Biography

Jeff has been active in educational unions since his days as a TA at UTM (1979-82), first with CUEW and then for many years in OSSTF as a secondary school teacher. He is currently CUPE Unit 3 Rep for the Joint Health & Safety Committee, agreeing that someone should do it during a pandemic. 
 
After being Branch President of the largest high school in YRDSB during the two-week protest/strike action in 1997 he was asked to represent secondary teachers in the healing process in the Board’s New Directions initiative (1999), in which he became the Team Leader for the Universality & Diversity Strategic Arena. In the early 2000s this regional committee worked with administrators in better coming to understand and address homophobia and anti-Black racism. He later represented YRDSB secondary teachers in the implementation process for the revised Teacher Performance Appraisal process. 
 
Preferring to stay in the classroom, he also started teaching part time at OISE in 2006 and decided to focus his work in the academic realm. Although OISE does not have the robust Philosophy of Education Department it had when he did his doctorate here, he is proud to represent OISE/UT at international conferences and to continue infusing his own teaching with a philosophy of education focus, including more recent work on environmental education. 

Jeff severed on two doctoral committees an helped supervise the candidates in writing their dissertations: one on Foucault at OISE (2013), and one on Wittgenstein at York (2018). He reviews for seven journals and for the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain annual conference. As an editor he has been helping emerging scholars to publish alongside renowned authors.  
 

Academic Positions

  • Lecturer
    University of Toronto/OISE, CTL, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Sep 2006 - Present

Scholarly & Creative Works

  • Wittgenstein’s Language-games of Education: Reading higher and lower registers of ‘learning’ in On Certainty
    2023, Wittgenstein and Education: Not Sparing Others the Trouble of Thinking. Oxford: Wiley. From my keynote address at the joint British Wittgenstein Society & Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain conference at University College London (July, 2018
    Jeff Stickney
  • Pedagogies of Place: Conserving forms of place-based environmental education during a pandemic
    2023, Ethics and Education.
    Jeff Stickney
  • 2022, Educational Philosophy and Theory.
    Jeff Stickney
  • Ways of Performing and Regarding Practices of Silence in Classrooms: Reflections with Wittgenstein and Foucault
    2021, Moral Education and the Ethics of Self-Cultivation Chinese and Western Perspectives (Eds) Michael A. Peters, Tina Besley, and Huajun Zhang
    Jeff Stickney
  • Philosophical walks as place-based environmental education
    0202, Journal of Philosophy of Education
    Jeff Stickney
  • 2020, Journal of Philosophy of Education
    Jeff Stickney and Arian Skillbeck
  • Emplaced Transcendence” as Ecologizing Education in Michael Bonnett’s Environmental Philosophy
    2020, the Journal of Philosophy of Education
    Jeff Stickney
  • “Mother-trees” and Teachers: Connecting My Daughter’s Environmental Education with Diana Beresford-Kroeger’s Enduring Wisdom
    2020, the Journal of Philosophy of Education
    Jeff Sticknet, Simon Heath and Diana Beresford-Kroeger
  • Educating teachers and fostering authentic professional learning in an era of austerity, global competition and quality assurance rhetoric
    2019, Beijing International Review of Education
    Jeff Stickney
  • “Teacher ‘training’ under three philosophical lenses: The Analytic School of Philosophy of Education, Wittgenstein, and Foucault.”
    Encyclopedia of Teacher Education (Michael A. Peters, Ed.)
    Jeff Stickney
  • Philosophy of Education 1945-2010 and the ‘Education of Reason’: Post-foundational approaches through Dewey, Wittgenstein, and Foucault.”
    2019, Cambridge History of Philosophy
    Jeff Stickney, Michael A. Peters
  • “Wittgenstein at Cambridge: Philosophy as a way of life.”
    2019, Educational Philosophy and Theory
    Jeff Stickney, Michael A. Peters
  • Wittgenstein’s Education: “A Picture Held Us Captive.”
    2018, Springer Brief Series on Key Thinkers in Education
    Jeff Stickney, Michael A. Peters
  • Wittgenstein on Judging the Soundness of Curriculum Reforms: Investigating the case of the Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies program.
    2017, A Companion to Wittgenstein on Education: Pedagogical Investigations
    Jeff Stickney, Michael A. Peters
  • Mapping the Terrain of Political Theory in Education
    2016, Educational Philosophy and Theory Encyclopedia (Springer).
    Jeff Stickney
  • Wittgenstein as Educator.
    2016, Educational Philosophy and Theory Encyclopedia (Springer)
    Jeff Stickney, Nicholas Burbules
  • System alignment and consensus discourse in reforms: School Effectiveness Frameworks and Instructional Rounds. Philosophical responses from Oakeshott, Mouffe and Rancière."
    2015, nternational Journal of Leadership in Education
    Jeff Stickney
  • Aesthetic Judgment in Dance."
    2014, Liber amicorum: A Philosophical Conversation among Friends
    Jeff Stickney
  • Philosophical Fellowship: An Interview with Michael Peters and Nicholas Burbules
    2014, Liber amicorum: A Philosophical Conversation among Friends
    Jeff Stickney
  • Wittgenstein for Adolescents? Post-foundational Epistemology in High School Philosophy
    2014, Ethics and Education
    Jeff Stickney
  • A paradox of freedom in “becoming oneself through learning”: Foucault’s response to his educators."
    2013, Ethics and Education
    Jeff Stickney
  • Judging teachers: Foucault, governance and agency during education reforms
    2012, Educational Philosophy and Theory
    Jeff Stickney
  • Philosophy. Thinkers, Theories & Questions
    2012, McGraw-Hill Ryerson
    Jeff Stickney
  • Philosophy. Thinkers, Theories & Questions.
    2011, McGraw-Hill Ryerson
    Jeff Stickney
  • Reconciling Forms of Asian Humility with Assessment Practices and Character Education Programs in North America,”
    2010, Ethics and Education
    Jeff Stickney
  • Casting teachers into education reforms and regimes of inspection: resistance to normalization through self-governance
    2009, Governmentality Studies in Education, ed. Michael Peters, et al
    Jeff Stickney
  • Wittgenstein’s contextualist approach to judging 'sound' teaching: Escaping enthrallment in criteria-based assessments
    2009, Educational Theory
    Jeff Stickney
  • Training and mastery of techniques in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy: A response to Michael Luntley
    2008, Educational Philosophy and Theory
    Jeff Stickney
  • Wittgenstein’s ‘Relativity'”: agreement in forms of life and training in language-games
    2008, Special Edition on Wittgenstein
    Jeff Stickney
  • Review of Mark Olssen’s book, Michel Foucault: Materialism and Education
    2007, Paideusis
    Jeff Stickney
  • Deconstructing Discourses about ‘New Paradigms of Teaching’: A Foucaultian and Wittgensteinian perspective
    2006, Special Edition on Teaching, Educational Philosophy and Theory
    Jeff Stickney
  • Teaching and learning in Wittgenstein’s philosophic method
    2005, Philosophy of Education
    Jeff Stickney

