Conference Agenda

The aim of this small-scale research is to explore whether there is an improvement teaching and learning practices resulting from the collaborative action research focused on Student Engagement in Classroom Learning, implemented in 22 SHARE schools (School Hub for Action Research in Education) in Astana city, Kazakhstan.

The SHARE project is an educational initiative, implemented since 2019 by the Astana city Department of Education in collaboration with esteemed scholars, including the Emeritus Professor of the University of Cambridge, Professor Colleen McLaughlin, a former Principal of Bottisham Village College Mrs. Kate Evans and Dr Nazipa Ayubayeva, the University of Cambridge graduate and prominent advocate for action research in Kazakhstan, who also serves as a national coordinator for the SHARE. The coordination and implementation of the SHARE are carried out by the Center for Education Modernisation along with 22 school coordinators, four of whom are the authors of this paper.

The primary goal of the SHARE is to bring about the changes into teachers’ practice, ensuring that every child benefits from the initiative. In contemporary educational settings, there exists a need to explore innovative methodologies that actively engage students in the learning process. Scholarly enquiries by Elliott (1991), Townsend (2013), Pollard (2014), and other education practitioners highlight the transformative impact of action research on the educational paradigm, fostering to enhance learning outcomes. In response to this context, Calhoun (1993) has emphasized three distinct approaches aimed at supporting teachers to improve teaching and learning practices by engaging inaction research: 1. Individual teacher research, 2. Collaborative action research, and 3. School-wide action research. Manfra's (2019) research findings suggest that collaborative action research approaches are particularly effective in empowering teachers to modify their teaching practices. Moreover, Oranga and Gisore(2023) in their research focus their attention on improving problem-solving effectiveness through comprehensive school-wide initiatives.

Hence, the SHARE, that started as a collaborative action research within and across different schools of Astana city has a significant potential to help teachers to improve teaching, enhance their own learning and share ideas and practices for other to learn from.The implementation of any small-scale action research project within the SHARE centers around four domains of change: 1) acquiring knowledge about action research methodology; 2) improving teaching and learning; 3) fostering teacher leadership; 4) establishing conditions for sustained engagement in the initiative and beyond.

As such, during the 2022-2023 academic year all 22 SHARE schools implemented a small-scale action research project about student engagement in classroom learning. During academic year teachers were guided by the core team of scholar show to implement the project, including reading about student engagement, conducting classes, filling in the protocols of class observation and video-recording lessons for the analysis and etc., in order to learn about student engagement in classroom settings. Whereas SHARE school-coordinators were guided by a national coordinator to research teachers’ perception about the four domains of SHARE. Specifically, our team consisting of a national coordinator and four school-coordinators came together to research teachers’ perception about one of the SHARE domains. That is, to learn about changes in teaching and learning practices steaming from the implementation of student engagement in classroom settings, implemented across 22 SHARE schools.

Thus, the research is intended to assist conducting a literature review about teachers’ perception of changes and contribute to better understanding of how teachers perceive the changes and improvements in their practices within SHARE initiatives.

The present paper is part of the PNRR PhD project “Teaching and learning heritage”, which responds to the need expressed in the PNRR plan to develop strategies for safeguarding cultural heritage (M1C3.1: cultural heritage for the next generation). The research project identifies heritage education with children as a possible safeguarding action, as also suggested by the 2003 UNESCO Convention.

Considering the reflections brought by Manal & Srour (2021) and Smith (2013), which underline how children are under-represented in heritage discourses and how necessary it is to rethink their relationship with heritage, the aim of the research is to get a deeper understanding of children’s perspectives of cultural heritage (in all its forms, natural, tangible and intangible), and its associated meanings, related to their everyday urban environment.

In this context, mapping urban spaces with children as a method to foster an identification and co-construction of knowledge (De Nicola et al., 2022) of cultural heritage is proposed. For considering children as social and cultural actors (Melton et al, 2014), implies involving them in safeguarding processes and bringing their voices into the – this way intergenerationally structured – heritage discourse.

To reflect on heritage education, the perspective of intangible cultural heritage is proposed. The “intangible cultural heritage” paradigm shift introduced by 2003 UNESCO Convention highlights a change from the hegemony of the cultural objects to the centrality of the subjects (Lapiccirella Zingari, 2017, p. 19). The 2005 Faro Convention also emphasises the relevance of the participation of communities, groups, and individuals in the processes of heritage making, safeguarding and education. Thus, heritage, considered as a cultural (Smith, 2006) and active process (Copeland, 2012, p. 22), is constituted by the meanings and the values that individuals attribute to it. Accordingly, heritage education “is about people” (Copeland, 2012, p.22), which means that it lies less in the acquisition of factual knowledge, but rather in the individuals’ involvement in the process of heritage making and meaning making. Furthermore, Del Gobbo et al. (2018) emphasise the importance of designing educational activities that foster the production of a plurality of narratives and interpretations by persons and communities, highlighting the dynamic and active component of cultural experiences (p.26).

Inspired by Children’s geography, the tool of mapping urban spaces, assuming the "more than representational" approach (Malatesta, 2015), allows to compose the experienced dimension (practices, meanings, values) of places with its translation into graphic form (Malatesta, 2015, p.62). In this sense, mapping no longer represents an objective physical space, but becomes the narrative of an experienced and lived place. As Barnes (2018) and Powell (2010) suggest, mapping, as a research method, allows the exploring of new narratives, not fixing meanings.

In heritage education, asking children to map their urban spaces means identifying all those elements (places, cultural practices, people) considered important. The children’s narratives of their maps will compose a collective narrative of the places, as well as of the community living in the neighborhood.

Observing cultural heritage from everyday places responds on one hand to the necessity to make this concept more accessible (Schofield, 2015), anchoring it in everyday experiences that are considered significant; on the other hand, it also allows to recognise all those 'unofficial' cultural expressions as heritage (Harrison, 2013, p. 15).

In a present marked by uncertainty, instability, and unpredictability, school system struggles to keep pace, despite calls for schools and teachers to be dynamic, open to change and to prepare pupils to face the challenges and problems of an ever-fast-changing world (European Union, 2008). The environments where we spend most of our time in the period of (trans)formation appear entrenched in an overly predetermined structure that fail to align with the dynamism of the present. This research aims to delve into jazz, conceived as a metaphor encompassing values and attitudes essential for daily life and long-term development (Santi, Zorzi, 2016). Jazz embodies a formative potential for the next generations and a trans-formative one for the teaching/learning approach and, more in general, for the idea of an inclusive, inventive, polyphonic, and explorative education. Schools frequently hinder aspects inherent to human existence that are also prevalent in jazz: improvisation in ambiguous situations, adaptation to new contexts, curiosity about the unknown, and learning from mistakes. Instead of presenting themselves as protected havens resistant to the unpredictability of the world, educational environments should be viewed as safe spaces that foster experimentation, mirroring what happens between jazz musicians during a jam session with no audience. In both contexts, focus is placed on the process unfolding in the present, requiring continuous attention (Masschelein, 2010), rather than prioritizing the product as a predetermined outcome subject to rigid evaluation criteria.

