Conference Agenda

This workshop will explore a number of methodological and theoretical perspectives used in curriculum research. For example, we will look at Design Based Research, Use of life Histories, Network Theory, Critical Realism and other methodologies and theories.

This workshop will be of interest to early career researchers in the area of curriculum studies. From the saying “There is nothing so practical as good theory”, we will explore different methodological and theoretical perspectives being used in research in this area. Researchers will share their own experiences and knowledge of how they have used various methodologies and theories to research curriculum. There will be an opportunity to question and look at real applications in the context of current research.

The objectives of this workshop are as follows:

• To share theoretical perspectives from early career researchers
• To explore methodological approaches to curriculum research
• To investigate theoretical perspectives and how they inform curriculum research.

If education is an intrinsically normative exercise, then the ethical question of how we arrive at those norms cannot be avoided. Educational theorists often address this as a question of educational aims, but also of moral education. In either case, it demonstrates the foundational nature of educational theory and philosophy.

Scotland’s contribution to educational theory and philosophy is significant. One important aspect of this symposium is to reflect on the past to imagine possible futures for philosophy of education for Scottish education and society. Aspiring to establish the significance of the discipline, we then turn to the concept of moral education to consider different aspects of moral formation, from the civic and political to the personally formative. While the concept of moral education lies at the heart of many theories and philosophies of education it is an explicit dimension of contemporary Scottish schooling through the obligatory school subject: Religious and Moral Education. And yet the phrase Moral Education might seem out of kilter with contemporary Scottish sensibilities. On the one hand it can be simply defined as helping children and young people to acquire beliefs, values and dispositions concerning right and wrong. On the other hand, the phrase might seem like a paternalistic anachronism. Does moral education belong to a bygone era in which one of the primary functions of public education was to inculcate explicit moral virtues that reflected a singular moral vision? If we no longer consider moral education to be shaped by the religious culture of Scottish Presbyterianism, how do we understand moral influence today? How are we to reimagine moral formation when we struggle to take account of our own social and political realities, when we can’t fully reflect on our past and present? How are we to expect children to explore and discover moral and ethical values?

Such questions are longstanding. But contemporary contexts raise these issues in novel ways: from the transformation of social relations through modern technology, to repeated climate and ecological breakdowns; from the erosion of democratic and liberal values to crises in global health; from discourses of justice and human rights in an era of so-called post-truth. Such contexts highlight the urgent need for serious normative debate about the nature and future of education, in Scotland and the world.

This symposium invites reflections from philosophers of education at the University of Glasgow whose career-long interests in philosophical and normative educational issues make them well placed to initiate novel reflections on the state of moral education in Scotland today.

Locating moral education in the broader field of philosophy of education, I offer a series of provocations for the future. Building on Tesar’s (2021:1235) claim that the foundations of philosophy of education ‘are no longer valued by managers and educational leaders’ unless ‘serving ‘managerial purposes and desired outcomes’, I explore what a ‘new key’ (Tesar et al, 2021) might entail. That new key pertains not only to philosophers of education in HE in Scotland, but for all educational researchers attending this ECER conference with its theme of ‘The Value of Diversity in Education and Educational Research’. My argument rests on the claim that while ‘we need to draw on the rich and diverse research traditions that make up our educational community’ with a ‘commitment of educational researchers and educational research to address and include diversity in all aspects of what we do’ (ECER, 2023[i]), the philosophy of education is simultaneously thriving and under threat. Thriving is suggested in the 2021 UK REF report[ii] in which, ‘Educational research drawing on philosophy and history was mainly of very high quality, and the sub-panel noted its clear contribution to contemporary debates about core epistemic questions in educational practice, especially around its purposes and responsibilities’. However, concerns about the relative paucity of philosophy in teacher education at all levels are paralleled by a common dismissal of philosophy of education as research or, perhaps more obviously, by a dismissal of philosophers of education as researchers. These concerns are not new, but I suggest that philosophers of education need now to participate more volubly in the ‘ongoing dialogue about what it means to “do” educational research in the 21st century’ (ECER, 2023i). I shall suggest possible futures for philosophy that might stem the tide of our demise. Firstly, we can and should talk about our methods without slipping into methodolatry (see Ruitenberg, 2010). Secondly, we have a key role as both users of and contributors to empirical research (see de Ruyter, 2019). Thirdly, we should teach and so include philosophy of education in all teacher education programmes, including research methods courses and, finally, we should work together in and beyond Scotland to articulate our contributions to educational research. That this colloquium is part of a special interest group for philosophers of education likely not to attract many ECER participants outwith our field is, itself, a challenge we will also discuss.

Heyting, Frieda, Lenzen, Dieter & White, John (2001) Methods in Philosophy of Education, Routledge. Oancea, Alis & Bridges, David.. (2009) Philosophy of education in the UK: The historical and contemporary tradition, Oxford Review of Education, 35(5), 553-568. Ruyter, Doret de (2019) Does a Theory of Moral Education Need the Input of Empirical Research?,Journal of Philosophy of Education, 53, (4):642-648. Ruitenberg, Claudia (ed.) (2010) What Do Philosophers of Education Do?: And How Do They Do It?, Wiley-Blackwell. Tesar, Marek, Hytten, Kathy; Hoskins, Te Kawehau; Rosiek, Jerry; Jackson, Alecia Y; Hand, Michael; Roberts, Peter; Opiniano, Gina A; Matapo, Jacoba; St. Pierre, Elizabeth Adams; Azada-Palacios, Rowena; Kuby, Candace R; Jones, Alison; Mazzei, Lisa A; Maruyama, Yasushi; O'Donnell, Aislinn; Dixon-Román, Ezekiel; Chengbing, Wang; Huang, Zhongjing; Chen, Lei; Peters, Michael A; Jackson, Liz (2022) Philosophy of education in a new key: Future of philosophy of education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54(8), 1234-1255.

The argument of this paper is that the indigenous histories of education in early modern Scotland, and their expression in the distinctive public institutions of schools and universities, created conditions in the Scottish Enlightenment for the rise across the nation of several diverse influential philosophical movements at the centre of which was a shared concern for the educated person and the educated polity. This civic impulse, operative across otherwise often strongly contrasting styles of philosophical reasoning and political outlook, placed a defining emphasis on the promotion of a deliberative public ethics: one that was to be fostered by the extension of popular, moral education and the embrace by universities and schools of their accompanying social and cultural responsibilities. The paper charts these important historic trends and their living legacies. It starts from their shared origins in the Scottish Enlightenment moral systematics of Francis Hutcheson, the Common Sense School of Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart, and the qualified educational populism associated with Adam Smith and William Hamilton. It then attends to the ‘democratic intellect’ radicalisation of this heritage in the 20th century thought of George Elder Davie, John Macmurray and Stanley Nisbet, who in their various revisions sought to renew and extend from its own deep sources the Scottish tradition of educational critique and ethical exchange. The paper concludes that the moral educational purposes of education in Scotland retain to this day the imprint of these philosophical values and civic expectations.

Allan. D. (2020). Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment. Edinburgh: EUP. Bow, C. B. (2022). Dugald Stewart's Empire of the Mind: Moral Education in the late Scottish Enlightenment. Oxford: OUP. Graham, G. (2015). Scottish Philosophy in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Oxford: OUP. MacAllister J. and Macleod, G (2016). Philosophy in Scotland and Scottish Education, Ethics and Social Welfare, 10:3, 197-210. Mirayes, J. R. V. (2005) The Prejudices of Education: Educational Aspects of the Scottish Enlightenment, Atlantis, 27.2 (Diciembre 2005), 101-118. Robertson, R. (2020). The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane.

How should philosophy of education in Scotland address the postcolonial moment? Among the recent calls made across the academy is for all disciplines to be decolonised: to consider ways in which they have been historically implicated in colonialism, as well as possible reparatory obligations. Such calls are likely to claim that philosophy as a colonised discipline is heavily dominated by Western philosophers, whether in the Anglo-American or Continental traditions – and hence in need of decolonisation. Such claims could well be made by alluding to Scotland’s role in the history of the British Empire, to its continuing material gains from that history and so to an as yet incomplete reckoning with complicity in colonialism. Under particular scrutiny in the decolonial literature is the Enlightenment tradition, which among its alleged flaws is seen to suffer from a tendency to universalism and hence a failure to recognise and respect particularity, especially the experiences and traditions of societies colonised by European powers. Decolonial challenges pose important critical questions for philosophy in Scotland, and for philosophers of education who value the tradition of the Scottish Enlightenment. In a preliminary response to this set of criticisms I will explore the distinction between hegemonic, abusive universalism on the one hand and pluralist, critical universalism on the other, defending the latter as offering a necessary contribution to a postcolonial ethics in philosophy of education. My primary example will be the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, Adam Smith, drawing on recent reassessments of his work.

Benhabib S (1999) ‘Nous’ et ‘les Autres’ The Politics of Complex Cultural Dialogue in a Global Civilization. In Joppke C & Lukes S (eds) Multicultural Questions Oxford University Press, 44-63 Carey D & Trakulhun S (2013) Universalism, diversity, and the postcolonial enlightenment. In Carey D & Festa L (eds) The Postcolonial Enlightenment: Eighteenth-Century Colonialism and Postcolonial Theory Oxford University Press, 240-280 Gordon L (2019) Decolonizing philosophy. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 57 Supplement, 16-36 Muthu S (2008) Adam Smith's critique of international trading companies: Theorizing "globalization" in the Age of Enlightenment. Political Theory 36(2), 185-212 Rothschild E (2012) Adam Smith in the British Empire. In Muthu S (ed) Empire and Modern Political Thought Cambridge University Press, 184-198

In February 2022, and in response to the experience of an increasingly fraught discourse in the public spaces (actual and virtual) the Department for Education in England issued guidance on ensuring political impartiality. In his introduction to the Guidance the, then Secretary of State, observed that ‘Legal duties on political impartiality ultimately help schools command the confidence of our whole diverse and multi-opinioned society’. The Guidance then proceeds to suggest that while a teacher might legitimately encourage pupils to applaud the National Health Service they could not legitimately suggest to the same pupils that they might question the levels of funding and by extension the commitment of the Government. The grounds for such a distinction would appear to be that the latter displayed political bias but the former didn’t! The intervention, in its entirety, might be considered ill-conceived from an Arendtian perspective, given its deliberate intent to manipulate the boundaries of political discourse in the classroom. And, as I have argued elsewhere the impulse of governments and other political agencies to use schools as sites for the establishment of political preferences is as injurious as it is ubiquitous to the objects of good education. However, once the intervention is present what are we to make of it both educationally and philosophically. In this paper I will attempt to illustrate why the intervention was ill-conceived from the outset on not only Arendtian grounds but also on the basis of conceptual mis-steps (the injunction to foreground the celebratory is not apolitical in the way in which the advice seems to suggest) In doing so I will suggest that linguistic and para-linguistic moves such as clapping are no less performative than explicit questioning of resource allocation and because they are implicit potentially more harmful to the cause of education. Moreover, I will illustrate that the elision of the distinctions (evident in the advice) between the irrational, non-rational and rational leads not to more desirable educational and social outcomes but to undermining a key morally educative imperative – judgment.

Conroy, J.(2020) Caught in the Middle: Arendt, childhood and Responsibility, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54:1, 23-42. Taylor, D. (2002) Hannah Arendt on Judgment: Thinking for Politics, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 10:2, 151-169. The Department for Education (2022) Political Impartiality in Schools https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/political-impartiality-in-schools, downloaded 18th March 2023. The Department for Education (2022) Extra Support to Safeguard Political Impartiality in schools https://www.gov.uk/government/news/extra-support-to-safeguard-political-impartiality-in-schools

In this paper we present reflections from our philosophical and experimental investigation of Improv as a method for collaborative philosophical inquiry and begin to explore its implication for educational practice.

Academic conferences create opportunities for a variety of different actions and interactions – some individualistic, others collaborative; some combative, others marked by openness and curiosity. At the same time, how we ‘do philosophy’ with others in institutionalised contexts is also limited by many factors, such as the cultural norms of academia and deeply established, habitual forms of interaction. These norms lay out an implicit curriculum (in Eisner’s 1979 sense) that enables and constrains particular kinds of knowing, interacting and learning. For example, typically, ‘doing philosophy’ together often implies debate, and tends to be competitive; we seek flaws in our opponent’s arguments and focus on defending rather than changing our own points of view.

We believe that philosophy understood as a “a game of wits” (147) and “epideixis - an exhibition” made up of an audience, strategy and clear goals for demonstration, as described by Huizinga in Homo Ludens (1949), is educationally and philosophically disabling. It sets certain limitations on our ability to learn from and with each other, and generate new ideas in the pursuit of philosophy understood as the “love of wisdom". While forming nuanced arguments in favour of one’s position can deepen an idea, it can also close off potential symbioses, disruptions, and cross-pollination. Similarly, through years of cultivating certain ways of thinking, we can get straightjacketed by our cherished concepts, either through force of habit, attachment to professional capital we believe they bring, a simple fear of change, or some other limitation.

