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Papers by Hanan Alexander
The Diversity Of Worldviews Among Young Adults
A Q-analysis generally favors large inter-group differences, whereas consensual statements that a... more A Q-analysis generally favors large inter-group differences, whereas consensual statements that are shared by most participants tend to receive less attention, as do unusual views, which characterize small groups of participants. In this chapter, we start by exploring consensus statements and offer some thoughts on their meaning. We then consider views that are outside of the individual horizons of most participants. We identified these views through statements towards which most of the samples tended to be indifferent or neutral.Against the backdrop of these transnational statement preferences, we proceed to discuss irrelevant statements through the lens of “religious outliers”; individuals for whom the statements in question were, in fact, highly relevant and important. We then attempt to characterize these “types” through sets of statements, which were not part of any national prototype, and analyze the subjectivities of those who endorse them, by presenting holistic analyses of ...
Finding Meaning, 2021
Situated within the theoretical framework of meaning-making, this chapter discusses sense-making,... more Situated within the theoretical framework of meaning-making, this chapter discusses sense-making, purpose-making, and significance-making in the context of religion, spirituality, and secularity. To do so, the authors present a 24-item scale, Meaning-Making in Religion (MMR), based on items from the Faith-Q-Sort. Next, they report the results of a study involving 90 Israeli students, Jewish, Muslim, and Druze, who took part in a study of young adults and religion globally. Using participants’ Faith-Q-Sort and in-depth interviews, 12 faith prototypes were extracted. Their analysis uncovered several socially recognized paths for pursuing meaning through religion or spirituality, one socially agreed-upon narrative of secularity, and a few less socially sanctioned narratives of religious meaninglessness. The authors analyze our findings in terms of meaning-making, subjective well-being, and religious subcultures in Israel and discuss the implications of these findings for the study of m...
Marriage guidebooks for Orthodox Jews in Israel have become increasingly popular over the past fe... more Marriage guidebooks for Orthodox Jews in Israel have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Previous research has shown that Jewish Orthodox Israelis are exposed to liberal Western ideals about romantic love and gender egalitarianism while continuing to uphold conservative family values. To gain insight into how leaders of Orthodox Jewish groups deal with these conflicting meaning systems, a representative sample of thirty guidebooks written for Religious Zionist and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel was analyzed by using a qualitative grounded theory analysis. The books were found to reject romantic love and gender egalitarianism, emphasizing instead the notions of other-focused giving and an essentialist gender partnership. The authors of these books also offer religious meaning systems focused on the interface between God and couples that we term marriage theologies. We offer a typology of five marriage theologies, which endeavor to infuse even the most mundane aspects ...
Religious Education
Abstract In this article, I comment on responses to my Presidential Address offered by HyeRan Kim... more Abstract In this article, I comment on responses to my Presidential Address offered by HyeRan Kim-Cragg and Hosffman Ospino. While I take on board their call to diversify the references on defending pedagogies of difference and hope, I caution against judging arguments on the grounds of the origins of their authors. Neither Enlightenment nor Counter-Enlightenment thought can provide a defensible basis for this dialogical pedagogy, I argue. So, we need a new start grounded in authors who eschew comprehensive universal views that marginalize particular groups such as the historic otherization of Jew and Judaism.
Pedagogika
This paper reports on a capacity-building project in higher education known as DARE (Developing p... more This paper reports on a capacity-building project in higher education known as DARE (Developing programs for Access of disadvantaged groups of people and Regions to higher Education), as viewed through the lenses of Hanan Alexander’s pedagogy of difference, Uri Bronfenbrenner’sbioecological theory of human development, and Chris Argyris’s concept of action science. The project is funded by the European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency. Following a literature review, the report analyzes data drawn from documents, observations, and focus groups to explore how and why policies addressing accessibility to higher education for disadvantaged groups are implemented in different international contexts. Influenced by international initiatives, DARE has provided material, conceptual, professional, and collegial resources to have an overall positive effect on advancing access to and inclusion in higher education for minorities, students with disabilities, and wo...
