Abstract There are striking similarities between Jacques Rancière's treatment of the pedagogue in The Ignorant Schoolmaster (1991) and Stanley Cavell's treatment of the skeptical instructor in the second chapter of Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome (1990). In this article, I argue that this pairing highlights the ways in which both Rancière and Cavell approach the figure I call the skeptical pedagogue. They share the term “stultification” for the effect of this figure on the process of learning and teaching. Skepticism and the explanative method erode the student's capacity to show their intelligence and the teacher's willingness to perceive it. I also show that both Rancière and Cavell share an egalitarian ethos in their writing on education and aesthetics. Against the skeptical pedagogue's misleading foundationalism, the connection between Rancière and Cavell illuminates how the presupposition of equality enhances the context of education, focused not on a single proper starting point or a procedure of rule‐following but on acts of translation and creative intelligence. This article responds to key texts on Rancière and Cavell in educational theory and aesthetics and develops an account of practices such as rule‐following in judgment and communicability in aesthetic education. After describing the skeptical pedagogue and presenting an account of egalitarian education, I show how a distinctive conception of translation enables both Rancière and Cavell to describe ways for the student and teacher to go on together. I develop the connection between Rancière and Cavell and argue that they share a conception of egalitarian education that emphasizes what we owe to ourselves and each other as reasonable beings.

Abstract This article advances the debate on artificial intelligence (AI) use in education by moving beyond the mechanistic notion of “prompt engineering” and the human‐centered focus of prevailing AI‐literacy frameworks. I introduce prompting (l)iteracy, a sociotechnical capacity that is simultaneously iterative (built through cycles of prompt revision and reflection) and critical (attuned to the economic logics, linguistic hierarchies, and distributed agencies that shape AI dialogue). Four theoretical lenses scaffold the concept: (1) post‐Fordist political economy explains how each prompt exploits commodified linguistic labor embedded in large language models; (2) Bourdieu's linguistic‐capital thesis illuminates the social inequities likely reproduced by differential prompting proficiency; (3) Latour's actor–network theory highlights non‐human agency, as humans do not only prompt AI, but they are also prompted by AI; and (4) de Certeau's tactics foreground users' creative appropriations and resistances. Vignettes of AI interactions illustrate these dimensions and expose the twin pitfalls of techno‐solutionism and techno‐pessimism. I argue that future research must abandon self‐report surveys in favor of authentic, trace‐centered mixed methods that record authentic prompt–response logs and machine telemetry. Prompting (l)iteracy thus offers a richer analytic lens for understanding, and ultimately mitigating, AI‐mediated educational inequality.

Abstract Capitalism inheres alienation as a fundament of modern life, twisting the root of being such that a sense of pervasive estrangement becomes the condition undergirding much of our phenomenal existence. Alienation, I argue, formed in the cleavage of capital mediation, leaves us reinscribing its tenor across multiple spheres, as we are compelled to not only maximize capitalist growth, but also maintain the fullness of capitalism beyond the economic realm. To locate this argument, I begin with a brief description of Marx's analysis of capital as an alienating force. In the second section of the article, I employ Heidegger's existential analytic to argue that capitalist alienation is a perversion that shifts and informs how we exist, as we are called not only to accumulate but also to justify capitalism as a reifying force. I approach the analysis by looking at three phenomena: first, the issue of transcendental debt; second, the emergence of neoliberal idle talk as a supplement to capitalism; third, the oppression of the built environment, as capitalist efficiencies are prioritized in a globalizing world. Given the robustness of phenomenal encounters with capitalism, it is increasingly difficult to argue that education might offer solutions for issues of alienation. Nonetheless, this very prevalence is what makes the stakes of some kind of educational response clear. As such, I conclude the article with an exploration of what might be done to disrupt capitalist tendencies through a pedagogy of respite.

Abstract This article builds from an exorbitant moment—the invocation of an inspirational quote on the eve of a new school year—to critically explore the larger, commonplace conceptual frame that the best teachers give all of themselves to their students, even to the point of self‐erasure, as it continues to manifest across various discourses in education, research, and policy. We find significant problems emerging from this rhetoric, ones that compromise both the efficacy and humanizing potential of pedagogical practices. Offering alternative ways forward for teachers that do not romanticize teacher martyrdom, we focus instead on approaches that affirm the relational complexities of work in classrooms and encourage constant transformation, versions of “a teaching life” we argue to be more life‐giving and sustaining.

Abstract This article argues that the traditional view of philosophy of education as a derivative branch of philosophy has it backwards: that for many canonical philosophers, reflections on education were basic to their philosophy. More than this, attention to the educational dimensions of philosophical claims generally makes them better grounded and more viable. Philosophy of education is, in this sense, basic to philosophy.

Abstract Whether open‐mindedness (OM) counts as an admirable epistemic aim of education has been a surprisingly contentious matter. Skeptics point out that OM is only contingently truth‐conducive and that open‐minded students may be maladaptive to the hostile epistemic environment outside school. Here, Seunghyun Lee contends that, while these critiques are not without merit, they overlook the possibility of epistemic inhospitality within classrooms, and so mischaracterize the significance of open‐mindedness in education. Viewing malicious forms of credibility influence — namely from echo chambers and epistemic preemption — as a serious deterrent against our educational efforts, Lee argues that these epistemic practices point to the necessity of open‐mindedness in education and, simultaneously, to its difficulty. He concludes by analyzing and offering potential strategies for classroom‐based instruction.

Abstract Recent calls by legislators to exclude “divisive concepts” and histories from our curricula pose a challenge to the development of students' epistemic responsibility and agency in classrooms. In this paper, Martha Perez‐Mugg examines the classroom as a space for the development of epistemic responsibility, ultimately suggesting that digital literacy and civic reasoning skills underpin students' development as responsible epistemic agents. In doing so, she connects epistemic responsibility to civic reasoning and digital literacy as central aspects of democratic deliberation. Further, she offers a social epistemological framework for understanding the classroom as a core venue for the development of epistemic responsibility. In the end, Perez‐Mugg explores the pedagogical implications that might arise from a deep commitment to cultivating epistemic responsibility for students.

Abstract In this article, Jan Frode Haugseth discusses a multidimensional model of educational engagement by outlining Laurent Thévenot's regimes of engagement in an educational setting. Haugseth argues that six intertwined regimes of educational engagement could be perceived to exist in tension with each other: formality, justice, familiarity, exploration, love/care, and retreat, all reflecting the relationship between cognition, bodies, and the environment (immediate surroundings as well as cultural and historical configurations). The regimes are simultaneously valid on a personal level, as engagement is established and maintained individually, and on a collective level, since engagement is shared and negotiated in a dynamic social space. The regimes differ from and complement each other, providing notions of benefits, tensions, and investments, while allowing for various forms of confidence and doubt. Many researchers study the causes of dropout and disengagement without a clear idea of what engagement truly entails: when students engage in all the rich facets of educational engagement and are able to freely transition among regimes, they develop a real sense of power over their own education.