The research’s main theoretical framework is pedagojazz (Santi, 2010, 2015; Santi, Zorzi, 2016). Santi's theoretical proposal introduces values that could serve as inspiration for a novel pedagogical approach, exploring possibilities often overlooked in traditional education. Specifically, it emphasizes the significance of authentic presence, the establishment of a safe creativity environment (Weinstein, 2016) that encourages experimentation without fear of making mistakes, and the importance of maintaining an open stance toward others in the pursuit of a shared educational journey. Above all, pedagojazz places a priority on the potential of improvisation, a fundamental element of jazz music, that has undergone extensive study in various fields, including education (Cappa, Negro, 2006; Tomlinson, Germundson, 2007; Sawyer, 2011; Zorzi, 2020). It teaches that mistakes are inherent in the journey, and the real challenge lies in effectively dealing with them. Embracing mistakes is the pathway to stepping out of our comfort zones and genuinely putting ourselves on the line.

The research subject is of great topicality, which is confirmed by the support from NRRP funds for this research grant. Moreover, the project stems from a collaboration between the University of Padua and Federazione Nazionale Il Jazz Italiano. The objective is to expose jazz hallmarks by drawing insights directly from the experiences of jazz professionals to outline a teaching and learning jazzing posture that responds to the need to embrace the uncertainty of the present. Due to the collaborative nature of the project, it pursues two interconnected goals, addressing both theoretical and practical needs. Firstly, it endeavors to explore the potentially revolutionary impact of a jazzing approach in the pedagogical field: what does it mean to bring jazz to school? What does a teaching and learning jazzing posture entail? Which positive implications might it have? Secondly, the project aims to highlight the cultural heritage of jazz, recognized by UNESCO for promoting peace, dialogue, respect, eradicating discrimination, fostering gender equality, and promoting freedom of expression. The collaborative effort involves co-constructing a yet-to-be-identified tool with representatives from jazz organizations to answer the following questions: how is it possible to enhance networking among musicians engaged in the educational field? How could this step benefit the school system as a whole?

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL)* and language immersion programmes have been implemented in the majority of educational systems of Europe since the 1990s (Goris et al., 2019; Renau & Mas Marti, 2018). There is a consensus in the literature that the target language (TL) development of students in CLIL and immersion settings outstrips their peers who study the language in stand-alone classes (Cammarata & Tedick, 2012; Dalton-Puffer, 2008; Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, 2013; Tedick & Lyster, 2020). However, many scholars internationally conclude that students do not reach an advanced level of competence but, rather, a “functional proficiency” (Cammarata & Tedick, 2012, p. 253). For CLIL to reach its full potential by the end of upper secondary education, a more explicit and systematic focus on language is needed in content-area classrooms (Tedick & Lyster, 2020).

There is acknowledgement that this is not an easy undertaking as this fusing of content teaching and language teaching has variously been referred to as a “stab in the dark” (Cammarata & Tedick, 2012, p. 261) and a “conundrum” (Ó Ceallaigh et al., 2018, p. 5). In many jurisdictions this situation is exacerbated by teacher readiness issues, where no specific qualification is required to teach in CLIL settings (Ó Ceallaigh et al., 2018; Tedick & Fortune, 2013).

Irish is a minority language on the island of Ireland with the English language being the first language (L1) of the vast majority of the population (Central Statistics Office, 2017). This research project focused on the lived experiences of secondary CLIL teachers as they attempt to integrate the teaching of content and the teaching of language in Irish-medium schools. The first iteration of a pedagogical tool was developed to explore CLIL teachers’ experiences, attitudes and practices (Mac Gearailt et al., 2023). This pedagogical tool, SIOF, has now been refined and it is hoped that it will be a significant development in a move to a more “systematic” pedagogy” (Genesee & Lindholm-Leary, 2013, p. 22). SIOF focuses on “language sensitive” (Marsh et al., 2001, p. 4) classroom practices that relate to Scaffolding, Input, Output and Feedback.

It adopts a socio-cognitive view of the learning process and accepts that cognition and social interaction have complementary roles in language learning (Lyster, 2007). Considering the varied and naturalistic input of CLIL settings, the work of Krashen (1982), his theory on Comprehensible Input in particular, underpins much of the scholarship on CLIL. Social interactions are fundamental to the sociocultural perspective on second language learning (Lightbown & Spada, 2013). Speaking (and writing) enables learners to control their mental processes, which facilitates the internalisation of language used in social interactions. In devising SIOF the authors drew heavily on the Counterbalanced Approach of Lyster (2007) and the CAPA model of Tedick and Lyster (2020), which focuses on contextualisation, awareness, practice and autonomy when integrating the teaching of language and content. Form-focused instruction (FFI) is the bedrock of these approaches, and of SIOF. FFI is defined as “any pedagogical effort which is used to draw the learners’ attention to language form either implicitly or explicitly” (Spada, 1997, p. 73).

* The authors view CLIL as an umbrella term for any context where an additional language is used to teach content. As such, when the authors use the term CLIL this includes immersion. For further discussion on the interrelatedness of CLIL and immersion see (Mac Gearailt et al., 2021).

Being able to learn independently is indispensable for successfully organizing your time at university. Individual learners are influenced by the teaching practices in higher education, which are often primarily shaped by university lecturers. However, ideas about the design and requirements of self-study often remain vague for this group (Gerber, 2023). One way to address this challenge is to familiarize lecturers with different conceptual understandings and design dimensions of self-study, particularly in light of the fact that the German-speaking scientific discourse on concepts of self-study has so far been largely independent of the rich theoretical and empirical work on related concepts such as self-directed, self-regulated, and self-organized learning (e.g. Dyrna, 2021). Thematizing own ideas and concepts of self-study, especially from an international comparative perspective, seems to open up new opportunities to contribute to the further development of self-study in the European Higher Education Area. Such thematization and reflection were undertaken with lecturers from Germany and Ukraine as part of three workshops on higher education didactics.