Our premise is that when overemphasised, this way of doing philosophy, runs counter to playful and exploratory approaches to philosophising that have occurred historically, and continues to occur in informal contexts, other cultures, and in children (Huizinga 1949; Kline Hunnicutt 2009). Importantly, we believe it also runs counter to philosophy in its original meaning. Philosophy, as we all know, has as its etymology the “love of wisdom.” If loving wisdom is worth pursuing, and indeed loving the very pursuit, are our current practices optimised for such aims? Or do we foreground values, practices and relationships that divert personal and collective attention from such pursuits? We investigate Improv as a complementary kind of ‘game’ that foregrounds an understanding of philosophy as the collective pursuit of wisdom, and prioritises this aim.

Improv, as we understand it here, is a particular kind of playful transactional relationship that is both productively disruptive and generative. Its guiding principle is ‘yes, and…,’ which means participants have to respond affirmatively to what their fellow collaborators do. They are challenged to find a way to take on board whatever is offered, and to contribute an offering in turn as a new point of departure for subsequent responses. Through their contribution, each participant sets the possibilities of what will follow, and yet the process remains open-ended and capable of evolving in indeterminate ways. Improv asks us to set fixed habits, concepts of self, other beliefs and epistemological commitments aside, and adopt a more open orientation towards others and their experiences and ideas.

The introduction of philosophy into schools has taken a particular tradition of philosophy as its only model. A.C. Grayling in his forward to a justly influential book looking at aspects of this movement contrasts philosophy as ‘love of wisdom’ with ‘reflective and critical enquiry’ and dismisses the first as inspiring but unhelpful and that latter as the way to go (Hand et al, 2009: xviii). Much philosophy in schools has followed this approach. This paper does not seek to challenge the benefits of understanding philosophy as Grayling and his fellow travellers, but rather proposes that in the context of the increased interest on ‘well-being’ and mental health in schools other traditions of philosophy, including those dismissed as ‘wisdom loving’ might actually be beneficial. An example of an alternative is Hellenistic therapeutic philosophy. I contrast two approaches to understanding this tradition to show that Grayling’s contrast is ill-informed because ‘wisdom’ traditions include critical thinking.

We usually regard education as a matter of realizing the students’ potentials. The child, or the adult student, is observed as a medium to be formed through knowledge, and education is seen as a process in which the potentials of the student are realized. As Claudio Baraldi and Giancarlo Corsi (2017: 55) explain: “Paradoxical as it may sound, while the child is what it is, for the education system it is what it is not (yet). Teachers consider pupils as a potential that has to be developed”. In this paper, we suggest that we may currently be witnessing a fundamental discursive change when it comes to education.

This discursive change is particularly evident in a body of educational material produced by the Danish company Lego, and in this paper we will present an analysis of a case developed by Lego and First (an American company). In First Lego League, the children in the video ‘Teamwork Makes the Dream Work’ sing: “You can be anything, so just do it!” (First Lego League, 2019b). These lyrics indicate that children can become anything, that their potential is unlimited. They tell the child to unlock its unlimited potential: instead of sticking to a single track in life, you can become an astronaut, archaeologist, or engineer. The important thing is to dream and keep dreaming.

It is not surprising that the education system is interested in the potential of the child. To conceive of children as potential that should be realised through education can be seen already in the Aristotelian distinction between the actual and the potential, and between form and matter, seeing matter as something loaded with potential that strives for a form.
The surprising thing about Lego and the song above is that the child is not simply seen as a potential that needs to be shaped. Instead, the child is observed as a potential which must be potentialised. Rather than being a matter of realizing potentials, education is seen as a matter of potentialising potentials. The student is not asked to realize his/her potentials and learn mathematics and French (for instance) with a view to becoming a teacher or an engineer later on. The student is asked to become a force for change, constantly ready to look for new potentials in her/himself.

Paraphrasing Lewis 2014: 277), Lego wants to form the child as a potential in order to increase contingencies and potentiality. Sam Sellar (2015) observes in his work on “potential of ‘potential’” that potentiality, including the economic potential of education, emerges as a concept of interest and a site of intervention for the political system. Young people who do not get an education are observed as wasted potential. Where Sam Sellar talks about “the logic of realising potential”, we are more interested in the logic of potentialising the potential. This logic entails not simply observing children as a given resource, but constructing them as an undetermined resource and demanding that they consider and care for themselves as such. In this paper, we take a close look at this discursive figure and examine what it means to educate children (and others) to see themselves as a potential that has no limits.

In the paper presentation I will present some of the early findings from the research project The Children of Textiles. The purpose of the research project is to investigate the relationship between children's work, education and play within the history of textile work as recorded in the textile archives and testimonies. Child labor is a widespread reality in the textile industry and child labor was a major contributing factor of the early industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries. (Humphries, 2013) My focus is not on whether or to what extent the children participated in the work, but rather in what way these children appear in the archive, also in relation to each other, to the mothers and fathers and the industries.

An interesting finding from my early archive work states that children took part in work, but they were also involved in other activities. One example of this is the sign post at Rydal’s Spinnery in Sweden (which today is a museum) that urge the children not to play or fight: "Don't play, don't fight – rule out play and fighting at work". (Rydals museum n.d.) Play is a central concept and phenomenon for childhood. It is a phenomenon that is philosophically interesting in order to understand different aspects in life and childhood, as well as in relation to education, politics, society and democracy (Koubová et al., 2021)

The call not to engage with play, in this specific Rydal’s Spinnery, tells us that it occurred, but it also tells us something about the place, the view of children and childhood within this industry and spinnery, and what it could mean to be a child in the textile industry. Drawing on this example of “Don't play, don't fight” I will explore and develop the relationship philosophically between children's work, education and play within the history of textile work and its archive. The question that I will focus on in the paper presentation is: How can the relationship between work, play and educational process related to the children be understood?

In the presentation I will philosophically develop these children’s life through the lens of play. In Agamben’s work, play has a function in the act of profaning things, in order to understand politics, capitalism and consumption. Profanation means to treat something (or someone) as worldly and as something “that can be played with”. It is an act that separates the thing from its context (from the sacred) and makes it free. (Agamben, 2007; Removed for peer review) Agamben write:

“Children, who play with whatever old thing falls into their hands, make toys out of things that also belong to the spheres of economics, war, law, and other activities that we are used to thinking of as serious. All of a sudden, a car, a firearm, or a legal contract becomes a toy.” (Agamben, 2007, p. 76)

Children’s use of things – sticks, cars, pots, chairs – shall neither be understood as sloppy nor negligent. Rather, the children have the capacity to make something new of the old thing. “It should be understood as a new usage that children give to humanity.” (Sundal and Øksnes, in Koubová et al., 2021, p. 215) Drawing on Agamben, one can regard play as freeing things from its normal use. Play is characterized by its changing and transforming of both actions and things into something new. It is not about restoring an original state. (Sundal and Øksnes, in: Koubová et al., 2021, p. 216) This thing or action can also be related to time (cf. Masschelein & Simons, 2013; Lewis, 2013), a free time that is not productive.

Building on fieldwork carried out in schools in Belgium and in the DR Congo, this presentation aims to empirically and theoretically explore some of the characteristics of scholastic presentations of the lifeworld. At schools, the lifeworld (understood with Stiegler (2010) as the world as it appears during its disappearing) is presented to students in a new form: through a particular operation, the everyday lifeworld is transformed and re-presented at school so that it becomes ‘fit for teaching’ (the literal translation of the Greek word didactikos). This contribution focusses on the relationship between scholastic presentations and their ‘worldly counterparts’ and it will do so by exploring two movements.

First movement: from world to classroom. Different scholars have written about the ‘gap’ between everyday lifeworld and scholastic (re)presentation. Mollenhauer (2014: 20-21), when discussing Comenius’ Orbis Pictus, observed that through the educational sphere of the school, cultures ‘filter’ and ‘slow down’ the full force of adult realities by artificially re-presenting the world to children: the seamless lifeworld is cut into different topics and themes in order to turn (an aspect of) the world into a topic that can be discussed. Related, Masschelein and Simons (2019: 21) have discussed the artificial and hyperfunctionalized nature of scholastic (re)presentations of life world actions, activities, and practices and they have conceptualized school material as ‘suspended’ and ‘profanated’ (see Masschelein and Simons 2013). And drawing on Auroux (1994) and Stiegler (2010), Vlieghe and Zamojski (2019: 138) observe that at schools, the world is ‘grammatized’ and introduced in the form of discrete elements that in themselves have no meaning. This presentation empirically examines how (i.e., through what gestures, images, words, ways of speaking) the world is presented in the classroom, and by doing so, it provides an insight in how the lifeworld is transformed in order to be made ‘fit for teaching’.

Second movement: from classroom to world. If we can indeed observe an artificial gap between scholastic (re)presentations and their ‘worldly counterparts’, how to conceive of the connection between the two? Mollenhauer, for example, has argued that cultural objects (like scholastic (re)presentations) are encoded depictions of a particular worldview. Children, then, should acquire an ‘aesthetic literacy’ (Weiss 2018): an ability to decode and situate cultural objects within a (historically/socially) determined field of meaning and students should become aware that the world presented at school is not the ‘real world’ but only a perspective on that world (see Masschelein 2014 for a response to this). A second perspective considers scholastic (re)presentations of the (life)world as useful tools to adequately prepare students for participation in the labor market. The most recent policy document of the Flemish minister of education, for example, states that the didactic material used in the classroom should be attuned to the material and equipment used in the labor market. Accordingly, efforts should be made to decrease the artificial gap between scholastic (re)presentation and the ‘real world’.

Instead of urging children to become aware of the situated nature of scholastic (re)presentations, or instead of criticizing them for being too far removed from the ‘real world’, this contribution explores a third perspective and pays attention to those aspects that are meaningful and valuable about the gap between world and scholastic (re)presentation. Drawing on the work of Agamben (1993) and Fink (2016), it will approach scholastic presentations of the world as play-things, that is: not as tools that serve an external end goal (an acquired literacy, or participation on the labor market), but as miniaturized and essentialized materials that allow for students to establish a new relationship with the world.

Schooling is a profoundly ‘ritualized performance’ (e.g. McLaren, 1999). Not only is schooling itself a kind of rite de passage (Durkheim, 1915) with the purpose of preparing children for adult life – a school is also a place where everyday pedagogical life often depends on ritualized activities.

The notion of ritual has been of interest to philosophers of education already since the 1960’s (e.g. Bernstein et. al. 1966), but it has not been given much attention in recent years (Losito, W. F. 1996; Quantz, 1999). One reason for the neglect is political and historical suggesting that ritualistic practices connote to repetition, sameness and conformism, even to collective political manipulation and fascism (i.e. World War II, e.g. Adorno, 1997). Another reason is ethical and ideological, suggesting that rituals bear conservative connotations, referring either to habitual activities and routine (i.e. “empty ritual”), or to ancestry and tradition. In short, the pedagogical meaning of rituals has been of little interest to progressive theories of education due to its conservative connotations (Quantz et. al., 2011; Warnick, 2009) – a reluctance that seems to be rooted in its assumed inability to offer possibilities for change and transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore this ‘assumed inability’ and rethink the notion of ritual so that it holds possibilities for change. It is suggested that the notion of time is crucial in this regard and, hence, that a pedagogical rethinking of the notion of ritual also requires a rethinking of the notion of time. The question in focus is thus: what notion of time is needed for exploring the notion of ritual pedagogically, that is, beyond the divide between a progressive, future oriented idea of education rooted in a linear notion of time and a conservative, past-oriented idea of education rooted in a circular ditto?

To this end, the first part of the paper turns to Julia Kristeva’s (1995) critique of linear and circular time as well as to literary theorist Rita Felski’s (2015) focus on the experience of ‘doing time’ – two philosophers who both take the question of difference and different temporalities into account when rethinking the antithetical division between past and future, or, between preservation and transformation. The second part of the paper brings this discussion on time to bear on pedagogical practice, turning to scholars in philosophy of education who, inspired by the work of Hannah Arendt, explore the school as the ‘time and space’ that a society inserts between the past and the future in the present (e.g. Masschelein & Simons, 2011, 2013; Todd, 2021, 2022; Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2019). By mobilizing particularly Felski’s notion of everyday time as a bodily experience beyond the circular – linear divide it is suggested, by way of conclusion, that a pedagogical understanding of rituals in schools can contribute both to rethinking education beyond the confines of modernity, and, in doing so, expand the repertoire within which teaching is understood as an affirmative gesture.

Glossed as “forced to do more with less”, postpandemic health care systems are calibrating mortality by articulating covid-19 imbued reductions in outpatient care as a form of learning: “this ‘natural experiment’ in reduced care may help health systems identify and address unnecessary care, and move towards greater sustainability.” Similarly, schooling systems are celebrating the increased safety measures imposed during the pandemic as a successful educational experiment in condensed curriculum, online delivery and socially sanitized classrooms. M. (name) will not return to his classroom even after the comprehensive lifting of measures as testing for complying with safety protocols is now recalibrated as testing for developmental fitness for learning. A new bill on special education cancels the right to school escort for students with disabilities, brings back mandatory testing for school entry, and sends students with disabilities back to separate-but-safe special education.

Saving lives from the pandemic put people under the rule of exception. For those, however, whose lives were already regulated through social hygiene, those contained in marginality, those “inhuman, and human-as-humus” (Haraway, 2015) surviving in “refuges”, the government tightening of social distancing was experience as a pastoral command for economizing contact but as criminalization of life. This paper explores how educational zones of slowness and morbidity --wherein marginality, stasis, and abjection are recomposted as zones of life-- reckoned with social distancing and shaming for not distancing effectively.