Educational Philosophy and Theory
Abstract In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy giv... more Abstract In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy given problems with accounts grounded in critical social theory, rational liberalism and pragmatic esthetic theory. I offer instead an alternative account of criticism for education in open, pluralistic, liberal, democratic societies called 'pedagogy of difference' that is grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. In our current condition in which there is no agreement as to the proper criteria for assessing attitudes and actions, for a critical attitude to gain a foothold one must learn to evaluate proposed beliefs and behaviour-based standards within a particular tradition as well as those drawn from another viewpoint. To know oneself, one must engage others who are different. But to engage others in a meaningful way one must be immersed in a tradition to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate.
Religious Education
One of the great accomplishments of modernity has been the establishment of societies in which pe... more One of the great accomplishments of modernity has been the establishment of societies in which people can live together with others whose ways of life are different than their own. Unfortunately, this achievement is currently threatened by rising forms of populism on the right and the left of the political and religious spectrums that are challenging the idea that peaceful coexistence across deep difference is a valuable social ideal. A growing chasm exists in the public deliberations of democracies around the world today in which people of diverse religious and spiritual persuasions find it increasingly difficult to communicate across difference in order to live together in a common civil society. These differences are often tied to political ideology, ethical orientation, moral proclivity, cultural identity, nationality, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and more. Consequently, extreme positions on the right and the left of the political and religious spectrums have come increasingly to dominate the public square, which challenges peaceful coexistence across difference. In this essay, I argue that the time has come to take the public square back from these extremes in diverse democratic societies by offering an alternative account of how we might live together in peaceful coexistence and a concomitant pedagogy to prepare youngsters to do so. After a brief review of diversity’s role in premodern social and political theory, I turn to the two revolutions of modernity that laid the foundation for contemporary thinking on the topic. I argue that the most influential trends in education for religious and spiritual affiliation that emerged from these modern revolutions have contributed to this chasm. One follows the political liberalism and educational thought of American philosophers Rawls (1971, 1993) and Dewey (1916, 1938), the other follows the cosmopolitan multiculturalism of German critical theorist Habermas (1985, 1991), and finally Brazilian critical pedagog Freire (2014, 2018). I then consider an alternative to these accounts of the public square, which requires a recovery of humanism grounded in the diversity liberalism of Berlin (1969) and the diversity theology of Sacks (2003) and Levinas (2005). The essay concludes with reference to some educational consequences of this analysis that draws on my own contribution to educational philosophy called pedagogy of the sacred and of difference (Alexander 2015). During premodern times, Western politics were dominated by ancient Greek philosophy according to which a virtuous society should serve a uniform vision of the good life. Plato (2008) proposed a hierarchical version of such a society, according to which each would receive resources and power according to his or her perceived capacity to
Religious Education
Since my first publication in this journal (Alexander 1981), my research program has endeavored t... more Since my first publication in this journal (Alexander 1981), my research program has endeavored to understand the role of robust affiliations and perspectives—grounded in faith, culture, language, gender, race, ethics, or politics—in the education of citizens in open, pluralistic, liberal democratic societies, and the relation of these affiliations to inquiry, both about the processes and institutions by means of which such an education is conducted and within particular subject-matter disciplines that comprise its content and pedagogy. I have argued that cultivating transcendental concepts of the good through initiation into dynamic traditions prepared to engage alternative points of view is a high ideal of schooling in diverse democratic societies. This is accomplished by way of a number of innovative concepts around which I attempt to reimagine liberal education in order to make greater room for people like myself—committed at once to the values of an ancient tradition on the one hand and to open, pluralistic, liberal democracy on the other. I consider this view of education liberal because it nurtures the sense of personal agency within individual learners that can enable them to become moral actors and holds that open, pluralistic, liberal societies offer the best possibility of celebrating particularity and distinctiveness in ways that recognize the rights and obligations of both majority and minority cultures while enhancing the individual capacity for intelligent choice, personal freedom, and respect for difference. Addressing tensions between affiliation and inquiry in democratic schooling also