Re-Imagining Relationships in Education

Is education simply a faceless enterprise concerned with the sterile transmission of knowledge? Or is it that the sum of interpersonal connections, attachments, and affiliations between teachers and students better represents the pinnacle of a true education? Bringing state-of-the-art theoretical and philosophical insights to bear on current teaching practices, Re-Imagining Relationships in Education offers a fundamental reconsideration and re-imagining of relationships in contemporary education. Featuring contributions from a wide range of international theorists of varying philosophical specialties, the majority of essays reframe the issue of relationships between teachers and students as intrinsically linked with the ethical and political nature of education. Others extend our conceptions of relationships beyond the humanist enterprise and analyse how relationships matter a great deal to the larger demands currently placed on educational practices--those by the state, community, local traditions, and global trends. Authors draw on a wide range of philosophical traditions--from Arendt, Beckett, Irigaray and Wollstonecraft to name but a few--while exploring themes of dependence, performativity, embodiment, sexual difference, and social justice. Innovative and thought-provoking, Re-Imagining Relationships in Education offers illuminating insights into the potential of relationships in education to reshape the practice of 21st-century learning.