No Education Without Relation

This book is a collective statement about a new approach to education - the pedagogy of relation. After revisiting a number of existing conversations, the authors bring together several theoretical traditions under the umbrella of the pedagogy of relation. This book is an appeal to develop a common frame of reference for educational approaches based on the primacy of relations in education. The authors try to understand human relations rather than educational processes, behaviors, methods, curriculum, etc. The authors also examine the dangers that a pedagogy of relations may present, and the implications such a pedagogy may have for curriculum and educational policy. The promise of the pedagogy of relation is to offer a viable alternative to dominating trends in educational thinking - trends that emphasize control over teacher and student behavior as the main way of achieving excellence.

Written in an accessible and personal style, this innovative study of authority in education examines scenarios of authority in ways that problematize, augment, and redefine prevalent ideas of how it works. Usually seen as a thing that people have, the author suggests that authority should be understood instead as a relation that happens between people, which gets enacted in circuits where each participant has a role to play; those circuits can include teachers, students, the books they read, as well as former teachers and former students. Drawing on ideas from psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, philosophy of language, and the work of Jacques Derrida and Paulo Freire, the book offers a useful new understanding of authority in education.

Vol. for 1870 includes Addresses and journal of proceedings of the Central College Association.

This book defines and galvanizes a new approach to education through refocusing it on human relations. Following on the heels of lackluster accountability- and choice-based reforms, this approach suggests that meaningful educational change depends on recognition that relations between students and teachers and among students are critically important. Stakeholders must create intentional policies and practices that allow the relational side of education to flourish. Focusing on the PK-12 educational system, Pedagogy of Relation provides support for the claim that relations are the basis for successful learning—that education is a profoundly social activity—and to push educational reform in a new direction.

Winner - AERA 2011 Outstanding Book Award Jacques Rancière: Education, Truth, Emancipation demonstrates the importance of Rancière's work for educational theory, and in turn, it shows just how central Rancière's educational thought is to his work in political theory and aesthetics. Charles Bingham and Gert Biesta illustrate brilliantly how philosophy can benefit from Rancière's particular way of thinking about education, and go on to offer their own provocative account of the relationship between education, truth, and emancipation. Including a new essay by Rancière himself, this book is a must-read for scholars of social theory and all who profess to educate.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1882.