It draws from queer theorizations of temporality (Freeman, 2010; Love, 2009) and shame (Sedgwick 2003) and touches on stories of dissident intimacies during the pandemic to tease out the gentrification of queer theory and to relink the latter with a politics of sustainability: as a rewildening-and-queering of commoning. I suggest queering slowness and commoning in marginal educational zones through two supplementary moves: (a) reclaiming Aristotle’s “socializing of/in zoe” (κοινωνία ζωῆς; social communion) from reifying readings of zoe as biological life, and (b) making connections between queer theory and forms of dissident affective sociality not claimed as such in their living present. This asynchronous and perhaps also theoretically aberrant double touch--the touch on the pandemic as past and the touch of theory on narratives across genres-- follows what Carolyn Dinshaw (1999) calls a queer historical impulse: “an impulse toward making connections across time between, on the one hand, lives, texts, and other cultural phenomena left out of sexual categories back then and, on the other, those left out of current sexual categories now.”

To be a proactive, efficient and productive student who is trained and able to act decidedly with skills and competences, seems to be the highest value and the gold standard of what higher education is aiming at. Thomas Huxley famous aphorism: “Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation" (Huxley & Huxley, 2011, p.51), leaves no room for any form of tarrying or hesitation. Quite the opposite, every form of inertia, hesitation, and slowing down is regarded as an impediment to progress and efficiency (Brunstad & Oliverio, 2019). The problem though might be, as Albert Einstein formulated it, that we can’t solve a problem with the ways of thinking that created it (Einstein, 1931). It starts to deem that our existing educational system, with its understanding of knowing and thinking, is a larger part of the contemporary global crisis we are facing, then a solution. We therefore need to reassess our educational system and its pedagogical, epistemological and ontological presuppositions.

Huxley’s aphorism might consequently be put to shame. A more passive and critical reflective mode of being, can be more valuable for the time ahead than first thought of. Not more of the same, but less. To slow down, to make a halt in order to revisit conventional practice and old thinking, can help students to better navigate and find new and more sustainable alternative sources of insight and wisdom. Tarrying or the art of hesitation can enable a form of attention or reflection that can unveil both the depth and the complexity of being (Brunstad & Oliverio, 2019) for the purpose of finding sager and better ways of doing.

This paper will scrutinize the value of a wise passivity that “enables things to come about less by what is done than by what is not done, that opens up possibilities where activity closes it down” (McGilchrist, 2012, p. 174, emphasis in original). A further elaboration upon this topic will take what John Keats calls ‘negative capability’ as its starting point. “Negative capability” characterizes a “man of achievement” who “is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason” (Keats, 1970, p.43).

In a world marked by a high degree of uncertainty and doubts, Keats calls for an ability to tolerate ambiguity and complexity without filling the vacuum of uncertainty and not-knowing with “fact and reason”, and accordingly also renounce using old and well-known solutions. By refraining from knowing and doing, by not using one’s “positive capability”, an inner and outer space is left open and enables an active and attentive receptivity that can help students to find new and more relevant perspectives and possibilities. The art of hesitation developed in line with Keats “negative capability”, maintain an inner space needed for a hopeful and positive engagement with unknown and uncertain future (Bülow & Simpson, 2022, p.45).

With political malaise having settled firmly into the national consciousnesses of Europe and North America, inquiry into the moribund status of education for democratic habits of mind now seems more pressing than ever. Although much educational philosophy has been devoted to assessing the state of democratic education in schools, little attention has been directed toward democratic education in museums. Scholarship on the “out-of-school” curriculum and other forms of “public pedagogy” has typically focused on popular culture, social media, and internet culture. Museum pedagogy has not so readily been attended to, with the result that philosophical insights into the potential of non-compulsory forms of education (for both children and adults) to promote democratic habits of mind go missing.

Drawing on Jurgen Habermas’s theory of the rationalization of the lifeworld, I argue that as formal, informal, and nonformal learning environments, museums function as a contact zone between institutional and individual rationalities. I distinguish this zone of rationality from how museums are typically understood as contact zones, which in the field of museum studies has been driven primarily by anthropological analyses (Boast, 2011). Pratt (1991) refers to contact zones as “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (p. 34). Building on Pratt’s formulation, Clifford writes, “When museums are seen as contact zones, their organizing structure as a collection becomes an ongoing historical, political, moral relationship” (p. 190). Kreps thinks of museum encounters in terms of “cultural hybridization,” which she characterizes as “a more dynamic and even empowering approach to understanding contemporary processes of cultural contact and exchange” (p. 15). However, cultural hybridization is not power neutral; the terms of cultural exchange are rarely equal. My paper theorizes the museum contact zone as a space in which the communicative reason inherent to interpersonal communication encounters the functional rationality of the institution. Like cultural hybridization, what I call rational hybridization is never power neutral.

Whether positioning themselves as a forum or temple (Cameron, 2012), museums operate according to an organizational logic that has been conditioned by Enlightenment values that are rationalist, universalist, and empiricist. (Kitromilides, 1992). These values significantly reinforce lifeworld systems that are functionalist in orientation. Habermas (1984) uses the term lifeworld to refer to the web of societal beliefs, values, and behavioral norms that serves as the backdrop for communicative action. Habermas (1987) notes, “Insofar as speakers and hearers straightforwardly achieve a mutual understanding about something in the world, they move within the horizon of their common lifeworld; this remains in the background of the participants—as intuitively known, unproblematic, and unanalyzable, holistic background” (p. 337). Museums serve as communicative spaces in which lifeworlds are mediated, rationalized, and reproduced, and museum education unfolds within “the context-forming horizon of the lifeworld, from within which participants in communication come to an understanding with one another about something.” (Habermas, 1984, p. 337).

In many European countries but also beyond, there has been an ongoing debate with respect to the state of academic freedom today. While there have been many voices to criticize the political suppression and attacks on academics and on universities (Ignatieff 2018, AFI 2022), it has also been pointed out that there is a threat of academic freedom “from within” the university (Furedi 2016). The diagnosis presented in this context is very diverse: Some authors bemoan emotional correctness, the usage of trigger warnings or a growing conformity within academia (Furedi 2017, Williams 2016). Others emphasize more strongly the changing political and economic situation of universities: the imperilment of shared governance due to the growing power of governing boards and university presidents, the increasing privatization, as well as the attack on unions (Reichman 2021). To mention one more interpretation, recent contributions have emphasized how academic freedom is interwoven with discrimination and suppression. Dutt-Ballerstadt et al. (2021) have argued, for example, that the reference to civility has been used to silence and discipline marginalized voices of academia.

A literature review of the past years shows that the debates on academic freedom – the conditions, the state, as well as limiting factoes – are very complex. There are different phenomena and different interpretative approaches in use. Furthermore, the discours on academic freedom is highly controversial. In other words, it is a field of polarizing views in the way that certain agents or views are held responsible for the demise of academic freedom. Williams (2016), e.g. has attributed the demise of academic freedom to critical and post-structural theory. Others have made the progression of academic fields, more conretely: education, psychology, and gender studies, responsible for the antiacademic discourse in the universities (Kaldewey 2017). In order to understand the current situation of academic freedom, it is important to understand how the debate of academic freedom is structured.

In this paper, I will investigate how contributions in this area makes use of particular (educational-)philosophical themes and arguments in order to provide a generalizing frame for the interpretation of academic freedom. Concerning the above-mentioned publication of Williams, it is interesting to reconstruct how the link between critical theory and the loss of academic freedom is made. Similarly, it will be analyzed how other philosophical voices from the liberal tradition are taken up (Mill’s “marketplace of ideas”, Kant’s idea of Enlightenment, or Habermas’ compelling power of the better argument).

After having given an overview of the current academic debate on academic freedom (I.), the paper focuses on the philosophical motives and how they are interwoven in the interpretative scheme concerning the state of academic freedom. Are they used as way out, as cure, as promise or as the source of the problem? (II.) While my intension is to delineate where the educational-philosophical frames fall short in giving a legitimate account of academic freedom, the overall aim is to generally detect the limits that specific philosophical traditions have (III.). In the final part of the paper I will comment on how these detected limits can be productive for Bildung in the university.

Post-truth can be defined as an assertion of ideological supremacy by which to try to persuade someone about something no matter the available evidence (McIntyre, 2018; Frankfurt, 2006 and 2005). Knowing what the truth is may cause a rift in opinions, but it should not stop mattering. We, both individually and collectively, should care for and about truths and the search for them (Thoilliez, 2022). And when it comes to keeping up with University life, academic freedom becomes extremely relevant (Beaud, 2021): caring for the freedom academics need to fulfil our duty of seeking and communicating truths to the best of our abilities.

In her book La faiblesse du vrai. Ce que la post-vérité fait à notre monde commun, Myriam Revault d’Allonnes (2018) offers a profound examination of the advent of the post-truth regime, from the urgency of gaining awareness of the nature and scope of the phenomenon in order to deflect its ethical and political effects. As Revault d’Allonnes (2018) notes, post-truth goes far beyond the deconstruction begun by the “masters of suspicion”: Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud. These three critical philosophers did not do away with the distinction between true and false; rather, they objected to the absolute and false nature of the truth understood as a universal norm. In contrast, post-truth refers to a grey area in which we no longer know if things are true or false. This is much more problematic than simlpy lying. In totalitarian systems, the combination of ideology and terror results in the systematic and consistent construction of a set of falsehoods that end up replacing reality. In contrast, in our democracies, the danger resides in the tendency toward the relativism of “anything goes”. Therefore, we can question fact-based truths, historical truths, events, what happened. Post-truth separates the facts from their objective reality in order to transform them into contingent opinions that anyone can hold as true. This situation undermines our ability to live together in a common world and makes education in our campuses extremely difficult to accomplish.

The post-truth scenario and its impact on how states of opinion are generated have spread and increased exponentially through technologies that give us new, multiple, and simultaneous ways to communicate and share information. The possibilities of thinking with, of, and about that information diminish as loops of likes and unlikes, loves and unloves, follows and unfollows increase. As Patrick Troude-Chastenet (2018) notes, for the fake news business model to work, it takes large intermediary platforms such as search engines (Google), social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram), and advertising networks (Google Ads). To a great extent, this makes them “if not political accomplices, at least economic collaborators with the fake news industry, because in the end, they are its main beneficiaries” (p. 94). And either way, the proliferation of data made available from numerous sources has not brought about the promised land of a democracy made stronger by well informed publics and freer citizens. Instead, we have a progressive suspension of practices of thinking. As Seymour (2020) states, social networks have turned into a space that provides is with a continuous stream mixing news, opinions, and entertainment that informs our day-to-day life, opening us up to a recreation of the (problematic) public sphere, or perhaps shutting us up into it.

Who deserves credit for multiple authorship published educational research? Often those who ‘deserve credit’ are attributed the title of author/s in publications. The aim of this presentation is to question the idea of the authorship in a context of measurement and performativity. The issue of authorship does not only focus on who the authors are, but also on who the first or last author is amongst a group of authors in a multiple authorship publication. This is an ethical and a justice issue, as authorship of publications often entails powerful and positionality decisions about the authorship order. Kwok (2005) argued for the so-called ‘White Bull’ effect, that senior researchers coercively assert themselves with first authorship credit, where junior researchers are abused and bullied by unscrupulous senior collaborators. Also, it has also been observed that junior or less powerfully academics can also be unfavourably impacted by the Matthew effect (Merton, 1973) where co-authors with an already established status tend to gain disproportionate credit.

Efforts are in place, such as the international standard for authorship (the Vancouver protocol) defined by the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE 2009), to aim to establish protocols in authorship publications. While the protocol originated in the bio-medical sciences in 1978, it is now applied across all academic disciplines such the social sciences and education. Several have noted the limitations of the Vancouver protocol and provided critique for it. This presentation adds another critical voice to the already available critique.

This presentation will rely on the philosophical readings of Jean-Luc Nancy to question the ‘subject of authorship’. Central to Nancy’s work was his critique of the idea of a distinct, singular individual. As he argued in Being Singular Plural (2000), a singular being is a ‘contradiction in terms.’ Nancy takes a different position from that of Descartes and argues for the ‘we’. ‘We’ is not a secondary term in relation to the ‘I’, but rather it precedes individuality. ‘Being,’ Nancy (2000) writes, ‘cannot be anything but being-with-one-another, circulating with and as the with of this singularly plural coexistence… with is at the heart of Being’ (emphasis in original, p.87). It is thus a relational being that Nancy is arguing for, and community at the heart of this being.

The above paragraph gives indications of how Nancy’s work helps us question the idea of multiple authorship, where the tension between the individual author (for example the first author) and the collective (multiple authorship) is put to question. What does it mean to talk of a ‘first author’ is a community of authors? What is the relationship between the authors in developing research and publishing it? If ‘we’ precedes the ‘I’, how can we talk of a first or last author? These all contribute to question the ethics and justice of multiple authorship. This presentation will also ask if educational research brings a uniqueness to the conversation of multiple authorship. Given the uniqueness of what education is, does this effect the I/We and community relationship that Nancy argues for?

Given the performative cultures that many academics globally work in, the focus of the presentation has relevance for a European/international dimension.

