Conference Agenda

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.