ABSTRACT. The pragmatist philosopher John Dewey is known for substituting the concept of guaranteed assertability for truth in his Logic. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from preserving a moral sense of truth, which he defended in both words and actions. Dewey's emphasis on inquiry and the demand for truth as its foundation, while making guaranteed assertability the goal of this inquiry, calls for a reconfiguration of the relationship between truth, accuracy, justness and falsehood, and lies. Such a reconfiguration would provide a new compass to navigate through the sea of information in the supposed "post-truth" era.

ABSTRACT. Democracy is struggling in a polarized world where competing political groups spout conflicting facts. Polarization is spurred by our epistemology of truth, the affective dimensions of tribal loyalty, and dishonesty in how we share information to serve group interests. This presentation employs Deweyan pragmatism to describe how truth and honesty are related to polarization, why they are important to democracy, and how we can nurture them in schools through pragmatist inquiry and habit formation to combat polarization.

ABSTRACT. This investigation is a hypothetical dialogue between Arendt and Dewey about their political theories, investigating critically and reconstructing by means of comparison the commonalities and differences of their perspectives. What we get from this is a better understanding of how to do political theory in a way that can meaningfully inform and guide political practice and action, giving us a productive harmonization of inquiry and ethics on the field of political theory, reflecting critically on the problems and on the prospects of re-uniting political theory with political practice in an inclusive and democratic way, thereby contributing to today’s debate.

ABSTRACT. Critical thinking has been one of the most discussed educational aims during the past decades. The mainstream of critical thinking scholarship has defined this phenomenon as an aggregate of all those intellectual skills and attitudes that enable an individual to engage actively and successfully in reasoned belief formation and decision making. Reflective thinking, in turn, is a close relative of critical thinking, both in its origins and in its core message. However, in terms of the amount of scholarly attention it has received as a topic, reflective thinking has in more recent times been overshadowed by critical thinking. The notion of reflective thinking was first introduced by the American philosopher of education John Dewey at the beginning of the twentieth century, and he is also customarily mentioned as a formative influence on the development of the modern account of critical thinking (see e.g., Hitchcock, 2018). Indeed, Dewey’s How we think (1910) freely uses the two labels of ‘reflective thinking’ and ‘critical thinking’ interchangeably, so these terms seem to share the same philosophical roots although they have since then had lives of their own (for the sake of clarity, in this text we reserve the label of reflective thinking for the original Deweyan notion and use the name ‘critical thinking’ for the present-day account). Our article argues that, while on the surface Deweyan reflective thinking resembles contemporary critical thinking, on closer look the differences between these two phenomena become significant. A side-by-side comparison of these notions results in deeper understanding of both, opening interesting avenues for future work in this field. We begin by introducing the mainstream account of critical thinking as it is currently defended in analytic philosophy of education. After this we contrast it with the earlier Deweyan reflective thinking. Our findings reveal five key differences between the received view of critical thinking and Dewey's original reflective thinking: First, critical thinking, as a normative theory, is its orientation a so-called ideal theory, whereas Dewey's model is more akin to a non-ideal theory. In short, this means that the conditions for successful critical thinking are revealed through epistemological analyses and logical principles, without reference to our actual cognitive abilities. Dewey’s theory, in stark contrast, is built from the bottom up – through educational interventions he wants to improve reflective thinking in the form it is actually practiced by us as human beings. Secondly, and related to the previous point, the image of the thinker as a subject is highly idealized within the theory of critical thinking, whereas such abstract talk of “epistemic agents” is alien to Dewey’s more “human faced” way of philosophizing. Thirdly, Dewey’s model emphasizes the embodied and experimental nature of thinking, which is missing in the modern theory of critical thinking. Fourthly, Dewey draws a crucial distinction between the process of thinking and its end products in a way that is not done in the theory of critical thinking. Finally, some of the underlying epistemological assumptions of critical thinking theory make it incompatible with the reflective thinking model – namely, the theory of critical thinking seems to build upon the so-called “spectator theory of knowledge” (as it was criticized by Dewey). We believe that these comparisons between critical thinking and Deweyan reflective thinking will provide new insights to the current debates on the educational goal of critical thinking, as an introduction to Dewey's ideas will help to clarify the proper spirit of critical thinking in both pedagogy and education policy. The central problem here is that the post-Deweyan philosophizing has produced a normative yardstick, which is unreasonably idealized in the light of current psychological understanding of our cognitive capacities and limits qua homo sapiens individuals. This outcome is the result of the way in which the theory of critical thinking has been constructed primarily by logicians and analytic philosophers by using the methodological tools and perspectives of their own disciplines (conceptual analyses of knowledge and justification paired with the principles of sound logical reasoning). This abstract theory needs to be replaced by a more humanized image of the critical thinker, as in Dewey's approach. This move will avoid the pitfalls that an abstract model of critical thinking leads to, both in theory and in pedagogy. We suggest, metaphorically, that by first taking one step backwards in this way, the study of critical thinking can then take two steps forwards.