Research Interests


·     Philosophy of Education
·     Ludwig Wittgenstein
·     Michel Foucault
·     Environmental Education
·     Place-based and arts-based learning
·     Land-based education
·     Political Philosophy
·     Teacher supervision and autonomy
·     Professional development
·     Social justice, co-ops, and community building
·     Local history

Teaching Interests

In the MT program Jeff teaches
·      Sustainability Education (CTL7070H); and,
·      I/S Social Sciences (CYL7027Y) in the MT Program.  
He recently published a paper in the Brock Education journal on creating the Sustainability course.
Embedding Environmental Sustainability Education in a Master of Teaching Program: Reflections on Improvisation and Learning-by-Doing at OISE, University of Toronto 
A journal of educational research and practice 
2022 Vol. 31 (2) 85−108 
 
 
 
https://journals.library.brocku.ca/brocked/index.php/home/issue/view/44

He has taught a couple CLT courses in Curriculum & Pedagogy:
·     Foundations of Wellness Through a Phenomenology of Practice (CTL1121H), and,
·     Education for Human Goals Local and Global: How's Science Education Helping? (CTL1221H)
Jeff also taught graduate level Philosophy of Education in the former Theory & Policy Studies Department:
·     Introduction to Philosophy of Education (3 years)
·     Troubling Knowledges (2 years)
·     Character Education: Its Proponents and Critics
·     The School in its Cultural Setting (Leadership Department)
 In the former BEd program at OISE he taught Sr, Philosophy and Concurrent I/S Geography. He was senior author and consultant on the Grade 12 Philosophy textbook (McGraw-Hill Ryerson, now Nelson, 2011) and taught the Philosophy ABQ course at OISE in Continuing Education.  
Prior to teaching at OISE he taught in YRDSB for thirty years: Astronomy,Geography, English, Philosophy, Theory of Knowledge.