entails a contribution to the long-standing philosophical and theological conversation about the proper relation between faith and reason in the context of contemporary educational research, policy, and practice (Alexander 2015b, 1–4). I recognized only recently that this research program involves an effort to recover an alternative form of humanism than that which has dominated Western thought for centuries, not only a reimagining of liberal education. This view seeks to discover our common humanity in a variety of religious and ethical traditions in dialogue with one another, rather than in a singular conception of the good life. The idea of “humanitas,” or a common humanity, originated with the republicanism of the political philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, who translated the Greek idea of Paideia into the terms of Roman civilization during the first century BCE. According to the Platonic interpretation of this idea, to be fully human is to be educated in the virtues of a particular conception of justice that is liberated from falsehood through a dialectical process in which corrupting material influences are eliminated to reveal pure form (Plato 2008). Cicero understood these virtues in terms of traditional Roman conduct learned through the study of fine literature and suited to both the duties of public life and the rewards of private life. To be fully human in this view is to possess a common concept of
Journal of Jewish Education
Ethics and Education
ABSTRACT In this essay I agree with Nicholas Burbules that ‘Phronesis’ is an ethical and politica... more ABSTRACT In this essay I agree with Nicholas Burbules that ‘Phronesis’ is an ethical and political category that grounds the possibility of intercultural communication in translation from one particular context to another rather than in the presumption of one or another account of universalism. After a brief review of the development of this idea in key milestones of Western philosophy, I argue that it requires an education in dialogue across difference that can foster hope for peaceful coexistence among diverse traditions and perspectives in diverse democratic societies.
Research in Science Education
Educational Philosophy and Theory
The rise of secularism is one of the most striking features of modernity. Following Jürgen Haberm... more The rise of secularism is one of the most striking features of modernity. Following Jürgen Habermas (2008, pp. 18, 27), this has involved three characteristics: (a) dominance of a ‘disenchanted’ worldview in the public domain based on a ‘hard’ scientific naturalism; (b) restriction of organized religion to the private domain with a role that is primarily pastoral; and (c) appreciation for higher standards of living, reduction in risks to life, and increased existential security resulting from advanced technologies. This rise was not the result of a single transformation, according to Charles Taylor (2007), but a series of departures, in which earlier forms of life were destabilized to reveal new ones. Among other considerations, these departures where grounded in both sides of the modern dialectic between Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, the former requiring the acceptance of one or another account of reason as a condition for entry into the public square, the latter allegiance to one or another view of solidarity (Berlin, 1998, pp. 243–268). Understood as the awareness that power interests are inexorably embedded in the human condition, postmodernism challenged a so-called left-leaning interpretation of the Counter-Enlightenment side of this dialectic—the utopian aspirations of Marxist and neo-Marxist critical social theory. In so doing, however, it dramatically increased skepticism concerning what was left of the Enlightenment side as well. This after Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel’s earlier critique of Immanuel Kant’s influential presupposition that the very possibility of knowledge is grounded in the rational structure of mind, independent of history, culture, language, and other characteristics of particularity (2004). Hegel situated the possibility of universal knowledge within, not logically prior to, history (Hegel, 1953). Yet, when postmodern skepticism is turned on itself, what remains is an epistemological paradox. If we are to doubt Marxist and neo-Marxist utopianism along with Kantian rationalism, each due to embedded power interests, why not also the very postmodern obsession with power itself? If all views are corrupted by power, can postmodernism be exempt? This critique of postmodernism has not left the arguments that contributed to the rise of secularism unshaken. Although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined, according to Taylor, today’s world is characterized by the emergence of new religious, spiritual, and antireligious options that people use to make sense of their lives and give shape to their aspirations. Habermas referred to this growing public appreciation for diversity in belief and unbelief as ‘postsecular society.’ Such a society is rife with both opportunities and dangers, for personal and collective growth, on the one hand, and religious and antireligious extremism, on the other. Following Isaiah Berlin’s recognition that human experience is comprised of an infinite variety of deeply different ways to live (Berlin, 1998; pp. 191–242), I have argued that a key task of pedagogy in this postsecular moment is to promote peaceful coexistence across difference by learning to define ourselves within intelligent spiritualties that eschew extremes through dialog with alternative worldviews (Alexander, 2015).
