Abstract This article focuses on the four-step schema introduced by Harry Brighouse, Helen F. Ladd, Susanna Loeb, and Adam Swift for operationalizing the Educational Goods Framework and making ‘value-led and data-informed’ decisions in education. The four steps are (1) identify the main values at play; (2) identify the key decisions relevant to those values; (3) assess the options in light of the values and evidence; and (4) establish what is the best policy overall in the circumstances. In this article, we point out the ambiguities in this four-step approach and argue that its lack of clarity carries the danger of causing ethical problems in certain real-world educational contexts. We demonstrate our points through two cases in El Salvador, a country with non-ideal features that render it challenging to implement Brighouse and Swift’s idealized vision of rational, impartial, and informed decision-making processes. We conclude with a call for adding normative guidance on collective decision-making as an addendum to the Educational Goods Framework and note its potential utility in contexts beyond El Salvador.

Abstract Recent concern in the Anglophone-West over teacher autonomy, well-being, demoralization, and retention, as well as increasing strike action, point to a critical moment in the work lives of schoolteachers. In response, scholars have reached for diverse conceptions of teacher agency. I argue that a robust and adequate response to the current crisis requires that teacher agency be tightly coupled with a distinct form of intentionality. At stake here is the intention to educate—to help students discern what goals and intentions are worthwhile. Given this view, what are the conditions of teacher agency? Mark Priestley, Gert Biesta, and Sarah Robinson’s ecological approach to teacher agency offers a viable start; yet it is limited by its adherence to the existing education system bureaucracy. I turn to the enactivist account of agency in order to extend and enrich their ecological account. According to enactivism, agents are driven by the goal of maintaining identity. Intentions are shaped and sustained in response to the agent’s situation. When an intention becomes unsustainable in a given context, agents will pursue other means of self-maintenance. Appeals to teacher agency, therefore, are ultimately about keeping the teacherly intention to educate alive. I posit three conditions of agency for teachers: 1) differentiation from the education system bureaucracy; 2) the ability to change the conditions of their practice in line with internalized and personally meaningful educational goals; and 3) a working environment that facilitates meaningful reflection upon, and refinement of, education goals—and discuss the implications of this approach.

Abstract Comprehensive liberals and political liberals disagree over the extent to which the compulsory school curriculum must be ‘neutral’, in the sense of avoiding taking a stance on value-disagreements between citizens. Problems with these two liberal positions come to the fore when we consider what each has to say about the inclusion of evolutionary theory on the curriculum. Comprehensive liberals have justified its inclusion by appealing to the intrinsic value of this knowledge. But their appeal to controversial justifications is rejected by some as failing to show respect for the free, equal, and rational status of citizens. The majority of political liberals have also supported evolution’s inclusion on the curriculum, offering ‘neutral’ arguments that appeal to the value of scientific understanding. But these arguments face various challenges, including that they do not justify the teaching of evolutionary theory specifically. ‘Thin comprehensive liberalism’ offers a distinctive approach that avoids the main pitfalls of the two dominant positions within liberalism. How does this approach fare in relation to this difficult test case? This article gives a provisional case for the inclusion of evolution on the curriculum, highlighting the epistemic damage that tends (in practice) to accompany creationist beliefs, including conspiratorial thinking and confusion about the nature and methods of science. Considering this issue points to the acute challenge liberals face in deciding how to trade off schools’ epistemic responsibilities against respect for the diversity of beliefs held by citizens.

Abstract This article rethinks contextualization in history education by arguing that it should be viewed not as a domain-specific heuristic but as an ordinary act of human understanding. Drawing on linguistic, ideational, and cultural traditions of contextualism—from Wittgenstein’s ‘meaning as use’ and Austin’s illocutionary acts to Bevir’s webs of belief and Geertz’s ‘thick description’—it demonstrates that contextualization underlies everyday reasoning. Challenging Wineburg’s view of contextualization as an ‘unnatural act’, the article contends that history education should refine rather than replace students’ intuitive contextual reasoning. It further proposes that instruction preceding contextualization should focus on helping students conceptualize the nature of historical context and examine the contingent relationship between past and present. This approach seeks to connect disciplinary historical enquiry with the interpretive capacities that guide ordinary human understanding.

Abstract The UK (United Kingdom) government’s evolving strategies for teacher recruitment and statutory guidance have cultivated a dynamic cohort of new teachers with ever-changing needs. Drawing on Rousseau’s educational philosophy, this theoretical article advocates for a personalized and autonomous approach to teacher training. It tentatively introduces the term ‘Émilian Autodidacticism’, inspired by Rousseau’s Émile, or on Education. This article contends that Émilian Autodidacticism, despite its inherent flaws and contradictions, offers a valuable mentoring framework. It places the mentee at the centre of their own learning, fostering autonomy and self-directed growth. By emphasizing the teacher’s active role in their own development, this approach provides a meaningful and personalized mentoring system for new teachers. Additionally, this article aims to bridge theory and practice, presenting Émilian Autodidacticism as an alternative way to support beginning teachers.