Due to the legacy of Western modernity (e.g., hierarchical power and market capitalism), education is burdened by an ideology of supremacy and haunted by “imperialist amnesia” (Kapoor, 2020, P. 12). Inspired by the writings of Agamben (1998) and Mignolo (2011), we ask: What are the challenges and possibilities of thinking in new ways, that is, beyond a Western socio-symbolic order?

Despite various forms of critique education is still assumed to be ‘a place’, both metaphorically and literally, in which thoughtful consideration about ourselves, others, and the world can be nurtured.

In (un)conscious ways, however, education can be “a reiteration, indeed a celebration, of the limits to thought and of the impossibility of moving beyond those limits” (Collet­-Sabé and Ball, 2022, p. 2). Education can (re)produce certain aesthetical perceptions that can make it difficult to transcend our intellectual, emotional, and sensory horizons of experience (Rüsselbæk Hansen and Phelan, 2019). Of course, education can encourage us to think and comprehend things in new ways. But if we (educators and students) are ‘caught’ in a socio-symbolic (Western) order, we may only be able to think and perceive someone/something that (only) makes sense within this order. Witness, for example, the following reflection of a Canadian student returning from a trip to Nicaragua:

"With government corruption and civil war, Nicaragua has now become the poorest country in Central America, wracked with social problems and oftentimes with little hope for growth or change […] I wanted to bring out the fairy dust, sprinkle it all over the place and free them of their misfortune, be it disability, violence, poverty or illiteracy. […] I wished I could pocket some of their optimism in times of personal despair […] Not all of Nicaragua is bleak. Central America is big on relaxation and taking it easy. […] I am a little closer to discovering the true me, and I would return to those same chicken buses, heat waves and unreliable water sources in a heartbeat." (Benham Rennick & Desjardins, 2013 in Andreotti, 2016, pp. 16-18)

The student exhibits a “projective empathy that forecloses the connections between privilege and underprivilege” (Andreotti, 2016, p. 115) and “reproduce[s] a Canadian-centric global imaginary that does not engage with the invisible complicity of modern/colonial institutions and subjectivities in the creation of inequalities” (p. 115). As social entrepreneur, the student assumes their right to dispense knowledge, skills and values thought to be of universal worth and “to use the community as a resource for personal growth and accumulation of symbolic capital” (p. 115).

The epistemological attitude mirrored in the student’s reflection is that “we go out to the world in order to comprehend it, which literally means to grasp it in its totality, and thus end up with a world of objects outside of us, where we are in the centre and the world is ‘out there’ … for us” (Biesta, 2021, p. 97). The self’s horizon of experience – a “hermeneutic monism” (Benhabib, 1992, p. 228) – dominates the situation disavowing the presence of the other.

The vignette underscores the need for students – repositioned as social critics – to learn to distance themselves from their Western legacy and to think in new ways about themselves, others, and the world. Social criticism requires “epistemic delinking” (Mignolo, 2011, p. 139), a decolonial project which involves both uncovering the particular origins of universal claims to truth and the symbolic violence inherent in “the categories of thought and logic” (p. 116) that sustain Western colonialism. Paradoxically, the Western modern legacy can be the starting point to criticize it; it can be used, as it were, against itself.

In a brief article, published shortly after the passing of Bruno Latour, Didier Debaise (2022) takes stock of the French sociologist and philosopher’s contribution to our understanding of modernity. In his major work, Enquête sur les modes d’existence, Latour (2012) defines the Moderns as a “people of the Idea” (p. 33). Debaise argues that Latour’s philosophical project can best be conceived as a pharmacological inquiry into the pragmatic value of our ideas, which, in spite of their innocent appearance, have all too often functioned as disqualifiers of what was put away as ‘belief’, domesticators of all kinds of (scientific) knowledge, and colonizers of other ways of inhabiting the Earth. Latour’s inquiry into the efficacy of ideas takes place within a more general framework of questioning modernity as the progressive emancipation of human beings from natural constraints. Although Latour rarely refers to discussions in educational theory, it is remarkable that the notion of emancipation—an educational concept par excellence—takes such a prominent position in his problematization of modernity.

Modes of Existence are a concept taken by Bruno Latour from the works of Souriau and of Simondon, which he expands to define as being ontological features of the world, brought into view – not constructed – by empirical inquiry, derived from experience, and capable of being added to. They are labelled through a series of three-letter notations such as [POL] for politics or [TEC] for technology. The fifteen modes that Latour has identified thus far are presented in a Pivot Table. In a spreadsheet, a pivot table allows the user to switch between different tables and columns, in order to filter the data. Likewise, through filtering our inquiries through different crossings between two modes (for example, we might consider the confluence of political debate with religious sentiment through [POL-REL]) we can, as ethnographers, move through different ontological frames brought to bear on any situation through being crossed together, sometimes in order to resolve questions, and at other times in order to highlight new ones. Actor-network theory (ANT) is relabelled as [NET] within AIME and works alongside the other modes. AIME has begun to be critically employed within explorations of legal theory, medieval studies, politics and postpolitics, and education (Decuypere and Simons, 2019; Tummons, 2020, 2021).

If we take seriously Latour’s claim that actor-network theory is just one amongst many different but equal modes of existence alongside politics, technology, or religion, as well as others, then what does this imply for how we employ ANT – now [NET] – to think about education? Are the fifteen modes that Latour has identified sufficient, or might we also take seriously his invitation to expand on his modes, as others have done, and include beings of the educational mode within his comparative ontology?

In this paper I argue for the necessity of considering actor-network theory alongside the other modes of existence when thinking about education. In embracing the theoretical and empirical affordances of the Modes of Existence, I argue that Latour’s ‘philosophical-ontological toolkit’ provides ways of thinking about the beings of education in many ways, from textbooks to policies and from university researchers to kindergarten teachers, all enrolled in networks within their own ontology, their own mode of existence.

I propose that education [EDU] is a mode of existence, just as law [LAW] or religion [REL] are modes of existence. This is not the first extension of Latour’s cosmology: alongside the gradual uptake of AIME as a framework for inquiry, several additional modes have been suggested: of academic practice; of form [FOR], a concept that is found within AIME , but which, it has been argued, should be considered a mode in its own right; of signs [SIG], derived from the semiotic theories of Saussure and of recognition derived from the theories of Axel Honneth. Within AIME, a mode of existence is identified through four elements: firstly, the continuities and discontinuities of the beings of the mode in question; secondly, the felicity and infelicity conditions that pertain to the beings of the mode; thirdly, the type of beings that the mode leaves behind; and fourthly, the condition of alteration of the beings of the mode. It is important to remember that these four conditions are of equal importance; nor does their presentation assume a hierarchy or an operating sequence – they all pertain simultaneously to any mode.

Despite the prioritisation of widening participation agendas globally, and increased levels of working-class people entering higher education, inequalities along the lines of social class persist (Hoskins & Shah, 2017). As a result, social class dynamics produced in the higher education remain a critical site of research, particularly as practices of precarious employment rise (Walkerdine, 2021). While a growing body of higher education research emphasises the shifting and contradictory nature of class assemblages (Hey et al., 2021; Threadgold, 2020; Webb et al., 2017), there remains a need to counter an historical tendency to use binary conceptions of power, which typically point to the stability of classed relations. For the most part, working-class students and scholars remain framed around notions of constraint in social class research, which risks naturalising deficit framings. What tools do we have then, to refocus on working-class agency? What concepts can aid in capturing how ‘dominant class interests… [are] forever encountering and sometimes fraying in the face of dissent and difference’? (Hey et al., 2021, p.18).

In this paper, I use Jack Halberstam’s insights on the queer art of failure (Halberstam, 2011) to understand complex, classed student and early career academic identities, by exploring ambivalent rejections of middle-class norms. As Halberstam has it, the failure of queer lives to comply with dominant norms generates ‘negative’ affects, but these ‘bad’ feelings are, simultaneously, a productive force. Their mobilisation can ‘poke holes in the toxic positivity of contemporary life’ (Halberstam, 2011, p. 3) and expose capitalist logics as a sham, including the assumption that there must be winners and losers in life. Practices of queer failure blur the normative lines between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ affects, and undo the binarisation that often occurs in relation to working class actors, who are read as disempowered rather than as both mobilised and constrained. An impetus towards queered class relations could engender a working-class being-in-the-world as a mode in which attachments to loss, awkwardness, alienation and otherness continue, but in a way that offers relief. The impossibility of doing or being ‘elite academic’ may usher in ambivalence; knowing failures are ‘modes of unbeing and unbecoming [which enact] a different relation to knowledge’ (Halberstam, 2011, p. 23). That is, ambivalence towards middle-classed assumptions and modes of action in higher education represent a potential means of unknowing and un-feeling of class deficits—an un-becoming of class disadvantage.

In this empirical research, I apply Halberstam’s insights on reading non-normativity to the lives of working-class, women-identifying students and early career staff in Australian universities enrolled in postgraduate education. Through interview data, and in conjunction with Margaret Wetherell’s (2012) affective-discursive practices approach, I identify affective practices that enact ambivalence and productive failings. Everyday sense-making is treated as series of affective events where analytic attention is placed on the micropolitical, but in relation with ‘entanglements between the constituent social, cultural, biological and material parts of the broader field’ (Wetherell, 2015, p. 147). The art of failing to perform the elite and high performing student or early career researcher does not necessarily eradicate the negative impacts of deficit discourses. However, it has potential to displace them, by giving them other meanings. Overall, this paper contributes to a feminist and queer ethics for class research in higher education that is both intellectual and affective (Reay, 2015), and emphasises working-class capacities.

All networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

The idea of education focuses on passing what is good in our world to the generations that arrive as newcomers. With the newcomers, the world is renewed (Arendt 1961): changed while preserving what is valuable in it. This view has recently been re-invigorated in the debate on instrumentality in education. In one instance, Hodgson, Vlieghe and Zamojski (2017) evoke the notion of "love to the world" (as opposed to "hate," which they ascribe to critical pedagogy) as the foundation of post-critical education, focused on things of concern around which passionate teaching can unite students and teachers.

In this symposium, we juxtapose this way of seeing education with the global situation in which more and more children are displaced. In most cases, education for newcomers who are refugees and asylum seekers is planned with repatriation in mind (Dryden-Peterson & Reddick, 2017; Ferede, 2018). However, in the face of climatic catastrophe and prolific wars, repatriation frequently becomes impossible. If those children stay in receiving countries, "things of concern" of their new teachers may differ radically from those of their parents or themselves. How do we conceive of education for next generations in this context?

Next, as typically construed in trans-generational pedagogical narratives, is one who arrives later. In this symposium, we are exploring "nextness" in a broader sense, both in temporal and spatial terms. We want to stress that ”next” also arrives spatially, as "next to us", neighbour or alien. This perspective opens to broader ethical and political issues. What is education when its next generation – one to inherit the world -- is both temporal and spatial? When its newcomer children are not only arriving after us but are, at the same time, neighbors or aliens to us? What is it, then, that needs passing on, what can be passed on, and what is worth passing for the sake of "us”, or for "them," and for the world itself?

The symposium proposed to the Philosophy of Education Network will be organized in two sessions.

In Session 1, we explore what next generation means, in times of existential threats when having children is becoming an ethical issue, by interrogating the concept of "nextness" in spatial and temporal terms (Kalisha). Children who arrive, arrive “thrown”, while the challenge for educators is creating conditions for their dwelling (Parker). We ask whether education can provide space for educators taking ethical responsibility which requires that what we know as pedagogical tact in Herbart becomes multicultural tact (Hilt & Rompianesi). Finally, we discuss empirical data on teachers' ethical dilemmas and possibilities while teaching newcomers in an introductory class in Norway (Gudmundset & Brøvig Østby).

In our understanding, the critical issue for this symposium is that the notion of "next generation," which legitimises pedagogical efforts of passing the world on to newcomers, needs at least a doubling gesture of complication. We should read "nextness" in temporal and spatial terms when considering who the next generation is. "Next" as typically construed in trans-generational pedagogical narratives, arrives later, but it also means "next to us", it arrives as neighbour or alien. At the same time, Edelman (2004) describes western countries as sometimes driven by a "death drive" rather than by a "reproductive futurism". With this description, the "spatial nextness" gains unprecedented weight in the dream of renewal by education. We believe that the categories of reproductive futurism and death drive proposed by Edelman in the context of queer theory can be re-contextualized fruitfully to map the terrain of refusal or procrastination of parenthood in most Western countries where young adults decide not (or not yet) having children; not only because they pursue their individual achievement, but also for ethical reasons. Having children may seem irresponsible in the world that is falling apart. We claim that "spatial nextness," concerning the newcomers from elsewhere, needs to be installed as permanent within the idea of education as renewal, as means to pass what is good in our world to those who arrive. If that renewal is to be viable, it should be conceived responsibly in response to the world driven by climatic catastrophe, wars and massive migration.