Based on the theoretical assumption that metaphors, in particular, have an influence on thinking, speaking, and action (Lakoff & Johnson, 2003), the hypothesis can be derived that the metaphors used by university lecturers to describe self-study reflect their ideas of academic teaching and learning and have an impact on their didactic activities. Lakoff and Johnson (2003) propose that our "unreflected everyday actions [Author's translation.]" and our "everyday language [Author's translation.]" are largely structured by metaphorical concepts. In the following, a metaphor is understood as a transfer of meaning "from one area to another" (Schmitt, 2017, p. 39). A "metaphorical concept" is a bundling of corresponding individual metaphorical phrases and formulations (Schmitt, 2017). Rau and Kosubski (2019) view metaphors in learning and educational contexts as having the potential to express individual and collective ideas about specific topics linguistically and to make them accessible for reflection because they "bundle specific individual or cultural patterns of thought, perception, feeling, and action [Author's translation.]" (Schmitt, 2017, p. 52). The reconstruction of metaphorical concepts opens up opportunities for reflection regarding the linguistic means of one's own didactic expressiveness as well as the everyday language of certain target groups (Rau & Kosubski, 2019). The potential of metaphors as tools for reflection is being discussed and examined, particularly in the English- and German-speaking debate in higher education didactics (e.g. Ekoç-Özçelik 2022; Scharlau, 2020; Bager-Elsborg & Greve 2019; Wegner & Nückles, 2013; Visser-Wijnveen et al., 2009).

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the perceptions and beliefs of university lecturers regarding the concept of self-study through the use of metaphors. In pursuit of this overarching goal, the research addresses the following questions:

• Which metaphors do university lecturers employ to depict self-study?
• How do university teachers conceptualize their role as educators in the context of self-study with respect to the chosen metaphors?
• What disparities exist in the metaphors and interpretations between teachers in Ukraine and Germany?

By the the age of Uncertainty I understand the knot of recently experienced: economic crises, global warming, pandemics, technological development, wars, and mass migrations. All these contribute to the necessity of posing the question on the aim of education again.

My research question is: how do adults, who are directly responsible for children’s development, (i.e. parents and teachers), understand the aim of preschool education and their role in it? What values, attitudes and competences they find fundamental in that regard, and how they define them.

I place special emphasis on preschool education. Evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that experiences from birth through age 5 are critical to children’s development (Wechsler, 2016). At the same time, preschool children are unknowingly thrown into education and these are adults who are responsible for delivering the best possible raising up conditions.

On one hand, research indicates important elements of high-quality early childhood education programs. These include, among others:

• early learning standards and curricula that address the whole child, are developmentally appropriate, and are effectively implemented, assessments that consider children’s academic;

• social-emotional, and physical progress and contribute to instructional and program planning well-prepared teachers who provide engaging interactions and classroom environments that support learning;

• meaningful family engagement.

These high-quality building blocks should be the foundation of any early childhood education system (Wechsler, 2016).

On the other hand, there is a gap between academic research and the way that preschool education is organised and provided in different countries.

Also, the growing consensus that preschool quality matters greatly for children’s outcomes focuses mainly on school entry readiness and academic achievement over the subsequent four years (Newman, 2022).

Various schools that are providing early childhood education have been found exceeding their limits and putting unnecessary pressure and academic burden on pre-schoolers by stressing on formal teaching of reading, writing and number work. These practices appear to have encouraged parents to subject children in the age-group of 3-6 years to the pressure of formal education.

It is very important for both parents and teachers to understand that they have a valuable contribution to make towards development of children at early years without burdening the young mind.

My expected outcome is to unveil parents’ and teachers' Subjective Concepts of Meanings of aims of preschool education.

Capturing the differences and similarities in the subjective perception of reality can be used to redefine the role of the preschool teachers, refresh curriculum and teaching methods.

Outcomes need to be compiled with the current interdisciplinary research and core curricilum which indicates the purpose of preschool education, the preventive and educational tasks of a preschool education setting and the results of the tasks achieved by children at the end of preschool education

Diversity is an integral aspect of our increasingly interconnected world, and understanding its multifaceted dimensions is crucial for fostering inclusive and equitable communities, organizations, and institutions. This workshop seeks to shed light on innovative research methodologies, Photovoice and Active Learning, as potent tools for investigating diversity through a Participatory Action Research (PAR) lens.

Photovoice, a qualitative research technique, empowers participants to capture their experiences visually and narratively, providing an authentic platform for the expression of diverse perspectives (Wang & Burris, 1997). PhotoVoice includes critical reflections of social, political, cultural, and community factors using photographic images (Sitter, 2017; Wang, 1999). Rooted in feminist theories of inclusion and empowerment, participants determine the direction and goals of the project by taking photographs of community experiences that affect their everyday lives (Latz, 2017; Schumann et al., 2019).

Active Learning, on the other hand, engages participants in interactive, collaborative activities, fostering dialogue, self-reflection, and the exchange of diverse viewpoints (Prince, 2004).

The workshop will feature a rich tapestry of insights, experiences, and case studies, demonstrating how Photovoice and Active Learning can be seamlessly integrated into a PAR framework to address diversity comprehensively.

Key themes to be explored during the workshop include:

The transformative power of Photovoice: How visual narratives empower marginalized communities to voice their experiences and challenge existing notions of diversity (Wang, 1999).

Active Learning as a catalyst for meaningful dialogue: Strategies for designing interactive learning activities that promote critical thinking, self-awareness, and empathy in the context of diversity (Bonwell & Eison, 1991).

Active learning methods presume that the educator has high expectations of all the learners and will delegate a lot of the learning process to their learners. Active learning motivates learners to explore by giving them ownership of the learning process, empowering them and helping them see that they have a role in society.

Ethical considerations and practical challenges: Discussions on ethical considerations when working with diverse groups and addressing practical challenges in implementing these methodologies.

Thus, the workshop aims to foster a collaborative and inclusive environment where participants can exchange ideas, best practices, and insights, and inspire future research and action in the field of diversity studies. Together, we will explore how Photovoice and Active Learning, when embedded in the PAR framework, have the potential to drive positive change and promote diversity, equity, and inclusion in our ever-evolving society.

In an increasingly complex and uncertain world, proficiency in numeracy skills provides students essential cognitive tools to interpret evidence, evaluate risk and rewards, and make informed decisions. Thus, effective numeracy instruction offers students hope by empowering them with capacities for reasoning and problem solving vital for personal agency and civic participation. This highlights an imperative within teacher education programs worldwide. However, teaching numeracy poses significant challenges for many preservice teachers. Specifically, conceptual ambiguity regarding numeracy presents difficulties for both teacher educators and future teachers across many countries. These difficulties are further compounded by growing attention given to numeracy in educational policies and standards in places like the UK, US, Canada and Australia. These policies increasingly mandate that all subject area teachers take responsibility for teaching numeracy concepts relevant to their disciplines. For example, in the UK, the National Numeracy Strategy instituted a requirement that numeracy be explicitly addressed across all subjects in primary and secondary schools. Similarly, countries like Australia and Canada have introduced standardized literacy and numeracy tests for entrance into many teacher preparation programs. However, international research indicates personal numeracy competence does not necessarily equate to pedagogical expertise in teaching numeracy. Furthermore, pedagogical knowledge alone does not necessarily translate into positive teacher beliefs about their own motivation and self-efficacy to teach numeracy. Extensive previous research reinforces that these affective variables exert significant influence on student numeracy outcomes. This highlights an imperative within teacher education programs worldwide to intertwine building content expertise with efforts to cultivate positive teacher beliefs. Presently, limited data has emerged regarding pre-service teachers’ own motivation and self-efficacy to teach numeracy across different subjects and age groups. Additional perspectives are needed to evaluate teacher educators’ views on best practices for developing pre-service teachers’ beliefs and competencies. Further comparative investigation of the roots of pre-service teachers’ self-beliefs and motivations towards teaching numeracy is therefore vital and could illuminate improvements to initial teacher education involving numeracy curriculum and pedagogy internationally.

