How to avoid giving unwanted answers to unasked questions: realizing Karl Popper's educational dream

Karl Popper did not explore educational issues in depth, but in a passage in his autobiography he recounts an educational dream from his youth. Many educationists are aware of this passage, but few have considered its radical implications. Fewer still have developed schools or classrooms in which the aspirations it expresses have been pursued. Mindful of Popper’s dream, and drawing on two education initiatives in the United Kingdom, including her action research in a primary school classroom, Swann (2006) makes an original case for the development of curricula based on problems formulated by students and arising out of their own experiences. The chapters in the edited three-volume text in which the paper is published were internationally peer-reviewed and are based on a sample of papers presented at the Karl Popper Centenary Congress 2002, held in Vienna. Swann (2006) is the only education paper to have survived the refereeing process.