Draft:Jim Garrison (educator)

James W. ("Jim") Garrison is an American academic specialising in the philosophy of education. He is emeritus professor in the Foundations of Education program at Virginia Tech and an expert on John Dewey's philosophy.

Life and career
Garrison completed undergraduate and graduate degrees at University of Central Florida and at Florida State University, earning a PhD in Philosophy (1981) with a focus on the history and philosophy of science and mathematical logic. His dissertation was titled "Geometry As A Source Of Theory‑Ladenness In Early Modern Physics." From 1983 to 1985, he was a junior investigator on NSF Grant #8310936 under Jaakko Hintikka. Garrison joined the faculty at Virginia Tech in 1985 as an assistant professor, and was promoted to associate professor in 1989 and full professor in 1992.

Philosophical work
Throughout his career, Garrison has made significant contributions to the philosophy of education, including authoring or co-authoring 14 books, 166 peer-reviewed book chapters and journal articles, 46 peer-reviewed articles in proceedings, 44 non-refereed book chapters, and numerous reviews and newsletter and newspaper articles. He has served as president of the John Dewey Society (2007-2011), the Philosophy of Education Society (2000), and the Society of Professors of Education (2013-2014).

Much of his work focuses on reinterpreting the work of John Dewey in contemporary context. A selection of his books in this area include Democracy and Education Reconsidered: Dewey After One Hundred Years (2016, Routledge), John Dewey's Philosophy of Education: An Introduction and Recontextualization for Our Times (2012, Palgrave), and Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching (1997, Teachers College Press). Philosopher Joop Berding reviewed Dewey and Eros in the journal Education and Culture, saying that "this is one of the best books I have ever read within the Deweyan discourse. From the very first pages I had the feeling I was diving into a genuinely new outlook, not only on Dewey but on the very subject of education."

Garrison has also done significant work placing Deweyan philosophy in dialogue with philosophers across a variety of philosophical traditions, including Daisaku Ikeda, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Derrida,  and Michel Foucault.