Morten T Korsgaard | Malmö University (original) (raw)
Papers by Morten T Korsgaard
Educational philosophy and theory, 2024
In this paper, we argue that the attempts to centre education in one of its three constitutive a... more In this paper, we argue that the attempts to centre education in one of
its three constitutive aspects that have long determined the discourse
on the purpose and aims of education run the risk of one-sidedness.
Theories of student-centred education have been in vogue for many
centuries now, having been born out of a polemic against teacher-centred
education which focuses on knowledge transfer. In turn, recent
thing-centred or world-centred accounts of education polemicize against
student-centred accounts and their privileging of individual learning
processes. However, each side of this multifaceted polemic is one-sided
in its own way, and this has held back not only theories of education,
but also educational practice. We argue that educational theorising that
is not attentive to all three aspects and dimensions of educational practices – teacher, student, and world – will ultimately lead to a poorer
understanding of the purpose and aims of education. Here, we argue
with Hannah Arendt that educational love must be polyamorous.
Ethics and Education, 2024
Introduction to special issue on Pedagogical Tact, published in Ethics and Education.
Journal of Philosophy of education, 2024
Introduction to special issue on Bildung and the significance of place in Journal of Philosophy o... more Introduction to special issue on Bildung and the significance of place in Journal of Philosophy of education
Ethics and education, 2024
In this article, we try to understand the phenomenon of pedagogical tact as a particular form of ... more In this article, we try to understand the phenomenon of pedagogical tact as a particular form of power to judge. For this, we rehearse Immanuel Kant’s idea of Urteilskraft as it first appears in the Critique of Pure Reason, where it is also rendered in educational terms. However, the power to apply rules works without any rule governing its operations. Similarly, Hannah Arendt, in her work on judging, points to the groundlessness of judging – or to its self-grounding. We follow these insights when rehearsing Johann F. Herbart account of pedagogical tact, in order to arrive at the question of how to theorise education from within the phenomenon of pedagogical tact. We take a clue from Herbart’s idea of range of thought (Gesichtkreis), a horizon within one can build one’s own understanding of education, one’s own sensibility towards each and every singular educational situation that imposes various demands on educators.
Phenomenology & Practice, 2024
Current educative practices have given rise to the predominant pressure to increase production an... more Current educative practices have given rise to the predominant pressure to increase production and speed in academic work and education in general. Educators need to ask whether conceiving of education in such terms is what we really want our children and youth to experience. In this paper, we aim to interrogate the question of how a deceleration of education is possible, and why this would be desirable for students and teachers. We do this in a circuitous way, by exploring four exercises in pedagogical deceleration. These exercises are inspired by philological, didactical, pedagogical, and phenomenological practices.
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2024
Calls for reframing the subject matter of Religious Education in schools include the tricky quest... more Calls for reframing the subject matter of Religious Education in schools include the tricky question of how to select from a world of potentially interesting and relevant material. Pedagogues have long questioned the educational logic that takes so-called substantive knowledge as its starting point and imagines education to follow a linear path from simple to complex. Scholars of Religious Studies have addressed similar questions of how to bring the subject matter to life through taking a more disciplinary orientation , though this approach is problematized by RE's multidisciplinary foundations This paper brings together pedagogical and disciplinary perspectives to the question of exemplification in the production of curricular subject matter. Taking as its context RE in schools, the paper assumes the didactic principle that there is considerable difference between putative disciplinary knowledge and school subject matter and that the production of school subject matter requires considered processes of pedagogical transformation and reduction. The paper explores the logic governing this transformation by drawing on the pedagogical analysis of exemplarity offered by Martin Wagenschein alongside the more disciplinary analyses of the place of examples from Jonathan Z. Smith.
Ethics and Education, 2020
In late October of 2019, we brought together scholars from very different traditions in order to ... more In late October of 2019, we brought together scholars from very different traditions in order to explore the notion of exemplarity and the role of exemplars in education. Bringing together scholars working on ethics and moral exemplarism, Spinoza scholars and Arendt scholars, we attempted to bring these different perspectives to bear on the role of exemplarity in education. Not in order to create a synthesis of ideas or to find solutions for practical issues, but in order to explore collegially the important issue of exemplarity in education. On the one hand, it was an attempt to put something on the table, and on the other, it was an attempt to bring people together in order to share a couple of days away from everyday academic life so as to engage the object of study without distractions. Part of what it occasioned can be read in this special issue.
