Malcolm Thorburn
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 601957 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Malcolm Thorburn |
| NOMBRES | Malcolm |
| APELLIDO | Thorburn |
| FIRMA | THORBURN M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6738-6583 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 29 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 68 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 29 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2003 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2025 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
A narrative approach exploring phenomenology in education and educational research
Intersubjectivity, embodiment and enquiry
This paper progresses a critique on how the writings of selective founding fathers of phenomenology can inform a more structured, insightful, and sensitive approach to contemporary school learning. Specifically, the paper examines how previous Merleau-Pontian informed investigations into intersubjectivity, embodiment and the visibility of experience could benefit from an enhanced engagement with aspects of the semantic contribution of Edmund Huss…
Individual freedom and the supremacy of law
This article considers Alan Brudner’s contribution to criminal law theory. Part I makes clear just how distinctive his Hegelian account of criminal law is from the two accounts that dominated the field over the past half century. Part II considers the important connection between criminal justice and the authority of law that stands at the centre of Brudner’s Hegelian account. We need not go as far as Hannah Arendt and insist that ‘authority has …
Where Merleau-Ponty Meets Dewey
This paper utilises selective writings by John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the conceptual basis for considering how an enhanced synergistic focus on habit and embodiment could support practice gains in schools. The paper focuses on Dewey’s belief that established habits can help students to incorporate experiences into evaluations of educational progress and Merleau-Ponty’s spotlight on the body-subject, and how it provides a holistic way …
Contemporary education and guiding pedagogical principals
This critical paper posits that an ongoing reconceptualising of educational aims and values is necessary and desirable, especially so given the multiple complexities of current times and the associated need to reappraise the overarching pedagogical principles that inform contemporary education. We propose that phenomenology can yield incisive insights that can inform and shape students’ holistic learning experiences. We focus specifically on the …
Emphasising an Embodied Phenomenological Sense of the Self and the Social in Education
This paper reviews the theoretical underpinnings of phenomenology-related writings which support claims that the self and the social (the ‘I’ and the ‘We’) can plausibly be integrated and nurtured together in education. We begin by analysing contemporary theorising which suggests that reviewing foundational phenomenologists, particularly Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, can lead to greater clarity in understanding and appreciating the intersubjective s…
Criminal punishment and the right to rule
Criminal justice is much more deeply connected to the very possibility of state authority than is usually understood. In this article, I argue that, whatever else criminal justice might accomplish, there is one task that it must accomplish. This, I argue, is because a certain idea of criminal justice is built into the very idea of state authority as we know it. It is just part of the idea of individuals having a private right, I argue, that there…
Introduction
Policing and public office
In this paper, I argue that policing can be defended as consistent with the equality of all before the law – but not by denying that policing occupies a special place in our legal order that is dangerously close to certain ancien régime privileges. In order to defend the special privileges of policing, it is essential to show that they are something quite different from the ancien régime privileges that they in some respects resemble. The crucial…
Privatisation reforms and health work in schools
This discursive paper selectively reviews the empirical papers informing the major part of the special issue. In doing so it focuses particularly on issues which are apparent across many papers. One major point of contrast is the advanced state of marketisation in schools situated at the lower socioeconomic margins. This is relative to those schools in more socially advantaged areas where a more selective and rather insular and individual approac…
Sisyphus, crisis discourse, and the theory-practice gap in physical education
The constant and perennial plea by academics in the field to reform or change physical education share some similarities with the myth of Sisyphus from Greek mythology. Just as Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of endless frustration of rolling an enormous stone up a mountain as punishment for trying to be too clever, we argue that if the physical education profession continues down the path of more of the same unquestioned assumptions surrou…
Creating thriving and sustainable futures in physical education, health and sport
