachers' evaluations based on tests constructed for classroom use. In this article we explain the purpose of a TOS and how to use it to help construct classroom tests.

In this paper, I argue that potentialism is uniquely able to articulate the value of educational practices (such as philosophy with children, and study) that lack the kind of directionality commonly associated with educational activities. It does so by operating with radically different assumptions about the nature and value of education – assumptions that can be derived from the basic premise of progressive education that education needs to be rooted in experience. I follow here a line of thought that leads from Dewey’s (broadly scientific) notion of experience aimed at new and better experiences, to Ivan Illich’s emphasis on the experience of the new, to Gert Biesta’s idea that education needs to allow students to bring something new into the world, to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons’ emphasis on the experience of the possibility of the new. Finally, drawing from the work of Giorgio Agamben and Tyson E. Lewis, I show how a potentialist notion of experience operates with a different temporality, enabling us to think of the experience of the potentiality of the new as such as what accounts for the educational value of non-directional practices–not only in spite of, but because of their lack of directionality.

While some argue that the only way to make a place for Philosophy for Children (P4C) in today's strict, standardised classroom is to measure its efficacy in promoting reasoning, we believe that this must be avoided in order to safeguard what is truly unique in P4C dialogue. When P4C acquiesces to the very same quantitative measures that define the rest of learning, then the philosophical dimension drops out and P4C becomes yet another progressive curriculum and pedagogy for enhancing argumentation skills that can easily be appropriated by any content area. What we want to offer in this article is a reevaluation of P4C that remains faithful to a radical kernel that we find when we do philosophy with children and young adults. To theorise the potential for P4C, we draw heavily on Agamben's work, and in particular his reflections on speech and infancy. We propose that the redemption of P4C necessitates a shift from a community of inquiry (as the dialogic pedagogical model underlying P4C) to a community of infancy. Such a community is not a community that operates according to predefined rules or standardised assessment protocols but rather is an inoperative community that is defined by letting ends idle. On our account, a community of infancy is an example of dialogic studious play that is neither ritual nor just play, thus avoiding the extreme polarities of the ritualised classrooms of high-stakes testing and the 'ludic' postmodern classroom of free play. What is at stake here is to preserve the last vestige of freedom within the school.

This paper reassesses a perennial concern of philosophy of education: the nature of the educational community and the role of the teacher in relation to such a
community. As an entry point into this broader question, we turn to Philosophy for children (P4C), which has consistently emphasized the importance of community. Yet, not unlike pragmatist notions of community more broadly, the P4C community has largely focused on the goal-directed, purposive, aspect of the process of inquiry. The purpose of our paper is to move beyond P4C (as it has traditionally been conceived) in order to theorize a noninstrumental, in-tentional, educational community without pre-conceived goals or intentions. Drawing largely from the work of Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, we describe the P4C-classroom as one that refuses to be operative (moving forward toward reaching common goals) and thus undermines the taken-for-granted logic of means and ends that underlies how educational communities are typically depicted and justified. Again drawing from Agamben, we identify the specific ways in which the experience of love and friendship (both of which are pure means rather than means to an end) constitute the intentional community. The silence of the voice of the teacher enables the experience of love and friendship to come about. Being included as an exclusion via his/her silence, the teacher is neither immanent (facilitator of student learning) nor transcendent

Educational theorists ranging from Ivan Illich to Jan Masschelein and Maarten Simons have described institutionalized schooling as a modernized, secular church, full of rituals, sacraments, and various incantations. For them, the function of the teacher as priest and schooling as baptism is highly problematic, separating education from the common world. As such, the educational theology of the school needs to be suspended in order for educational life to take on new meaning beyond the sacraments of learning. To further this line of inquiry, we turn to the work of Giorgio Agamben on the oath and its originary function of guaranteeing the truthfulness of language ('sacrament of language'). Insofar as the oath is also operable in learning (in the voice of the teacher), we argue that such operability can be suspended through a dialogic practice called 'community of infancy' , thereby making possible new, profane forms of educational life beyond baptism.

Educational theorists ranging from Plato, to Freire, to bell hooks, to
Peter McLaren have theorized love as an essential factor in education. Whereas,
typically, a particular kind of love (erotic love, caring love, etc.) is argued to be
especially relevant for educational practice, what we do in this paper is to look at
kinds of love that are constitutive for the relationship between teacher and student.
Specifically, we outline four types of love that one might find in a classroom. We
argue that from the perspective of Italian critical theorist Giorgio Agamben, the first
three are problematic as they are not attentive to the potentiality of students to be
whatever, and thus sacrifice potentiality of the child as such in the name of what
must be or what is. The fourth type of love, on the other hand, embraces the
potentiality of the child as a pure means rather than a means to another end. We
further argue that there is an educational practice, what we are calling ‘‘Philosophy
for Infancy’’ (P4I), that enables us to love our students’ potentiality. In contrast to
Philosophy for Children, P4I exposes children to their potentiality rather than orienting
specific potentialities towards determined outcomes. As such, P4I has its
own, distinctive take on love in the classroom that differentiates it from other forms
of love. It is our intention to develop this theory of love.

The Most Reasonable Answer is an innovative and comprehensive guide to engaging students in inquiry dialogue—a type of talk used in text-based classroom discussions. During inquiry dialogue, students collectively search for the most reasonable answers to big, controversial questions, and, as a result, enhance their argumentation skills and develop a deep understanding of the texts they read. Based on years of research and work in nearly fifty classrooms, this book is an essential resource for educators looking for new ways to teach critical thinking and engage students in high-quality discourse. Reznitskaya and Wilkinson introduce a robust Argumentation Rating Tool, a ru-bric highlighting eleven practices and corresponding talk moves that can be used by teachers and students to improve the quality of their arguments. The tool encourages students to build on and challenge each other's ideas, clarify meaning, rely on well-examined reasons and evidence, and make logical connections. The authors explain how to choose the readings that have high " dialogic quality, " create controversial questions based on these readings, and design lessons that help students develop their argumentation skills when speaking, listening, reading , and writing. The book provides detailed annotated transcripts that illustrate how teachers can effectively facilitate whole-group and small-group discussions using fiction, nonfiction, and multimodal texts. Packed with a rich array of field-tested materials, The Most Reasonable Answer supports teachers in facilitating inquiry dialogue in upper-elementary grades.