Conference Agenda

The school is a social microcosm where the political-cultural and economic-social panoramas are reflected. In this context, teachers' memory narratives can be observed in a sociodynamic perspective. The memories that emerge in teachers' narratives reflect their interpretation of past events and biographical experiences in constant dialogue with their present. In this article, we intend to explore the social memory of school in the time of the Estado Novo (1933-1974) in Portugal, focusing on how teachers' testimonies reveal the social and temporal dialogue of school memories.

The “Estado Novo” dictatorship period in Portugal characterized by authoritarianism, strict censorship, corporativism and a lack of political freedoms. During this time, the Portuguese education system was heavily influenced by the ideology of the regime, which emphasized the values of "Deus, Pátria e Família" (God, Homeland, and Family). This ideology was disseminated throughout the education system and had a significant impact on the experiences of students and teachers alike.

This study aims to observe how national political dynamics have affected the memory of the school and how teaching experiences emerge in teachers' narratives and reveal interviewees' perceptions of the national context of education.

At ECER 2022, I sketched the “posthumanist” framework of a recently initiated research project which also informs the current paper proposal. In this project, I venture into what Bruno Latour (2004) would perhaps have considered “articulations”, associations/translations/adaptations in ongoing erratic movement, but what Karen Barad (2007) would figure as iterative entanglements or “enfoldments”, of “education” and “street art” imbued with “history” which have come to help shape the city of Porto, Portugal in ways similar to yet different from other European cities. “Troubling time/s” (Barad 2017, 2018), this project views “historical eras” as “multitemporal” (Serres & Latour, 1995: 60), rather than singular and successive, although it upholds the importance of precise incisions into their fabric. Likewise, “history” emerges from it not as a representational study of the past linearly distanced from it in the present but as performative practices of simultaneously “knowledge seeking and -effecting” (Thyssen 2023; Thyssen et al. 2023, 2021) that help mark/embody (cf. Barad 2007) temporalities in education and street art enfolding.

At ECER 2023, I wish to explore methods to help “re-turn” (to) or “cut together-apart” (Barad 2014; Thyssen & Herman 2019; Thyssen et al. 2023) such enfoldments of history, education and street art, some of which pertain to as early a period as the 1850s as much as they do to the early 2020s. I intend to highlight tools of analysis (“contemporary” audio-visual as well as more traditional textual-archival ones) which may have innovative potential for the historiography of education and education research more broadly when used “diffractively” (Barad 2007, 2014), that is: when employed purposely to allow results from these to be analysed through one another as ways of “re-membering”/reconfiguring (Barad, 2017, 2018) enfoldments such that particular inclusions-exclusions embodied therein, “mattering (...) simultaneously [as] )...) substance and significance” (Barad 2007, ix), are teased out. I plan to explore, in one and the same move, such methods’ potential on the premise of an approach geared at grasping matters “compositionally”, in their immanence, as matters worth “assembling” (around), precisely because of their bodying forth of inclusions that are also exclusions (Latour 2010).

My proposal takes a cue from António Nóvoa (2015: 49, 50), who urged scholars researching education historically to engage in “risk-taking and transgression”, so as to help “discover new problems (…) left hidden, in silence, by (…) educational historiography”. With reference to its etymology, I have suggested elsewhere (Thyssen et al. 2021, 2023; Thyssen 2023) that historio-graphy can be figured as “drawing(s)-together” of knowledge effecting concerning education. Here, I wish to explore particularly the potential of “street-wise” drawing together of knowledge effecting, not so much from an interest in the street itself as an educationally relevant “place and space” (Smith 2001) and/or “object” (Watt 2016), as from a fascination with (non-formal and) informal education (of various kinds) as it has been emerging with street art, which may help understand historically education, however conceived, in different, more formal contexts as well.

This paper introduces the work of the Finnish educational philosopher, Urpo Harva (1910–1994), who became the first professor of adult education in any of the Nordic countries in 1946. Harva identified as the first Finnish academic professor that included nature conservation, environmental education, and active debate against the ideal of continuous economic growth to his own teaching (Salo 1994). Already in the 1950s, Harva (1955; Alanen 1994; Salo 1994) wrote about how the most important task of adult education should be nature conservation. Despite Harva’s progressive approach to environmental issues not only in academic but in public discussion with columns and essays published in Finnish newspapers as well, he is nowadays only remembered as a value philosopher. Moreover, his ecological ideas are largely neglected although many in Finland have acknowledged Harva’s efforts to make environmental awareness a key part of adult education (e.g., Alanen 1994; 1997; Mäki-Kulmala 1995; Jaaksi 1997; Vilkka 1997; Värri 1997).

In this paper, I intend to correct this lack of research and assert that Harva should be understood not only as a philosopher of value but also as a theoretician of environmental adult education. Thus, my purpose is to supplement the history of Finnish theory of environmental adult education and to show how strong the presence of environmental issues has been in Finnish adult education in the past. To prove this, my aim is first, define basis of Harva’s environmental theory, and second, to localise Harva’s environmental adult educational theory’s philosophical starting points.

The basis on Harva’s environmental theory needs to be pieced together from his various columns and essays in Finnish and to combine them with his earlier theories because Harva did not publish any one piece specifically devoted to the environmental issues (Vilkka 1997; Jaaksi 1997). So far, the only two pieces of research into Harva’s environmental theory have been by the Finnish philosophers Leena Vilkka (1997) and Vesa Jaaksi (1997), respectively. In this study, I use more extensive material than Jaaksi and Vilkka a quarter of a century ago and I'm aiming for an even broader overview of Harva's thinking.

To localise philosophical starting points of Harva’s environmental adult education theory, I utilise Canadian professor Pierre Walter’s (2009; 2021) definition of five major philosophical approaches guiding historical development of environmental adult education theory and practices since the beginning of 1900s which are liberal, progressive, behaviorist, humanistic and radical. All these approaches include informal learning (Walter 2021). Interestingly, especially self-cultivation, i. e. a voluntary task of developing one’s personality to reach mature adulthood guided by moral principles, the theory of which has a rich history in Finland (Koski & Filander 2013), as a form of informal learning was essential form of adult education for Harva (Harva 1955; 1963; Alanen 1994, 297; 1997, 28)

I this article, I argue that Harva's environmental adult education is based on the civic educational goal of encouraging Finnish into implementing a biophilic attitude, i. e. implementing nurture relationship with the living and non-living things in nature (e. g. Blom, Aguayo & Carapeto 2020, 8–10; Orr 2004, 131–152), achieved by active inner work of self-cultivation. To prove my argument, I analysed 31 columns and essays Harva wrote during 1971 to 1994 focusing on environmental issues with abductive content analysis guided by the following research questions:

1. What are the societal structures Harva thinks should be targeted by adult education in the pursuit of more ecologically sustainable practices?

2. What forms of self-cultivation does Harva think might counteract the values these societal structures represent?

3. How do Harva’s environmental philosophy fit in with the rest of environmental adult education theory?