As technological advances become increasingly integrated into children’s learning environments, this paper aims to initiate a dialogue about the place and meaning of educational robots in children’s lives. We reviewed the existing literature on robots in education and the field of philosophy for children. While the existing studies undoubtedly enrich our understanding of learners’ experiences with educational robots, they stop short of explicitly dealing with existential questions. Therefore, we recommend two avenues to study children’s existential meaning-making of educational robots: educational robots as cultural tools and educational robots as part of children’s play.

Introduction

Students have a need to think about philosophical life issues such as friendship, loneliness, justice, life, and death and they also have a need to talk about these life issues (Lilja, Buchardt, Kärnebro, Osbeck & Sporre,2020). Students also have a natural inclination to play and take part in playful activities. We suggest that the school age educare centre is a suitable arena where both needs can be accommodated. In this paper, we discuss the intimate relationship between the playfulness that appears inherent in the students' way of solving a particular task and how they simultaneously make use of their ‘practical intellect’. We intend to contribute to an expanded understanding of what constitutes intellectual activity and suggest that teachers and researchers can make use of this expanded understanding at the school age education centre.

Aim

The aim of this article is to develop an exploratory theoretical reasoning regarding the connection between (internal) intellectual processes and (external) practical observable actions of students participating in an activity. The question that is more specifically investigated is: How can students' play, in solving a task given within the framework of an adult-led activity, be seen as an expression of intellectual processes?

Methodology and theoretical framework

Theoretically a departure is taken in Gilbert Ryle's (1949/2000) discussion of how theory and practice are closely interwoven, and in Tomas Tempte's (1997) theory of the practical intellect. Our argumentation is supported by analyzing some empirical examples from an activity lead by one of the researchers, and in the analysis using concepts from Ryle and Tempte to make our point about the practical intellect to come alive.

Result

We put this reasoning as the basis for a normative argumentation that deals with the fact that the School age Educare could be a place that meets students' needs to investigate questions of a philosophical nature without, for the sake of it, renouncing the equally central needs of playful antics and movement. We then propose a pedagogical position where teachers let the students themselves design and explore activities that, according to them, can lead to philosophical conversations without either placing demands on the students' achievements or seeking to steer the activity towards specific educational outcomes.

In 2011 a new teacher education program, Extended school (180 credit), later reffered to School Age Education ( SAE, 180) was launched. Research interested in the conditions for the new profession found that many SAE teachers experience difficulties and operate in a structurally subordinate position in the workplace, struggling with an underdog mentality in relation to other groups of teachers (e.g., Haglund & Boström 2020). SAE teachers also construct their professional identity in a field of tension between an older social-pedagogical care tradition and new forms of governance based in a school subject-oriented educational tradition (Ackesjö et al. 2019). However, instead of focusing on how organizational and profession oriented frameworks shape the profession, we direct our gaze to the importance for the professional role that new SAE teachers attribute to their personal social commitment and their independent intellectual and moral reasoning.

Theory

School is regarded as an economically, socially and culturally contestedplace, inextricably linked to issues of power and interest. Rather than separated from the dynamics of politics, schools are are viwed as contested spheres that incorporate and express societal struggles over knowledge, forms of authority, values, roles, identities, etcetera (Giroux 1985). Teachers’ work accordingly can not be reduced to the instrumental task of implementing the curriculum and, like a technician, only enforcing educational decisions that have been made at a political and bureaucratic level.

Aim and research question

The aim of this paper is to examine how graduated SAE teachers’ reason about their personal motivations and positions in relation to curriculum management and educational policy decisions. More precisely, we examine the question:How do graduated SAE teachers’ reason about their own intellectual and moral agency in relation to curriculum governance and educational policy decisions?