The idea for this Special Issue, ‘Creating thriving and sustainable futures in physical education, health and sport’ arose from the Association Internationale des Écoles Supérieures d’Éducation Physique (AIESEP) World Congress in Edinburgh, 25–28 July, 2018. The quadrennial World Congress welcomed an international audience of over 400 delegates from 40 plus countries to critically consider some of the demanding issues and resurgent possibilities …
John Dewey, subject purposes and schools of tomorrow
Reconstructing Dewey
This critical paper utilises selective education writings by John Dewey as the basis for considering how a strengths-based and personalised view of habit and embodiment could effectively thrive as part of an enhanced health and well-being focus in schools. The paper centres on Dewey’s belief that habits when allied to continuity and interaction could help children to integrate experiences in ways which enable them to constructively evaluate the c…
Health and wellbeing and wider achievement
When an old cricketer leaves the crease’
The paper reflects on the development of examination awards in physical education from a predominantly autobiographical research perspective. The paper draws on experiences and reflections from inside examinations as a teacher, part of the policy and implementation process and document author and outside examinations as a researcher of the aspirations of awards and policy enactment in schools in Scotland. This combined perspective proceeds via a …
John Dewey, William Wirt and the Gary Schools Plan
A century on from the height of John Dewey’s educational writings and the reputation of the Gary Schools Plan as a model of progressive education, the paper reappraises two key matters: the relationship between John Dewey and William Wirt, the first superintendent of the Gary Schools in Gary Indiana, and the coherence between John Dewey’s progressive pedagogies and the early years of the Gary Schools Plan. Through drawing on a range of primary an…
A genealogical analysis of Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education
We write as critical theorists who share an interest in how conceptions of physical education are taken forward in policy and practice. In this respect, we are particularly intrigued by Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education, and the subsequent ways in which his ideas have informed national curriculum ambitions. Despite the prominence of Arnold's influence, we are concerned that there has been an in…
Embodied learning and school-based physical culture
We write as critical theorists, who consider that in terms of scoping out robust conceptual elaborations which are suitable for contemporary schooling, that physical education has ground to make up connecting theory with practice and practice with theory. We advocate that aspects of existentialism and phenomenology can provide a theoretically sound basis on which to argue that embodied learning should be the foundational cornerstone of physical e…
Theoretical constructs of well‐being and their implications for education
In the broad area of moral philosophy, critiques of well‐being values have notably increased since the 1980's. Often underpinning analysis are contrasting theories of well‐being, e.g. subjective constructs that value highly reflections on personal experiences and individual fulfillment, and objective theories that emphasise more through specific criteria the societal benefits of well‐being. Without detailed recourse to such theorising, education …
Cultivating Practical Wisdom as Education
This article argues, from a critical realist perspective, that it would be beneficial to extend thinking on how personal and social education could become more central to students’ learning. We explore how constructive-informed arrangements which emphasize cognitive skills and affective qualities could be realized through experiential approaches to learning. Our theorizing is informed by neo-Aristotelian thinking on the importance of identifying …
Grand designs! analysing the conceptual tensions associated with new physical education and health and well-being curriculum
The positioning of physical education in the school curriculum continues to reflect external discourses circulating in political and social milieu. As increasing austerity measures influence and restrict educational priorities, we consider that there is an urgent need for physical educationalists to articulate a rationale for an educational contribution which is worthy of investment and which avoids the pitfalls of conceptual ambiguity and/or rel…
Promoting perseverance and challenge in physical education
This paper explores critical notions about how improved understandings of students learning experiences within practical learning environments could sensitise teachers to appreciate the complex influences more that affect how levels of challenge and perseverance are constructed by students. The authors, in furthering their critique, build on the model of constructivism developed by Ollis and Sproule. This model attempted in embryonic terms to rec…
Complexity theory
This paper describes how complexity theory principles relating to self-emergence and connectivity have been employed to inform our recent developmental work in Scottish physical education. We suggest that these complexity principles have purchase in postmodern times characterised by uncertainty, multiplicity and contradiction. We cite examples from the development and delivery of a developmental physical education programme in Scotland to assert …
