Τμήμα Επιστημών της Αγωγής / Department of Educationhttp://gnosis.library.ucy.ac.cy:80/handle/7/369382024-03-28T14:02:41Z2024-03-28T14:02:41ZEchoes and Sοunds οf ΚarΙ Jasper's "Limit Situation"Papastephanou, Mariannahttp://gnosis.library.ucy.ac.cy:80/handle/7/657162024-01-16T14:32:58Z2023-01-01T00:00:00ZEchoes and Sοunds οf ΚarΙ Jasper's "Limit Situation"
Papastephanou, Marianna
Karl Jaspers' notion of a "limit situation'' (Grenzsituation) refers to an occurrence in life that existentially displaces, disorients and discomforts subjects by shattering their assumptions of control and certainty.
Limit situations create events that are existentially ambiguous, potentially disabling or enabling. Jaspers' engagement with "limit situation" sets the premises for opening up the notion to varying philosophiοal reοeptions and implications, existential and ethico-pοlitical. Of this variety, it is the ethico-pοlitical
implications that have been mostly neglected in cοntemporary philosophy. The present article aims to emphasize the significance of "limit situation" for political thought. To this end, it first engages with theoretical echoes of Jaspers' "limit situation" today and then attempts an expanded reading of Jaspers' cοncept, in the hope of making audible, in Jaspers' parlance, "the new sound in an old thought."
2023-01-01T00:00:00ZMinimal Ontological Realism as Pragmatist Foundation, and the Ethics of ResponsibilityStables, Andrewhttp://gnosis.library.ucy.ac.cy:80/handle/7/651062024-01-16T14:32:58Z2021-12-21T00:00:00ZMinimal Ontological Realism as Pragmatist Foundation, and the Ethics of Responsibility
Stables, Andrew
Current philosophy of education explores inter alia ontologies that frame educational-philosophical determinations of the learner or teacher as a being. In so doing, it engages with old and new paradigms of (post-)metaphysical thought and requires ever fresh perspectives for its engagement to be critical and refreshing. To recent educational-philosophical initiatives that invite a rethinking of how educational philosophy addresses the Zeitgeist (spirit of the times) this paper responds by suggesting minimal ontological realist assumptions as a new, fertile ground. The paper will argue that educational and moral philosophy are potentially most fruitful if underpinned by assumptions that are minimally realist but eschew assumptions about individual entities existing in the extraphenomenal sphere. Rather, the extraphenomenal real can be seen as a field of energy operating in certain largely predictable ways. Theoretical physicists are the contemporary natural philosophers who study such forces and the nature of energy itself as modern empirical techniques offer them some insight into what was previously unobservable. There is no longer any need to be held back by certain limitations in the thinking of classical philosophers on these matters, including ambiguity in Kant’s work arising from his use of noumenon/noumena as a count noun. The paper goes on to consider the implications of thinking about minimal ontological realism in the applied and social spheres, including education. It particularly critiques structuralist models of thinking about social events, especially those that emphasise the importance of hidden, deep structures that drive surface events.
2021-12-21T00:00:00ZHow many words are enough? Investigating the effect of different configurations of a software scaffold for formulating scientific hypotheses in inquiry-oriented contextsHovardas, TasosZacharia, ZachariasXenofontos, NikolettadeJong, Tonhttp://gnosis.library.ucy.ac.cy:80/handle/7/651012024-01-16T14:32:59Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZHow many words are enough? Investigating the effect of different configurations of a software scaffold for formulating scientific hypotheses in inquiry-oriented contexts
Hovardas, Tasos; Zacharia, Zacharias; Xenofontos, Nikoletta; deJong, Ton
We extended research on scaffolds for formulating scientific hypotheses, namely the Hypothesis Scratchpad (HS), in the domain of relative density. The sample comprised of secondary school students who used three different configurations of the HS: Fully structured, containing all words needed to formulate a hypothesis in the domain of the study; partially structured, containing some words; unstructured, containing no words. We used a design with two different measures of student ability to formulate hypotheses (targeted skill): A global, domain-independent measure, and a domain-specific measure. Students used the HS in an intervention context, and then, in a novel context, addressing a transfer task. The fully and partially structured versions of the HS improved the global measure of the targeted skill, while the unstructured version, and to a lesser extent, the partially structured version, favored student performance as assessed by the domain-specific measure. The partially structured solution revealed strengths for both measures of the targeted skill (global and domain-specific), which may be attributed to its resemblance to completion problems (partially worked examples). The unstructured version of the HS seems to have promoted schema construction for students who revealed an improvement of advanced cognitive processes (thinking critically and creatively). We suggest that a comprehensive assessment of scaffolding student work when formulating hypotheses should incorporate both global and domain-specific measures and it should also involve transfer tasks.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZPandemic Totalitarianisms, Limit Situations and Forced VaccinationsPapastephanou, Mariannahttp://gnosis.library.ucy.ac.cy:80/handle/7/650992024-01-16T14:33:00Z2021-12-01T00:00:00ZPandemic Totalitarianisms, Limit Situations and Forced Vaccinations
Papastephanou, Marianna
In this article, I critically discuss the politics of forced and mandatory vaccination that is being now promoted in certain countries as a means for overcoming the Covid-19 pandemic. I canvass my critique through Karl Jaspers’ notion of a “limit situation” and through references to Ionesco’s plays Rhinoceros and Jeux de Massacre both of which concern hygienic, existential and political dystopias. My aim is to explore and chastise the pandemic totalitarianisms that are now spreading in the world and revolve around the “vaccinated versus the unvaccinated” polarization.
2021-12-01T00:00:00Z