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Chua, Jude Soo Meng
Preferred name
Chua, Jude Soo Meng
Email
jude.chua@nie.edu.sg
Department
Office of Graduate Studies and Professional Learning (GPL)
Policy, Curriculum and Leadership (PCL)
Personal Site(s)
ORCID
3 results
Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
- PublicationMetadata onlyA critical evaluation of “paradoxical” leadership: (New) natural law theory, Aristotelian “heresy” and the mending of nominalist bifurcationsIn this essay, I evaluate the theory that leadership ought to be ”paradoxical”, meaning that leaders should embrace contradictions and incoherent norms. The idea of a paradoxical practice is trending in both education leadership and policy studies (as well as in business leadership studies), but in fact the literature on education (in Singapore and elsewhere) suggests that this is not helpful for arresting the terrors of performativity, and that there are examples of high performing education systems flourishing better through being consistent with core values. I detail how paradoxical leadership makes it difficult for defending ethical practice and how their rejection and shaming of the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction risks effecting a woke culture that represses criticality. I argue that all this is part of an ongoing nominalist trend (the bifurcation between nature and thinking) in the history of ideas, only that we are at a philosophical tipping point. I explore the alternative, which takes contradictions seriously and irons out inconsistencies, and pre-empt objections internal to the Aristotelian tradition, and also offer an interpretation of James March’s influential theory of leadership to show that if read carefully, the theory does not fit well with the paradoxes approach.
7 - PublicationMetadata onlyThat certain leica glow: Photography, ethics and design educationDesign activity that is fluid and emergent can help us discover new preferences. I argue that it can also help us grasp important ethical ideas. This suggests that design and design education can help form the liberally educated person, and can be a kind of liberal education that studies the human and his broadening preferences and ethical insights. Black and white film photography can be an example of a type of design practice that does this; its affordances for locating the designer in regions of wondrous nature help comport the designer to grasp ethical ideas. Thus photography alongside other design practices can help to reveal to us humans what we truly are and should deserve consideration for being an important aspect of a liberal education programme.
45 - PublicationMetadata onlyInclusive design research and design’s moral foundationIn this chapter, I make the case for an inclusive design research agenda that draws on recent moral philosophy in a manner that is consistent with the research strategies in both Herbert Simon and Nigel Cross. I argue that insights in other fields or disciplines, such as John Finnis’ retrieval of Aquinas’ moral philosophy, enable theorists to overcome intellectual roadblocks in Simon’s practical epistemology and support the emergence of a notion of design that is a criticality in the sense that Clive Dilnot means it: able to critically identify and address the deficient. In this way, “design” becomes synonymous with an ethically robust manner of thinking attentive to choice-worthy goals, contrasted with a mere instrumentalist concern for arriving at means (even if, clever means) in the slavish service of what is liked or preferred (by consumers). I end the chapter with a brief indication of how ideas in the later Martin Heidegger can further support the grasp of ethical insights for design thinking.
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