Constructing Pragmatist Knowledge: Education, Philosophy and Social Emancipation

By: Neil Hooley

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Synopsis: Constructing Pragmatist Knowledge reintroduces an explicit and systematic philosophical approach to education through American Pragmatism, expanding and detailing the practice of pragmatism itself for practitioners across various fields of social action. While a number of theorists are referenced, it focuses on the work of the original pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, George Herbert Mead and Jane Addams. It is written in a narrative style and connects personal and professional experience of the author with philosophical description, analysis and explanation. Major themes of pragmatism are encountered throughout involving knowledge, experience, inquiry, social acts, dialectic and contradiction, giving rise to human constructs of values, moral conduct and bricolage. Reintroducing pragmatism and epistemology as the focus of teaching and learning heralds revolutionary and democratic change for education systems worldwide and corrects neoliberal tendencies that impose anti-educational ideological, economic and political distortions. This book will be of interest to academics, graduate students, teachers and pre-service teachers, policy makers and researchers in education, philosophy, sociology and epistemology.