CFP: Philosophy of Education Conference

Philosophy of Education Conference, 2015
Azim Premji University, Bangalore
January 19-21, 2015

Azim Premji University invites submissions for the Philosophy of Education Conference, 2015 at Bangalore, from January 19th to 21st, 2015. This is the third annual Conference on Philosophy of Education organized by Azim Premji University.

Themes of the Conference

Submissions are expected to have a philosophical bearing on educational problems and questions under the given themes.

1.  Human Nature and Education: Contemporary Concerns:

Helping human beings to participate in social life constitutes the essence of educational aims and processes. Educative processes and aims, normally, tend to take a view on what constitutes the basic nature of human beings which is broadly reflected in assumptions such as ‘humans as social beings’, ‘humans are equipped to learn’, ‘to socialize’, ‘they develop their innate capabilities to reason through social interaction’, and so on. The view of human nature taken also reflects itself in assumptions about learning and institutional interactions.

In the modern democratic age, education builds upon these basic assumptions of human nature to educate for democratic ideals like Equality, respect for individual freedom, individual dignity and social harmony. However, in contemporary times, when the democratic ideals themselves are under interrogation, and people are seen as instruments, where their rational faculty is primarily negated by the power structure and political establishment, the challenge is to revisit the questions of human nature and its essential linkage with educative processes. This theme seeks to explore the assumptions and understanding of human nature and its educative links from the perspective of contemporary social and political concerns.

2.  Ethics and Education: Questions in Aims, Content and Teaching :

This theme seeks to explore the questions of Ethics in education.  Education, being a social endeavor, the questions of Ethics lie at its heart. Any educative endeavor faces the questions of what the educational aims should be, what should be taught and who should be teaching. Ethical questions in teaching is about the nature of social relations in teaching and learning. These are the questions which define education as an essentially ‘contested concept’ as they place education in a social and dialogic domain. This theme intends to explore these questions through diverse philosophical perspectives.

3.  Notions of the Public and Private in Education

Is Education essentially a public good or a private good is an often asked question. This question holds promises to look at education for intrinsic worthwhileness. However, it is also often invoked to debate over the issues of educational provision largely through the binary category of public/government provision of schooling/higher education or their private provisioning through markets. The question of educational provision is an important one, and hence deserves to be further explored.  Through this theme we propose to broaden the scope of ‘public’ and ‘private’ in education to deal with the questions of wider concerns in education, which include  the questions of public and private pursuits of educational aims, and the public and private instrumentality of educational achievements. How do we define ‘public’ and ‘private’? Are ‘government’ school systems necessarily ‘public’?

The conference encourages authors to explore the given themes from the Indian Philosophical perspectives. The Conference also encourages the young scholars and doctoral candidates to write papers on these themes.   

 The papers presented in the conference will be published in the form of a book within a year of the conference.

Deadline for Submissions

Complete papers between 4500-5000 words should be uploaded at the link provided on our website www.azimpremjiuniversity.edu.in/poe by October 30, 2014 11:59 PM, IST. Authors are advised to follow the prescribed word limit. They may also note that incomplete papers, extended abstracts, or papers exceeding the word limit may not be considered.

Important Dates

Deadline for submissions: October 30, 2014

Communications on acceptance of submissions: November 15, 2014

Conference dates: January 19-21, 20

Instructions for Submissions

Submissions should be made by registering as ‘interested speaker’ in the online system and subsequently uploading a copy of the paper in MS Word format. Please don’t upload pdf versions of the papers.

Young scholars and doctoral students are requested to specify that they are submitting under the young scholars category. 

All submissions should have two documents;

I. Information about the author; name, institutional affiliation, email ids, and phone numbers.

2. Complete paper with the title, and containing an abstract of the paper in 200-300 words. Authors should not write their names, institutional affiliation, email id or any form of identification on the paper.

Enquiries

In case, you don’t receive an email acknowledgement on submission, or if you have any other query regarding the conference or paper submissions please write to  [email protected]n.

Review Process

All submissions will be blind reviewed by a panel of reviewers. The decision regarding selection of the paper will be communicated by email to the authors on or before November, 15, 2014. The decision of the Conference Committee will be final.

Travel and Accommodation

Authors are advised to first explore funding possibilities at their home institutions or other institutions and then contact us for travel funding. Azim Premji University will be supporting partial or full cost of travel for a limited number of authors based on individual merit and need. Lodging and boarding for the period of the Conference will be provided by Azim Premji University.