Conference Agenda

From a governmental perspective, maintaining an economic area in global competition does not only mean to have access to the newest technology and creating the right atmosphere and legal framework for innovation und entrepreneurship education but also to support adults and young adults with low levels of skills and qualifications in accessing new learning opportunities and reskilling and upskilling their competences. According to the European Commission (2021, p. 14) “in 2019, 21.6 % of adults (aged 25-64) in the EU – 51.5 million people – had not completed upper secondary education (ISCED 3; EQF 3 or 4). Of these, 12.5 million left the education system with less than lower secondary education”. Moreover, across all EU Member States, the proportion of adults (aged 25-64) without upper secondary education is higher among adults born outside the country of residence (foreign-born) than among adults born in the country (34.1% vs. 19.6% in 2019; ibid, p. 32). Considering that retraining and upskilling adults in precarious employment is a high priority for the European Commission until 2030 (ibid, p. 30), and assuming that not all adults are willing or able to upgrade their educational qualifications, entrepreneurship can be central to socio-economic integration processes as it can provide access to better jobs (ILO 2018) or help to earn a living, achieve a better social status and have a smoother transition into the labour market (Alexandre-Leclair 2014). Therefore, participation in entrepreneurship education (EE), as distinct in many ways from general education, could unlock skills in vulnerable groups and enable them to identify new opportunities and lead empowered lives in one’s given or new social contexts. It is noteworthy that many of the marginalised groups, especially the newcomer refugees and immigrants, possess valuable entrepreneurship skills as they were already familiar with running a business in their own country. These existing skills and social inclusion need to be harnessed in host countries through meaningful policies, programmes and strategies all the more as they contribute to the economic and social development of their region. While entrepreneurship in general is considered "one of the strongest drivers of job creation worldwide and has a powerful impact on economic growth and political stability" (Bohoney 2011), our research shows that there is a lack of research on entrepreneurship education and vulnerable groups, as most policies, interventions and projects target the highly skilled, as higher levels of education and experience are correlated to higher rates of success (Van der Sluis et al., 2006). Furthermore, our research in SIATE has shown that non-connected networks and EU projects, welfare systems and institutionalised barriers are also impediments to the participation of vulnerable adults in EE. With the creation of ENTNET (European Network for Entrepreneurship in Adult Education) we hope to go beyond the duration of the funded project and create meaningful networks and support for vulnerable groups and their participation in EE. At this point we will also problematise the challenges we face in building ENTNET and the implications for longevity and accountability beyond the funding period.

How do you go about a partnership project that intends to develop ideas bottom up? In the project “Hacking Innovative Pedagogies: Digital Education Rewilded” our intention is to “rewild” higher education, by focusing on just and fair pedagogies using bottom-up approaches. By “rewilding” higher education pedagogy we understand the rediscovery of ways that support the complexity of human learning, that take note of inequalities generated through human/digital technology relationships (Waller, 2007), with the overall aim to reduce the negative impacts of industry driven digital environment building (Bowers, 2014). This means that we want to return to the nested ingenuities communities of teachers and students carry with them. Instead of managing education from the top down, that can lead to monocultures of education, we want to set up processes and opportunities that include stakeholders and support the experimenting, (co-) creating and sharing of nested digi-tech solutions from the bottom up, that are more diverse and sensitive to local contexts. However, such an ambition requires a special approach and a consideration of what “partnership” means in this context.

In this presentation we will share our “pedagogy of methodology” (Otrel-Cass, 2022), and describe an approach to a partnership project where we want to identify people’s experiences, articulations and reflections about teaching and learning with digital technologies in different ways. As partners we want to focus on aspects of well-being, and the importance of taking nested teaching and learning cultures seriously but acknowledge that doing so requires a deep understanding of different institutional practices. While our focus on hacking and rewilding may give the impression of fast paced, technology-driven approaches, our partnership approach is underpinned by an ethic of care. This includes responsibility and respect for others and the motivation and willingness to protect the other, above all however, it means to listen (Noddings, 2012). The presentation will focus on how such an approach can support professional/teacher/student agency and what tools we are considering that might widen the possibilities for teachers and students to share their ideas and experiences to imagine new futures of teaching.

The “Hacking Innovative Pedagogies is an Erasmus+ funded partnership project that involves partners from 3 countries (Austria, Ireland, and Denmark). This project only started in the middle of 2022. In the short time since the team has worked together to refine our project plans, prepare a synthesis report and co-designed methods to ask teachers and students at our institutions about their experiences and ideas on how to rewild higher education pedagogies. In this presentation we will introduce the project and share our approaches and early insights.

The field of sexuality education has gained renewed interest within policy and practice in Sweden as well as in other parts of the world (e.g. OECD). In Sweden, there is a revised curriculum from 2022 that includes strengthened formulations concerning what now is labeled the knowledge area of sexuality, consent and relationships. This means that both teachers and researchers find it urgent to explore how this can be carried out in teaching.

Within this educational-political setting, four colleagues and I conducted a practice-based research project in secondary schools. Drawing from the project, this paper aims to theoretically and empirically explore the encounter of practice-based research and feminist posthumanisms with a specific focus on affective dimensions. More specifically, how the matter of sexuality education offered specific affective conditions for the practice-based research collaboration.

This exploration is carried out with a feminist posthumanist theoretical framework. This framework “turns the attention to sensuous, affective, material and spatial qualities” (Juelskjær 2017, p. 65-66) co-creating both educational and research practices. By putting to work feminist posthumanism, the exploration addresses the indeterminacy of affective conditions. Working with the notion of affective conditions makes it possible to methodologically consider energies, frictions and movements in terms of how they are operating in a manner that is contingent upon relational doings (Gunnarsson 2022). As affectivity is a vital component difficult to bare or linger, this was done by slowing down the messy research practice and being attentive to moments when intensities and frictions were at play.

Grounded in a feminist posthumanist approach, this paper connects to research working with postqualitiative methodology. This methodological approach entails considering how knowledge is a performative practice taking place together with the world. By stressing co-producing and interfering aspects, collaboration and engagement with those whom the research concerns become vital (Duggan 2021; Murris 2020). As such, co-production here suggests research to “engage productively with a world in process” (Duggan 2021, p. 357). Then, the response-abilities of doing research imply “working as collaborative assemblages in order to generate social changes and recognize the material force and impact of our research on the world around us” (Ringrose et.al. 2019, p. 262; see also Renold & Ivinson 2022).

Hence, working with this feminist posthumanist collaborative practice-based approach offered the possibility to engage with sexuality education in terms of careful proximity. This meant interfering and inventing together with teachers, classrooms, and school subjects, within specific kinds of closeness which also involves risks and fragilities. With inspiration from the writing of Puig de la Bellacasa (2017), the ethical-political notion of care is connected to knowledge production and offers a way to entangle methodology, theory and practice. This is done by encouraging the “awareness of the vulnerability of the facts and things we set out to study and criticize” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2017, p. 36 in Gunnarsson 2023).

As such, this paper addresses how practice-based approaches involve methodological concerns of both being sensitive to as well as working with the creation of affective conditions. This means considering how the research practice involves mutual doings that push and manage affective conditions in specific directions. Moreover, how our mutual research doings carry ambiguities and uncertainties of creating affective-spatial apparatuses for what might take place in the encounters.