Translating change into improved practice
In Scotland, substantial changes in the management of education at national, local authority and school/community levels are afoot. Central to future improvements are how teachers translate curriculum guidelines, with an increased focus on health and wellbeing and holistic learning experiences, into constructivist inclined pedagogical practices. Through reviewing semi-structured interviews and planning conversations, this article reports on five …
Embodied learning and school-based physical culture
We write as critical theorists, who consider that in terms of scoping out robust conceptual elaborations which are suitable for contemporary schooling, that physical education has ground to make up connecting theory with practice and practice with theory. We advocate that aspects of existentialism and phenomenology can provide a theoretically sound basis on which to argue that embodied learning should be the foundational cornerstone of physical e…
Complexity theory
This paper describes how complexity theory principles relating to self-emergence and connectivity have been employed to inform our recent developmental work in Scottish physical education. We suggest that these complexity principles have purchase in postmodern times characterised by uncertainty, multiplicity and contradiction. We cite examples from the development and delivery of a developmental physical education programme in Scotland to assert …
Integrated Curriculum Models and their Effects on Teachers' Pedagogy Practices
There is increasing interest in how philosophy or overarching aims are articulated through the various planning stages to eventual teaching methodology. Accordingly, this paper analyses the interrelationship between teaching, learning and assessment through tracking the decision-making chain from teachers' intentions to the assessment of student outcomes. The context employs an integrated curriculum model, which attempts to link improving perform…
Articulating a Merleau-Pontian phenomenology of physical education
In an earlier paper some of the conceptual and curriculum coherence challenges of linking practically based experiential learning with authentic attainment in high-stakes examination awards in physical education were analysed (Thorburn, 2007). Problems often existed for students in deriving subject knowledge understanding from tasks where there was a lack of personalized engagement in learning. Due to weaknesses in previous cognitive attempts to …
The effects of an integrated curriculum model on student learning and attainment
In an earlier article, we considered the pedagogy and assessment practices enacted by physical education (PE) teachers when attempting to translate a centrally prescribed rationale into meaningful performance-led teaching within an integrated curriculum - Higher Still Physical Education (HSPE) in Scotland. Through further research this article analyses the consequences of teachers’ curriculum decision-making on students’ learning and assessment e…
Criminal punishment and the right to rule
Criminal justice is much more deeply connected to the very possibility of state authority than is usually understood. In this article, I argue that, whatever else criminal justice might accomplish, there is one task that it must accomplish. This, I argue, is because a certain idea of criminal justice is built into the very idea of state authority as we know it. It is just part of the idea of individuals having a private right, I argue, that there…
Sisyphus, crisis discourse, and the theory-practice gap in physical education
The constant and perennial plea by academics in the field to reform or change physical education share some similarities with the myth of Sisyphus from Greek mythology. Just as Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of endless frustration of rolling an enormous stone up a mountain as punishment for trying to be too clever, we argue that if the physical education profession continues down the path of more of the same unquestioned assumptions surrou…
Theoretical constructs of well‐being and their implications for education
In the broad area of moral philosophy, critiques of well‐being values have notably increased since the 1980's. Often underpinning analysis are contrasting theories of well‐being, e.g. subjective constructs that value highly reflections on personal experiences and individual fulfillment, and objective theories that emphasise more through specific criteria the societal benefits of well‐being. Without detailed recourse to such theorising, education …
Translating change into improved practice
In Scotland, substantial changes in the management of education at national, local authority and school/community levels are afoot. Central to future improvements are how teachers translate curriculum guidelines, with an increased focus on health and wellbeing and holistic learning experiences, into constructivist inclined pedagogical practices. Through reviewing semi-structured interviews and planning conversations, this article reports on five …
Emphasising an Embodied Phenomenological Sense of the Self and the Social in Education