There is a long history of some students finding that the science instruction they receive in sch... more There is a long history of some students finding that the science instruction they receive in schools fails to address their deeply held concerns about the theory of evolution. Such concerns are principally religious, though there are also students with deeply held religious views who are perfectly comfortable with the theory of evolution. New instructional strategies are emerging, aimed at reducing the tensions that may exist between evolution and religion by making space for students to examine their own views and recognize the spectrum of views that exists between atheistic evolution and special creation, as well as the bounded nature of science and different ways of knowing. In this article, we discuss the teaching of evolution in societies where acceptance of the theory of evolution is far from universal, and argue that an approach based on pedagogy of difference has considerable potential to enhance students' development of epistemic insight through recognition of the mult...
Ethics and Education
Abstract How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer d... more Abstract How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer draws on quantitative research designs. By measuring the inputs and processes that produce the highest levels of virtue among participants according to some reasonable criterion, in this view, we can determine which programs engender the most desired results. Although many outcomes of character education can undoubtedly be assessed in this way, taken on its own, this approach may support favorable judgments about programs that indoctrinate rather than educate, because education in character entails teleological thinking that is volitional not merely determined. I argue instead that proper assessment of virtue requires an expansive view of character education in both particular and common goods that avoids the tendency to indoctrinate and an inclusive conception of measurement that takes into account qualitative in addition to quantitative methodologies.
British Journal of Religious Education, 2015
Philosophy of Education Archive, Jun 1, 2010
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 1364436990040204, Jul 28, 2006
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 0034408960910401, Jul 10, 2006
The Diversity Of Worldviews Among Young Adults
A Q-analysis generally favors large inter-group differences, whereas consensual statements that a... more A Q-analysis generally favors large inter-group differences, whereas consensual statements that are shared by most participants tend to receive less attention, as do unusual views, which characterize small groups of participants. In this chapter, we start by exploring consensus statements and offer some thoughts on their meaning. We then consider views that are outside of the individual horizons of most participants. We identified these views through statements towards which most of the samples tended to be indifferent or neutral.Against the backdrop of these transnational statement preferences, we proceed to discuss irrelevant statements through the lens of “religious outliers”; individuals for whom the statements in question were, in fact, highly relevant and important. We then attempt to characterize these “types” through sets of statements, which were not part of any national prototype, and analyze the subjectivities of those who endorse them, by presenting holistic analyses of ...
Finding Meaning, 2021
Situated within the theoretical framework of meaning-making, this chapter discusses sense-making,... more Situated within the theoretical framework of meaning-making, this chapter discusses sense-making, purpose-making, and significance-making in the context of religion, spirituality, and secularity. To do so, the authors present a 24-item scale, Meaning-Making in Religion (MMR), based on items from the Faith-Q-Sort. Next, they report the results of a study involving 90 Israeli students, Jewish, Muslim, and Druze, who took part in a study of young adults and religion globally. Using participants’ Faith-Q-Sort and in-depth interviews, 12 faith prototypes were extracted. Their analysis uncovered several socially recognized paths for pursuing meaning through religion or spirituality, one socially agreed-upon narrative of secularity, and a few less socially sanctioned narratives of religious meaninglessness. The authors analyze our findings in terms of meaning-making, subjective well-being, and religious subcultures in Israel and discuss the implications of these findings for the study of m...