ABSTRACT In this essay, Emily Miller Budick sets out to explore narrative in the manner that it appears in Stanley Cavell's writings, as a way of exploring the human condition. Storytelling can be in service of didactic or moralistic argument or principles. But those dimensions of human experience—in ethics, epistemology, politics, metaphysics—coexist and are co-dependent on human minds that perceive and live these matters. ‘Suppose', Cavell writes in Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome, ‘the issue is not to win an argument, but to manifest for the other another way.' Stories, and critical reflection upon them, can open the possibility of other ways of thinking and other ways of being. In the light of references to Jane Austen and to Emerson's ‘aversion to conformity', the essay reflects on aspects of Cavell's autobiographical writings, especially on the significance of his recollections of his friend, the philosopher Kurt Fischer. It goes on to focus on questions of race and antisemitism, in the light of close attention to J. M. Coetzee’s novels, Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello.

Abstract We present here excerpts from seminars, interviews, and conversations with Stanley Cavell during the time of his visit to Caracas in 1998, collectively known as the ‘Caracas Seminar’. This material comprises Cavell’s responses to questions raised at the seminar, extracts from an interview with Maria Elena Ramos and Victor Krebs, and a subsequent letter they received from Cavell in response to further questions. Krebs’ introduction to the collection sets the scene for Cavell’s visit and sketches some reasons for the relevance of Cavell’s philosophy to Latin America and the nature of its reception there.

Abstract Critical reflection on the history, conceptual underpinnings, and practices of human rights education (HRE) has prompted calls for the field to be decolonized, in response to the injustices of colonial history and persisting present-day coloniality. We sympathize with current calls to decolonize and value their effect in prompting critical reflection on Empire in all its facets, yet we also regard HRE as having a credible role to play in response to both colonialism and continuing coloniality. Addressing the decolonial criticism of human rights education as undermined by Western, European, universalist underpinnings, we question its account of European thought. In doing so we distinguish between a qualified universalism on the one hand, which we support, and colonial hypocrisy and pseudo-universalism on the other. Favouring a postcolonial stance, we argue that while the practices of HRE must reflect local diversity, its conceptual foundations are neither historically fixed nor geographically determined. We reflect on the prospects for developing a conceptually coherent and programmatically defensible HRE if we embrace the decolonization imperative’s scepticism about European thought and the possibilities for universality that seem so central to the human rights movement.

Abstract In this interview with Naoko Saito, Stanley Cavell responds to questions about how he became interested in Wittgenstein and his sense of Wittgenstein’s fundamental importance for the question of what philosophy is or can be. Wittgenstein’s difference from Dewey and pragmatism is discussed in relation to the tone of philosophy, including possibilities of its not being characterized by polemical argument or geared towards problem-solving. This develops into a series of reflections on Emerson and Thoreau, as Cavell pursues these in The Senses of Walden. Similarly, some apparent similarities with, though in fact important differences from, Heidegger are considered, especially regarding the returning of philosophy to the ordinary and the finding of the ‘sublime in the pedestrian’. The conversation then turns to Wittgenstein’s alleged behaviourism: Cavell clarifies what he takes Wittgenstein to be opposing, and what endorsing, in conceptions of mind. Finally, a question is raised regarding the sounds of philosophy, in connection with religious inflections in Wittgenstein and with Cavell’s apparent receptiveness towards East Asian thought. The task of philosophy is identified as involving a kind of cultural criticism, understood as other than comparative philosophy or cultural studies. This involves finding the place you begin from, an exploration in which cross-cultural dialogue can play a significant role. The interview took place in November 1997 and was originally published in Japanese under the title ‘Return to the Ordinary: The Voice of Myself, and the Voice of America’, in Gendai Shiso, in a special issue on Wittgenstein. This is the first publication of the English text upon which the Japanese version was based.

Abstract Stanley Cavell wrote this article on the occasion of the first publication of one of his books in Japanese. The Senses of Walden, translated by Naoko Saito, was published by Hosei University Press in 2005. The paper was subsequently presented at two colloquia held at Harvard University in the development of the present collection. The article recalls aspects of the writing of his book on Walden, interweaving these with reflections on the relationship in philosophy between East and West and questions of mutual understanding. The discussion focuses particularly on Heidegger’s ‘A Dialogue on Language between a Japanese and an Inquirer’ and on questions of culture, high and low. Many of the articles that follow in this special issue, ‘Walden in Tokyo: Stanley Cavell and the Thought of Other Cultures’, pick up topics and themes that are addressed in Cavell’s discussion.