This paper reviews the theoretical underpinnings of phenomenology-related writings which support claims that the self and the social (the ‘I’ and the ‘We’) can plausibly be integrated and nurtured together in education. We begin by analysing contemporary theorising which suggests that reviewing foundational phenomenologists, particularly Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, can lead to greater clarity in understanding and appreciating the intersubjective s…
Creating thriving and sustainable futures in physical education, health and sport
The idea for this Special Issue, ‘Creating thriving and sustainable futures in physical education, health and sport’ arose from the Association Internationale des Écoles Supérieures d’Éducation Physique (AIESEP) World Congress in Edinburgh, 25–28 July, 2018. The quadrennial World Congress welcomed an international audience of over 400 delegates from 40 plus countries to critically consider some of the demanding issues and resurgent possibilities …
Reconstructing Dewey
This critical paper utilises selective education writings by John Dewey as the basis for considering how a strengths-based and personalised view of habit and embodiment could effectively thrive as part of an enhanced health and well-being focus in schools. The paper centres on Dewey’s belief that habits when allied to continuity and interaction could help children to integrate experiences in ways which enable them to constructively evaluate the c…
A genealogical analysis of Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education
We write as critical theorists who share an interest in how conceptions of physical education are taken forward in policy and practice. In this respect, we are particularly intrigued by Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education, and the subsequent ways in which his ideas have informed national curriculum ambitions. Despite the prominence of Arnold's influence, we are concerned that there has been an in…
Where Merleau-Ponty Meets Dewey
This paper utilises selective writings by John Dewey and Maurice Merleau-Ponty as the conceptual basis for considering how an enhanced synergistic focus on habit and embodiment could support practice gains in schools. The paper focuses on Dewey’s belief that established habits can help students to incorporate experiences into evaluations of educational progress and Merleau-Ponty’s spotlight on the body-subject, and how it provides a holistic way …
Policing and public office
In this paper, I argue that policing can be defended as consistent with the equality of all before the law – but not by denying that policing occupies a special place in our legal order that is dangerously close to certain ancien régime privileges. In order to defend the special privileges of policing, it is essential to show that they are something quite different from the ancien régime privileges that they in some respects resemble. The crucial…
When an old cricketer leaves the crease’
The paper reflects on the development of examination awards in physical education from a predominantly autobiographical research perspective. The paper draws on experiences and reflections from inside examinations as a teacher, part of the policy and implementation process and document author and outside examinations as a researcher of the aspirations of awards and policy enactment in schools in Scotland. This combined perspective proceeds via a …
John Dewey, William Wirt and the Gary Schools Plan
A century on from the height of John Dewey’s educational writings and the reputation of the Gary Schools Plan as a model of progressive education, the paper reappraises two key matters: the relationship between John Dewey and William Wirt, the first superintendent of the Gary Schools in Gary Indiana, and the coherence between John Dewey’s progressive pedagogies and the early years of the Gary Schools Plan. Through drawing on a range of primary an…
Reinventing the Night-Watchman State
This article raises a principled objection to the privatization of certain core police services. Whereas most of the literature critical of privatizing security services has focused on the negative consequences of doing so (corruption, waste, etc.), the argument here focuses squarely on the standing of private parties to perform police services. According to an important strain of liberal political theory, certain tasks are assigned to the state …
Integrated Curriculum Models and their Effects on Teachers' Pedagogy Practices
There is increasing interest in how philosophy or overarching aims are articulated through the various planning stages to eventual teaching methodology. Accordingly, this paper analyses the interrelationship between teaching, learning and assessment through tracking the decision-making chain from teachers' intentions to the assessment of student outcomes. The context employs an integrated curriculum model, which attempts to link improving perform…
The effects of an integrated curriculum model on student learning and attainment
In an earlier article, we considered the pedagogy and assessment practices enacted by physical education (PE) teachers when attempting to translate a centrally prescribed rationale into meaningful performance-led teaching within an integrated curriculum - Higher Still Physical Education (HSPE) in Scotland. Through further research this article analyses the consequences of teachers’ curriculum decision-making on students’ learning and assessment e…