Arendt, H. (2006). Between past and future : eight exercises in political thought. Penguin. Edelman, L. (2004). No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Duke University Press. Eide, K. (2020). Barn p? flukt : psykososialt arbeid med enslige mindre?rige flyktninger (2. utgave. ed.). Gyldendal. Hilt, L. T. (2015). Included as excluded and excluded as included: minority language pupils in Norwegian inclusion policy. International journal of inclusive education, 19(2), 165-182. Hirvonen, K. (2013). Sweden: when hate becomes the norm. Race and Class, 55(1), 78-86. Hodgson, N., Vlieghe, J., Zamojski, P., Lewis, T., & Ramaekers, S. (2017). Manifesto for a Post-Critical Pedagogy. Kalisha, W. (2020). While We Wait: Unaccompanied Minors in Norway – Or the Hospita(bi)lity for the Other. In T. Strand (Ed.), Rethinking Ethical-Political Education (pp. 67-84). Springer International Publishing. Labaree, D. F., Tröhler, D., & Popkewitz, T. S. (2011). Schooling and the making of citizens in the long nineteenth century : comparative visions (Vol. 57). Routledge. Mollenhauer, K. (2014). Forgotten connections : on culture and upbringing (N. Friesen, Trans.). Routledge. Seeberg, M. L., & Goździak, E. M. (2016). Contested Childhoods: Growing up in Migrancy : Migration, Governance, Identities (1st 2016. ed.). Springer International Publishing : Imprint: Springer.

Presenting and representing the world to the students is a foundational issue in educational research (Mollenhauer, 2006). Recently, Gert Biesta (2021) has called for a world-centered education, encouraging teachers to turn the pupils' gaze toward the world, to be educated by the world itself. However, introducing the student to the world within increasingly diverse societies and educational settings constitutes a challenge to national educational systems. From the perspective of intercultural education and post-colonialism, the domination of Eurocentric orientations might result in unfair and exclusion conditions for minority pupils in schools (Banks, 1993; Bennett, 2001). With the words of Willbergh and Aasebø (2022), representing the world in multicultural classrooms might generate "the multicultural paradox": should teaching represent the perspectives of particular minority groups to provide recognition, inclusion, and empowerment, or should teaching rather aim at representing universal aspects in teaching, where culture, race, privilege, etc. are irrelevant? This essay will investigate the foundational question of how we are to represent the world in multicultural schools and societies, thus facilitating Bildung processes for all children. Although we acknowledge the difficulty in defining the social and cultural world in an inclusive manner in multicultural schools, we will argue that this is an essential feature of good education and that conscious selection of content and teaching materials should be at the forefront of educational practice today. The essay concludes that we need to focus on the teacher as an agent of inclusion and Bildung, exercising judgment in the encounter between the curriculum and the multicultural pupils. As a further development of the concept of educational tact from educational philosopher J. F. Herbart (2012), the essay calls attention to the necessity of teachers developing what we conceptualise as multicultural tact. Regarding our theoretical framework, we position ourselves within the discipline of general pedagogy (Allgemeine Peädagogik) and the European Bildung tradition. Although theories of Bildung are manifold, we acknowledge that Bildung concerns the result and the very process by which subjects encounter the world through education. In this frame, we understand inter/multicultural education as an epistemologically and theoretically complex field (Holm & Zilliacus, 2009). Started as an ethical-political project in the context of International Organizations, it aims at developing peaceful coexistence in contemporary pluralistic societies and mutual exchange between different cultures.

Banks, J. A. (1993). The canon debate, knowledge construction, and multicultural education. Educational Researcher, 22(5), 4–14. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X022005004 Bennett, C. (2001). Genres of research in multicultural education. Review of Educational Reserach, 71(2), 171–217. https:// doi.org/10.3102/00346543071002171 Biesta, G. (2021) World-centered education: A view for the present. Routledge. Aasebø, T. S. & Willbergh, I. (2022). Empowering minority students: a study of cultural references in the teaching content. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 54 (5), 618-631. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2022.2095877 Herbart, J. F. (2012) ABC of sense-perception and minor pedagogical works. Ulan Press Holm, G., & Zilliacus, H. (2009). Multicultural Education and Intercultural Education: Is There a Difference? In M.-T. Talib, J. Loima, H. Paavola, & S. Patrikainen (Eds.), Dialogues on Diversity and Global Education (pp. 11-28). Peter Lang. Mollenhauer, K. (2006) Glemte sammenhenger [Forgotten Connections]. Ad Notam Gyldendal

Norway is becoming a more multicultural/ multilingual society and with this comes an added challenge for all teachers who adapt the curriculum and provide an inclusive education for all pupils, within the confines of the existing system. An increasing group of pupils within the education system are those who have newly arrived in Norway (Dewilde & Kulbrandstad, 2016). They come from various cultures and backgrounds and speak many different languages, but politically they are treated as a single entity when offered provisions within the education system (Hilt, 2016). The introductory classroom is one type of educational provision available to these newly arrived pupils. Here they are offered one to two years, by law, in which to acquire the rudiments of the Norwegian language. They are then deemed to have a 'sufficient proficiency' in the language to continue their education within the mainstream (Opplæringslova, 1998, §2-8). There are high expectations placed upon these teachers working in introductory classrooms to teach these pupils Norwegian, as quickly and effectively as possible "for the sake of integration" (Utdanningsdirektoratet, 2016). In this presentation we wish to highlight some of the challenges and ethical dilemmas these teachers face, based upon empirical data from interviews. The teachers were from several different introductory classes ('innføringsklasser'), 3rd to 10th grade. Some of the fundamental questions we ask are: 'In what ways do these teachers reflect upon their pedagogical and personal interactions when engaging with these pupils, who are in their care for such a short time?', 'What kinds of dilemmas are they faced with?'. In the continental tradition of pedagogikk Biesta approaches the art of teaching as finding the right balance between the three educational functions of qualification, socialization, and subjectification (Biesta, 2012; Biesta, 2014). Our informants have experience in adapting their methods of teaching to 'fit the pupil', they regard the 'uniqueness' of their pupils and how education impacts upon them. This has implications in the way they meet these pupils and the need to establish a relationship with them quickly. The teacher's unique insight, experience, and reflections in this field may also provide valuable professional insight into teacher judgment in inclusive education.

Biesta, G.J.J. (2014). The Beautiful Risk of Education. Paradigm Publishers Biesta, G.J.J. (2012). Receiving the Gift of teaching: From 'Learning from' to 'Being taught by'. Stud Philos Educ 32: 449-461 Dewilde, J. & Kulbrandstad, L.A (2016). Nyankomne barn og unge i den norske utdanningskonteksten. Nordisk tidsskrift for andrespråksutvikling. 11(2): 3-13. Fagbokforlaget. Hilt, L. (2016). Kategorisering som hinder for sosial inkludering? En kritisk diskusjon av kategorien «nyankomne minoritetsspråklige elever» i lys av målet om inkludering. In: F.B. Børhaug & I. Helleve (red.) Interkulturell Pedagogikk som Motkraft. I en monokulturell praksis. Fagbokforlaget. Opplæringslova. (1998). Lov om grunnskolen og den videregåande opplæringa (LOV-1998-07-17-61). Lovdata. Lov om grunnskolen og den vidaregåande opplæringa (opplæringslova) - Lovdata Utdanningsdirektoratet (Department of Education) (2016). Veileder. Innføringstilbud til nyankomne minoritetsspråklige elever. Innføringstilbud til nyankomne minoritetsspråklige elever (udir.no)

Migrant and refugee children live through a rupture that non-migrants will never know: they experience a reset of the circumstances of their lives (Haas, 2017). These children carry with them gifts of language, experience, family, and memory, but are often forced into conditions that fail to recognize their worth as such. The growing numbers of these children, a function of the destruction of homelands due to war and pervasive climate change, present education with urgent questions, including: What kinds of ethical dilemmas arise in caring for and educating these children? What constitutes the generational "passing on" of learning amidst such exponential heterogeneity? In this chapter, I draw upon two concepts to highlight the uniqueness of the migrant or refugee child's experiences. First, I discuss Heidegger's rendering of "thrownness" and facticity to better understand the ontological condition of migration. In his writing on Dasein in Being and Time, Heidegger (1996) delineates the qualities that characterize a human's unique being in the world. One dimension of Dasein highlights the facticity of our birth at this time and in this place, our thrownness into the circumstances of our unique lives. I argue that this aspect of thrownness is significant to understanding the fundamental disruption of migration as an ontological (and epistemological) upheaval. I contextualize this analysis by drawing on literature on thrownness in the multicultural condition (Lai, 2003), as well as facticity and colonialism (Marino, 2021; Price, 2021). Second, with a view to responding to the questions posed above, I turn to Levinas's (1979, 1989, 1998) thinking about "dwelling" to present education's responsibilities to these children and the possibilities of wisdom they entail, and to recast the horizon of presence and futurity. I suggest that Levinas's premise of ethics as first philosophy engenders responsibility expressed as vulnerability—not of the child, but of the countries, educators, and classrooms receiving them as the Levinasian Other. I further describe how Levinas's critique of Western philosophy opens the door for an intersubjective epistemology that holds us open to listening as the only pathway to wisdom. This has implications for learning, but also for how, through the potentials of education, migrant children might find the "freedom to move" (Ansems de Vries et al., 2017) as participants in, contributors to, and inheritors of their new societies. Finally, I assert that the ethical relation changes how we experience presence in the classroom and enlivens possibilities for a yet-to-be-imagined future.

Ansems de Vries, L., Coleman, L. M., Rosenow, D., Tazzioli, M., & Vázquez, R. (2017). Collective discussion: Fracturing politics (or, how to avoid the tacit reproduction of modern/colonial ontologies in critical thought). International Political Sociology, 11(1), 90-108. Haas, B. M. (2017). Citizens‐in‐waiting, deportees‐in‐waiting: Power, temporality, and suffering in the US asylum system. Ethos, 45(1), 75-97. Heidegger, M. (1996) Being and time: A translation of Sein und Zeit. SUNY Press. (Original work published in 1927) Lai, C. H. (2003). Re-writing the subject: The thrownness of being in the multicultural condition. Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, 30(3-4). Levinas, E. (1979). Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority (A. Lingis, Trans.). Duquesne UP. (Original work published in 1961) Levinas, E. (1989). The Levinas reader. Blackwell. Levinas, E. (1998). Otherwise than being or beyond essence (A. Lingis, Trans.). Dusquesne UP. (Original work published in 1974) Marino, S. (2021). Thrown into the world: The shift between pavlova and pasta in the ethnic identity of Australians originating from Italy. Journal of Sociology, 57(2), 231-248. Price, R. B. E. (2021). Nietzsche, Heidegger and colonialism: Occupying South East Asia. Routledge.

The idea of education focuses on passing what is good in our world to the generations that arrive as newcomers. With the newcomers, the world is renewed (Arendt 1961): changed while preserving what is valuable in it. This view has recently been re-invigorated in the debate on instrumentality in education. In one instance, Hodgson, Vlieghe and Zamojski (2017) evoke the notion of "love to the world" (as opposed to "hate," which they ascribe to critical pedagogy) as the foundation of post-critical education, focused on things of concern around which passionate teaching can unite students and teachers.

In this symposium, we juxtapose this way of seeing education with the global situation in which more and more children are displaced. In most cases, education for newcomers who are refugees and asylum seekers is planned with repatriation in mind (Dryden-Peterson & Reddick, 2017; Ferede, 2018). However, in the face of climatic catastrophe and prolific wars, repatriation frequently becomes impossible. If those children stay in receiving countries, "things of concern" of their new teachers may differ radically from those of their parents or themselves. How do we conceive of education for next generations in this context?

Next, as typically construed in trans-generational pedagogical narratives, is one who arrives later. In this symposium, we are exploring "nextness" in a broader sense, both in temporal and spatial terms. We want to stress that ”next” also arrives spatially, as "next to us", neighbour or alien. This perspective opens to broader ethical and political issues. What is education when its next generation – one to inherit the world -- is both temporal and spatial? When its newcomer children are not only arriving after us but are, at the same time, neighbors or aliens to us? What is it, then, that needs passing on, what can be passed on, and what is worth passing for the sake of "us”, or for "them," and for the world itself?

The symposium proposed to the Philosophy of Education Network will be organized in two sessions.

In Session 2, education is seen as marked by a generation gap. The radical foreignness of the child (and the immigrant child in particular) means that learning is bi-directional and that education as dealing with "the alien" becomes transformative for "the home" as well (Anna Kirova). More radically, we may see homelessness as the condition of children (not only immigrant ones) and adults in the world in which “there is no place to land" for anybody, which means that we have to constitute anew a shared world that we can call home again (Vlieghe & Zamojski). However, alienation has a radically concrete shape as well, as in case of those immigrants who have no right to claim their political rights. This is explored in the Ranciere’an perspective of disagreement as the condition of democracy (Tone Saevi). In this context, ethical decisions of teachers and school leaders working for the inclusion of newcomers in a Norwegian school are explored empirically (Eivid Larssen).