Marriage guidebooks for Orthodox Jews in Israel have become increasingly popular over the past fe... more Marriage guidebooks for Orthodox Jews in Israel have become increasingly popular over the past few years. Previous research has shown that Jewish Orthodox Israelis are exposed to liberal Western ideals about romantic love and gender egalitarianism while continuing to uphold conservative family values. To gain insight into how leaders of Orthodox Jewish groups deal with these conflicting meaning systems, a representative sample of thirty guidebooks written for Religious Zionist and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel was analyzed by using a qualitative grounded theory analysis. The books were found to reject romantic love and gender egalitarianism, emphasizing instead the notions of other-focused giving and an essentialist gender partnership. The authors of these books also offer religious meaning systems focused on the interface between God and couples that we term marriage theologies. We offer a typology of five marriage theologies, which endeavor to infuse even the most mundane aspects ...
Religious Education
Abstract In this article, I comment on responses to my Presidential Address offered by HyeRan Kim... more Abstract In this article, I comment on responses to my Presidential Address offered by HyeRan Kim-Cragg and Hosffman Ospino. While I take on board their call to diversify the references on defending pedagogies of difference and hope, I caution against judging arguments on the grounds of the origins of their authors. Neither Enlightenment nor Counter-Enlightenment thought can provide a defensible basis for this dialogical pedagogy, I argue. So, we need a new start grounded in authors who eschew comprehensive universal views that marginalize particular groups such as the historic otherization of Jew and Judaism.
Pedagogika
This paper reports on a capacity-building project in higher education known as DARE (Developing p... more This paper reports on a capacity-building project in higher education known as DARE (Developing programs for Access of disadvantaged groups of people and Regions to higher Education), as viewed through the lenses of Hanan Alexander’s pedagogy of difference, Uri Bronfenbrenner’sbioecological theory of human development, and Chris Argyris’s concept of action science. The project is funded by the European Commission’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency. Following a literature review, the report analyzes data drawn from documents, observations, and focus groups to explore how and why policies addressing accessibility to higher education for disadvantaged groups are implemented in different international contexts. Influenced by international initiatives, DARE has provided material, conceptual, professional, and collegial resources to have an overall positive effect on advancing access to and inclusion in higher education for minorities, students with disabilities, and wo...
Educational Philosophy and Theory
Abstract In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy giv... more Abstract In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy given problems with accounts grounded in critical social theory, rational liberalism and pragmatic esthetic theory. I offer instead an alternative account of criticism for education in open, pluralistic, liberal, democratic societies called 'pedagogy of difference' that is grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. In our current condition in which there is no agreement as to the proper criteria for assessing attitudes and actions, for a critical attitude to gain a foothold one must learn to evaluate proposed beliefs and behaviour-based standards within a particular tradition as well as those drawn from another viewpoint. To know oneself, one must engage others who are different. But to engage others in a meaningful way one must be immersed in a tradition to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate.
Religious Education
One of the great accomplishments of modernity has been the establishment of societies in which pe... more One of the great accomplishments of modernity has been the establishment of societies in which people can live together with others whose ways of life are different than their own. Unfortunately, this achievement is currently threatened by rising forms of populism on the right and the left of the political and religious spectrums that are challenging the idea that peaceful coexistence across deep difference is a valuable social ideal. A growing chasm exists in the public deliberations of democracies around the world today in which people of diverse religious and spiritual persuasions find it increasingly difficult to communicate across difference in order to live together in a common civil society. These differences are often tied to political ideology, ethical orientation, moral proclivity, cultural identity, nationality, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, and more. Consequently, extreme positions on the right and the left of the political and religious spectrums have come increasingly to dominate the public square, which challenges peaceful coexistence across difference. In this essay, I argue that the time has come to take the public square back from these extremes in diverse democratic societies by offering an alternative account of how we might live together in peaceful