In this conceptual article, I examine several educational aims and propose a new conception of education based on stewardship. The conception of stewardship as an educational aim recognizes the limited authority of educators and parents while fostering student autonomy. I address educational stewardship across various lenses, such as democratic, cultural and epistemic, environmental, and ethical stewardship as a means of informing a well-rounded approach to educational stewardship. I address the boundaries of stewardship as an educational aim and conclude with implications for further work.
For the public to be prepared to deliberate about the proper role (if any) of artificial superintelligence in society, artificial intelligence literacy needs to address technical, empirical, and normative philosophical topics related to this task. Yet recent reviews of artificial intelligence literacy studies and frameworks suggest that artificial superintelligence receives little to no coverage and that the philosophical dimensions of artificial intelligence literacy are often minimized. Toward supporting the development of artificial superintelligence in literacy approaches, curricula, and policy, we conduct a scoping review of the last 20 years of English-language philosophy articles on artificial superintelligence in the PhilPapers database. We reviewed 65 articles using both bibliometric and thematic forms of analysis. Using qualitative methods, we identify 9 primary themes and 50 subthemes in these articles, as well as the domains of philosophy covered in each. In this set of articles, three topics with an axiological focus—artificial superintelligence value alignment (n = 41), existential risk (n = 33), and machine ethics (n = 31)—were identified as the most common themes. We also identify the foundational texts most frequently cited by articles in the study set. By placing these themes in dialogue with artificial intelligence literacy reviews, we identify three main types of opportunities to support deeper artificial superintelligence literacy: (1) content opportunities, (2) skill opportunities, and (3) pedagogical opportunities. Specifically, we recommend expanding both artificial superintelligence and philosophical content in artificial intelligence literacy, developing argument assessment skills through computational thinking, and extending artificial intelligence literacy pedagogies to support philosophical inquiry into foundational principles of artificial intelligence and artificial superintelligence.
Scholars in philosophy of education who discuss the history of educational thought, by which I mean thought about education in the history of philosophy and/or the history of social science, continue to miss a vital opportunity. Their work, more often than it has in recent decades, should do what many essays in fields like ancient philosophy and modern philosophy have traditionally done in examining the past: pick out counterintuitive parts of it and try to show that they are more defensible than they seem. Among other reasons, facing pushback from historical figures is an important way to prevent or offset the effects of group polarization, as democratic theorists have called it. The danger that this sort of polarization poses for philosophers of education today is that, on a range of issues, since they all agree with one another and encounter no opposition, they will lose the true beliefs they already have.
Exploitation pervades the higher education system. Individuals with more power within higher education tend to be advantaged in their interactions with individuals with less power. Despite thorough documentation, protest, and general condemnation, exploitative practices persist. While some scholars suggest bias and neoliberal policies are to blame for the persistence of exploitation across the higher education system, I argue persist exploitation can only be explained by attending to complex structures and systems. Drawing on insights from game theory and social theorists, this article provides a more complete account of the persistence of exploitation in higher education by focusing on structures-networks of relations between various positions, sustained by norms and practices. I suggest exploitative practices in higher education derive from bargaining interactions across power where individuals adhere to the norms embedded in higher education's hierarchical structure for fear of potential sanction. In these interactions, individuals with less power face greater repercussions for deviating from the norm, leaving them limited options to resist exploitation. These dynamics are further complicated by the complex and dynamic systems with which higher education is intertwined. The interconnectivity of complex social systems ensures bargaining dynamics within higher education simultaneously affect and are affected by other social systems. This makes resisting exploitation difficult and disproportionately costly for individuals who experience disadvantage in multiple social systems. This article introduces insights from game theory and complexity theory to conversations about injustice in education, arguing that addressing long-standing oppression requires attention to complex structures and systems.
In Networks of Trust, Anthony Laden argues that higher education should shift from cultivating broadly scientific thinking to fostering open-mindedness. While the expected benefits of this proposal are richly detailed, potential costs are not similarly explored. Here, I flesh out some consequences of Laden's proposal for higher education, and argue that the costs of his preferred educative model may turn out to be just as weighty as those he attributes to the current model.
