The Educational Theory Summer Institute 2014
Humane Education: Recovering the Humanistic Dimensions of Teaching, Learning & Research

The Fifth Educational Theory Summer Institute (ETSI) was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from August 17–19, 2014. The journal Educational Theory and the Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership co-sponsored this event.

This year’s theme was Humane Education: Recovering the Humanistic Dimensions of Teaching, Learning & Research. Educational Theory commissioned a team of leading international scholars to produce fresh and substantive contributions to a special issue on the theme. Their papers appear as a special issue of Educational Theory, volume 65, no. 6. The invited 2014 participants were:

• René Arcilla, New York University
• Gert Biesta, University of Luxembourg (co-director)
• Robert Davis, University of Glasgow (co-director)
• Chris Higgins, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (co-director)
• Deborah Kerdeman, University of Washington
• Duck-Joo Kwak, Seoul National University
• Megan Laverty, Teachers College, Columbia University
• Richard Smith, Durham University (co-director)

During the first two days of the institute, participants workshopped each other’s papers in internal sessions with Educational Theory staff. The institute culminated on Tuesday, August 19th, with an all-day open conference, featuring the scholars above and the following area scholars: Nicholas Burbules, Craig Cunningham, Walter Feinberg, Lauren Goodlad, Mark Jonas, and Amy Shuffelton. The conference featured four panels:

1. The Possibilities of a Critical Humanism
2. The Nature, Condition, and Future of the Humanities
3. Humanistic Perspectives on Teaching and Teacher Education
4. Humanistic Inquiry in Educational Research

It should be redundant to add the words “humane" or “humanist" to “education.” Teachers and learners are human beings, after all, and teaching and learning are central human activities. Nonetheless, at various points in the history of education, it has become necessary to remind ourselves of these basic facts. This is one of those times. In this era of hyper-reform, when accounting masquerades as accountability and testing trumps teaching, schools have become increasingly inhospitable to human beings. From alt-cert programs to corporate charter schools, a new behaviorism is afoot kicking off yet another season in the old sports of union busting and teacher bashing. Even as subject matter the human seems to be out of favor as the quest for measurable “achievement” has led to a narrowing and thinning of the curriculum. The attenuation of the arts, humanities, and general education is also visible in the universities where budget pressures lead to tuition increases exacerbating our tendency to view higher education as credentialing. Thus, the time has once again come when it is necessary to call for a humane education. To issue that call, we approach the topic of humane education from four angles. The symposium opens with papers by Bob Davis and Megan Laverty on the nature, current state, and future prospects of the humanities. We then turn to the question of humane teaching and teacher education as Gert Biesta and Duck-Joo Kwak consider what it means to think of the teacher in humanistic terms. Finally, Richard Smith and Debby Kerdeman turn our attention to the place of the humanities in educational research. Punctuating these three pairs of papers are two thematic essays, one by René Arcilla and the other by Chris Higgins, probing the meanings of humanism and the very category of the human.