coexistence and a concomitant pedagogy to prepare youngsters to do so. After a brief review of diversity’s role in premodern social and political theory, I turn to the two revolutions of modernity that laid the foundation for contemporary thinking on the topic. I argue that the most influential trends in education for religious and spiritual affiliation that emerged from these modern revolutions have contributed to this chasm. One follows the political liberalism and educational thought of American philosophers Rawls (1971, 1993) and Dewey (1916, 1938), the other follows the cosmopolitan multiculturalism of German critical theorist Habermas (1985, 1991), and finally Brazilian critical pedagog Freire (2014, 2018). I then consider an alternative to these accounts of the public square, which requires a recovery of humanism grounded in the diversity liberalism of Berlin (1969) and the diversity theology of Sacks (2003) and Levinas (2005). The essay concludes with reference to some educational consequences of this analysis that draws on my own contribution to educational philosophy called pedagogy of the sacred and of difference (Alexander 2015). During premodern times, Western politics were dominated by ancient Greek philosophy according to which a virtuous society should serve a uniform vision of the good life. Plato (2008) proposed a hierarchical version of such a society, according to which each would receive resources and power according to his or her perceived capacity to
Religious Education
Since my first publication in this journal (Alexander 1981), my research program has endeavored t... more Since my first publication in this journal (Alexander 1981), my research program has endeavored to understand the role of robust affiliations and perspectives—grounded in faith, culture, language, gender, race, ethics, or politics—in the education of citizens in open, pluralistic, liberal democratic societies, and the relation of these affiliations to inquiry, both about the processes and institutions by means of which such an education is conducted and within particular subject-matter disciplines that comprise its content and pedagogy. I have argued that cultivating transcendental concepts of the good through initiation into dynamic traditions prepared to engage alternative points of view is a high ideal of schooling in diverse democratic societies. This is accomplished by way of a number of innovative concepts around which I attempt to reimagine liberal education in order to make greater room for people like myself—committed at once to the values of an ancient tradition on the one hand and to open, pluralistic, liberal democracy on the other. I consider this view of education liberal because it nurtures the sense of personal agency within individual learners that can enable them to become moral actors and holds that open, pluralistic, liberal societies offer the best possibility of celebrating particularity and distinctiveness in ways that recognize the rights and obligations of both majority and minority cultures while enhancing the individual capacity for intelligent choice, personal freedom, and respect for difference. Addressing tensions between affiliation and inquiry in democratic schooling also entails a contribution to the long-standing philosophical and theological conversation about the proper relation between faith and reason in the context of contemporary educational research, policy, and practice (Alexander 2015b, 1–4). I recognized only recently that this research program involves an effort to recover an alternative form of humanism than that which has dominated Western thought for centuries, not only a reimagining of liberal education. This view seeks to discover our common humanity in a variety of religious and ethical traditions in dialogue with one another, rather than in a singular conception of the good life. The idea of “humanitas,” or a common humanity, originated with the republicanism of the political philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero, who translated the Greek idea of Paideia into the terms of Roman civilization during the first century BCE. According to the Platonic interpretation of this idea, to be fully human is to be educated in the virtues of a particular conception of justice that is liberated from falsehood through a dialectical process in which corrupting material influences are eliminated to reveal pure form (Plato 2008). Cicero understood these virtues in terms of traditional Roman conduct learned through the study of fine literature and suited to both the duties of public life and the rewards of private life. To be fully human in this view is to possess a common concept of
Journal of Jewish Education
Ethics and Education
ABSTRACT In this essay I agree with Nicholas Burbules that ‘Phronesis’ is an ethical and politica... more ABSTRACT In this essay I agree with Nicholas Burbules that ‘Phronesis’ is an ethical and political category that grounds the possibility of intercultural communication in translation from one particular context to another rather than in the presumption of one or another account of universalism. After a brief review of the development of this idea in key milestones of Western philosophy, I argue that it requires an education in dialogue across difference that can foster hope for peaceful coexistence among diverse traditions and perspectives in diverse democratic societies.
