This unique collection of essays by well known scholars from around the world examines the role of edutopias in the utopian tradition, examining its sources and sites as a means for understanding the aims and purposes of education, for realizing its societal value, and for criticizing its present economic, technological and organizational modes.

This book brings together the perspectives of researchers, architects, technical designers, and teachers on emerging theoretical and technological developments pertaining to the classroom of the future.

Utopia and Education is an original contribution of the philosophy and theory of education, which also enters the fields of disciplines other than pedagogy and uses their approaches and achievements. The work is part of utopian studies and complements its discourse with a less marked path of philosophy and theory of education. Moreover, in the context of pedagogy and education, it takes up a number of issues whose significance goes beyond the conventional framework of a single discipline: utopia, ideology, social criticism, fundamentalism, democracy, populism, translation, transdisciplinarity and knowledge transfer, socialisation, school as one of the social institutions, etc. The work not only reconstructs knowledge about specific phenomena relevant to education and pedagogy but also proposes an original solution to educational problems in the form of the concept of asylum pedagogy. The approach to these phenomena is well reflected in the division of the book into two parts. The book, apart from references to researchers associated with utopian studies, addresses ideas of such figures of the humanities and social sciences as Emmanuel Levinas and Erich Fromm; their concepts were earlier used by the Author in two monographs. Besides, there are references to Bronisław Baczko, George Steiner, Jacques Derrida, Michael Walzer, Hannah Arendt, Janusz Korczak, and Ilan Gur- Ze'ev. Throughout the work, the Author attempts to combine the perspectives of critical pedagogy and dialogue, finds inspiration in the achievements of the Warsaw School of the History of Ideas and draws on Jewish thought and tradition.

This book covers Rudolf Steiner’s biography, presented from an educational point of view and also unfolds the different aspects of Steiner’s educational thought in Waldorf Education. His point of view is unique in that it relates education to a wide horizon of different contexts, such as social, pedagogical, evolutionary and spiritual aspects. His ideas are philosophical (ethical, epistemological, ontological). However, above all, they are based on spiritual understanding of the human being and the world. In many ways, they stand in stark contrast to the views that inform present mainstream educational thought and practice. Nevertheless, there are points where Steiner’s ideas can find a resonance in more recent educational thought. Steiner was in many ways ahead of his time and his educational ideas are still relevant to many present day educational issues and problems.

Misguided Education Reform: Debating the Impact on Students argues for reforms that will help, not hurt, America’s public school students. Early childhood education, testing, reading, special education, discipline, loss of the arts, and school facilities, are all areas experiencing reform in the wrong direction. This book says “no” to the reforms that fail, and challenges Americans to address the real student needs that will fix public schools and make America strong.

What is the trouble with schools and why should we want to make ‘school trouble’? Schooling is implicated in the making of educational and social exclusions and inequalities as well as the making of particular sorts of students and teachers. For this reason schools are important sites of counter- or radical- politics. In this book, Deborah Youdell brings together theories of counter-politics and radical traditions in education to make sense of the politics of daily life inside schools and explores a range of resources for thinking about and enacting political practices that make ‘school trouble’. The book offers a solid introduction to the much-debated issues of ‘intersectionality’ and the limits of identity politics and the relationship between schooling and the wider policy and political context. It pieces together a series of tools and tactics that might destabilize educational inequalities by unsettling the knowledges, meanings, practices, subjectivities and feelings that are normalized and privileged in the ‘business as usual’ of school life. Engaging with curriculum materials, teachers’ lesson plans and accounts of their pedagogy, and ethnographic observations of school practices, the book investigates a range of empirical examples of critical action in school, from overt political action pursued by educators to day-to-day pedagogic encounters between teachers and students. The book draws on the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau and Chantel Mouffe, and Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to make sense of these practices and identify the political possibilities for educators who refuse to accept the everyday injustices and wide-reaching social inequalities that face us. School Trouble appears at a moment of political and economic flux and uncertainty, and when the policy moves that have promoted markets and private sector involvement in education around the globe have been subject to intense scrutiny and critique. Against this backdrop, renewed attention is being paid to the questions of how politics might be rejuvenated, how societies might be made fair, and what role education might have in pursing this. This book makes an important intervention into this terrain. By exploring a politics of discourse, an anti-identity politics, a politics of feeling, and a politics of becoming, it shows how the education assemblage can be unsettled and education can be re-imagined. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars in the fields of education, sociology, cultural studies, and social and political science as well as to critical educators looking for new tools for thinking about their practice.

Beyond a design school, the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) is an immersive environment--a dense atmosphere saturated with creative and intellectual activity. Platform 4 represents a selective sampling of agendas cultivated at the GSD during the last academic year, revealing a diverse mixture of projects, research, and events. Organized as a searchable database, this publication documents both site and situation at the GSD--it is an institutional index. While Platform 4 records research trajectories from the past year, it also has the capacity to set agendas for future work. By framing a set of issues and topics, Platform 4 focuses attention towards particular areas of interest, allowing individual work to build on and contribute to a larger body of disciplinary knowledge. In that sense, the themes within this book become projective, they provide frameworks for future inquiry.

This collection of essays provides new readings of Huxley’s classic dystopian satire, Brave New World (1932). Leading international scholars consider from new angles the historical contexts in which the book was written and the cultural legacies in which it looms large. The volume affirms Huxley’s prescient critiques of modernity and his continuing relevance to debates about political power, art, and the vexed relationship between nature and humankind. Individual chapters explore connections between Brave New World and the nature of utopia, the 1930s American Technocracy movement, education and social control, pleasure, reproduction, futurology, inter-war periodical networks, motherhood, ethics and the Anthropocene, islands, and the moral life. The volume also includes a ‘Foreword’ written by David Bradshaw, one of the world’s top Huxley scholars. Timely and consistently illuminating, this collection is essential reading for students, critics, and Huxley enthusiasts alike.

Introduction -- The arts and social change -- The power of utopian thinking -- Transforming society -- Music education and utopia -- Conclusion.

Educators are finding that communication and interaction are at the core of a successful web-based classroom. This interactivity fosters community, which contributes to effective and meaningful learning. Positive online communities and the communication therein encourage students to interact with others’ views which not only grows one’s empathy, but is an integral part of constructivist learning theories. Because of this, the most important role of an educator in an online class is one that ensures student interactivity and engagement. Creating Teacher Immediacy in Online Learning Environments addresses the most effective models and strategies for nurturing teacher immediacy in web-based and virtual learning environments. A number of innovative methods for building an authentic, personalized online learning experience are outlined and discussed at length within this publication, providing solutions for pre-service as well as in-service educators. This book is a valuable compilation of research for course designers, faculty, students of education, administration, software designers, and higher education researchers.