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Professor of Education
Associate Editor, Journal of Philosophy of Education


 Principal Research Interests

Philosophy of Education –

  • Ethical and political issues in education
  • Education and postmodernity
  • Higher Education
  • Epistemology of social science research
  • Moral psychology of self-belief
  • Unknowing
 Some Recent Publications (2009 -) 

Books

David Bridges, Paul Smeyers and Richard Smith (eds), Evidence-based Educational Policy:  What Evidence? What Basis? Whose Policy? (Blackwell, 2009), xiv & 194
Education Policy: Philosophical Critique (Ed.) (Wiley Blackwell, 2013), viii & 175
Paul Smeyers and Richard Smith, Understanding Education and Educational Research (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), viii & 221
Richard Smith(Ed.),Philosophy of Education II (Routledge 2015, 5 vols), pp. 21 & 2,213. 

Journals (edited)

Ethics and Education, 2006 – 2013
Policy, Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education, 46. 4 2012

Chapters

Half a language: listening in the city of words, in: Paul Smeyers and Marc Depaepe (eds.), Educational Research: Proofs, Arguments and Other Reasoning (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), 149-160
Authenticity and higher education: the Nietzschean university in the twenty-first century, in: Thomas E. Hart (ed) Nietzsche, Culture and Education (Ashgate, 2009), 1-11
The long slide to happiness, in: Ruth Cigman and Andrew Davis (eds), New Philosophies of Learning (Blackwell, 2009), 191-204
Writing the philosophy of education, in: Richard Bailey (ed.)  The Philosophy of Education: an introduction (Continuum, 2010), 158-166
Poststructuralism, postmodernism and education, in: Richard Bailey et al. (eds) The SAGE Handbook of Philosophy of Education (SAGE, 2010),  139-150
Between the lines: philosophy, text and conversation, in: Claudia Ruitenberg (ed) What do Philosophers of Education Do? (And How Do They Do It?) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 118-130
A bubble for the spirit level: metricophilia, rhetoric and philosophy, in:  P. Smeyers, M. Depaepe and E. Keiner (eds) Educational Research: the ethics and aesthetics of statistics (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), 189-204
The play of Socratic dialogue, in: Nancy Vansieleghem and David Kennedy (eds) Philosophy for Children in Transition (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 52-65
The theology of education to come, in:  P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe (eds) Educational research. The attraction of psychology (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 147-157
Interpretation: the space of text, in: P. Smeyers, M. Depaepe and E. Keiner (eds) Educational Research: The Importance and Effects of Institutional Spaces (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 115-126
Educational research and the light of science, in: A. Reid et al. (eds) A Companion to Research in Education (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 155-158
The analytical philosopher and the writer, in: J. Gingell(ed.) Education and the Common Good: Essays in Honor of Robin Barrow (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 1-12
Re-reading Plato: the slow cure for knowledge, in:  M. Papastephanou, T. Strand and A. Pirrie (eds), Philosophy as a Lived Experience (Berlin: LIT Verlag,  2014), 23-37
Mud and hair: an essay on the conditions of educational research, in: P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe (eds). Educational research: Material culture and its representation (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), 133-144
Citizenship, therapy and the politics of irony, in: J. Baldacchino, S. Galea and D. Mercieca,  (eds.) My Teaching, My Philosophy. Kenneth Wain: A Lifelong Engagement with Education (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), 303-316
An epistemic monoculture and the university of reasons, in: David Lewin, Alex Guilherme and Morgan White, New Perspectives in the Philosophy of Education: Ethics, Politics and Religion (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
Philosophy in its place, in: L. Waks (ed.) Leaders in Philosophy of Education (second series) (Rotterdam: Sense, 2014), 245-254

Articles (most of these are at philpapers: Online research in philosophy: http://philpapers.org/)

Between the lines: philosophy, text and conversation, in: Claudia Ruitenburg (ed) Special Issue of Journal of Philosophy of Education 43.3, 2009, 437-449

Total parenting, Educational Theory 60. 3, 2010, 357-369

Social science and education: challenge and rhetoric, Zeitschrift für pädagogische Historiographie (16th volume), 2010, 107-109

Beneath the skin: statistics, trust and status, Educational Theory, 61. 6, 2011, 633-645

The play of Socratic dialogue, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 45. 2, 2011, 221-233

On dogs and children: judgements in the realm of meaning, Special Issue of Ethics and Education  (6. 2) eds Judith Suissa and Stefan Ramaekers, 2011, 171-180