The present research examines preservice teachers’ levels of motivation and self-efficacy for teaching numeracy using a mixed methods design. Quantitative findings derived from a newly developed survey instrument demonstrated variability in levels of motivation and self-efficacy beliefs among 729 teacher candidates. Factor analysis indicated that both motivation and self-efficacy to teach numeracy represented valid and reliable factors reflective of Goos’ rich interpretation of numeracy. Subsequent interviews with nine teacher educators yielded qualitative themes such as the significance of previous mathematical education and experience, and the role of teacher educators in fostering critical thinking of pre-service teachers. Integrating the quantitative and qualitative results highlights the need for sustained efforts to understand and improve teacher motivation and self-efficacy to teach numeracy within teacher education. Further research is needed to continue to improve the reliability and validity of the newly developed measure in conjunction with longitudinal and intervention studies. Overall, findings provide additional knowledge to inform ongoing program development and empirical inquiry regarding the field of numeracy teaching within initial teacher education.

Contribution

Education serves as a key to independence and personal development. In Sweden, children with intellectual disabilities attend a Compulsory School for Pupils with Intellectual disabilities. The education is adapted to the needs of each pupil and aims to provide knowledge, personal development and well-being. There is high staff density with special education teachers and paraprofessionals. Much of the educational practice is conducted by teaching assistants without any formal academic training and there is evidence that communication regarding these teaching and learning processes between teachers and paraprofessionals to be a hurdle. There is limited research that has engaged with the everyday practices within these school settings.

Incorporated within a broader research initiative, this study is conducted within the framework of a larger research project carried out in collaboration between a specialised compulsory school and university: "The path towards collaboration for education in a Compulsory School for Pupils with Intellectual disabilities: in the tension between teaching, care, physiotherapy, and occupational therapy."

The study is grounded in the Sociocognitive theory formation (Bandura, 1977), which emphasizes how learning and knowledge development are influenced by interactions among individuals, their environment, and their own cognitive processes. In the context of Compulsory School for Pupils with severe Intellectual disabilities, the focus will be how teaching and care are shaped and impacted by social and cognitive factors.

The research investigates how teaching and care in Compulsory School for Pupils with severe Intellectual disabilities take shape within the framework of sociocognitive theory. The study will shed light on how teachers and students can interact to create a conducive learning environment and how sociocognitive processes can influence students' well-being and knowledge development.

Within Sociocognitive theory, self-efficacy, also known as confidence or self-capability (Bandura, 1997), is a central concept. Self-efficacy refers to an individual's perceived ability to successfully perform a task within a specific context. In this study, the sociocognitive theory with a focus on self-efficacy will be utilised as the theoretical framework for interpreting the results.

In this study, sociocognitive theory with a focus on self-efficacy will be used as the theoretical framework to interpret the results and describe how self-efficacy, according to sociocognitive theory, can impact teaching and care in Compulsory school for Pupils with severe Intellectual disabilities.

The analysis explores how self-efficacy manifests itself in students and how it affects their engagement, goal setting, and perseverance in the learning process, as well as how teachers' beliefs in students' abilities influence instruction.

The individual's belief in their ability to perform a specific task, according to Bandura's theory of self-efficacy, influences the goals they set and their confidence in achieving them. The level of self-confidence affects how much effort the individual invests in reaching these goals and the degree of persistence when facing challenges (Caprara, G.V., Barbaranelli, C., Steca, P. & Malone, P.S., 2006).

The purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between teaching and care in a Compulsory School for Pupils with Intellectual disabilities. The study describes how teaching and care take place and how these factors can interact to benefit students' knowledge development.

The purpose is further specified in the following research questions:

• How does teaching occur in Compulsory School for Pupils with severe Intellectual disabilities?

• How does care take place in Compulsory School for Pupils with severe Intellectual disabilities?

• How can teaching and care interact to promote students' knowledge development in Compulsory School for Pupils with severe Intellectual disabilities?

While contemporary research affirms we will soon arrive at the point of irreconcilable ecological breakdown, new technologies are advancing rapidly, imbricating themselves into every facet of our lives. Yet today’s mainstream Environmental Education (EE) research lacks thorough exploration of the onto-epistemological origins surrounding how education could/should exist within current entanglements of technology with/in nature. In fact, EE, as positioned in its neoliberal context, driven by a Eurocentric research community, has defaulted to anthropocentric perspectives which force a nature/culture binary (Aikens et al., 2016). What’s more, potentially promising alternative (or ‘transformative’) approaches remain fragmented across EE and are oftentimes inaccessible to teachers.

This paper is thus positioned within the critical current of posthumanism, which brings together critiques of exclusionary, hierarchical, and anthropocentric humanisms from, for example, feminist, decolonial, queer, ecofeminist, STS, and environmental studies (Braidotti, Jones, & Klumbytė, 2022). Critical posthumanism includes decolonial perspectives, which challenge narratives that promote unbridled technological progress by unravelling human/tech, human/nature, and nature/tech binaries and can centre EE within the ever-plural, entangled nature that includes all environments (biological, social, technological), viewing these environments as ontologically and epistemologically entangled (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017). Critical posthuman onto-epistemologies are particularly relevant to this aim of reconceptualising EE in an ecologically and technologically uncertain world as they stress the hybrid, intersectional, and relational aspects of existence where humans are irreducibly entangled with technology and the environment, co-evolving alongside one another. (Barad, 2007; Braidotti, Jones, & Klumbytė, 2022)

As a result, in my ongoing research as a doctoral scholar, I argue that EE should engage more critically and deeply with envisioning and enacting new ways of being in the world. I propose a reconceptualisation of education that disrupts the constraints of an anthropocentric education system in the Global North, and engages with transformative approaches that do not perpetuate epistemic, social, ecological or technological violence, so we might collectively and effectively help our students navigate the realities of their future and our changing world. I ask: what does living, thriving and dying well on a damaged planet ask from Environmental Education? I draw from the ‘real utopia’ movement within social sciences and humanities research, which formulate concrete proposals to address systemic injustices designed to challenge and transform existing paradigms (Wright, 2010). To do so, this research takes a decolonial approach to Levitas’ (2013) three-staged methodological-philosophical framework ‘Utopia-as-Method’ (UAM) to not only critically analyse the current discourse in EE but also to imagine and construct alternative habits of knowing and being which take into account the technological realities of today’s world.