To implement an Aristotelian virtue ethics framework to live well with artificial intelligence (as described in Smith & Vickers, 2024), we need teachers who can serve as mentors and role models for the next generation. Finding mentors who can teach both technical expertise and model ethical deployment of that expertise is challenging, and Aristotle provides few hints on how to uncover such mentors. The account of expertise in Plato's Gorgias seems to align with Aristotle's vision and provides additional detail. The upshot of the conversation between Socrates and his interlocutors is that an expert should have three capacities: (1) to consistently produce excellent products of their expertise, (2) to replicate their skillset in the next generation, and (3) to use that expertise ethically. A doctor serves as a paradigm case of an expert in Gorgias-while a doctor has the technical ability to both heal and poison, the doctor also has good judgment that will prevent them from using their powers for harm. In Plato's day, expertise was transmitted through apprentice learning, and so a doctor would also train subsequent generations of doctors. In Gorgias, Plato establishes these criteria for a trustworthy expert who can pass on dangerous skills responsibly. While the dangerous skill in Plato's day was oratory, we can apply the same criteria to another dangerous form of expertise: artificial intelligence. By corollary, expert engineers should possess the technical skills, understand how to use those technical skills ethically (and actually use them ethically), and be able to replicate both of these skill sets in the next generation of engineers. We can use this account of expertise to develop a clearer picture of the ideal faculty we would hire to teach in all disciplines, but particularly technical disciplines, with the capacity to shape artificial intelligence for good or ill. Plato's criteria provide us with the criteria required to pick out mentors for a robust virtue ethics-based training of the designers (and even the users) of technology: (1) technical ability, (2) teaching ability, and (3) ethical practices (at least in the scope of their technical domain).
Luck egalitarianism about educational justice requires, roughly, that educational policy be arranged so as to minimize unchosen inequality in how well lives go. Luck egalitarianism famously faces the objection that it is an implausibly overdemanding theory of educational justice—especially when it is applied to educators in non-ideal conditions like our own, who are tasked with educating in social circumstances that are marred by the effects of pervasive background and historical injustices. I show that luck egalitarianism can be rescued from that overdemandingness objection. I effect that rescue by showing, first, the importance of distinguishing between the ideal-theoretic and non-ideal-theoretic parts of a normative principle like luck egalitarianism and showing then that, having made that distinction, there is a version of luck egalitarianism whose non-ideal-theoretic part does not entail implausibly overdemanding requirements for educators in non-ideal conditions. I also show that my discussion suggests useful directions and resources for further work in non-ideal theorizing about luck egalitarianism and other theories of educational justice.
This article presents a qualitative analysis of the ethical reasoning of 149 teachers working in a large city district. Through exploring how these experienced teachers reason through a 'normative case study in educational ethics' (NCS) that presents an ethical dilemma of how to support a student experiencing multiple injustices in and outside of school, this study offers an illustration of how individual teacher decision-making seeks to mitigate structural inequities. Findings show that, in contrast to the techno-rational decision-making assumed by the USA K-12 education system, teachers' ethical reasoning in this case was individually-focused, holistic, and flexible. These findings suggest the need for professional development and systemic change that supports teachers' complex individual ethical reasoning. Methodologically, this study demonstrates that qualitative philosophical inquiry using normative case studies is a promising approach to investigating teachers' situated ethical and moral reasoning in real time.
This article examines participatory disability research through the lens of epistemic justice, drawing (among others) on Miranda Fricker's concepts of testimonial and hermeneutic injustice. It highlights how participatory approaches empower marginalised groups, particularly people with disabilities, to overcome exclusion from knowledge production. The article emphasises the challenges of achieving epistemic justice, especially for individuals with cognitive impairments, and advocates for epistemic humility and collaborative, inclusive research practices. By addressing these issues, participatory disability research serves as both a critique and a corrective to traditional knowledge production, fostering more equitable and transformative outcomes.
This special issue of Theory and Research in Education examines participatory research as a political and methodological project that raises fundamental epistemological questions about knowledge, legitimacy, and authority in educational inquiry. Seeking to democratize knowledge production, participatory research engages those historically excluded-such as children and disabled people-as co-researchers and challenges hierarchical structures of expertise. Rooted in liberation pedagogy, feminist and decolonial epistemologies, and disability studies, it explores how research can become a site of shared meaning-making and social transformation. The special issue brings together three theoretical and epistemological contributions with two empirical studies, showing how participatory research redefines both the methodology and the politics of educational practice, linking epistemic justice with democratic renewal in education.
This article critically examines the paradoxical position of participatory research within an ever more neoliberal academic system. While participatory research aspires to democratize knowledge production and empower marginalized communities, it is often constrained by the structural realities of academic capitalism. Drawing on the frameworks of Boltanski and Chiapello's critique of co-optation and Slaughter and Rhoades' theory of academic capitalism, this article analyzes the possibilities and challenges of participatory research. These theoretical perspectives reveal how participatory research's emancipatory goals risk being instrumentalized as moral legitimations of institutional practices that reinforce economic logics. Through an exploration of the benefits, risks, and ethical dilemmas inherent in participatory research, the article critiques its susceptibility to tokenism, co-optation, and the pressures of efficiency-driven research. In response, the article advocates for a re-radicalization of participatory research, emphasizing the importance of structural reforms, community-driven funding models, and alternative success metrics that prioritize community impact over academic prestige.
