To implement an Aristotelian virtue ethics framework to live well with artificial intelligence (as described in Smith & Vickers, 2024), we need teachers who can serve as mentors and role models for the next generation. Finding mentors who can teach both technical expertise and model ethical deployment of that expertise is challenging, and Aristotle provides few hints on how to uncover such mentors. The account of expertise in Plato’s Gorgias seems to align with Aristotle’s vision and provides additional detail. The upshot of the conversation between Socrates and his interlocutors is that an expert should have three capacities: (1) to consistently produce excellent products of their expertise, (2) to replicate their skillset in the next generation, and (3) to use that expertise ethically. A doctor serves as a paradigm case of an expert in Gorgias —while a doctor has the technical ability to both heal and poison, the doctor also has good judgment that will prevent them from using their powers for harm. In Plato’s day, expertise was transmitted through apprentice learning, and so a doctor would also train subsequent generations of doctors. In Gorgias , Plato establishes these criteria for a trustworthy expert who can pass on dangerous skills responsibly. While the dangerous skill in Plato’s day was oratory, we can apply the same criteria to another dangerous form of expertise: artificial intelligence. By corollary, expert engineers should possess the technical skills, understand how to use those technical skills ethically (and actually use them ethically), and be able to replicate both of these skill sets in the next generation of engineers. We can use this account of expertise to develop a clearer picture of the ideal faculty we would hire to teach in all disciplines, but particularly technical disciplines, with the capacity to shape artificial intelligence for good or ill. Plato’s criteria provide us with the criteria required to pick out mentors for a robust virtue ethics-based training of the designers (and even the users) of technology: (1) technical ability, (2) teaching ability, and (3) ethical practices (at least in the scope of their technical domain).

Luck egalitarianism about educational justice requires, roughly, that educational policy be arranged so as to minimize unchosen inequality in how well lives go. Luck egalitarianism famously faces the objection that it is an implausibly overdemanding theory of educational justice—especially when it is applied to educators in non-ideal conditions like our own, who are tasked with educating in social circumstances that are marred by the effects of pervasive background and historical injustices. I show that luck egalitarianism can be rescued from that overdemandingness objection. I effect that rescue by showing, first, the importance of distinguishing between the ideal-theoretic and non-ideal-theoretic parts of a normative principle like luck egalitarianism and showing then that, having made that distinction, there is a version of luck egalitarianism whose non-ideal-theoretic part does not entail implausibly overdemanding requirements for educators in non-ideal conditions. I also show that my discussion suggests useful directions and resources for further work in non-ideal theorizing about luck egalitarianism and other theories of educational justice.

This article presents a qualitative analysis of the ethical reasoning of 149 teachers working in a large city district. Through exploring how these experienced teachers reason through a ‘normative case study in educational ethics’ (NCS) that presents an ethical dilemma of how to support a student experiencing multiple injustices in and outside of school, this study offers an illustration of how individual teacher decision-making seeks to mitigate structural inequities. Findings show that, in contrast to the techno-rational decision-making assumed by the USA K-12 education system, teachers’ ethical reasoning in this case was individually-focused, holistic, and flexible. These findings suggest the need for professional development and systemic change that supports teachers’ complex individual ethical reasoning. Methodologically, this study demonstrates that qualitative philosophical inquiry using normative case studies is a promising approach to investigating teachers’ situated ethical and moral reasoning in real time.

Feminist, intersectional, and post-colonial scholars have shown how the perspectives of marginalized groups are often rendered invisible, while dominant perspectives are presented as universal. Participatory research seeks to counter this injustice by foregrounding marginalized voices and vision. This has been widely adopted in special education research as well as disability and childhood studies. This article examines the epistemological assumptions that underpin participatory and inclusive research, focusing on the use of metaphors of ‘voice’ and ‘vision’. Using ‘inclusive research with people with learning disabilities’ as a case study, we analyze the epistemological implications of these metaphors and highlight contradictions regarding the essentialization of identity and the reification of difference. To address these contradictions, we propose shifting toward relational and ontological perspectives that conceptualize experience, knowledge, and identity as relationally enacted rather than fixed. We propose a set of questions that offer a way of ‘staying with the trouble’. This reframing highlights the performative nature of research and its potential to contribute to the articulation of other possible worlds.

Youth-Participatory Action Research (YPAR) challenges traditional research hierarchies between young people and adults by situating youth as co-researchers rather than the objects of research. Like all forms of community-engaged research, Youth-Participatory Action Research involves collaborations between scholars and community members, and requires relationship-building to facilitate these partnerships. Power dynamics can be of particular importance in Youth-Participatory Action Research, given the prevalence of adultism in society. Conducting Youth-Participatory Action Research within the context of schools offers a mechanism to increase access for youth to participate, but can also pose challenges to Youth-Participatory Action Research’s liberatory aims and youth’s authentic engagement, given the often-hierarchical nature of schools. To expand research on the affordances and challenges of school-based Youth-Participatory Action Research, we conducted a qualitative self-study, examining two rounds of Youth-Participatory Action Research that occurred within the same Title 1 middle school, one of which took place virtually, via Zoom, and one that occurred in-person, on campus. Drawing upon fieldnotes and reflective memos, we identified key differences in processes and practices that impacted students’ experiences, which focused on project structure, roles and responsibilities of team members, and meeting durations and frequency. We found that increasing accessibility for youth involvement was not ‘one-size-fits-all’, but instead nuanced, based on both the setting and the students. Overall, this study revealed the complexity of conducting Youth-Participatory Action Research in school settings and the contextual factors that may influence student engagement.

This article critically examines the paradoxical position of participatory research within an ever more neoliberal academic system. While participatory research aspires to democratize knowledge production and empower marginalized communities, it is often constrained by the structural realities of academic capitalism. Drawing on the frameworks of Boltanski and Chiapello’s critique of co-optation and Slaughter and Rhoades’ theory of academic capitalism, this article analyzes the possibilities and challenges of participatory research. These theoretical perspectives reveal how participatory research’s emancipatory goals risk being instrumentalized as moral legitimations of institutional practices that reinforce economic logics. Through an exploration of the benefits, risks, and ethical dilemmas inherent in participatory research, the article critiques its susceptibility to tokenism, co-optation, and the pressures of efficiency-driven research. In response, the article advocates for a re-radicalization of participatory research, emphasizing the importance of structural reforms, community-driven funding models, and alternative success metrics that prioritize community impact over academic prestige.

This special issue of Theory and Research in Education examines participatory research as a political and methodological project that raises fundamental epistemological questions about knowledge, legitimacy, and authority in educational inquiry. Seeking to democratize knowledge production, participatory research engages those historically excluded—such as children and disabled people—as co-researchers and challenges hierarchical structures of expertise. Rooted in liberation pedagogy, feminist and decolonial epistemologies, and disability studies, it explores how research can become a site of shared meaning-making and social transformation. The special issue brings together three theoretical and epistemological contributions with two empirical studies, showing how participatory research redefines both the methodology and the politics of educational practice, linking epistemic justice with democratic renewal in education.