Facilitator: Alison Brady | Five two-hour sessions I Autumn: 17:30 - 19.30 Tuesday 16, 30 October + 13, 27 November + 11 December I Rooms: Oct 16 = 744 / Oct 30 = 834 / Nov 13 = 836 / Nov 27 = 804 / Dec 11 = 639 

The student-led research group is intended to facilitate a close reading and discussion of philosophical and/or theoretical texts that research students are intending to use in their PhD thesis.

Each week, different participants will be asked to recommend a philosophical/theoretical text that they will invite other participants to read in advance. Following an adapted “distributed expertise” model (Saloman, 1997; Lave and Wenger, 1991), participants will do a short presentation where they will give some background to the text, and explain how they will use it in their thesis. Following this, other participants will be invited to undertake a close reading of the text and discuss it in detail with one another.

The aim of the research group is to allow for a deeper and more collaborative reading of texts in order to help research students gain more insight into how they might use this text in their thesis, and also, to learn about new perspectives primarily in the field of philosophy of education.

Students do not need to be ‘experts’ in these fields in order to present. On the contrary, the research group encourages a close reading and discussion of texts that are particularly difficult, that students are struggling to understand, that are polemical/controversial, that disrupt conventional ways of thinking about certain topics, or, simply, that are relatively ‘new’ to the research students. Research indicates that a collaborative approach to difficult texts is more conducive to greater understanding and insight than attempting to look at these texts individually (e.g. Hageman, 2015; Lave and Wenger, 1991).

This research group is open to all research students, but preferably those who can come all or most weeks, and to those that are dealing specifically with philosophical or theoretical texts in some way. Other kinds of ‘atypical’ texts are also welcome, such as literary works, or works that encompass a wider scope in the field of arts and humanities. Texts do not have to have a directbearing on education, but some connection to education may be made clear by the participant presenting, or throughout the discussion. Ideally, certain allowances can be made for distance students, or those that cannot come into the institute.

References

• Hagaman, S. (2015) The community of inquiry: an approach to collaborative learning, Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research. 31 (3), pp. 149-157 [online].
• Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Salomon, G. (ed.) (1997) Distributed cognitions: psychological and educational considerations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Potential (Example) Texts for Discussion

**(These are just suggestions, but ideally papers/essays would be recommended/provided by participants each week)

• Baldwin, J. (1963) A talk to teachers. In: J. Baldwin (1963) Collected Essays. United States: The Library of America.
• Blanchot, M. (1988) The Unavowable Community, New York: Station Hill Press Ltd.  
• Camus, A. (1991) The myth of Sisyphus and other essays, London: Vintage International. [Originally published in 1942].
• Cavell, S. (1979) Normal and Natural. In: S. Cavell (1979) The claim of reason: Wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tradegy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Emerson, R. W. (2003) Selected Essays. London: Penguin Books Ltd.  [Originally published in 1841].
• Honneth, A. (1995) The Struggle for Recognition: the moral grammar of social conflicts. United States: MIT Press.
• LaFargue, P. (2011) The right to be lazy: essays, Oakland: AK Press. [Originally publuished in 1883].
• Lefort, C. (2012) The Present and the Possible. In: C. Lefort (2012) Machiavelli in the making. United States: Northwestern University Press.  
• Sartre, J. P. (2001) What is literature? London: Routledge Classics. [Originally published in 1948].
• Sartre, J. P. (1995) Anti-semite and Jew: an exploration of the etiology of hate. London: Schocken Books. [Originally published in 1946].
• Taylor, C. (1985) Self-interpreting animals. In: C. Taylor (1985) Philosophical Papers Volume 1: Human Agency and Language, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• White, A. (1967) The aims of education and other essays. London: Free Press. [Originally published in 1929].