What if Vogons are running our universities?
Studier i Pædagogisk Filosofi, 2015
Th e article addresses the emerging framework of 'positioning theory', which has become infl uent... more Th e article addresses the emerging framework of 'positioning theory', which has become infl uential in educational theory. We will present the central concepts and ideas of 'positioning theory' and subsequently how they are being used to contribute to educational theory. We will focus on an article by Svend Brinkmann where he uses 'positioning theory' as the foundation for moral education. Seemingly, Brinkmann uses 'positioning theory' rather uncritically in an attempt to 'strengthen' the educational process by introducing fi xed categorisations and concepts to it. Contrary to this approach, we will use the educational theories of Knud Grue-Sørensen and Gert Biesta to emphasise how we instead should recognise what is here defi ned as the 'weakness' of educational theory, and how we have to consider both the adaptive element of education as well as the emancipatory element of it.
Nordic Studies in Education, 2022
In this paper, we present exemplarity as an alternative to the dominant evidence framework, and a... more In this paper, we present exemplarity as an alternative to the dominant evidence framework, and as the proper foundation for pedagogical reflection and action. This paper focuses attention on how exemplarity can serve to elicit and develop educational judgement. In other words, rather than evidence, teachers need good and bad examples of ways of acting and being to shape and sharpen their educational judgement. By turning to the exemplary approach, the space of reflection is widened, and educational
judgement is challenged and provoked. The paper highlights how teacher judgement is formed through the challenge of examples.
Efterskrift til Hannah Arendt. Krisen i skolesystemet og pædagogikken - og andre pædagogiske teks... more Efterskrift til Hannah Arendt. Krisen i skolesystemet og pædagogikken - og andre pædagogiske tekster.
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers looks at inclusion in education in a new way, regarding education as a dis... more Bearing with Strangers looks at inclusion in education in a new way, regarding education as a discipline with practical and theoretical concepts and criteria which emanate from education and school ...
In this paper, we present the educational thinking of Hannah Arendt and an accompanying education... more In this paper, we present the educational thinking of Hannah Arendt and an accompanying educational reading of The Seducer’s Diary by Søren Kierkegaard. Arendt understands the educational relation as being characterised by a generational tension between the old and the new, which presents us with the challenge of reconciling ourselves with the world and with the challenge of having brought a new generation into the world. This challenge is accepted by Johannes in The Seducer’s Diary as he attempts to seduce and, at the same time, educate Cordelia -- a project in which he ultimately fails because he does not grasp what lies between the old and the new, the inter-est, and because he is unable to separate his own lust from the endeavour.
Educational Philosophy and Theory
Educational philosophy and theory, 2024
In this paper, we argue that the attempts to centre education in one of its three constitutive a... more In this paper, we argue that the attempts to centre education in one of
its three constitutive aspects that have long determined the discourse
on the purpose and aims of education run the risk of one-sidedness.
Theories of student-centred education have been in vogue for many
centuries now, having been born out of a polemic against teacher-centred
education which focuses on knowledge transfer. In turn, recent
thing-centred or world-centred accounts of education polemicize against
student-centred accounts and their privileging of individual learning
processes. However, each side of this multifaceted polemic is one-sided
in its own way, and this has held back not only theories of education,
but also educational practice. We argue that educational theorising that
is not attentive to all three aspects and dimensions of educational practices – teacher, student, and world – will ultimately lead to a poorer
understanding of the purpose and aims of education. Here, we argue
with Hannah Arendt that educational love must be polyamorous.
Ethics and Education, 2024
Introduction to special issue on Pedagogical Tact, published in Ethics and Education.
Journal of Philosophy of education, 2024
Introduction to special issue on Bildung and the significance of place in Journal of Philosophy o... more Introduction to special issue on Bildung and the significance of place in Journal of Philosophy of education
Ethics and education, 2024
In this article, we try to understand the phenomenon of pedagogical tact as a particular form of ... more In this article, we try to understand the phenomenon of pedagogical tact as a particular form of power to judge. For this, we rehearse Immanuel Kant’s idea of Urteilskraft as it first appears in the Critique of Pure Reason, where it is also rendered in educational terms. However, the power to apply rules works without any rule governing its operations. Similarly, Hannah Arendt, in her work on judging, points to the groundlessness of judging – or to its self-grounding. We follow these insights when rehearsing Johann F. Herbart account of pedagogical tact, in order to arrive at the question of how to theorise education from within the phenomenon of pedagogical tact. We take a clue from Herbart’s idea of range of thought (Gesichtkreis), a horizon within one can build one’s own understanding of education, one’s own sensibility towards each and every singular educational situation that imposes various demands on educators.