A newborn child enters the world of pre-existing order established by the previous generations. However, some children accept, others reject the familial and/or societal rules. This prompts Lippitz to ask, "Does the interrelationship of successive generations follow a measure of continuity, or is the intergenerational process principally of discontinuity?" (2007, p. 90). This presentation explores the intergenerational processes from the generative phenomenological perspective that understands the constitutional significance of a "generation gap" as a kind of alienness in a generative home (Steinbock, 1995, p. 230). More specifically, it explores immigrant children's encounters with the alien world of school in their host country. Building on Lippitz's notion of education as "thoroughly interpenetrated by foreignness" (2007, p. 78) it asks, if the experience of schooling can be described as a "foreign imposition" on all children that results in their becoming cultural hybrids, how is this different for children who are (im)migrants or newcomers to the school? Particularly important here is Steinbock's (1995) description of this relationship as "liminal," that is, home and alien are formed by being mutually delimiting as home and as alien, as normal and abnormal. From the homeworld point of view, the mutual delimitation of home and alien implicates a "responsibility" (Steinbock, 1995, p. 185) for the alien in the sense of responsiveness to the indispensability of difference born of the recognition that to obliterate the alien is simultaneous to undermine the potential of the home for renewal. In the context of schooling, this means that as pedagogues, we recognize that intergenerational foreignness is present in the relationship between educator and child and that the child is not entirely accessible to us as we are not entirely accessible to the child. This difference is indispensable not only because pedagogy is "the human charge of protecting and teaching the young to live in this world and to take responsibility for themselves, for others and for the continuance and welfare of the world" (Van Manen, 1991, p. 7), but also because the difference between myself and my own child or the child I am teaching opens the possibility for me to become engaged in a critical renewal of my homeworld though the transgressive act of encounter with the child as a foreigner. This renewal is not a mere repetition, but an "absolute ethical demand" consisting in the struggle toward a "better humanity" and "genuine human culture" (Steinbock, 1995, p. 200).

Lippitz, W. (2007). Foreignness and otherness in pedagogical contexts. Phenomenology and Practice, 1 (1), 76-96. Steinbock, A.J. (1995). Home and beyond: Generative phenomenology after Hüsserl. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Van Manen, M. (1991). The tact of teaching: The meaning of pedagogical thoughtfulness. London, ON: Althouse Press.

Among educational theorist there is a growing tendency to define education in terms of intergenerational relation (cf. Arendt 1961; Mollenhauer 2013). Education is about introducing the new generation into the 'old world'. This assumes that the young and the adult inhabit one common world and possess a shared cultural background: children are always our children. In our contribution, we want to focus on how the climate and migration crisis challenges this view. One circumstance that has changed is the increasing number of children in our day that are forced into migration, and that therefore arrive from a different cultural background: they are not our children in a strong sense, and yet they are children that require education. We first analyze the most common responses to this new condition: one – heavily criticized today – guided by the concepts of inclusion and integration, and the other – as a reaction to the first – taking respect to the absolute otherness of migrant children as a principle, hence calling for an attitude of unconditional hospitality (Derrida 2000). We want to develop a third answer in this contribution, drawing from Latour's (2018) and Nail (2015) work. Both claim, for different reasons, that we are all migrants: for Nail this has always been the case (even if this remained unnoticed until now), whereas for Latour the climate crisis has forced us to come and see that there is not enough soil left and that there is no 'place to land'. Today, we are all radically homeless. If this is the case, the issue of what it means to relate to the next generation needs to be reconsidered substantially: what does it mean to welcome children and introduce them to the common world when also the generation of adults is not at home in the world? We argue that a more meaningful response consists of moving beyond the paradigms of inclusion/integration and hospitality into the direction of an education that testifies to an attitude of generosity vis-à-vis the newcomers in our world (Cf. Visker 1994). When faced with a generalized condition of homelessness, the old and the coming generation, teachers and students, are free to focus on what presents itself hic et nunc. This means that children appear first of all as new - rather than as other – in a world that invites study.

Arendt, H. (1961). The Crisis in Education. In Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. The Viking Press: New York Badiou, A. (2005) Handbook of Inaesthetics (Alberto Toscano, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press Biesta, G.G. (2004) The community of those who have nothing in common: Education and the language of responsibility. Interchange 35, 307-324. Derrida, J. (2000) Of Hospitality (Rachel Bowlby, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Latour, B. (2018). Down to earth: Politics in the new climatic regime. (C. Porter, Trans.). Polity Press. Latour, B. & Weibel, P. (eds.) (2020) Critical Zones. The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth. Massachusetts: The MIT Press Mollenhauer, K. (2013). Forgotten Connections: On Culture and Upbringing (N. Friesen, Trans.). London: Routledge. Nail, Th. (2015) The Figure of the Migrant. Stanford: Stanford University Press Popkewitz, T. (2008) Cosmopolitanism and the Age of School Reform Science, Education, and Making Society by Making the Child. London: Routledge. Visker, R. (1994) Transcultural Vibrations. Ethical Perspectives 1, pp. 89-101

The paper contributes to the debate on what the basis of education should be, and to what degree education should be a critical science based on research as well as experience. The source of the discussion is the question of balance between child and society, education and policy in educational practice and research. The access to the question is critical and represents a counter voice to the hegemonic and politicized educational system in our culture. The text questions the extended distrust of education itself that lies within the strong goal-oriented management of our educational institutions, and in the political power of definition of what valuable knowledge is to children and young people. The above abstract was written to a chapter published in March this year in an edited book at Fagbokforlaget, Norway (Thuen, Myklestad & Vik, 2022). I would like to look at how an orientation from human subjectivity (Levinas 1998) and action (Arendt 1958) might dislocate the structures of the constructivist approach of today’s conceptualization of learning. In his little book Disagreement (1999) Ranciere asserts that the precondition of democracy is not agreement, but the will to difference; the will to disagree about right and wrong and the fight for real equality and justice, not only in general, but in concrete situations involving concrete human beings. One group in society that do not have a right to experience themselves wrongfully or unjustly treated is some of the refugee’s seeking asylum, and in particular the paperless refugees from non-European Muslim countries. They are kept in a helpless condition where they are not allowed to speak for their own rights or care for themselves by trying to better their condition. They seem to be categorized as «human waste» (Bauman 2003), and do not have a place in the world. They are invisible as subjects and not able to act themselves, or let others act for them. They do not have the right to speak for themselves from themselves. I intend to open a discussion on how questions regarding democratic care for so-called marginal human beings directly address our humanity in radical ways, and educationally challenge how we relate to the next generations of children and young people.

Arendt, H. (1958). The human condition. University of Chicago Press. Bauman, Z. (2003). Wasted lives: Modernity and its outcasts. Wiley. Levinas, E. (1998). Entre Nous. Thinking of the Other. Colombia University Press. Ranciere, J. (1999). Disagreement. University of Minnesota Press. Thuen, H., Myklestad, S. & Vik, S. (eds.). (2022). Pedagogikkens ide og oppdrag. Fagbokforlaget, 297-310.

International research has highlighted how refugee children and young people in exile struggle with emotional and behavioral difficulties such as post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression (Pastoor, 2015). Arguably, students with these types of problems require that school leaders and teachers possess high levels of psychosocial competence, both skills and knowledge, to meet them in the best way possible. Also, as will be evident in this chapter, it requires teachers to act as leaders in handling emerging situations of uncertainty when educating students who struggle emotionally and with behavioral difficulties. However, despite of the challenges, I argue there are also immense opportunities for teachers responsible for introductory teaching groups as they work in the 'front line' when educating this student group; they possess rich experiences and are highly knowledgeable in educating newly arrived students (Wigg & Erlin, 2021). The current chapter illustrates stories of ethical decision-making based on innovative pedagogical approaches when including students from different backgrounds in an introductory teaching group in a Norwegian lower-secondary school. Although there are several studies on educating newly arrived students (e.g. Catarci, 2014; Pastoor, 2015; Wigg & Erlin, 2021), we know less about how school leaders and teachers make ethical decisions in situations of uncertainty when working with this student group. Thus, this chapter aims to provide insight into school leaders and teachers' ethical decision-making in emerging situations characterized by high levels of uncertainty when educating newly arrived students. More broadly, the aim is also to contribute to the knowledge base on how school professionals' face uncertain situations in introductory teaching groups. Three research questions are addressed: 1) What characterize school leaders' ethical decision-making in situations of uncertainty when educating newly arrived students? 2) What challenges and opportunities emerge in including all newly arrived students in a special introductory class? 3) What contextual factors enable and constrain ethical decision-making? Methodologically, the chapter draws on empirical data from a Ph.D.-project that was completed in spring 2022 (Larsen, 2022), which consists of interviews with a principal and two teachers granted special responsibility for an introductory teaching group ("mottaksklasse") in a Norwegian lower-secondary school. Theories on democratic leadership (Woods, 2004), ethical decision-making (Birmingham, 2004; Smith & Riley, 2012) and different forms of professionalism (Anderson & Cohen, 2018; Green, 2011) serve as the overarching framework for analysis.

Anderson, G., & Cohen, M. I. (2018). The new democratic professional in education. Teachers' College Press. Birmingham, C. (2004). Phronesis: A Model for Pedagogical Reflection. Journal of Teacher Education, 55(4), 313–324. Catarci, M. (2014). Intercultural education in the European context: key remarks from a comparative study. Intercultural Education, 25(2), 95–104. Green, J. (2011). Education, professionalism, and the quest for accountability: Hitting the target but missing the point. Routledge. Larsen, E. (2022). Leading Education for Democracy in an Age of Accountability -Contextual changes and tensions in the case of Norway [Ph.D.]. University of Oslo. Pastoor, L. D. W. (2015). The mediational role of schools in supporting psychosocial transitions among unaccompanied young refugees upon resettlement in Norway. International Journal of Educational Development, 41, 245–254. Smith, L., & Riley, D. (2012). School leadership in times of crisis. School Leadership & Management, 32(1), 57–71. Wigg, U. J., & Ehrlin, A. (2021). Liminal spaces and places – Dilemmas in education for newly arrived students. International Journal of Educational Research Open, 2, 100078. Woods, P. (2004). Democratic leadership: drawing distinctions with distributed leadership. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 7(1), 3-26.

Soyoung Lee’s Poetics of Alterity: Education, Art, Politics (2022, Wiley) thematizes diversity and its value via questions of translation and ethical obligation to what is other to our settled ways of thinking and being. We provide an introduction to the book (1), followed by three commentaries (2-4).

1. The book problematizes prevalent ways of thinking in education in neoliberal times, whose defining characteristic is control. In Heidegger, Derrida and Celan, the book finds a poetics of resistance, while at its heart is Levinas’s philosophy of alterity. It is in language, especially poetic language, that alterity is expressed. Hence, recovery of language from its susceptibility to control, and from closed economies of thought, offers the best prospect for education and diversity. Thus, the book embraces themes of translation, mourning and remembrance, and other aporetic experience fundamental to human beings. Struggle with such experience is to be affirmed as central to education. It enables recovery of responsibility in what we say and do: this is less to do with competence and achievement, and more with affirmation of our lives together. Art and the humanities crucially enliven experience of alterity, where meanings remain open to judgement without a rule. Thus, one is called upon to speak in one’s own words, in responsibility and in faith.
2. I reflect, first, on the understanding of thinking and language as something ‘always already open to what is outside and yet to come’. As Poetics of Alterity points out, words may ‘cut and divide’ (Chapter 1: 18); however, as educators we should always ‘attend to the openness’ of language. Here also lies the ethical nature of thinking. Second, I consider the call toward dwelling upon what we learn (Chapter 2: 59), attending to the openness of signs and the ‘messiness’ of teaching (Chapter 3: 64). Here, I linger on ‘perplexity’ and its etymology. Per-plexus: per, meaning with, by means of, through, around; and plexus, meaning woven, or intricate, even obscure. Third, I turn to the idea of teaching as ethical ‘all the way down’ (Chapter 7).
3. How does this book speak to practices of teacher education? My own experience was of being schooled in the subject knowledge of my specialism, with classroom management skills tacked on so that my students’ learning would be effective, smooth, and undisturbed. The relationality of teaching was effaced or understood to take care of itself, Poetics of Alterity offers a different, more accurate, perhaps more practical, picture: of teaching as exposure. To be a teacher is always already to be in relation to the other, a relation we cannot fully escape from but must live with. I want to bring these thoughts close to those of another philosopher of alterity, Stanley Cavell, especially regarding the problem of other minds as something not so much to be theorised as to be lived. Cavell’s different philosophical language may elaborate, and perhaps further, the practicality of Lee’s ethical picture of teaching.
4. I reflect on two issues. First, Lee makes the distinction, in her reading of Cassin, between classical Latin and Greek and their influence on European thought. Drawing on Irigaray’s (1999) commentary on Heidegger, I reflect upon consequences of this difference for the discipline of pedagogy. Has it become homesick or are we, as researchers, simply being nostalgic? The second issue concerns poststructuralist philosophy today and particularly the notion of affirmation in Lee’s reading of Jacques Derrida. I reflect, with Lee and Rita Felski (2015), on critique in post-poststructuralism. Is it perhaps time to develop a more affirmative conception, beyond the masters of suspicion? What would an affirmative criticality imply for curriculum theory and teaching?

The Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller reminds us that humans are not just in the world but are crucially born somewhere in the world. We learn a language and acquire cultural habits, and the places we grow up are therefore extremely significant for our becoming as human beings (Heller, 2019, p. 11). The German philosopher J.G. Herder (2004[1774], p. 26) was concerned with the significance of place for human perfection, arguing that place should play a significant role in educational theory. However, theories of Bildung, addressing the process of becoming a subject in the encounter with a material, social and cultural world, have rarely dealt with the significance of place explicitly. Although places situate our experiences with the world, they are seldom at the center of our intellectual scrutiny.