University futures, Journal of Philosophy of Education 46. 4, 2012,
649-662

A strange condition of things: alterity and knowingness in Dickens’ ‘David
Copperfield‘, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2013,  371-382

Constructing childhood and making progress, Bildungsgeschichte. International Journal for the Historiography of Education 3. 1, 2013, 28-31

Waiting on text: interpretation in educational research, Asia Pacific Education Review 2013: DOI 10.1007/s12564-013-9295-4

Judgement calls: the ethics of educational deliberation, Kultura Pedagogiczna 1, 2014, 99-112

(with Edwin Keiner) Erziehung und Wissenschaft, Erklären und Verstehen. Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 5/2015, 665-681
Educational research: the importance of the humanities, Educational Theory 65. 6, 2015, 739-754
Metamorphosis and the management of change, Journal of Philosophy of Education 50. 1, 2016, 8-19

In press/forthcoming

Foreword, and Reading between the lines, in: Amanda Fulford and Naomi Hodgson (Eds), Writing in the Margin: Philosophy and Theory in Educational Research (Routledge, 2016)
Managing change and the language of change, in: P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe (Eds) Educational Research: Discourses of Change and Changes of Discourse (Springer, 2016)
Going beyond, in: Naoko Saito (Ed.) Replacing the Subject of Philosophy (University of Tokyo Press, 2016)
The virtues of unknowing, Journal of Philosophy of Education 50. 2, 2016
Taking our time: slow learning, cautious teaching, in: M. Peters (Ed.)Encyclopedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory (Springer 2016/2017)
Jacques Derrida: Language, text and possibilities, in: M. Peters (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Educational  Philosophy and Theory (Springer 2016/2017)
(with James Conroy) The ethics of research  excellence, Journal of Philosophy of Education 50. 3, 2016

Conference Papers

Philosophy of education as listening: the confidence to interpret, European Conference on Educational Research, Vienna, September 2009
Education against itself: response to Carlos Torres, International Network of Philosophers of Education (INPE), Bogotá, Columbia, July 2010
The theology of education to come,Vlaanderen Fund for Scientific Research: Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education – Evaluation and Evolution of the Criteria for Educational Research, Leuven, Belgium, Nov 2010
Re-reading Plato: the slow cure for knowledge, Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford, April 2011
Re-reading Plato: the slow cure for knowledge, Philosophy of Education as a Lived Experience: Navigating Through Dichotomies of Thought and Action, Tilos, Greece, July 2011
Judgement calls: ethics in the realm of meaning, Ethics and Education, Warsaw, October 2011
The architecture of the text: meanings and spaces, Vlaanderen Fund for Scientific Research: Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education – Evaluation and Evolution of the Criteria for Educational Research, Nuremberg, Nov 2011
Charles Dickens and the problem of knowingness, Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford, March 2012
The irony of education, Philosophy of Education as a Lived Experience: Navigating Through Dichotomies of Thought and Action, Tilos, Greece, July 2012
Mud and hair: an essay on the conditions of educational research, Vlaanderen Fund for Scientific Research: Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education – Evaluation and Evolution of the Criteria for Educational Research, Leuven, Belgium, Nov 2013
Judgement calls: the ethics of educational deliberation, Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford, March 2013
Ways of not knowing, Philosophy of Education as a Lived Experience: Navigating Through Dichotomies of Thought and Action, Tilos, Greece, July 2013
The idea of ‘student satisfaction’ in higher education (with Sophie Ward), British Educational Research Association (BERA), Brighton, Sept 2013
Philosophy, literature and education: symposium, with James Conroy, Bob Davis, Liam Gearon and Sharon Todd, Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford, March 2014
Philosophy’s dirty secret, Philosophy of Education as a Lived Experience: Navigating Through Dichotomies of Thought and Action, Tilos, Greece, July 2014
Metamorphosis and the management of change, Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education – Evaluation and Evolution of the Criteria for Educational Research, Leuven, Belgium, Nov 2014
The virtues of unknowing, Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford, March 2015
Negative epistemology, irony and philosophical style, Philosophy of Education as a Lived Experience: Navigating Through Dichotomies of Thought and Action, Tilos, Greece, July 2015
The ethics of the UK’s Research  Excellence Framework  (with James Conroy), Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education – Evaluation and Evolution of the Criteria for Educational Research, Leuven, Belgium, Nov 2015
The ethics of the UK’s Research  Excellence Framework  (with James Conroy), Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, Oxford, March 2016