Conference Agenda

Deliberation of empirical legitimation of educational systems in the western cultures and the meaning of human rights as a reference for justice in education in a democracy

Education is a state-structured institution that, in a democratic state, move between different structures for legitimation. Historically education has strong ties to the movement of enlightenment. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant made a strong testimony writing an essay in Berlinische Monatsschrift, December 1784, titled: ‘Answering the question: What is Enlightenment?’ The first sentence in his answer was: “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity” (Kant 1989, p 27). In his testimony Kant writes that most people of his time were satisfied following the guidance of the central societal institutions, the king, and the church. Kant, on the other hand, wanted people to do the work entailed in thinking themselves. He urges the reader through a formulation in Latin from the Roman poet Horace: “Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own understanding” (Kant 1989, p. 27). This Kantian expression became a program for self-liberation through public discourse that is at work. The courage of the individual person to express her/his will public as reason, is the main resource for a democratic society. Education is, in this perspective, the public institution that builds democracy.

With the development of universal human rights, through the United Nations, the historicity of human rights ceases to exist. On the 10^th of December 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the international document named ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’. This document states the universal character of human rights, that human rights are rights for all human beings, everywhere, and for all time. From this moment on education was given a reference to two different sources for legitimation. First, the universal right to education. Second, the policy of education of the nation-state.

When a government, want to legitimate their program for education through a value-theoretical approach they understand value as an instrument for the state. Education becomes, in this perspective, like all other values, just a tool for the power of the state. Nation-states in Western culture often recognize education as an important instrument for the development of the value of the state in line with other value-systems like economics. What did I want to show with this? Mainly that nations legitimate their power to construct educational institutions, without any reference to their inhabitants’ rights. Teacher education is not different. However, teacher education is part of an academic community, with reference to the responsibility of academic autonomy. Teacher educators must think and act themselves and do this thinking and acting critically. Through education teacher students learn to teach. In these learning-acts teacher students, among other things, learn to assess and to decide, and keep pupils aware of, what is not acceptable behavior. This is acts of teaching that is in tension with the rights to education.

The study we are presenting shows an experience in which the teacher shares with the students a class diary that is mostly composed of personal reflective processes that happen during the subject. The context in which this experience takes place is in the subject Educational Organisation, in the second year of the degree in pedagogy at the University of Malaga, in the first semester of the academic year 2022-2023. In this experience, 60 students and the four people who signed this paper participated, three of them being teachers of this subject, and the remaining person teaches the same group, but in another subject.

The main objective is to show students the role of the teacher in a more humanised and closer way in order to create a relationship of trust between teachers and students. Paraphrasing bell hooks (2022), in order to create an atmosphere of trust in the classroom it has been necessary to take the teacher out of his or her safety zone, this has been done by not being afraid to show and recognise his or her mistakes, insecurities and even feelings of vulnerability with respect to some topics and situations that arise in class. Following the idea of the same work by bell hooks, conflict situations are used as opportunities to create spaces for debate and critical thinking instead of treating conflicts as taboo situations that are ignored to avoid frustration.

The teacher, in this case, shares feelings of satisfaction, frustration, concerns, challenges, and even acknowledges mistakes in the approach to activities that turn out to be contrary to expectations. This generates class discussions in which a process of evolution in classroom interactions can be appreciated. The results of this experience, as well as its consequences, will be shared in the conclusions of this work.

Throughout the whole process, the role of authoritarian and oppressive power that teachers tend to have, and which is culturally acquired and promoted by both teachers and students, is taken into account, trying to generate a context where students are able to liberate themselves and to liberate the oppressors (Freire, 1970).

In order to face the transformation of this roll, in addition to trust, conflict and other bell hooks ideas mentioned above, we have taken into account the principles of dialogic learning of Ramón Flecha (2002), seeking in this way a democratisation of relationships as well as a context of debate that generates the construction of collective learning in an egalitarian way.

Another idea that has been important throughout the classroom process, as well as during the research, is the use of the biographical-narrative perspective. Speaking at this point only of the teaching-learning process (we will return to the biographical-narrative perspective in the section on research methods), first of all, students were asked to write an individual account of their educational experience until they reached university, and then this account was shared in small groups, creating a representation of their experiences that would then be shared with the whole class. Another activity carried out is a learning story with self-assessment, which consists of writing about their time in the subject, and reasoning what mark they deserve and why they deserve it. Perhaps it goes without saying that the diary itself is another activity based on the biographical-narrative perspective. In this way we use the biographical-narrative perspective as a space for the construction, reflection and analysis of previous and present experiences in order to build individual and collective learning during our passage through the subject (Rivas y Leite, 2013).

Montessori teacher education, or “training” - as it is usually referred to, seems to be an intriguing example of a precisely defined and unique methodology of professional development conducted by the organizations which do not belong to the academic world but they are rather private, non-state funded entities or non-for-profit NGOs. Montessori education is practiced on all continents, in 154 countries, and is one of the dominant “alternative” to traditional schooling with estimated 15763 schools around the world. Such popularity also means that that there is a global demand for teachers prepared for working in accordance with this approach. Additionally, the founder of the pedagogy Maria Montessori left very clear instructions on the preparation of the adult. In this context the education of future Montessori practitioners is both described in detail and – to a large extent – elitist and privatized. At the same time the Montessori courses “use” specific techniques and technologies to “train” the teachers, which might be an interesting “lens” through which teacher education as such can be analyzed. The main research question of the empirical project was: how do Montessori approach trainees experience their participation in the training programs?