Dewey, John 1910. How we think. In Boydston, Jo Ann (Ed.), The middle works of John Dewey (Vol. 6). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 177–356. Dewey, John 1927. The public and its problems. In Boydston, Jo Ann (Ed.), The later works of John Dewey (Vol. 2). Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 235–372. Hitchcock, David 2018. Critical thinking. In Zalta, Edward N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/critical-thinking/ Rodgers, Carol 2002. Defining reflection: Another look at John Dewey and reflective thinking. Teachers College Record 104 (4), 842–866.

ABSTRACT. The cultivation of freedom of intelligence is what illuminates what it means for an idea to make a difference in practice. The paper shows how freedom of intelligence can be understood only by integrating the role of imagination for abstract thought. However, the claim requires that there is a recognition of the logical force of tertiary qualities, which can be seen by how affective and emotional terms can color and transform the meaning of situations. With Dewey’s own reference to the idea of democracy, the conclusion will highlight how ideas can be of intellectual use even when direct practical application is not immediately attained.

ABSTRACT. This work-in-progress paper presents one prong of a larger three-pronged theory of decolonising the mind to support teacher educators in Nigeria. The paper argues that Dewey’s critical thinking is an essential concept within a larger framework for decolonising the mind aimed at helping teacher educators make a dramatic shift in their understanding of themselves as “teachers of teachers” and who the learner is within educational interactions. This theory affords teacher educators, and in turn pre-service teachers, opportunities to change engrained models of banking education -largely considered a relic of colonial education – and instead support learner voice and agency.

ABSTRACT. Religious school choice poses a democratic dilemma for America today. The United States Constitution protects the free exercise religion while guaranteeing Government will never establish a state religion. For most of the 20th century, this has been interpreted to mean that public funding should only support secular schooling. So, religious private schools should not receive public funding. Recently, however, this legal wall separating Church and State has thinned, resulting in public funding for schooling practices that are inconsistent with the democratic aims of schooling (Dewey, 2008). This paper draws on Alison Kadlec’s (2007) critical pragmatism to respond to this dilemma.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, I draw on Dewey to consider some of the democratic qualities and challenges involved in parental activism and organizing around public education. Dewey’s view of democracy, and particularly his emphasis on interest, rather than rights, challenges recent calls to re-establish parental rights in education in at least two ways: (1) questioning the existence of such rights, and (2) stressing the deeply communicative nature of activism, including the importance of perspective-taking and understanding shared consequences. I argue that a Deweyan view of democracy frames political conflicts about public education as potential moral opportunities for further debate and conversation.

ABSTRACT. Hate speech is a complex phenomenon affecting many sectors of society. Children are exposed to the risks of hate speech online due to the fact that they are always connected through different electronic devices. The contribution will focus on the possibility of using the Philosophy for Children program, an educational project designed by Matthew Lipman and Ann Margaret Sharp during the early-1970s and built on Dewey’s heritage, as a tool to combat hate speech. It, in fact, acts on the de-construction of biased reasoning and the cultivation of caring thinking, which are two valid weapons to counter and prevent hate speech.