With this background, the double symposium will explore the possibilities of a relationship between Bildung and place. The participants of the symposium are from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and the educational tradition of Nordic Bildung will therefore be a point of departure for us. Accordingly, the symposium addresses educational features that are unique to the Nordic countries considering our similar languages, educational structures and culture, and shared pedagogical heritage (Solberg, 2021; Bostad & Solberg, 2022). We want to explore Nordic Bildung as an example of the inherent relationship between Bildung and place, not just in the formation of individuals, but also in the formation of theories.

While there are forces in the educational field that pushes towards globalization and standards decontextualized from time and place, we need educational thinking that enables us to reconsider the significance of place for Bildung-processes, without falling back into nationalistic nostalgia (Heller, 2019). Martha Nussbaum (2012) has pointed out how different constructs of place, such as common culture (history and values), blood ties, ethnicity, earth-boundedness, linguistic belonging, and religion, have all been central elements in building national sentiments in Europe. This way of manifesting national belonging has led to the fact that newcomers, regardless of their time of residence, are seldom considered as belonging to the nation. Place thus appears to be a concept presenting possibilities as well as dangers for educational thinking, and the symposium therefore intends to investigate the relationship between place and Bildung as essentially conflicted and paradoxical. We have organized the symposium in two parts, each addressing a particular tension in the relationship between Bildung and place:

1) Bildung: between the familiar and the unknown: Theories of Bildung often refer to the classical Bildung-journey as an image of the Bildung process. Starting off in the familiar landscape of the place she grows up, the young person travels out into the world to meet and deal with the unknown, before returning home more enlightened than before (e.g. Gustavsson 2003). This archetypical image thus implies that both familiarity with what is known as well as openness to the unknown are crucial elements of the Bildung-process. The symposium will elaborate on the dilemma of familiarity and openness in the context of Nordic countries. What does it mean to be familiar with Nordic culture and/or belong to Nordic countries as places, and what does it entail for education to be open towards the world? Central perspectives in this part of the symposium will be the relationship between educating for national and/or local identity versus educating citizens of the world, as well as dilemmas concerning the significance of place for Bildung and sustainability.

Part 2 "Nostalgia:possibilities and dangers" is sent as a symposium application of its own.

The story of the roots of Nordic Bildung is at least twofold. One begins in the Christian and nationalist sentiments of thinkers such as Grundtvig, the other in ancient Greek philosophy. Bildung and Paideia connote the illusive process of human becoming. In this presentation, we will explore a different origin story, in order to sever two connections that are carried over in the “origin stories” of Nordic Bildung. One is the ideal of progress and growth for a particular “folk” embedded in Christian and nationalist sentiments. The other is the dominance of educational thought by philosophy instigated by Plato (Säfström, 2022). These two connections must be overcome in order to be able to conceive of education beyond the ideal of mastery: mastery of man over man, man over nature, and of state over man. The first thread of our alternative story begins at the foot of Yggdrasil where Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld are seated. The three women tend the tree while weaving the thread of destiny for men and gods alike. Without the care of the three Norns, the tree of life would perish and all the worlds along with it, without the threads of destiny no individual history would unfold. The other thread begins with the rise of platonic educational philosophy, in which man is tied to the state and a particular project for education, and where the progress of the state is paramount. The aim of education is to sort and develop in humans the virtues and values necessary for progressing society (Jaeger, 1943; Säfström, 2022). This idea displaced the sophistic ideal of plurality in and of languages and between people. It inserted an ideal of oneness in which “the city/soul functions like the body” (Cassin, 2014, p. 123), and the parts “conspire to become whole” (p. 123). Hence, plurality as well as individual becoming are subsumed under the ideal of oneness and progress of the state. Sophistical practice, however, insists on more than one, and the possibility “of interpreting the ‘same’ not as a ‘one’ but as a ‘with’” (p. 124). The caring ideal of the three Norns, and the sophistic ideal of plurality (Säfström, 2022), may open a path for Nordic Bildung where the plurality of tongues (languages and identities) do not descend into mere strife or nationalist sentiment, but can become precisely ‘more than one’, in caring for the common.

Cassin, B. (2014). Sophistical Practice. Toward a Consistent Relativism. Fordham University Press. Grundtvig, N.F.S.(1983). Statsmæssig oplysning. Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck. Jaeger, W. (1943/1986). Paideia. The Ideas of Greek Culture. Vol II. In Search of the Divine Order. Oxford University Press. Säfström, C. A. (2021). Please, show me your world! A sophistical practice of teaching. Revista de Educación, 395,pp. 35-58. Doi: 10.4438/1988-592X-RE-2022-395-521.

Although the ideal of authenticity can be traced back to thinkers such as Augustine and Rousseau, it gained prominence in the Nordic tradition of folk-Bildung by virtue of the German philosopher J. G. Herder. Herder is best known for his polemics against Kant’s idea of pure reason, arguing instead that reason is deeply embedded in the particularities of places – in languages and histories. In Herder’s (2002[1774]) view, nations, communities, and individuals, would have to find their own authentic cultivation processes towards humanity. Ideas about authenticity as an equally anthropological and communitarian potential, gained momentum in the era of nation-building and folk-Bildung in Nordic societies. Today, however, authenticity is scarcely discussed as an explicit ideal for Bildung. This presentation will discuss whether authenticity should be considered relevant for normative pedagogical theory today and (re-)establishing theoretical connections to Bildung and place. Charles Taylor (1991) has argued for authenticity as a modern virtue. However, Taylor argues that authenticity as an ideal has the potential of creating both subverted and elevated forms of self-fulfillment. For instance, if not to be subverted into narcissism, authenticity needs orientation towards “horizons of significance”, that is, sources of meaning and morality that exist independent of an individual. Based on Taylor, we argue that a Bildung-theory that values authenticity must be orientated towards such “horizons of significance”, located in language communities. This way, the concepts of Bildung, authenticity, and place become substantially connected. Still, the archetypical image of the Bildung journey implies a dialectical movement between two features: inauguration into what is known as well as openness and transcendence to the unknown. If authenticity is associated with being faithful to something original, it mainly emphasizes the first part of the Bildung-process. What we refer to as “horizons of significance” must be possible to criticize and transcend – if Bildung is not to be subverted into reactionism. We will thus explore the concept of alienation (Jaeggi, 2014) as a necessary aspect of an authenticity-based Bildung-theory. Finally, we will discuss the potential that lies in the communitarian aspects of Taylors theory when re-imagining Nordic Bildung. For Taylor (1995, 2016), the development of individual morality is constituted by language communities. The presentation discusses possibilities and pitfalls that lie in understanding authenticity as not only an individual, but also a communitarian Bildung-ideal. Lastly, we will question whether Taylors communitarianism can sufficiently guard against destructive nationalist tendencies in wanting to re-imagine Nordic Bildung.

Herder, J. G. (2002[1774]). Endnu en historiefilosofi til menneskehedens dannelse. Det lille forlag. Jaeggi, R. (2014). Alienation. Columbia University Press. Taylor, C. (1991). Autentisitetens etikk. Cappelens Upopulære Taylor, C. (1995). Philosophical arguments. Harvard University Press Taylor, C. (2016). The Language Animal. Harvard University Press

The paper explores the relationship between place and Bildung, by asking the question of whether education for patriotism is legitimate from a liberal democratic perspective, and consistent with the liberal conception of autonomy. Martha Nussbaum argues that liberal democracies that aspire to be just are dependent on emotional support from its citizens. Liberal principles, such as respect, equality, liberty, and justice, need to be supported by political emotions, such as compassion and empathy. She claims that education for patriotism, based on stories, heroes, and events, situated in our local contexts, will stimulate the kind of emotions liberal institutions need for support (Nussbaum, 2013). I agree that the stability of modern liberal democracies and liberal institutions need emotional support, and that good emotions should be developed through education. However, given the fact that most of us do not choose our national belongings, and that many citizens of liberal societies have multiply identities, and citizenships, it can be argued that education for patriotism violates democratic principles of legitimacy and autonomy (Brighouse 2007; BenPorat 2007). Patriotism has also been an important tool for nation building, resulting in losses of minority identity, culture, and language. I therefore argue that education for patriotism should be combined with exercises that stimulate critical thinking. In cases of conflict between the values of your local community and the nation, one should not need to put one’s local identity aside. Local identities can be used as a source for critical reflection on dominant conceptions, narratives, and values (Ben Porath 2007, Williams 2007). Drawing on theories of citizenship as “shared fate”, I argue that education for liberal democracies needs to take the student’s different social positions into account and allow for different interpretations of national symbols, narratives, and values. Education for patriotism needs to be responsive to the fact that shared national institutions and values have affected minority groups differently, and that we do not interpret institutions, and the values they are based on, in similar ways. I am using the situation of the Samì people in the Nordic countries to frame the discussion and to support my claims.

Brighouse. H. (2007). Should We Teach Patriotic History? In McDonough, K and Feinberg, W, Citizenship and Education in Liberal – Democratic Societies. Oxford University Press. Ben – Porath. S. (2007). Civic Virtue out of necessity: Patriotic and democratic education. Theory and Research in education, 5(1),, pp. 41-59. Sage publication https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1477878507073608 Nussbaum, M (2013). Political Emotion – Why Love Matters for Justice. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

This paper addresses the significance of place by considering the potential of Bildung for dealing with sustainability and solidarity. I consider Bildung in the sense of developing joint action competence (Mogensen, F., & Schnack, K., 2010)). Inspired by the German educational thinker Wolfgang Klafki’s critical constructive theory of Bildung, the aim is to develop abilities of self-determination, co-determination, and solidarity (Klafki, 1983). I will define place as formed by a dialectical relationship between individuals, the outside world, action and meaning, where students dealing with real-world problems, like climate change, can develop action competence. I will argue that Bildung for sustainability requires joint action competence in a specific place, and I will illustrate my argument with the example of the Danish folk high school Tvind. Tvind became internationally known for constructing the world’s tallest and most technologically advanced wind turbine in the 1970s (Lund, 2020). Like other folk high schools in Denmark, Tvind was based on the ideas of the Danish theologian, poet, and educational thinker N.F. Grundtvig. Historically, the folk high school played a significant role in developing a national democracy. At Tvind, however, these ideas were combined with developments in critical pedagogy emphasising international solidarity and environmental sustainability. Building the windmill was a pedagogical act, rooted in a place and an environmental discourse. The construction of the windmill represented a manifest ideal of renewable energy, as part of a growing opposition to A-power, resulting in a new environmental movement that subsequently impacted environmental policies in Denmark. Inspired by Klafki, Tvind illustrates a valid perspective on Bildung for sustainability, by fostering students ability to co-determination and solidarity while dealing with the epochal key problem sustainable energy (Klafki, 1983). However, these ideas developed in intersection with, but also in tension with, place-bound Grundtvigian thinking. Furthermore, Tvind was known as “the travelling folk high school”. The idea was that the students should develop action competence and the feeling of international solidarity by travelling around the world. Therefore, young Danes were sent to third world countries, turning - as a result - the folk high school into a globalized forum addressing third-world problems and poverty. In this sense Tvind exemplifies tensions of the global and local in theories of Bildung, as well as the travelling metaphor of Bildung.

Lund, B. (2020). Bæredygtighed og handlekompetence – et velkommen tilbage til 70’erne? Forskning og Forandring, 3(2), pp. 47-68. Grundtvig, N.F.S(1848) Folkeligheden in NS:FS: ed Danskeren et ugeblad. Første årgang (p 381 -384) F.H. Eibe Klafki, W. (1983). Kategorial dannelse og kritisk-konstruktiv pædagogik. Kbh: Nyt Nordisk Forlag Mogensen, F., & Schnack, K. (2010). The Action Competence Approach and the “New” Discourses of Education for Sustainable Development, Competence and Quality Criteria. Environmental Education Research, 16, pp. 59-74.

The Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller reminds us that humans are not just in the world but are crucially born somewhere in the world. We learn a language and acquire cultural habits, and the places we grow up are therefore extremely significant for our becoming as human beings (Heller, 2019, p. 11). The German philosopher J.G. Herder (2004[1774], p. 26) was concerned with the significance of place for human perfection, arguing that place should play a significant role in educational theory. However, theories of Bildung, addressing the process of becoming a subject in the encounter with a material, social and cultural world, have rarely dealt with the significance of place explicitly. Although places situate our experiences with the world, they are seldom at the center of our intellectual scrutiny.

With this background, the double symposium will explore the possibilities of a relationship between Bildung and place. The participants of the symposium are from Norway, Sweden and Denmark, and the educational tradition of Nordic Bildung will therefore be a point of departure for us. Accordingly, the symposium addresses educational features that are unique to the Nordic countries considering our similar languages, educational structures and culture, and shared pedagogical heritage (Solberg, 2021; Bostad & Solberg, 2022). We want to explore Nordic Bildung as an example of the inherent relationship between Bildung and place, not just in the formation of individuals, but also in the formation of theories.

