Teaching and Learning as a Pedagogic Pilgrimage


Book Description

Teaching and Learning as a Pedagogic Pilgrimage is premised on an argument that if higher education is to remain responsive to a public good, then teaching and learning must be in a perpetual state of reflection and change. It argues in defence of teaching and learning as constitutive of a pedagogic pilgrimage and draws on a range of scholars and theories to explore concepts such as transcendental journeys, belief, hope and imagination. The main objective of the book is to show how teaching and learning ought to be reconsidered in relation to that which lies beyond the parameters of the encounters, as well as that which is intrinsic to the encounters. This book gives shape to rituals and routines of engagement and debate, before extending the limitations in deliberative pedagogic encounters to offer desirable outcomes in which both student and teacher can practice a spiritual take on teaching and learning along a continuum of ongoing action. Themes explored in the chapters include the following: Faith and deliberative encounters Post-human ethics of care in teaching and learning Diffracted teaching and learning This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, and teaching and learning in the philosophy of education. It will also appeal to school and university educators, policymakers and prospective teachers.




Pedagogical Responsiveness in Complex Contexts


Book Description

This book reflects a range of pedagogical responses to increasingly complex educational contexts. It finds this complexity in the interplay of a number of factors, including the diverse histories and identities of educational actors; institutional and systemic demands and constraints; competing conceptions of valued knowledge; and technological change. The chapters show the demand for pedagogical response to unexpected and unprecedented events (like COVID-19) and the importance of addressing barriers to access that become sedimented into institutional cultures. The authors, mostly from Global South contexts, are concerned with enabling educational access and inclusion in the face of competing global and local demands. They present new knowledge about pedagogical approaches that are relevant and effective in uncertain times and challenging places. Together, the contributors offer accounts of hope-full and innovative practice and conceptually rigorous engagement with fundamental issues of learning and teaching.




Mediating Learning in Higher Education in Africa


Book Description

This book enters the discourse of the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education in Africa. The book provides critical insights comprising topical themes from transformation, citizenship and gender, researching to ethical perspectives of teaching and learning.




Teaching, Friendship and Humanity


Book Description

This book extends liberal understandings in and about democratic citizenship education in relation to university pedagogy, more specifically higher teaching and learning. The authors’ argument is in defence of cultivating humanity through (higher) educational encounters on the basis of virtues that connect with the idea of love. Unlike romantic and erotic love, the book examines love in relation to educational encounters whereby humans or citizens can engage autonomously, deliberatively andresponsibly, yet lovingly. The rationale for focussing on the notion of philia (love) in educational encounters, the authors argue, is that doing so allows our current understandings of such encounters to be expanded beyond mere talk of reasonable engagements—autonomous action, deliberative iterations, and simple action—toward emotive enactments that could enhance human relations in educational encounters.




Education Transformation in Muslim Societies


Book Description

Hope is a complex concept—one academics use to accept the unknown while also expressing optimism. However, it can also be an action-oriented framework with measurable outcomes. In Education Transformation in Muslim Societies, scholars from around the world offer a wealth of perspectives for incorporating hope in the education of students from kindergarten through university to stimulate change, dialogue, and transformation in their communities. For instance, though progress has been made in Muslim societies on early education and girls' enrollment, it is not well documented. By examining effective educational initiatives and analyzing how they work, educators, policymakers, and government officials can create a catalyst for positive educational reform and transformation. Adopting strength-based educational discourse, contributors to Education Transformation in Muslim Societies reveal how critical the whole-person approach is for enriching the brain and the spirit and instilling hope back into the teaching and learning spaces of many Muslim societies and communities. Education Transformation in Muslim Societies is a copub with the International Institute of Islamic Thought.




Teachers Matter


Book Description

Who are our teachers? Should we care about who teaches our children? Because who they are, matters. It matters because who teachers are, manifests in how they teach. The authors’ analyses of prominent teachers in Anglo-Saxon philosophy of education and Muslim philosophy of education, coupled with their own narratives of what it means to be and become a teacher inform the central theme of this book, namely that teachers do matter. In addition, no attempt at good teaching and learning can manifest without having some idea of who teachers are and who they can become. In the main, becoming an authentic teacher can happen only in the presence of what it means for teachers to be or become transformative, dialectical and imaginative, deconstructive and friendly, expositors of equality and disruption, eloquent and conscientious and spiritual. It is such an understanding, which the authors advance and dare to cultivate in our institutions of primary, secondary and higher learning.




Democratic Education and Muslim Philosophy


Book Description

This book examines how democratic education is conceptualised by exploring understandings of emotions in learning. The authors argue that emotion is both an embodiment and enhancement of democratic education: that rationality and emotion are not separate entities, but exist on a continuum. While democratic education would not exist if it were incommensurate with reason, making judgements about the human condition could not happen without invoking emotion. Synthesising Muslim scholarship with the perspectives of the Western world, the book draws on scholars such as Ibn al-Arabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Fazlur Rahman to offer an enriched and expanded notion of democratic education. This engaging and reflective work will be of interest and value to students and scholars of educational philosophy and cultural studies.




The Future of Teaching


Book Description

The ‘future of teaching’ represents a technological disruption of moral traditions of teaching and what teaching might become and is a serious concern for the current generation of philosophers in both China and the West.




Academic Activism in Higher Education


Book Description

This book argues for renewed understandings of academic activism, understandings that conceive of the ideas, arguments and scholarship of the academe as embedded within the practices of what the academy does. It examines why and how a renewed notion of academic activism informs a philosophy of higher education specifically in relation to teaching and learning. The book focuses on the theories and practices of teaching and learning, in particular how such pedagogical actions are guided by social, political and cultural influences outside of the university as a higher education institution. The authors advocate for a living philosophy of higher education that is commensurate with real actions and imaginary fictions of what constitutes higher education and what remains in becoming for the discourse. With a focus on South African social justice education, the book imagines pathways for academic activism to manifest in revolutionised pedagogical actions or actions that bring into contestation what already exists with the possibility for the cultivation of renewal.




A Scholarship of Doctoral Education


Book Description

This edited collection is cohesive by a focus on becoming: becoming a doctoral student, becoming a researcher, becoming an academic, and becoming a supervisor. This journey of becoming takes us from pre-enrolment in a doctoral programme, through the many phases of candidature and into the post-doctoral environment. Both advancing theory, and providing very practical examples, this book is of immense value to doctoral students and academics not only in South Africa - for whom it should be a mandatory read - but also for doctoral education researchers, doctoral students and supervisors worldwide, as the themes covered extend well beyond the borders of South Africa.