Youth-Participatory Action Research (YPAR) challenges traditional research hierarchies between young people and adults by situating youth as co-researchers rather than the objects of research. Like all forms of community-engaged research, Youth-Participatory Action Research involves collaborations between scholars and community members, and requires relationship-building to facilitate these partnerships. Power dynamics can be of particular importance in Youth-Participatory Action Research, given the prevalence of adultism in society. Conducting Youth-Participatory Action Research within the context of schools offers a mechanism to increase access for youth to participate, but can also pose challenges to Youth-Participatory Action Research's liberatory aims and youth's authentic engagement, given the often-hierarchical nature of schools. To expand research on the affordances and challenges of school-based Youth-Participatory Action Research, we conducted a qualitative self-study, examining two rounds of Youth-Participatory Action Research that occurred within the same Title 1 middle school, one of which took place virtually, via Zoom, and one that occurred in-person, on campus. Drawing upon fieldnotes and reflective memos, we identified key differences in processes and practices that impacted students' experiences, which focused on project structure, roles and responsibilities of team members, and meeting durations and frequency. We found that increasing accessibility for youth involvement was not 'one-size-fits-all', but instead nuanced, based on both the setting and the students. Overall, this study revealed the complexity of conducting Youth-Participatory Action Research in school settings and the contextual factors that may influence student engagement.
Feminist, intersectional, and post-colonial scholars have shown how the perspectives of marginalized groups are often rendered invisible, while dominant perspectives are presented as universal. Participatory research seeks to counter this injustice by foregrounding marginalized voices and vision. This has been widely adopted in special education research as well as disability and childhood studies. This article examines the epistemological assumptions that underpin participatory and inclusive research, focusing on the use of metaphors of 'voice' and 'vision'. Using 'inclusive research with people with learning disabilities' as a case study, we analyze the epistemological implications of these metaphors and highlight contradictions regarding the essentialization of identity and the reification of difference. To address these contradictions, we propose shifting toward relational and ontological perspectives that conceptualize experience, knowledge, and identity as relationally enacted rather than fixed. We propose a set of questions that offer a way of 'staying with the trouble'. This reframing highlights the performative nature of research and its potential to contribute to the articulation of other possible worlds.
In recent years, researchers in childhood studies have pushed forward a critical agenda of revising the founding concepts of the field, that is, voice, agency, and participation. This implies engaging in a dialogue with those theoretical strands which decenter the subject and dissect the production of knowledge. In line with these trends, in this article, I engage with the poststructuralist frame in order to highlight the notions of relationality and reflexivity. In particular, I speak in the first person in order to take the position of a 'reflexive researcher' who is open about her own positionality and for whom this openness is instrumental for reaching a better understanding of her own entanglements in the research encounters with childhoods (in plural). This article treats the question of power, and, simultaneously, it delves into the feeling of powerlessness and it ignites a discussion about the practicalities of 'giving voice' in research concerning children. Discussing my two diverse research experiences based on the participatory and collaborative approaches, both concerning my work with children and with adults, I speak about my critical engagements with knowledge production understood as a social practice from a standpoint of a field researcher.
Parental rights are the subject of heated deliberation and policy-making in local, state, and national governing bodies. These debates are characterized by powerful disagreements regarding the role of parents, schools, and the interests of children and adolescents. Parents’ rights conflicts, contributing to the polarization and mistrust of public schools more broadly, demand a more nuanced and complex rendering of parenting, particularly as it functions as an ethical domain. In this article, we seek to complicate understandings of parental rights by defining parenting as a practice – a socially recognized activity with normative standards and often associated with moral traditions. We describe parenting as a practice using the example of the education of LGBTQ+ students to explore justifications for, and limitations to parental rights claims. The practice of parenting establishes, and helps safeguard, the parental right to invite their children into their own cultural and religious ways of life. We argue that, while public schools in a liberal democracy should be largely neutral in regards to the varied parenting practices seen in US society, and honor the parental right to invite, these schools must simultaneously be preparing students with an education that enables them to exercise their rights to accept or decline their parents’ cultural norms and roles. Public schools thus should prepare students with an education that enables them, if needed, to exercise a corresponding right to decline the ways of life on offer by parents. While parents are key partners in the process, student’s educational interests are the ultimate focus of a public educational institution.
For decades, the term ‘school culture’ has been widely used in scholarly, policy, and popular discussions of education, school reform, and school leadership. Yet, school culture remains an abstract term, and different definitions abound. Moreover, important research on aspects of the school environment often does not fall under the purview of school culture research. Drawing from recent work in organizational sociology and cultural sociology, we develop a model that is both more expansive and more specified, accounting for different sources (formal, informal, environmental) and forms (meanings, practices) of school culture. This model views school culture as not only official and top-down but also as emergent and situated and highlights the role of alignment across key elements of a school’s culture. Examples from two very different schools – a ‘no excuses’ charter middle school and a ‘progressive’ high school – illustrate elements of the model and patterns of alignment/misalignment. This model can aid scholars, policymakers, and practitioners interested in understanding and, ultimately, improving school culture.
