EDUCATIONAL THEORYPub Date : 2026-07-05Epub Date: 2026-03-08DOI: 10.1111/edth.70088
Jonathan Wurtz
{"title":"Education for Thinking in the Anthropocene: A Call to Ecosophize P4C Thinking Systems","authors":"Jonathan Wurtz","doi":"10.1111/edth.70088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.70088","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Matthew Lipman's Philosophy for Children (P4C) has been hailed as a valuable pedagogical program for addressing the nuanced questions raised by the Anthropocene. As many have proposed, its emphasis on reason-based thinking, community philosophical reflection, and inclusivity of diverse perspectives offers youth a chance to develop the thinking and dialogical skills necessary to address the environmental crisis we are facing. Despite the clear value of programs like P4C (or Philosophy with Children [PwC]), I argue that the current landscape of inquiry (i.e., the text and the community of philosophical inquiry) lacks an ecological dimension. That is, it is too abstract and detached from the non-ideal, immanent conditions of inquiry to purposefully cultivate thinkers who can make ecosocial decisions under the material conditions of the Anthropocene. Considering this narrowness, I resituate P4C within the broader program I call “Ecosophy with Children”: a purposeful reterritorialization of P4C's thinking systems as a transversal community of philosophical inquiry that conceptualizes participants' subjectivities in relation to their mental, social, and environmental ecological contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":47134,"journal":{"name":"EDUCATIONAL THEORY","volume":"76 4","pages":"467-485"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148389267","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EDUCATIONAL THEORYPub Date : 2026-07-05Epub Date: 2026-04-21DOI: 10.1111/edth.70091
Alexandra K. Chang
{"title":"Teachers and Philosophy: Essays on the Contact Zone, edited by Cara E. Furman and Tomas de Rezende Rocha, State University of New York Press, 2025, 304 pp.","authors":"Alexandra K. Chang","doi":"10.1111/edth.70091","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.70091","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47134,"journal":{"name":"EDUCATIONAL THEORY","volume":"76 4","pages":"565-572"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148389249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EDUCATIONAL THEORYPub Date : 2026-07-05Epub Date: 2026-06-01DOI: 10.1111/edth.70094
Nicholas Smith, Benjamin Pacini
{"title":"What to Do with Civic Virtue","authors":"Nicholas Smith, Benjamin Pacini","doi":"10.1111/edth.70094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.70094","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Civic virtues are character traits according to which people are disposed to act for the right reasons, at the right times, and in the right ways with the political sphere of life. Inculcating these virtues is often taken to be an important part of civic education, and therefore understanding what these virtues are is of pedagogical importance. One important question about civic virtues is how they relate to more general virtues of character. We consider two likely possibilities: civic virtues may be sui generis virtues with distinctly political content, or they may be the political instantiation of general virtues of character. We find both alternatives wanting, but argue that these philosophical difficulties can be leveraged for pedagogical purposes in order to engage civics students and help them learn to tolerate complexity.</p>","PeriodicalId":47134,"journal":{"name":"EDUCATIONAL THEORY","volume":"76 4","pages":"506-526"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148389135","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EDUCATIONAL THEORYPub Date : 2026-07-05Epub Date: 2026-04-30DOI: 10.1111/edth.70092
Julio Labraña
{"title":"The Paradox of Educationalization: Semantic Expansion and the Structural Limits of Modern Education","authors":"Julio Labraña","doi":"10.1111/edth.70092","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.70092","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this article, I develop a systemic theory of educationalization based on Niklas Luhmann's social systems theory. I define educationalization as a process of semantic expansion through which education absorbs a wide range of societal themes, overextending its structural capacities. Analyzing social, factual, and temporal dimensions of meaning, I argue that educationalization constitutes a structural paradox. As society tasks education with resolving problems originating in other systems, such as economic inequality or environmental crises, educational organizations become simultaneously indispensable and insufficient. This contradiction fuels recursive cycles of reform, where the system reaffirms its relevance through its inability to fully satisfy external demands. Ultimately, this article suggests that educationalization is a constitutive condition of modernity. Rather than solving the problems it absorbs, the system manages social contingency by rendering contradictions observable, ensuring its own institutional permanence through the persistent deferral of fulfillment within a permanent state of reform.</p>","PeriodicalId":47134,"journal":{"name":"EDUCATIONAL THEORY","volume":"76 4","pages":"546-564"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2026-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148389089","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EDUCATIONAL THEORYPub Date : 2026-03-09Epub Date: 2025-10-08DOI: 10.1111/edth.70057
Orhan Agirdag
{"title":"Beyond Prompt Engineering: Prompting (L)iteracy, Linguistic Capital, and Educational Inequality","authors":"Orhan Agirdag","doi":"10.1111/edth.70057","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.70057","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article advances the debate on artificial intelligence (AI) use in education by moving beyond the mechanistic notion of “prompt engineering” and the human-centered focus of prevailing AI-literacy frameworks. I introduce prompting (l)iteracy, a sociotechnical capacity that is simultaneously <i>iterative</i> (built through cycles of prompt revision and reflection) and <i>critical</i> (attuned to the economic logics, linguistic hierarchies, and distributed agencies that shape AI dialogue). Four theoretical lenses scaffold the concept: (1) post-Fordist political economy explains how each prompt exploits commodified linguistic labor embedded in large language models; (2) Bourdieu's linguistic-capital thesis illuminates the social inequities likely reproduced by differential prompting proficiency; (3) Latour's actor–network theory highlights non-human agency, as humans do not only prompt AI, but they are also prompted by AI; and (4) de Certeau's tactics foreground users' creative appropriations and resistances. Vignettes of AI interactions illustrate these dimensions and expose the twin pitfalls of techno-solutionism and techno-pessimism. I argue that future research must abandon self-report surveys in favor of authentic, trace-centered mixed methods that record authentic prompt–response logs and machine telemetry. Prompting (l)iteracy thus offers a richer analytic lens for understanding, and ultimately mitigating, AI-mediated educational inequality.</p>","PeriodicalId":47134,"journal":{"name":"EDUCATIONAL THEORY","volume":"76 2","pages":"206-223"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147564212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
EDUCATIONAL THEORYPub Date : 2026-03-09Epub Date: 2025-10-25DOI: 10.1111/edth.70061
Cara Furman
{"title":"The Confession-Grade Exchange: Penny for Your Thoughts","authors":"Cara Furman","doi":"10.1111/edth.70061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.70061","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This article tells the story of how an undergraduate future teacher, Jessie, gave an account of her hardships in the hopes of gaining a better grade. Responding to this episode, I name it a “confession-grade exchange.” I then offer a descriptive account of grading, grading as an exchange, and confession as an exchange. Building from this analysis, I offer an ameliorative reframing centered on reciprocity and responsibility.</p>","PeriodicalId":47134,"journal":{"name":"EDUCATIONAL THEORY","volume":"76 2","pages":"224-242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2026-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147569075","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}