Articulating a Merleau-Pontian phenomenology of physical education
In an earlier paper some of the conceptual and curriculum coherence challenges of linking practically based experiential learning with authentic attainment in high-stakes examination awards in physical education were analysed (Thorburn, 2007). Problems often existed for students in deriving subject knowledge understanding from tasks where there was a lack of personalized engagement in learning. Due to weaknesses in previous cognitive attempts to …
Reinventing the Night-Watchman State
This article raises a principled objection to the privatization of certain core police services. Whereas most of the literature critical of privatizing security services has focused on the negative consequences of doing so (corruption, waste, etc.), the argument here focuses squarely on the standing of private parties to perform police services. According to an important strain of liberal political theory, certain tasks are assigned to the state …
Promoting perseverance and challenge in physical education
This paper explores critical notions about how improved understandings of students learning experiences within practical learning environments could sensitise teachers to appreciate the complex influences more that affect how levels of challenge and perseverance are constructed by students. The authors, in furthering their critique, build on the model of constructivism developed by Ollis and Sproule. This model attempted in embryonic terms to rec…
Complexity theory
This paper describes how complexity theory principles relating to self-emergence and connectivity have been employed to inform our recent developmental work in Scottish physical education. We suggest that these complexity principles have purchase in postmodern times characterised by uncertainty, multiplicity and contradiction. We cite examples from the development and delivery of a developmental physical education programme in Scotland to assert …
Translating change into improved practice
In Scotland, substantial changes in the management of education at national, local authority and school/community levels are afoot. Central to future improvements are how teachers translate curriculum guidelines, with an increased focus on health and wellbeing and holistic learning experiences, into constructivist inclined pedagogical practices. Through reviewing semi-structured interviews and planning conversations, this article reports on five …
Grand designs! analysing the conceptual tensions associated with new physical education and health and well-being curriculum
The positioning of physical education in the school curriculum continues to reflect external discourses circulating in political and social milieu. As increasing austerity measures influence and restrict educational priorities, we consider that there is an urgent need for physical educationalists to articulate a rationale for an educational contribution which is worthy of investment and which avoids the pitfalls of conceptual ambiguity and/or rel…
Cultivating Practical Wisdom as Education
This article argues, from a critical realist perspective, that it would be beneficial to extend thinking on how personal and social education could become more central to students’ learning. We explore how constructive-informed arrangements which emphasize cognitive skills and affective qualities could be realized through experiential approaches to learning. Our theorizing is informed by neo-Aristotelian thinking on the importance of identifying …
A genealogical analysis of Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education
We write as critical theorists who share an interest in how conceptions of physical education are taken forward in policy and practice. In this respect, we are particularly intrigued by Peter Arnold's conceptual account of meaning in movement, sport and physical education, and the subsequent ways in which his ideas have informed national curriculum ambitions. Despite the prominence of Arnold's influence, we are concerned that there has been an in…
Embodied learning and school-based physical culture
We write as critical theorists, who consider that in terms of scoping out robust conceptual elaborations which are suitable for contemporary schooling, that physical education has ground to make up connecting theory with practice and practice with theory. We advocate that aspects of existentialism and phenomenology can provide a theoretically sound basis on which to argue that embodied learning should be the foundational cornerstone of physical e…
Theoretical constructs of well‐being and their implications for education
In the broad area of moral philosophy, critiques of well‐being values have notably increased since the 1980's. Often underpinning analysis are contrasting theories of well‐being, e.g. subjective constructs that value highly reflections on personal experiences and individual fulfillment, and objective theories that emphasise more through specific criteria the societal benefits of well‐being. Without detailed recourse to such theorising, education …
Health and wellbeing and wider achievement
When an old cricketer leaves the crease’