In this project, UAM’s first stage, Archaeology, involves a critical exploration of current trends, underlying assumptions and metanarratives in EE through a critical hermeneutic literature review, serving as a basis for envisioning transformative alternatives. Stage 2, Ontology, is grounded on an exploration of alternative ways of being and possibilities for the future through decolonial diffractive readings, while Stage 3, Architecture, is where I seek to build alternative EE futures drawing on a research-creation method. This paper will briefly discuss the trends emerging from Stage 1, including, for example, the aforementioned anthropocentric, Western-centric research community, resulting in various instances of colonial modernity and techno-optimism.

The methodological approach of Stage 2 (decolonial diffractive readings) will then be discussed in detail. Having critically considered and unearthed many underlying assumptions and conditions in EE, Stage 2, the Ontology stage of UAM, is grounded on an exploration of alternative ways of being and possibilities for the future, challenging existing ideas and boundaries. Finally, this paper will discuss the implications of these findings on the final UAM Stage within the broader research project.

This paper delves into the discourse surrounding the crisis of care, particularly in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, and seeks alternative perspectives that expose the shortcomings of neoliberal capitalism. The focus on the inhumanity and criminality of such a system (Saad-Filho, 2020) is heightened in the context of the pandemic, considered "the worst global crisis since World War II" (ILO, 2020: p. 2). The paper argues that amidst crises such as wars, conflicts, climate change, and economic downturns, there is an opportunity to envision a society that serves the majority and avoids repeating suffering and disgraceful outcomes.

The primary objective is to explore feminist, political economy, and post-human theoretical approaches to the 21st-century crisis and its connection to the crisis of care. Care, as emphasized by Fisher and Tronto (1990), is portrayed as a fundamental aspect of our lives, essential for maintaining, continuing, and repairing our world. Given the current global crisis characterized by pandemics, climate crises, social inequality, and economic troubles, the significance of care becomes more pronounced, leading to a specific focus on the crisis of care.

From feminist discussions about contradictions related to care within social reproduction, Nancy Fraser, a prominent social reproduction theorist, contends that while social reproduction is essential for sustained capital accumulation, capitalism's relentless pursuit of unlimited growth has the potential to destabilize the very processes of social reproduction on which it relies (Fraser, 2016, p.100). In the realm of social reproduction, significant contributions have been made by feminist scholars such as Bhattacharya (2015; 2017) and Fraser (2016). It is argued that social reproduction, involving the production of life, plays a central role in the accumulation of capital. Moreover, by incorporating feminist critiques, some scholars also criticize the gendered aspect of care in organizing and advocate for a 'care revolution' (Winker, 2015; 2020; Habermann, 2009; 2016) that confronts the crisis of social reproduction.

In light of the devaluation and extensive commodification of care, there has been a consequential emergence of fractured care cycles, leading to distinct separations among caring-about, taking-care-of, care-giving, care-receiving, and even caring-with (Tronto, 1993, 2009). This fragmentation underscores the complex nature of contemporary care dynamics. Recently, there has been a surge in feminist researchers and social movements advocating for a "Care Revolution" (Winker 2015; 2021; Habermann 2009; 2016). Regional networks have formed, bringing together groups and individuals from diverse fields of care, collectively confronting the crisis of social reproduction. The vision behind the "care revolution" is to steer society away from profit-driven orientations towards a focus on genuine needs. Advocating for fundamental changes, the movement calls for a deeper exploration of political economy and formulates a utopian vision emphasizing the participation of all and (self)care for all (Brückner 2016). Communities engaged in these efforts envision, reimagine, and reorganize care issues through joint initiatives. The concept of commons is integral to this transformation, expanding the understanding of care beyond traditional caregiving services for specific demographics. Care is viewed broadly as caring for each other, demonstrating concern and interest in the community as a whole. The issue of care is deliberately positioned at the heart of commons and commoning (Helfrich & Bollier 2020; Habermann 2009; 2016). By starting from people's own needs and envisioning care beyond the confines of the neoliberal capitalist system, commoning serves as a means to showcase "other possible" care practices. This approach recognizes that needs are the starting points for reproduction commoning, fostering community building not based on identity or status but on shared material and life conditions (Zechner, 2021, p.35).

This study aims to explore the dynamics of academic identity negotiation and (re)construction among Chinese students in the UK and the factors that affected the identity negotiation and (re)construction during this process. The pandemic era introduces additional complexities and challenges, making this research particularly timely and relevant. As globalisation forges ahead, an increasing number of Chinese students choose to study abroad, with those in the UK representing a significant proportion. In this context, comprehending how these students navigate and reshape their academic identities amidst the unique challenges of the pandemic and post-pandemic periods becomes crucial.

While there are previous studies related to identity negotiation and (re)construction of Chinese international students abroad, it often narrowly focused on doctoral students, thus overlooking the substantial cohort of master’s students. Furthermore, much of the existing literature presented fragmented insights and lacks a comprehensive, longitudinal perspective on the students’ identity development trajectory.

Drawing from post-structuralist stance of identity and incorporating theories of agency along with Norton’s notion of investment, this study analysed how Chinese students dynamically negotiated and (re)constructed their identities during their studies in the UK, especially under the extraordinary circumstances brought about by the pandemic. The post-structuralist perspective on identity acknowledges its dynamic, fluid, and sometimes contradictory nature. The theoretical framework of agency and investment is suitable for analysing students’ identity in my study as it emphasises the active role students play in their language learning and identity formation. Agency highlights learners’ intentional actions to shape their learning experiences and identity, emphasising the dynamic and proactive nature of identity construction. Investment, on the other hand, links learners' commitment to language learning with their identity and social context, showing how learners invest in their language skills as part of their identity and social membership. This framework is applicable to my study as it can provide insights into how Chinese students studying abroad actively engage in and shape their academic and social experiences, negotiating and constructing their identities in a new linguistic and cultural environment.

The study's significance is manifold: it aims not only to facilitate Chinese students’ adaptation to new academic environments in these unprecedented times but also to equip educators and policymakers with a profound understanding of the students' academic identity (re)construction and negotiation processes. This, in turn, will improve the support systems available to these students during and after the pandemic.

The presentation topic is located in the intersection of internationalization in higher education and formal and non-formal educational activities. Learning abroad, especially in higher education, but also in the non-formal education field, receives a lot of attention in the last decades. Emerging neoliberal pressures have affected the domain of learning abroad and keep pushing towards the direction of sending future professionals overseas in order for them to acquire valuable skills and competencies for their education and future career (Moscovitz & Zahavi, 2019; Rizvi, 2011; Thimmel, 2013; Waldow, 2018; Yang, 2020). These developments have fueled the further diversification of the available programs for learning abroad and, as a result, an increasing number of individuals has visited multiple countries today by getting involved in several types of learning experiences (e.g., study abroad, volunteering, language courses, au-pair, work & travel).