Phenomenology & Practice, 2024
Current educative practices have given rise to the predominant pressure to increase production an... more Current educative practices have given rise to the predominant pressure to increase production and speed in academic work and education in general. Educators need to ask whether conceiving of education in such terms is what we really want our children and youth to experience. In this paper, we aim to interrogate the question of how a deceleration of education is possible, and why this would be desirable for students and teachers. We do this in a circuitous way, by exploring four exercises in pedagogical deceleration. These exercises are inspired by philological, didactical, pedagogical, and phenomenological practices.
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 2024
Calls for reframing the subject matter of Religious Education in schools include the tricky quest... more Calls for reframing the subject matter of Religious Education in schools include the tricky question of how to select from a world of potentially interesting and relevant material. Pedagogues have long questioned the educational logic that takes so-called substantive knowledge as its starting point and imagines education to follow a linear path from simple to complex. Scholars of Religious Studies have addressed similar questions of how to bring the subject matter to life through taking a more disciplinary orientation , though this approach is problematized by RE's multidisciplinary foundations This paper brings together pedagogical and disciplinary perspectives to the question of exemplification in the production of curricular subject matter. Taking as its context RE in schools, the paper assumes the didactic principle that there is considerable difference between putative disciplinary knowledge and school subject matter and that the production of school subject matter requires considered processes of pedagogical transformation and reduction. The paper explores the logic governing this transformation by drawing on the pedagogical analysis of exemplarity offered by Martin Wagenschein alongside the more disciplinary analyses of the place of examples from Jonathan Z. Smith.
Ethics and Education, 2020
In late October of 2019, we brought together scholars from very different traditions in order to ... more In late October of 2019, we brought together scholars from very different traditions in order to explore the notion of exemplarity and the role of exemplars in education. Bringing together scholars working on ethics and moral exemplarism, Spinoza scholars and Arendt scholars, we attempted to bring these different perspectives to bear on the role of exemplarity in education. Not in order to create a synthesis of ideas or to find solutions for practical issues, but in order to explore collegially the important issue of exemplarity in education. On the one hand, it was an attempt to put something on the table, and on the other, it was an attempt to bring people together in order to share a couple of days away from everyday academic life so as to engage the object of study without distractions. Part of what it occasioned can be read in this special issue.
What if Vogons are running our universities?
Studier i Pædagogisk Filosofi, 2015
Th e article addresses the emerging framework of 'positioning theory', which has become infl uent... more Th e article addresses the emerging framework of 'positioning theory', which has become infl uential in educational theory. We will present the central concepts and ideas of 'positioning theory' and subsequently how they are being used to contribute to educational theory. We will focus on an article by Svend Brinkmann where he uses 'positioning theory' as the foundation for moral education. Seemingly, Brinkmann uses 'positioning theory' rather uncritically in an attempt to 'strengthen' the educational process by introducing fi xed categorisations and concepts to it. Contrary to this approach, we will use the educational theories of Knud Grue-Sørensen and Gert Biesta to emphasise how we instead should recognise what is here defi ned as the 'weakness' of educational theory, and how we have to consider both the adaptive element of education as well as the emancipatory element of it.
Nordic Studies in Education, 2022
In this paper, we present exemplarity as an alternative to the dominant evidence framework, and a... more In this paper, we present exemplarity as an alternative to the dominant evidence framework, and as the proper foundation for pedagogical reflection and action. This paper focuses attention on how exemplarity can serve to elicit and develop educational judgement. In other words, rather than evidence, teachers need good and bad examples of ways of acting and being to shape and sharpen their educational judgement. By turning to the exemplary approach, the space of reflection is widened, and educational
judgement is challenged and provoked. The paper highlights how teacher judgement is formed through the challenge of examples.
Efterskrift til Hannah Arendt. Krisen i skolesystemet og pædagogikken - og andre pædagogiske teks... more Efterskrift til Hannah Arendt. Krisen i skolesystemet og pædagogikken - og andre pædagogiske tekster.