ABSTRACT. The aim of the paper is to search for some inspirations for critical approach to anthropocentrism in John Dewey’s works. Particularly valuable would be these approaches which also give us some clues how to introduce anti-anthropocentric ideas to education. Dewey deconstructs beliefs in human exceptional position in nature and in our outstanding cognitive powers on various grounds - with reference to: Darwin’s Origin of Species, essential characteristics of the process of experience, and denial of the dualism of matter and mind. Dewey’s approach had to be avant-guard at his time. We have been able to appreciate it since at most four decades.

ABSTRACT. Given the formidable array of moral, political, economic, social, technological, and ecological challenges posed by the Anthropocene (cf. Bernard Stiegler), one could argue that liberal democracy has fallen short in effectively addressing the complex issues such as digitalization and general proletarianization (cf. Stiegler) arising in this era. It becomes imperative to bolster Deweyan democracy with a more viable approach by integrating a perspective that entails an exploration of Dewey’s pragmatist aesthetics (his notion of “consummatory experience”) in conjunction with insights derived from East Asian wisdom traditions (Buddhist and Daoist schools), to think democracy as the solidarity of living beings without selves, that is human and nonhuman beings with no sense of ownership toward the massive chunks of psychosocial and techno-ecological landscapes they are associated with.

ABSTRACT. This paper explores the pragmatic implications of Dewey's experiential learning theory for educational programming in emerging economies. Dewey's emphasis on learning through experience and reflection is particularly relevant for emerging economies, where traditional educational models may not adequately prepare students for the challenges of a rapidly changing global economy. By incorporating experiential learning principles into educational programming, emerging economies can better equip students with the practical skills and critical thinking abilities necessary for success in the modern workforce. This paper offers practical recommendations for integrating experiential learning into educational programming in emerging economies to promote economic development and social progress.

ABSTRACT. Dr. Ambedkar is known as the Chief Architect of the Constitution of India. He was a student of Prof. John Dewey at Columbia University. Recent work of Scott R. Stroud delineates the Deweyan pragmatism evident in the modus-vivendi of Ambedkar, which he employs in creating a new social of Social Democracy. Bell hooks works have given a framework to look at intersectional idea of inequalities from difference perspective. Thus, my paper will conceptualise a new Dewey-Ambedkar-hooks theory of education and delineate how its practice can help in paving a new ideal of humanism, enhancing the principles of Social Justice, that would pave a way out of this normal banality of evil in these times of crisis.

ABSTRACT. Dewey's philosophy of education was heavily criticized by the Chinese Communist Party in 1950s, which led many to believe that Dewey's educational theories were in complete opposition to that of the CCP. However, this study intends to prove that Dewey had a tremendous influence on the early CCP members in 1920s. Dewey's visit in China closely coincided highly with the time of the reception of Marxism in China and the eventual establishment of the CCP. Both founders of the CCP, Chen Duxiu (陳獨秀) and Li Dazhao (李大釗), had close personal relationships with Dewey, and Chen even tried to practice Dewey’s educational ideas in Southern China. As a graduate of a normal school, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) also read and practiced Dewey’s philosophy of education. Many other CCP members read Dewey in 1920s and then became left-wing revolutionaries. Though Dewey himself did not stand with Marxism, his idea that education is an agent of social reform paved the way for Marxism in China in theoretical and practical aspects. When an educational theory is spread abroad, it is often not accepted in a fundamentalist way, but rather in a process of collision and integration with the local tradition.

ABSTRACT. Dewey’s democratic conception of education is possibly a strong theoretical framework for advocating inclusive education. For Dewey, this entails the provision of equal chances and privileges to all irrespective of the differences that abound. This advocacy recognizes differences and abilities in providing educational facilities and resources. Our central argument is that Dewey deconstructs the “might is right” ethics/ philosophy of education and the “survival of the fittest” pedagogic practices. Differences in experiences, aptitude, needs, desires and attitudes justify acceptance of the other. This approach of inclusive education produces democratic citizens for democratic and multicultural societies.