The objective of this research is to collect experiences of current higher education students as well as recent graduates who have participated in at least two different types of international learning experiences. Individuals with multiple experiences abroad were chosen as the most suitable group to determine what people find meaningful across different types of international learning experiences because of their ability to compare their experiences overseas. This presentation focuses on one aspect of the wider research project that is being conducted, and attempts to discover to what extent participants of formal and non-formal international learning experiences find meaningfulness in personal development aspects and/or aspects regarding their contribution to/influence on the world.

Regarding the conceptual framework, I examine meaningfulness mainly in subjective terms (Yeoman, 2019). This means that the assessment of worthiness and the subsequent feelings cultivated by the interviewees should imply that the action is perceived by the individual as meaningful, irrespectively of whether the results could be characterized as ‘objectively meaningful’. The interviewees’ assessment is taken into account first and foremost. Further, to determine and categorize where individuals find meaningfulness and if this is primarily associated with the self or the world, I take into account two theories regarding the sources of meaning (Aguinis & Glavas, 2019; Rosso et al., 2010 in Yeoman, 2014: 18). These theories mention the self, others, the context (skill variety, task identity, task significance), and spiritual life as major sources of meaningfulness.

The analysis under the above-mentioned lens offers a better understanding of what individuals aspire to gain when choosing to go abroad for learning purposes. Following Baumeister (2018), a differentiation is made between happiness and meaningfulness in international learning experiences. This means that positive feelings of happiness during an experience abroad do not necessarily guarantee meaningful results and vice versa. Approaching international experiences from a lifelong perspective, meaningfulness is examined under a lifelong lens in order to help future students and current professionals in the field of internationalization to choose their international learning experiences more consciously.

Children of immigrants navigate the complex terrain of multiple ethnic identities and spaces of belonging, a process shaped by diverse contextual influences that can foster assimilation into the host culture or nurture connections to their parents' homeland. Schools, as primary institutions of the host country, wield considerable influence in this negotiation, with interactions among peers and adults contributing significantly to the development of ideas about ethnic self and others. The current global climate, steeped in anti-immigrant rhetoric and exclusionary immigration policies, exacerbates the challenges faced by these children. The United Kingdom's (UK) Brexit referendum stands as a poignant example, reflecting a culmination of hostility towards migrant and ethnic minorities in Britain (Benson and Lewis, 2019; Burrell and Schweyher, 2019). This paper positions itself within the neo-assimilationist context illuminated by Zontini and Peró (2020), seeking to explore how migrant children, particularly the largest community of Polish pupils in the UK, perceive and experience their school climate.

The Brexit context adds a layer of significance to the experiences of Polish children, who rapidly established themselves in the UK following the 2004 enlargement of the European Union. Despite initial expectations of seamless integration due to their whiteness and shared cultural background, the shifting socio-political landscape has exposed vulnerabilities and challenges for this migrant group (Lumsden et al., 2019). In this dynamic context, the paper explores the web of social interactions with peers and adults, investigating how these interactions contribute to Polish pupils' sense of belonging within the school environment. Additionally, the exploration of the overall school atmosphere provides insights into how these children navigate the neo-assimilationist climate and the broader implications for their well-being.

The theoretical framework grounding this research draws from the concept of school climate (Thapa et al., 2013), offering a nuanced lens to understand social relationships, safety perceptions, and the institutional environment for learning. Beyond the conventional focus on teaching and learning and academic achievements, this study uncovers the multifaceted ways in which Polish children navigate their school environment, shedding light on the socio-cultural dynamics that shape their educational experiences. By examining the socio-political landscape and the experiences of Polish children in UK schools, this research contributes to the broader conversation surrounding migration, education, and social cohesion in a post-Brexit era.

The study's focus on Polish children aligns with the European/international dimension, as Brexit is not an isolated phenomenon but a microcosm of the challenges faced by migrant communities within the larger exclusionary European context. The experiences of Polish pupils in the UK reflect broader trends of increasing anti-immigration sentiments across Europe and globally, making this research relevant to educational practitioners, policymakers, and researchers working within an international framework.

Furthermore, this research serves as a platform to amplify the voices of marginalised children, providing them with an opportunity to be heard in a landscape where their perspectives are often overlooked. This study contributes to developing an understanding of the school experiences of Polish children in England post-Brexit, offering insights into the intricate dynamics of their social interactions, sense of belonging, and overall school climate. By focusing on the largest community of migrant pupils in the UK, the research illuminates broader trends of anti-immigration sentiments, making a compelling case for the importance of fostering inclusive and culturally sensitive educational environments.

Seminar: Academic Publishing and the Work of the EERJ

In the current education discourse there are no any models of education that can navigate pedagogical challenges in uncertain situations. War and conflict creates unique levels of uncertainty. How these shape educational settings and pedagogical situations is not well understood yet.

Education research should be ready to bring into the discussions unexpected uncertainties and try to find out comparative contextual elements and navigating indicators among specific cases[1]. When we try to discuss education in armed or hidden conflicts, we have to remember about the shock and stress under which education should be organised. Education must continue, no one knows how long uncertainty will take.

As of November 2023, according to UNICEF “400 million children – or about 1 child in every 5 – are living in or fleeing from conflict zones. They are losing family members and friends. And some are being recruited and used by armed forces or groups. Many of them have been displaced multiple times, risking separation from their families, losing critical years of education, and fraying ties to their communities” [2]. Even children grow up and become adults in this insecure reality, and it is not possible to know how long the insecurity will last and what the conditions and capacities for education will be.

When we look at the range of cases from different conflict countries [3], [4], [5], [6], we see how non-specifically organised educational spaces are in an intermediate state of uncertainty. These cases are sometimes unique and unexpected, but they are important for overcoming the challenges of educational processes in uncertainty. There is no country and no educational system that is safe from risky situations and long-term uncertainties. "We have to learn to deal with uncertainty... to calculate with uncertainty...” [7].

These facts confirm that there are no standard solutions for extraordinary educational situations. In an explosive war situation, conflicting countries try to find out ways to continue education processes facing different phenomena which are happening in parallel.

The unique cases should be discovered and presented with the case studies within this Special Discussion, spreading out important experiences of uncertain schooling and trying to highlight the models of navigation on pedagogical challenges. There is no country and any educational system that is ensured from risky situations. The countries, which are in the similar situations, don’t have the possibility to be informed about the important experiences and about the results of researches on the education under attack. This discussion is going to deliver and exchange important messages from the frontline, because education has to be continued even in the UNCERTAINTY. This discussion could provide valuable lessons applicable to building and sustaining academic, social, and individual learning and achievements for teachers and students, emphasizing resilience and adaptability in the face of complex challenges coming from different conflicting countries.

During this Special Session we are going to explore different case studies from schooling in uncertainty, discovering navigation of education through war and conflicts.

There will be discussion on the Case Studies on Schooling in Uncertainty from Afghanistan, Armenia, Ukraine, Iraq, as well as post-migration situation in Poland.

