Module: EDU6111-20 Identity, Philosophy and Education

Credit Value: 20

Module Tutor: Darren Garside

Module Tutor Contact Details: D.Garside@bathspa.ac.uk

1. Brief description and aims of module:

In this module you will explore the broad themes of professional identity, radical pedagogy and educational ethics. The module provides an engaged opportunity to consider what it is to be an educational subject from philosophical and historical perspectives. Considering subjectivity and intersubjectivity in this way can be seen to have profound consequences for educational identity and ethics.  The primary theoretical influences in this module draw on continental, analytical and pragmatic philosophical traditions and applies them to educational contexts. 

The module is offered jointly with Dept of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics in CoLA. Identity is considered from contemporary philosophical and comparative religious perspectives. The history of subjectivity, genealogically inherited through the philosophical discourses of (post) modernity, are the starting points for considering relationships to selves and future worlds. This is an ethical position and one also of vocation and conduct and materialism, which are issues at the heart of contemporary approaches to philosophical thinking.

2.Outline syllabus

Module has three cycles:

Cycle 1 (weeks 1-5): Introducing philosophical and heritage perspectives

Cycle 2 (weeks 6-9): Philosophical issues in context of education and contemporary global identity

Cycle 3 (weeks 10-13): Relating perspectives to own educational understanding, experience and practice.

Philosophical perspectives include:

● Aristotelian philosophy and virtue ethics

● Kantian philosophy and deontological ethics

● Pragmatist philosophy and consequentialist ethics

● Radical philosophies including Nietzsche, Foucault, Rorty and Braidotti

3.Teaching and learning activities

The module is strongly dialogical and taught within the traditions and practices of academic philosophy of education. Each session is organised around some stimulus material, which is a launch point for further discussion. Every student in every seminar will be expected to contribute their thoughts about the paper under discussion with the aim of promoting further discussion amongst the participants. The role of the seminar tutor is to facilitate the discussion into explicitly philosophical territory such as ontology/metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, politics, logic, and the history & sociology of ideas.

You will need to learn a style of writing with which you may be unfamiliar. You will need to get into the habit of reading and writing philosophically on a regular basis - at least once a week, although daily is better. We will discuss this in the first seminar.

The module is taught on a weekly basis in order to help regular and sustained engagement. After week five there will be space each week for students to present 'Work in progress'. This will be philosophical writing of your own e.g.related to your  dissertation, module themes or other education matters. It is understood that the material will be exploratory in nature and an attempt to work through something that is problematic to you and for which you would be interested in critical but productive feedback.

Assessment Item 1:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Essay (2,500 words)

• % Weighting: 50

Assessment Item 2:

• Assessment Type: CW

• Description: Individual seminar report (2,500 words)

• % Weighting: 50