Research in Science Education
Educational Philosophy and Theory
The rise of secularism is one of the most striking features of modernity. Following Jürgen Haberm... more The rise of secularism is one of the most striking features of modernity. Following Jürgen Habermas (2008, pp. 18, 27), this has involved three characteristics: (a) dominance of a ‘disenchanted’ worldview in the public domain based on a ‘hard’ scientific naturalism; (b) restriction of organized religion to the private domain with a role that is primarily pastoral; and (c) appreciation for higher standards of living, reduction in risks to life, and increased existential security resulting from advanced technologies. This rise was not the result of a single transformation, according to Charles Taylor (2007), but a series of departures, in which earlier forms of life were destabilized to reveal new ones. Among other considerations, these departures where grounded in both sides of the modern dialectic between Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment, the former requiring the acceptance of one or another account of reason as a condition for entry into the public square, the latter allegiance to one or another view of solidarity (Berlin, 1998, pp. 243–268). Understood as the awareness that power interests are inexorably embedded in the human condition, postmodernism challenged a so-called left-leaning interpretation of the Counter-Enlightenment side of this dialectic—the utopian aspirations of Marxist and neo-Marxist critical social theory. In so doing, however, it dramatically increased skepticism concerning what was left of the Enlightenment side as well. This after Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel’s earlier critique of Immanuel Kant’s influential presupposition that the very possibility of knowledge is grounded in the rational structure of mind, independent of history, culture, language, and other characteristics of particularity (2004). Hegel situated the possibility of universal knowledge within, not logically prior to, history (Hegel, 1953). Yet, when postmodern skepticism is turned on itself, what remains is an epistemological paradox. If we are to doubt Marxist and neo-Marxist utopianism along with Kantian rationalism, each due to embedded power interests, why not also the very postmodern obsession with power itself? If all views are corrupted by power, can postmodernism be exempt? This critique of postmodernism has not left the arguments that contributed to the rise of secularism unshaken. Although in some societies religious belief and practice have markedly declined, according to Taylor, today’s world is characterized by the emergence of new religious, spiritual, and antireligious options that people use to make sense of their lives and give shape to their aspirations. Habermas referred to this growing public appreciation for diversity in belief and unbelief as ‘postsecular society.’ Such a society is rife with both opportunities and dangers, for personal and collective growth, on the one hand, and religious and antireligious extremism, on the other. Following Isaiah Berlin’s recognition that human experience is comprised of an infinite variety of deeply different ways to live (Berlin, 1998; pp. 191–242), I have argued that a key task of pedagogy in this postsecular moment is to promote peaceful coexistence across difference by learning to define ourselves within intelligent spiritualties that eschew extremes through dialog with alternative worldviews (Alexander, 2015).
There is a long history of some students finding that the science instruction they receive in sch... more There is a long history of some students finding that the science instruction they receive in schools fails to address their deeply held concerns about the theory of evolution. Such concerns are principally religious, though there are also students with deeply held religious views who are perfectly comfortable with the theory of evolution. New instructional strategies are emerging, aimed at reducing the tensions that may exist between evolution and religion by making space for students to examine their own views and recognize the spectrum of views that exists between atheistic evolution and special creation, as well as the bounded nature of science and different ways of knowing. In this article, we discuss the teaching of evolution in societies where acceptance of the theory of evolution is far from universal, and argue that an approach based on pedagogy of difference has considerable potential to enhance students' development of epistemic insight through recognition of the mult...
Ethics and Education
Abstract How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer d... more Abstract How should we assess programs dedicated to education in virtue? One influential answer draws on quantitative research designs. By measuring the inputs and processes that produce the highest levels of virtue among participants according to some reasonable criterion, in this view, we can determine which programs engender the most desired results. Although many outcomes of character education can undoubtedly be assessed in this way, taken on its own, this approach may support favorable judgments about programs that indoctrinate rather than educate, because education in character entails teleological thinking that is volitional not merely determined. I argue instead that proper assessment of virtue requires an expansive view of character education in both particular and common goods that avoids the tendency to indoctrinate and an inclusive conception of measurement that takes into account qualitative in addition to quantitative methodologies.
British Journal of Religious Education, 2015
Philosophy of Education Archive, Jun 1, 2010
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 1364436990040204, Jul 28, 2006
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 0034408960910401, Jul 10, 2006