The following Case Studies will be presented:

1. Schooling in Uncertainties: Education under the Atack
2. War as a New Real for Helping Professions: Education Trends in the Context of Continuous Crisis
3. Resilient Education: Sustaining the Future in the Shadows of War in Ukraine
4. Omid Online School: A Solution for Girls' Education in Afghanistan
5. Navigating Complexity: Successful School Principalship in in the Midst of War in Ukraine
6. Barrier to access in higher education for displaced yazidi minorities in Iraq

In contemporary doctoral education, much less attention is devoted to understanding how students engage with higher-level readings, than it is to supporting the development of their academic writing skills. Reading is generally approached instrumentally for research and equated with an extractive process to retrieve, survey, or review the information needed for writing.

This paper examines the under-researched area of reading habits, rhythms, and practices among doctoral students in the UK and Norway, exploring how a diverse group of doctoral students relates to, makes sense of, and engages with reading as a research practice in its own right. Through the innovative use of a rhythmanalytical-phenomenological methodology centred on the students' lived experience, the project takes a closer look at the spatiotemporal, material, cognitive, and affective dimensions of reading and draws pedagogical and philosophical implications for doctoral education and supervision while foregrounding mutual learning from cultural difference.

Doctoral students in the modern accelerated academy experience mounting institutional pressures to complete their research projects within tight timeframes punctuated by developmental milestones. At the same time, they are increasingly encouraged to publish and participate in externally funded projects before completing their course of studies, to position themselves more favourably in a hyper-competitive, yet precarious job market.

In this climate, pressures to develop key academic skills such as academic writing abound. This is well reflected in the sustained cross-disciplinary attention enjoyed by the field of academic writing practice. A vast literature is available to both novice and seasoned researchers to help them improve the quality and quantity of writing through a variety of techniques, ‘survival kits’ and motivational mantras (e.g. Sword 2012, 2017, 2023; Murray 2016; Wyse 2017; Moran 2019; Thomson 2023; Sternad and Power 2023).

Comparatively, much less attention is devoted to reading as an autonomous practice in relation to educational research. Reading is generally approached instrumentally for research and mostly equated with a strategic, extractive process whereby academics retrieve, survey, or review the information needed for writing to maximise efficiency (Fulford and Hodgson eds. 2016; Walker 2017). We argue instead that reading should be approached as research, that is a philosophical orientation whose intimate relation with thinking and writing constitutes a conjuncture with transformative potential for both the reader and the text (Hoveid & Hoveid 2013; Dakka and Wade 2019).

Reporting on preliminary findings from a pilot project funded by the British Academy/Leverhulme foundation, the paper is guided by a primary research question and two interrelated sub-questions:

How do English and Norwegian doctoral students relate to, make sense of, and engage with reading as a practice, cognitively and emotionally?

• What do different reading practices reveal about different cultural reading and schooling traditions?
• How do different languages and socio-political contexts shape reading as a socio-cultural practice and what can be mutually learned from the Norwegian and English context?

Through such exploration we intend to examine pedagogical and philosophical implications for learning in doctoral education (educational engagement and intellectual flourishing), for the practice of doctoral supervision as teaching and mentoring, and, by extension, for higher education as the nurturing, enabling ground of teachers and learners.

Doctoral students are novice researchers whose academic identity is being formed through significant reading encounters during their studies (and beyond). Examining their relationship with reading is vital, then, to foster the development of the criticality and creativity that inform their thinking (and, ultimately, their writing), and to create better conditions for meaningful educational engagement.

The reading group (or study group) is a gathering regularly taking place in which a group of interested individuals come together to read a certain text. There is much variety between groups as to how, when and where this takes place. Whether the group comes together to just discuss and read one text (advance or aloud) or that they have a certain continuity and institutionalized practice of meeting and selecting texts. The point of this abstract is not to provide an exhaustive list of different formats of reading groups and their characteristics. Rather, what we want to do is to develop what characterizes the specific pedagogical form of all reading groups. Our engagement with various different sorts of reading groups has led us to deduce some processes that lie at the heart of how the reading group is experienced We will attempt to elaborate on those experiences and develop them through the use of established texts in the field of philosophy of education but also with the aid of authors who have not been given much attention in relation to educational research. Next to this we will try to briefly show how and why the reading group is a relevant phenomenon to study and how our reflections are pertinent for its further understanding.

To us the reading group has always felt as both a highly accelerated form of individual thinking -of producing ideas- and as a truly collective thinking in which the ideas generated are the property of no one and everyone. In regards to this first aspect, we have always had the experience of thinking through the sessions in a really intense manner, to take the time, during, say, two hours, to allow ourselves to really think through the text and understand it, producing new insights and ideas. Part of this also has to do with being in a position in which people can also drive themselves to articulate those ideas in a group, the point of the reading group is not just to read, it’s to think and to discuss. There is always a certain surplus that is generated in the reading group which could not have been produced in reading the text alone. This mode of reading and discussing has the effect that one is intrinsically pushed to articulate certain intuitions that arise in a very precise, coherent and consistent manner, once involved in this activity, activity takes over and we’re swept up into a dynamic interaction between having insights – articulating them- and them being generative of more ideas. One has in this way a very intimate contact with the processes of thinking as such and to the feeling of thinking.

For the other part, looking at it from the collective, thinking can be expanded beyond the individual and seen as a collective activity and we don’t mean this in a uniquely metaphorical sense. The collective dimension of genuine thinking has a rhizomatic structure: there is a certain history, a duration of what has and what has not already been said in the discussion, the insights articulated and points shared have a materiality to them which makes further discussion possible. If one manages to make a meaningful contribution to the discussion this can trigger the reaction of others in terms of further insights. No individual idea stays individual since each idea has its history in the thinking done by the group and finds it’s resonance in the future thinking of the group. In this way the thinking of the group is always expanding outwards and contracting inward nd in this way its drifting from itself.

In discussions about the presence of Latin and Greek in school curricula, two arguments against this presence constantly recur, often in tandem: (1) the classics are not useful (enough) in this day and age; (2) they are the residue and/or symptom of an elitist educational system. In a certain sense, and depending on context, both of these arguments of course hold true: studying the classics hardly qualifies one for better chances of employability or ‘good citizenship’, and in many countries their study is de facto the prerogative of the privileged few. In both cases, however, a deeper-lying, more fundamental argument also seems to be at stake, which revolves around the status of Latin and Greek as dead languages, no longer spoken in ‘real life’. True education, it is claimed, drawing on ideas of Deweyan and Freirian inspiration, is essentially “bio-philic”. It should deal with the living present of educands’ existence, and should try to foster life-enhancing experiences, which precisely emancipate educands from the oppessive, dead weight of pure tradition. Hence dead languages have little or no place in education: their lifeless, strictly intellectual knowledge, which does not afford the crucial dialogal possibilities of living languages, indeed merely serves as cultural capital, an imaginary badge of distinction to keep certain socio-cultural hierarchies in place. The old-fashioned ways in which Latin and Greek are often still taught at schools, moreover confirms their “necrophilia”. As acutely depicted in the ‘progressive-pedagogical’ film The Browning Version (1951), pupils are literally mortified by rote-learning, endless repetition, and the reading of (always the same) texts, far removed from their daily life-worlds.