While there are forces in the educational field that pushes towards globalization and standards decontextualized from time and place, we need educational thinking that enables us to reconsider the significance of place for Bildung-processes, without falling back into nationalistic nostalgia (Heller, 2019). Martha Nussbaum (2012) has pointed out how different constructs of place, such as common culture (history and values), blood ties, ethnicity, earth-boundedness, linguistic belonging, and religion, have all been central elements in building national sentiments in Europe. This way of manifesting national belonging has led to the fact that newcomers, regardless of their time of residence, are seldom considered as belonging to the nation. Place thus appears to be a concept presenting possibilities as well as dangers for educational thinking, and the symposium therefore intends to investigate the relationship between place and Bildung as essentially conflicted and paradoxical. We have organized the symposium in two parts, each addressing a particular tension in the relationship between Bildung and place:

1) Part 1 is described in another application (Id 1868)

2) Nostalgia: possibilities and dangers: Barbara Cassin (2016) has investigated the ambiguous and sometimes dangerous feeling of nostalgia. What does it mean to feel at home and where does the feeling of nostalgia come from? As Cassin points out, the nostalgia for places of belonging can be both formative as well as degenerative and dangerous. It is for instance highly relevant what we long for when feeling nostalgic, if we find our belonging in territories or in languages. Cassin argues in favor of languages as “homes”, seeing as languages are not owned by people, but expressions of plurality that are accessible for translation. The symposium intends to discuss the dilemmas we are facing when connecting to the place of Nordic Bildung, a particular place with particular languages, which may be disappearing or is already no more. What does “place” even mean, and what does it entail to have “a home” in the Nordic countries? What do we conceive of when we speak of a Nordic nostalgia and is it possible to think of Nordic identity and belonging that is not detrimental to foreigners?

The ideals of Nordic Bildung can be described as emerging in and from the cultures and societal structures of the Nordic countries. In line with this, it can be argued that the ideals partly stem from specific places. Of particular significance for our becoming as human beings are the places where we grow up (Heller, 2019). In contemporary reformulations of Nordic Bildung ideals, both theories and place-based experiences of the past play a part. In this contribution I combine theories of Nordic Bildung with theories of place (Massey, 2005; McInerney, 2011). I explore the possibilities and dangers of using place and the nostalgia for places of belonging as a resource for pedagogical theorizing in a Nordic setting (Keskinen et al., 2019). In the Norwegian educational system, the school has been a common place of construing togetherness (Bostad & Solberg, 2022). Furthermore, the educational system is centralized, and state controlled. This means that, at the outset, the possibilities ought to be good for governing school practices in the direction of inclusion, which has become a core value in the curricula of all Nordic countries. Even if the classroom has been a place for formation of cultural and social solidarity, it has also been a place for formation of cultural and social outsiderness and marginalisation. I draw on examples from experiences of schooling in the geographical area of “Nordkalotten”, The Cap of the North, the regions in Norway, Sweden, and Finland located north of the arctic circle, when I discuss internal tensions and possible exclusionary potentials of Nordic Bildung theories and pedagogies of place (Zilliacus et al., 2017; Stenseth, 2023). Bildung theory in a Norwegian setting has historically rested on the processes of nation building, encouraging togetherness through monoculturalism and essentialisation, the state being classified as “colonial-blind”. What are the prospects for experiences of the culturally diverse classrooms of the arctic regions to play a constructive part in pedagogical theorising on Bildung? (How) can such theorising encourage cultural and social togetherness, and avoid fostering outsiderness and marginalisation?

Bostad, I. & Solberg, M. (2022) Rooms of Togetherness. Nordic Ideals of Knowledge in Education. In Tröhler, D. et al.., (Eds) The Nordic Education Model, In Studies in Curriculum Theory, Routledge Heller, A. (2019). Das Paradox des Europäischen Nationalstaates. In Heller, A. Paradox Europa. Kanten. Edition Konturen. Keskinen, S., Skaptadottir, U. & Toivanen, M. (2019) Undoing Homogeneity in the Nordic Region. Routledge. Massey, D. B. (2005). For Space. Sage McInerney, P., Smyth, J. & Down, B. (2011) ‘Coming to a place near you?’ The politics and possibilities of a critical pedagogy of place-based education, Asia-Pacific Journal of Teacher Education 39(1), p. Stenseth, A-M. (2023) “I am Sámi, but I am not a Sámi” Coastal Sámi students’ articulations of identity in a colonial-blind Norwegian state, Nordic Journal of Comparative and International Education 7(1), p. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.7577/njcie.5036 Zilliacus, H., Paulsrud, B., & Holm, G. (2017). Essentializing vs. non-essentializing students' cultural identities: curricular discourses in Finland and Sweden. Journal of multicultural discourses, 12(2), 166-180. https://doi.org/10.1080/17447143.2017.1311335

In the tradition of the Nordic Bildungsroman, the protagonist is in search of himself and a place in society. This entails the young person journeying out in search of himself, hence alienating and/or exiling himself from his home, before returning to a feeling of resonance. In the contemporary anti-Bildungstrilogy about Andreas Doppler, Erlend Loe tells a different story. On a faithful morning, Doppler falls on his bike ride in the woods, and suddenly feels completely alienated from his competent suburban existence. In an attempt at recovering his sense of resonance with himself and nature, Doppler flees into the Norwegian woods and settles there. Doppler finds an at least temporary respite from the life of competence and productivity from which he fled. In the third volume of the trilogy however, Doppler begins to long for his children and the intimacy of family life. However, upon returning he discovers that his family is no longer his but has in fact been “invaded”, or so Doppler sees it, by another man. Doppler settles now in the no longer used tree house in the garden, from where he observes the family and its new member. Here, Doppler feels nostalgic, not just for the woods from which he has returned, but also for the productive and competent family life he left behind. He is in exile even when at home. In this presentation, starting from the tale of Doppler, we will explore the phenomenon of nostalgia and exile so characteristic of modern life (Cassin, 2014). Central to the establishment of the ideal of public enlightenment (folkelig dannelse) and the establishment of the folk high schools in the Nordic countries, was the idea of belonging to a particular place and a particular people (Grundtvig, 1983, Straume, 2013). This ideal existed alongside a literary and poetic tradition of tales of alienation and exile as preconditions for finding one’s way back home. Hence Bildung has always rested upon this tension between home and away, resonance and alienation. If, as some current philosophers hold, we can no longer view past, present, or future considering the ideal of progress (Cassin, 2014; Savransky, 2021; Stengers, 2015), then the very dichotomy between home and away, between resonance and alienation, no longer makes sense for theories of Bildung, Nordic or otherwise. Like Doppler, we are stuck in exile in the tree house.

Cassin, B. (2016). Nostalgia. When Are We Ever at Home? Fordham University Press. Grundtvig, N.F.S.(1983). Statsmæssig oplysning. Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck. Loe, E. (2006) Doppler. København: Gyldendal. Loe, E. (2015) Enden på verden som vi kender den. København: Gyldendal. Savransky M. (2021). After progress: Notes for an ecology of perhaps. Ephemera: Theory & Politics in Organisation, 21(1), pp. 267–281. Stengers, I. (2015) In catastrophic times: Resisting the coming barbarism, trans. Andrew Goffey. Open Humanities Press. Straume, Ingerid S. (ed.) (2013). Danningens Filosofihistorie. Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. Jaeggi, R. (2014) Alienation. Columbia University Press.

The paper discusses value conflicts inherent in Danish interpretations of the concept of Bildung, particularly regarding the clash between nostalgic national and universal enlightenment ideals. The Danish Folk high school songbook will serve as an illustration. The idea of Bildung is ambiguous, pointing in several political and ideological directions, such as conservatism, liberalism, and left-wing ideologies. Consequently, researchers and school people are fighting over definitions of Bildung. One discussion concerns in what degree schools should promote national values. Historically, there has been a clash between national values and universal enlightenment ideals of being human (Herder, 2004). Heller (2019) describes this as the European Paradox: a central European ideal is “the enlightened universal man”, but on the other hand, the nation-state is the norm setter for values linked to the nation (Heller 2019). I will argue that the folk high school songbook is a pertinent example of this paradox. The Danish theologian, poet, and educational thinker N.F.S. Grundtvig (1783-1872) was the main inspiration for the Danish phenomenon 'the folk high school' ('Folkehøjskole'. Grundtvig advocated a poetic historical pedagogy, appealing to the sensuality and enlightened spirit of the people (Grundtvig, 1983; Korsgaard, 2004; Wieser, 2022). As Hannah Arendt reminds us: "the mother tongue is the only thing you can take with you from the old country" (cited in Cassin, 2016, p. 45). Especially poems and songs written in the national language have a significant impact on a person's identity. Poems express the mother tongue in a very nuanced way which might be difficult for a foreigner to understand. In this sense, poems and songs written in the mother tongue develop the feeling of belonging to a people. The songbook still plays a significant role, not only in the folk high school, but in most educational institutions and communities in Denmark. The songbook is one of the cornerstones in upholding Grundtvig's ideal of public ('folkelig') Bildung. Singing together is a sensual, emotional practice of Bildung. Following Grundtvig, I will argue that the Bildung ideal of the Danish folk high school refers to ideals of enlightenment and nostalgia. Nostalgia is represented by the national song treasure, which forms part of the songbook. Enlightenment is represented by Danish and international songs addressing freedom of spirit and global citizenship. The clash might illustrate that the Danish high school is a genuinely democratic institution because it can accommodate nationality, universality, and political diversity at the same time.

Cassin, B. (2016) Nostalgia: When are we ever at home? Fordham University Press Grundtvig, N.F.S.(1983). Statsmæssig oplysning. Nyt Nordisk Forlag Arnold Busck Heller, A. (2019: Das Paradox des Europäischen Nationalstaates. In. Heller, A. Paradox Europa. Edition Konturen. Herder, J.G.(2004 [1774]). Another Philosophy of History for the Education of Mankind. I. Herder. J.G. Another Philosophy of History and Selected Political Writings. Hackett Korsgaard, O.(2004). Kampen om folket. Gyldendal. Wieser, C.(2023). Die poetische Pädagogik von Grundtvig: Spuren einer dänischen Konzeption von Bildung.In. Pädagogische Rundschau Vol 77(2)

This paper will examine whether a Norwegian “pedagogy of place” – as the Norwegian pedagogue Erling Kristvik (1882-1969) sought to formulate it – is possible or even desirably in the 21st century, as more and more of our problems are global and demands a cosmopolitical awareness. Throughout the centuries, education has represented an encounter between generations connected to a particular place. Education has always consisted in the transmission of practices of work, rituals, ethics, and worldviews through actions and doctrines, but maybe first and foremost through narratives and poetry. However, in a post-enlightenment and modern society both community and belonging to a place need to be constructed in a particular central institution (school) by and through a corresponding knowledge form (pedagogy). Focusing on the notion of place, reveals interesting similarities between Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s concept of “the dialectics of Enlightenment” and Heidegger’s conception of the nature of technology, seeing as both are characterized by the erasing of place. Education plays an ambiguous role in this process – whether we call it the dialectics of Enlightenment (Adorno/Horkheimer) or the rise of technology (Heidegger), education necessarily connects us to a particular place through local curriculum, cultural history, and national heritage. At the same time, education seeks to sever the connection to a particular place through centralized factory-like schools, standardized curriculum, and formal competences. Erling Kristvik has addressed this problem in a Norwegian context. Early in the 20th century he wanted to formulate a “pedagogy of place” to counter the technical and alienating tendencies of modern society. He introduced «heimstadlære» (homestead-subject) as a holistic subject where the pupils’ education was closely anchored in their home environment. By entering a dialogue between Kristvik, Adorno/Horkheimer, and Heidegger, this paper asks whether a specific Norwegian “pedagogy of place” is possible in the 21st century. Is it meaningful to formulate a specific Norwegian version of Bildung when more and more of our local practices are entangled in international and global horizons of meaning? Furthermore, when discussing whether a specific Norwegian “pedagogy of place” is desirable in the 21st century, I will ask if this specific Norwegian version of Bildung is a contribution to common problems of humanity, or if it represents an exclusive nostalgia?

Adorno, T. & Horkheimer, M. (2011). Opplysningens dialektikk: filosofiske fragmenter, trans. L. P. S. Torjussen. Spartacus Heidegger, M. (2004). Vorträge und Aufsätze (Die Frage nach der Technik). Klett-Cotta. Kristvik, E. (1941). Læraryrket. Olaf Norlis Forlag Kristvik, E. (1944). Sjelelære. Olaf Norlis Forlag Kristvik, E. (1951) Elevkunne. Olaf Norlis Forlag

Adam Smith is a towering figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, a period that his older contemporary, the philosopher David Hume, referred to as ‘the historical Age’ of the ‘historical Nation’. Smith is perhaps most famous for his writings on political economy, his monumental An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), has proven to be a classic of the developing field of economic thought, and his investigation into Homo economicus remains a starting point for subsequent investigations of the behaviour of human beings in economic and political contexts. As a moral philosopher, questions of economic and social justice were never far from Smith’s mind, and educational considerations would play a key role in his thinking on these issues. Connecting his Wealth of Nations and his earlier The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) is a concern for moral education, together with a concern for religion and justice. Smith argues that economics can be assessed in moral terms: ‘economic policy is bad policy if it has morally unacceptable consequences’ (A. Broadie, A History of Scottish Philosophy, (EUP 2009), p199). One unacceptable consequence of the division of labour is the potential moral and spiritual damage it will do to people in the performance of endlessly repetitive microtasks. To ameliorate this, Smith proposed that, along with defence of the realm and the administration of justice, governments should support a system of schooling that would protect workers moral lives. This workshop will explore this crucial educational dimension of Smith’s thought.