The paper reflects on the development of examination awards in physical education from a predominantly autobiographical research perspective. The paper draws on experiences and reflections from inside examinations as a teacher, part of the policy and implementation process and document author and outside examinations as a researcher of the aspirations of awards and policy enactment in schools in Scotland. This combined perspective proceeds via a …
John Dewey, William Wirt and the Gary Schools Plan
A century on from the height of John Dewey’s educational writings and the reputation of the Gary Schools Plan as a model of progressive education, the paper reappraises two key matters: the relationship between John Dewey and William Wirt, the first superintendent of the Gary Schools in Gary Indiana, and the coherence between John Dewey’s progressive pedagogies and the early years of the Gary Schools Plan. Through drawing on a range of primary an…
John Dewey, subject purposes and schools of tomorrow
Reconstructing Dewey
This critical paper utilises selective education writings by John Dewey as the basis for considering how a strengths-based and personalised view of habit and embodiment could effectively thrive as part of an enhanced health and well-being focus in schools. The paper centres on Dewey’s belief that habits when allied to continuity and interaction could help children to integrate experiences in ways which enable them to constructively evaluate the c…
Sisyphus, crisis discourse, and the theory-practice gap in physical education
The constant and perennial plea by academics in the field to reform or change physical education share some similarities with the myth of Sisyphus from Greek mythology. Just as Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of endless frustration of rolling an enormous stone up a mountain as punishment for trying to be too clever, we argue that if the physical education profession continues down the path of more of the same unquestioned assumptions surrou…
Creating thriving and sustainable futures in physical education, health and sport
The idea for this Special Issue, ‘Creating thriving and sustainable futures in physical education, health and sport’ arose from the Association Internationale des Écoles Supérieures d’Éducation Physique (AIESEP) World Congress in Edinburgh, 25–28 July, 2018. The quadrennial World Congress welcomed an international audience of over 400 delegates from 40 plus countries to critically consider some of the demanding issues and resurgent possibilities …
Criminal punishment and the right to rule
Criminal justice is much more deeply connected to the very possibility of state authority than is usually understood. In this article, I argue that, whatever else criminal justice might accomplish, there is one task that it must accomplish. This, I argue, is because a certain idea of criminal justice is built into the very idea of state authority as we know it. It is just part of the idea of individuals having a private right, I argue, that there…
Introduction
Policing and public office
In this paper, I argue that policing can be defended as consistent with the equality of all before the law – but not by denying that policing occupies a special place in our legal order that is dangerously close to certain ancien régime privileges. In order to defend the special privileges of policing, it is essential to show that they are something quite different from the ancien régime privileges that they in some respects resemble. The crucial…
Privatisation reforms and health work in schools
This discursive paper selectively reviews the empirical papers informing the major part of the special issue. In doing so it focuses particularly on issues which are apparent across many papers. One major point of contrast is the advanced state of marketisation in schools situated at the lower socioeconomic margins. This is relative to those schools in more socially advantaged areas where a more selective and rather insular and individual approac…
Emphasising an Embodied Phenomenological Sense of the Self and the Social in Education
This paper reviews the theoretical underpinnings of phenomenology-related writings which support claims that the self and the social (the ‘I’ and the ‘We’) can plausibly be integrated and nurtured together in education. We begin by analysing contemporary theorising which suggests that reviewing foundational phenomenologists, particularly Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, can lead to greater clarity in understanding and appreciating the intersubjective s…
Contemporary education and guiding pedagogical principals
This critical paper posits that an ongoing reconceptualising of educational aims and values is necessary and desirable, especially so given the multiple complexities of current times and the associated need to reappraise the overarching pedagogical principles that inform contemporary education. We propose that phenomenology can yield incisive insights that can inform and shape students’ holistic learning experiences. We focus specifically on the …
Sociology (23 obras) · Pedagogy (20 obras) · Psychology (18 obras) · Epistemology (14 obras) · Physical Education and Pedagogy (13 obras) · Political science (12 obras) · Curriculum (10 obras) · Philosophy (9 obras) · Inclusion and Disability in Education and Sport (7 obras) · Law (7 obras)