Dear Colleagues,

The processes of education represent endeavors to preserve a heritage of cultural knowledge and values. As a tool for screening future citizens into different social roles, education discriminates among students who possess the abilities to affirm the dominant narrative and the values that it presents. Teacher preparation contributes to this process by sorting candidates based upon appropriateness of dispositions and mastery of standardized content knowledge.

The discipline of epistemology informs this sorting process. A society’s generally accepted basis for knowledge guides the process for learning as well as the nature of the content taught. It provides the foundation for interpreting physical and metaphysical relationships that define principles of its culture.  Herman’s (2014) best-selling work described the ongoing clash between the Aristotelian and Platonist traditions as they wrestled to claim the proper basis for knowledge. The advent of the new materialism sets forth a claim that views both of these traditions as informing a new metaphysics and providing a new grounding for epistemology necessitating examination (Nelson, Segall, and Durham, 2021).

This themed issue of Education Sciences seeks articles that examine this sense of new materialism and the principles that inform foundations for content knowledge and values undergirding education, schooling, and teacher preparation.

One matter relates to the validity that this environment offers the realm of spirituality, an area often relegated to religious and specialized environments. Spirituality and mysticism have occupied positions of great influence on patterns of knowledge and practice; however, findings of scientific-based study founded on materialist principles discount the concept of spirituality and its applications, redefining spirituality on material and humanistic principles.

The principles (physical and metaphysical) that inform the basis for knowledge greatly influence the social canon presented in schools and shape the traits of teachers and teacher candidates deemed qualified to teach it. These principles define human/environmental relationships, delineate their associations with the external earthy environment and/or oneness with an abstract supreme being, and inform foundations for social power and the values that shape social relationships. As teaching and learning represent processes designed to preserve cultural identities, a reframing of the principles that defining the basis for knowledge potentially reshapes individual and social self-conceptualizations.

This call for papers invites manuscripts that concern theory and research into the principles that undergird foundations of knowledge that shape education, primary and secondary schooling, and teacher preparations.

Topics that contributors may consider include, but are not limited to, the following questions.

• How do epistemological groundings inform definitions of power?
• What relevance do spirituality and mindfulness have in the classrooms and/or to development of teachers?
• What is spirituality and how does the definition inform its curricular presence?
• To what extent is separation of faith traditions and public education truly attainable or desirable?
• How do these conditions inform understandings of citizenship, its teaching, and its learning?

References

Herman, A. (2014). The cave and the light. Plato versus Aristotle and the struggle for the soul of western civilization. Random House.

Nelson, P. M., Segal, A., & Durham, B. S. (2021). Between aspiration and reality: New materialism and social studies education. Theory & Research in Social Education, 49(3), 449-476. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2021.1912679

Prof. Dr. Thomas A. Lucey
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• teacher education
• epistemology
• new materialism spirituality
• mindfulness
• power
• schooling