-
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- mathaus on Liquid modernity and the paradox of declining female happiness
- Lindsay Jordan on Maskell and Robinson – on HE, money, and professionalisation
- Duke Maskell on Maskell and Robinson – on HE, money, and professionalisation
- Robert Forte on The problem(s) with psychedelic moral enhancement
- Lindsay Jordan on The problem(s) with psychedelic moral enhancement
Archives
- November 2019
- January 2019
- June 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- May 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- July 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
Categories
Meta
Category Archives: Thesis
The evasiveness of conversation as educational research
Bojesen’s description of conversation as educational research captures the way I had begun to think about the empirical aspect of my thesis. However, having just assessed thirty of my own students’ small-scale pedagogic research projects, I confess to occasionally feeling … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment
Nietzsche and Spinoza on Humanity and Education
The central concern of my doctoral thesis is the role of universities in supporting our vision of humanity – of how we should live. I’m interested in what both Nietzsche and Spinoza have to say about human perfectibility, and I … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment
The Two Cultures: A Psychedelic Solution?
The key point of C.P. Snow’s 1959 Rede lecture on The Two Cultures is an imperative to address a schism between the two cultures of science and literature (or at least, literary criticism). Snow accuses the latter of romanticising the pre-scientific … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment
Why do we talk about the purpose of universities?
There are seven and a half billion of us on a rock hurtling through the vastness of space. We are collections of atoms with the capacity for conscious experience. Many of us live in vast, densely-populated cities. Others live in … Continue reading
Bildung, powerful knowledge and downward mobility
I referred in an earlier post to Von Humboldt’s specification of Wissenschaft (the ‘broad science’ that goes on in universities) as a communal endeavour in the service of Bildung. Bildung was the topic of this week’s PESGB seminar at the … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment
Changing ourselves, changing others
I want to return to something I wrote in my last post about encountering different approaches to life. I was responding to Karl Jaspers’ claim that tension between the individual and the world is necessary for self-knowledge and a true … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment
Karl Jaspers: universities, love and leadership
Wyatt, J.F. 1982. Karl Jaspers’ The Idea of the University: An existentialist argument for an institution concerned with freedom. Studies in Higher Education 7 (1), pp21-34. I’m still playing around with Newman’s Idea of the University and have been delving … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment
Oakeshott’s definition of the university
Oaskeshott, M. J. 1967. The Definition of a University. The Journal of Educational Thought / Revue de la Pensée Éducative, 1 (3), pp. 129-142 Writing four years after the publication of the Robbins report, Oakeshott responds here to a ‘confusion … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment
Possibly the dullest book in the world
Blessinger, P. and Anchan, J. P. 2015. Democratizing Higher Education: International Comparative Perspectives. Routledge. I bought this book over a year ago for a princely sum, fresh off the first print run. When it arrived I was disappointed – not … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment
Kreber and Barnett on authenticity, strangeness and what it means to be a graduate
Kreber, C. 2014. Rationalising the nature of ‘graduateness’ through philosophical accounts of authenticity. Teaching in Higher Education, 19 (1), pp90-100. While the internet was down at work, I read this. I hadn’t heard of Carolin Kreber before; her work was … Continue reading
Posted in Thesis
Leave a comment