The idea of fragmentation has transformed the living, convivial pursuit of knowledge into something akin to an industrial assembly line. Schooling in North America is inherently based on this idea, working against the spirit of pedagogy and the very nature of knowledge itself. Fragmentation has lead to practices that are easily recognizable in schools such as surveillance, colonization, leveling, standardization, normalization and even oppression: the logic of fragmentation has lead to the breaking apart of the living disciplines of knowledge entrusted to teachers and students in the classroom. In this profound and challenging book, David Jardine explores some of the historical and philosophical ancestries of the logic of fragmentation and then lays out how the logic of fragmentation is being interrupted by progressive contemporary thinking about the nature of knowledge and its pursuit. Jardine uses real classroom examples to show how inspiring teachers and students have stepped out from the normal rigidity of the school system to pursue a pedagogy left in peace.

The idea of fragmentation has transformed the living, convivial pursuit of knowledge into something akin to an industrial assembly line. Schooling in North America is inherently based on this idea, working against the spirit of pedagogy and the very nature of knowledge itself. Fragmentation has lead to practices that are easily recognizable in schools such as surveillance, colonization, leveling, standardization, normalization and even oppression: the logic of fragmentation has lead to the breaking apart of the living disciplines of knowledge entrusted to teachers and students in the classroom.

A provocative study of fragmentation in education, showing how teachers can escape the rigidity of the school system to pursue a new theory of education.

This text is a collection of essays by noted curriculum scholar and philosopher of education, David W. Jardine. It ranges over twenty-five years of work with teachers and students in schools. The main purpose of these essays is to provide teachers with new ways of thinking about their circumstances that side step some of the panic and exhaustion that is all too typical of many school settings. Using ideas and images from Buddhism, ecological thinking, and hermeneutics, the author shows how these lineages help with the practical work of thinking and acting differently regarding the knowledge entrusted to teachers and students in schools. It offers the image of living fields of relations as an alternative to the fragmented, industrial-assembly machinations that drive much curriculum thinking and practice. It roots this alternative in solid scholarly work, both inside and outside of the orbit of educational literature. This book can provide encouragement and example to those working in schools who have sensed the shifting of human consciousness and conscience over the past decades towards issues of sustainability, interrelatedness, diversity, ancestry, ecological well-being, and dependent co-arising. It provides solid classroom-based examples coupled with substantial scholarly delving into the roots of such work in long-standing streams of thinking that are born outside of the usual orbits of educational theory and practice, but that provide that practice with a refuge and a relief and an alternative. This book can also provide examples to those doing graduate work in education of how interpretive research into classrooms can be conducted, and how this work is must be solid, well-rooted, scholarly and meticulously thought out. It is useful as a handbook and sourcebook for interpretive research or hermeneutic research, and provides a wide array of sources and themes for the conduct of such work.

Drawing on the author’s lifelong practice in the non-competitive and defensive Japanese art of Aikido, this book examines education as self-cultivation, from a Japanese philosophy (e.g. Buddhist) perspective. Contemplative practices, such as secular mindfulness meditation, are being increasingly integrated into pedagogical settings to enhance social and emotional learning and well-being and to address stress-induced overwhelm due to increased pressures on the education system and its constituents. The chapters in this book explore the various ways, through the lens of this non-violent relational art of Aikido, that pedagogy is always something being practiced (on the level of psychological, somatic and emotional registers) and thus holding potential for transformation into being more relational, ecological-minded, and reflecting more ‘embodied attunement.’ Positioning education as a practice, one of self-discovery, the author argues that one can approach personal development as engaging in a spiritual process of integrating mind and body towards full presence of being and existence.

Through critical, qualitative, creative, and arts-integrated approaches, this collection seeks to advance teacher self-study and, through it, transformative praxis.

As one of the experimental projects initiated by Springer Nature for AI book content generation, this book is the result of a collaboration between a human editor and an artificial intelligence algorithm to create a machine-generated literature overview of research articles analyzing the importance of reconfiguring, restructuring and re-evolving educational practices. Each chapter presents summaries of predefined themes and provides the reader with a basis for further exploration of the topic. The pandemic has led academicians, researchers, teachers, students, parents, and even the government to penetrate and understand the challenges that it has brought and the importance of reconfiguring, restructuring and re-evolving educational practices. Insight into the involvement of computer application and information technology can be a harbinger of a new education era. This book precisely discusses these aspects and the future we are moving towards by inculcating technological changes in the educational curriculum.