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers, 2018
Bearing with Strangers looks at inclusion in education in a new way, regarding education as a dis... more Bearing with Strangers looks at inclusion in education in a new way, regarding education as a discipline with practical and theoretical concepts and criteria which emanate from education and school ...
In this paper, we present the educational thinking of Hannah Arendt and an accompanying education... more In this paper, we present the educational thinking of Hannah Arendt and an accompanying educational reading of The Seducer’s Diary by Søren Kierkegaard. Arendt understands the educational relation as being characterised by a generational tension between the old and the new, which presents us with the challenge of reconciling ourselves with the world and with the challenge of having brought a new generation into the world. This challenge is accepted by Johannes in The Seducer’s Diary as he attempts to seduce and, at the same time, educate Cordelia -- a project in which he ultimately fails because he does not grasp what lies between the old and the new, the inter-est, and because he is unable to separate his own lust from the endeavour.
Educational Philosophy and Theory
This book responds to the need for new ways of defining the aims and forms of education, in an ag... more This book responds to the need for new ways of defining the aims and forms of education, in an age that has seen the ideals of progress and growth lead the planet and its inhabitants to the brink of extinction.
Arguing that contemporary ideas of performance and accountability counter "the heart" of education, the book calls for a retuning of education that encourages the younger generation to study objects and ideas for their own sake, rather than to appease established and conventional notions in society – therefore stepping into a common space of reflection and study. The chapters examine why and how we educate, and offer the alternative of engaging with educational questions, not determined by the logic of progress and growth but with an objective of creating a relation to the world around us. Using the works of Hannah Arendt combined with the tradition of Allgemeine Pädagogik to argue for a new conception of Bildung, the book encourages a method that emphasises outrospection over introspection.
Ultimately questioning modern-day education, the book redirects and retunes education away from being wholly concerned with achievement and growth, and will therefore be of interest to students, researchers and academics in the fields of philosophy of education, education and curriculum studies, education policy and politics, and sociology of education.
Routledge. New directions in the philosophy of education, 2018
Bearing with Strangers looks at inclusion in education in a new way, regarding education as a dis... more Bearing with Strangers looks at inclusion in education in a new way, regarding education as a discipline with practical and theoretical concepts and criteria which emanate from education and schooling itself. By introducing the notion of the instrumental fallacy, it shows how this is not only an inherent feature of inclusive education policies, but also omnipresent in modern educational policy. It engages schooling through an Arendtian framework, constituted by and in a specific practice with the aim of mediating between generations. It outlines a didactic and pedagogical theory that presents inclusion not as an aim for education, but as a constitutive feature of the activity of schooling.
Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, the book offers a novel and critical perspective on inclusive education, as well as a contribution to a growing literature re-engaging didactic and pedagogical conceptions of teaching and the role of the teacher. Schooling is understood as a process of opening the world to the young and of opening the world to the renewal that the new generations offer. The activity of schooling offers the possibility of becoming attentive toward what is common while learning to bear with that which is strange and those who are strangers. The book points to valuable metaphors and ideas – referred to in the book as ‘pearls’ – that speak to the heart of what schooling and teaching concerns
A monograph on the educational thinking of Hannah Arendt.
Conversing with friends, or (higher) education beyond the logic of production 'Cicero and I spent... more Conversing with friends, or (higher) education beyond the logic of production 'Cicero and I spent ten tranquil, leisurely days together; and I think he enjoyed his stay and liked my company.' Petrarch (some 1400 years after Cicero's death).
In this article, I present an Arendtian perspective on tact and how it can be shaped in the educa... more In this article, I present an Arendtian perspective on tact and how it can be shaped in the educator. Pedagogical tact is generally understood as an ability to act appropriately in pedagogical situations with a sensitivity to the individual child or student, as well as the group and the demands of the particular situation. Building on Arendt's work on action, exemplarity and judgement, I argue that tact is similar in structure to the daimon, in ancient Greek thought. A guiding spirit that is an inseparable part of who we are, yet beyond our immediate control and visible only to others. Accordingly, tact is not something we can define, nor can we systematize the acquisition or development of it. Rather we are left with the rather illusive proposition of studying examples of tact. Not because they can simply be imitated, but because they offer the only way of placing ourselves in the vicinity of the tactful.
Tact as pedagogical daimon? Arendt on tact, exemplarity and judgement.