Methodology

The selection of respondents is strategic and consists of 30 graduated SAEteachers’ who have an interest in societal and moral issues in relation to the teaching assignment. Data consist of 30 reflection texts and individual semi-structured interviews with four of the respondents. In the interpretation of the data a departure is taken in Donald Davidson’s (2001) Principle of Charity. This means that reflection texts and interview statements is analyzed in terms of rational actions from which conceptions and ideas about actual phenomena can be inferred, rather than, for example, reconstructing linguistic discourses. Fora detailed description of the theoretical perspective and analysis procedure, see e.g. Halldén, Haglund & Strömdahl 2008.

Result

We hope to contribute to the field with an interest in the profession’s mission by broadening the picture of which factors, according to teachers,that may shape teacher identities, teachers’ conceptions of the mission andview of the special character of the profession. We will give some examples of a professional self-image and an approach to the teaching role where intellectual and moral independence is prioritized as an in alienable part of one’s professional practice.

This paper presents the findings of a study investigating School-Age Educare (SAE) teachers’ conceptions of care and care practices and how these conceptions of care and actual practices relate to pupils’ needs. The study is based on observations and interviews with two experienced SAE teachers and one young teacher in a Swedish SAE centre, working with pupils between 9–11 years old. The study was undertaken between March 2018 and April 2019, and provides insight into different forms of care and caring practices. The study also shows that pupils nowadays, according to the teachers, have needs that were previously met by their families. The teachers’ conceptions of the importance of a well-functioning group and pupils’ needs to be able to share their feelings, dreams and worries and to value each other’s differences were also salient findings of the study.

Abstract

The central concern of this thesis is to discuss interpretations of learning in educational research. A point of departure is taken in core epistemological and ontological assumptions informing three major approaches to learning: behaviourism, cognitive constructivism and socioculturalism. It is argued that all three perspectives provide important insights into research on learning, but each alone runs the risk of reducing learning and interpretations of learning to single aspects. Specific attention is therefore given to Intentional Analysis, as it has been developed to account for sociocultural aspects that influence learning and individual cognition. It is argued that interpretations of learning processes face challenges, different kinds of holism, underdetermination and the complexity of intentionality, that need to be accounted for in order to make valid interpretations. Interpretation is therefore also discussed in light of philosopher Donald Davidson’s theories of knowledge and interpretation. It is suggested that his theories may provide aspects of an ontological and epistemological stance that can form the basis for interpretations of learning in educational research. A first brief sketch, referred to as ‘epistemic holism’, is thus drawn. The thesis also exemplifies how such a stance can inform empirical research. It provides a first formulation of research strategies – a so-called ‘interpretative holism’. The thesis discusses what such a stance may imply with regard to the nature and location of knowledge and the status of the learning situation. Ascribing meaning to observed behaviour, as it is described in this thesis, implies that an action is always an action under a specific description. Different descriptions may not be contradictory, but if we do not know the learner’s language use, we cannot know whether there is a difference in language or in beliefs. It is argued that the principle of charity and reference to saliency, that is, what appears as the figure for the learner, may help us decide. However, saliency does not only appear as a phenomenon in relation to physical objects and events, but also in the symbolic world, thus requires that the analysis extend beyond the mere transcription of an interview or the description of an observation. Hence, a conclusion to be drawn from this thesis is that the very question of what counts as data in the interpretation of complex learning processes is up for discussion.

In this paper, we are mainly concerned with coherentism as an approach to ethical dialog in school. We have two different but connected aims with the paper. The first aim is to say something about general philosophical questions relating to coherentism as a theory in metaethics, and especially in relation to value education; the second aim is to explore some possible implications of coherentism as a method in studying the enterprise of discussing ethical issues and questions with children as well as the study of the actual ethical discussion in school. Furthermore, we evaluate the connection between a coherentistic approach to justification and the methodological parts of a Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, approach to ethics in school. Related to this, we scrutinize what implications this has for evaluating ethical learning within Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, as well as implications for evaluation of the Philosophy with Children, or Community of Inquiry, approaches as methods for dealing with ethical matters in school.