This paper explores the impact of technological advancements on education, particularly focusing on the changes in our “attention” as a response to these advancements from a technological philosophy perspective. The increasing importance of digital-related skills in education is a major topic in South Korea and worldwide. Consequently, what is the significance of attention at present? Bernard Stiegler(2012) contend that the cultivation of 'attention' is unattainable for individuals in isolation and exclusively arises through engagement with the social realm (Stiegler, 2012: 1). It differs from the posture and concentration exhibited by animals, and according to Stiegler, the acquisition of attention requires a process known as education, drawing upon Simondon's theory. This is because when we assert our social nature, it is made possible through the process of education, and during this period, education aids in the formation of individuals who cannot be individualized solely based on their mental and social (or collective) meaning. Education fosters a more refined form of attention, which is the fruit of accumulating experiences passed down through generations (Stiegler, 2012: 1-2). One captivating and crucial attribute of attention in this context is that the regulation of my conduct is contingent upon the collective physical environment. Let's contemplate the educational environment, such as the classroom setting. The teacher is positioned in front of me to impart knowledge that is deemed important within this society, and I make a conscious effort to accept, acknowledge, or comprehend that. The physical setup of the classroom, along with its occupants, is specifically designed to facilitate focused attention. The classroom's setup and its occupants are physically conditioned to concentrate in a certain manner. Thus, the attention developed during education can be guided by shared memory and the ongoing physical conditions that support this memory. However, technological advancements are transforming the way we exist in the realm of education. It is of greater significance for students to independently explore and actively participate in their own learning activities, rather than solely relying on teachers for extended periods of time within the classroom. Posthuman theorist Katherine Hales (Hayles, K., 2007: 167) characterizes this particular feature of online information acquisition and the capacity to attend to numerous sources concurrently as the "hyper-attention" exhibited by the younger generation. She argues that the same kind of attention as Stiegler's "deep attention" is drawn to a single stream of information, focusing on one specific object for an extended period of time and blocking out external stimuli, similar to the way it was done in the past in the humanities. Deep attention possesses the advantage of exhibiting patience over extended periods and excelling in resolving intricate problems. However, it exposes vulnerabilities in attentiveness towards rapidly changing surroundings and flexibility in response. Conversely, heightened focus enables us to swiftly redirect our attention towards different objects, facilitating prompt decision-making or assessments in the online realm where attention is in high demand. This phenomenon is characterized by an inability to tolerate monotony as it prefers to engage with multiple streams of information simultaneously and consistently seeks out more stimulating experiences. This shift in attention, accompanied by the advocacy for privatization in education and the establishment of a learning-centered society, has revolutionized our perception of education within the school setting and redefined the significance of defining educational time as a cultural phenomenon. This paper argues that there is a necessity to articulate and ponder upon the transformation of educational practices caused by the technological unawareness resulting from our repeated utilization. It aims to investigate the ways in which these alterations in educational time reshape the rapport between students and teachers and their very existence.

This paper explores, in its three sections, how the local/global and cosmopolitan education of democratic hospitality shapes individual and collective identities.

The first section examines whether democratic education's local and global contexts have a centric position that promotes border-thinking in understanding individual and national identities. Here, I use Derrida’s discussion about hospitality's conditional and unconditional factors to understand the limitations of individual and national identities.

In the second section, I argue that a cosmopolitan education focused on democratic hospitality enables us to understand a more fluid approach to individual and national identities. To further explain this concept, I refer to Papastephanou's notion of cosmopolitanism, which she formulates from an off-centre position, or what she calls “eccentric circles.” In cosmopolitan democratic hospitality, individuals have more freedom to explore their identities from a non-centralised position. This can also have an impact on how national identities are perceived. However, the potential of education to promote cosmopolitan democratic hospitality is sometimes hindered by our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, leaving us as mere spectators to society's powers.

The third and final section of the text suggests that a social imaginary of cosmopolitan democratic hospitality can help us overcome feelings of despair or giving up. This imaginary can help us develop pedagogies, as UNESCO claims, that allow us to learn in and with the world, which can lead to societal improvements. Education is not limited to schools but is a lifelong project that requires individuals to continue learning and sharing knowledge. This can make education more robust in an uncertain future. However, this promising point can also be challenging, as we strive to bridge the gap between theory and practice locally and globally. It is important to remember that even as our identities shift and change, education remains a valuable tool. Through education, we can challenge negative actions and promote cosmopolitan democratic hospitality. Its social imaginary reminds us that we are all connected as humans and that our collective actions can make the world a more habitable and welcoming place, especially during times of uncertainty.

Burdened by a humanistic Enlightenment legacy (Bojesen, 2020), there exists a powerful human desire to control the uncontrollable world (Rosa, 2020). For example, as the ski industry becomes challenged by the variability related to climate change, we increasingly endeavour to plan skiing holidays to locations that guarantee snow (Willibald et al., 2021). Lured to these places by images that promise us ‘real’ snowscapes, our vision is often shattered when, on our arrival, we are faced with the large snow-making machines that are required to fulfil the advertised promises. The ‘reality’ of the scenes is lacking and what we get is a manufactured ‘synthetic’ experience; an artificial landscape filled with the distinct texture of imaginary snow and not the ‘real’ thing. Moreover, the consistent images that matched our thoughts of snow, are fractured by the inconsistent work of the noisy and intrusive machinery. Rosa (2020) suggests that such levels of control create a fabricated or engineered version of the snowscape focused on producing reality in pursuit of a specific goal despite the accompanying undesirable consequences. With this in mind, our study builds on previous exploration of negative universality (Rüsselbæk Hansen et al., 2024) and contributes towards the sustained inquiry into the phenomenon of human desire and control in the context of education and its implications for the philosophy and functioning of contemporary schooling.

In our exploration, we problematise the hope and desire for education evidenced by the OECD conceptual learning framework – Learning Compass 2030 (OECD, 2019a) and critique the notion of the compass metaphor and the ideas expressed in the values and attitudes component of the framework (OECD, 2019b). We draw on the lens of negative universality combined with Rosa’s (2020), Ruti’s (2008,2012) work and Saul’s (2021) notion of cultural criticism to examine possible inadequacies in the documents that will prompt teachers, researchers, and policymakers to adopt a more ‘negative’ gaze when considering possibilities for their practice. For example, one of the challenges of education is the overwhelming ‘positive’ lens used to view schools’ positioning on global uncertainties related to environmental, social, political, and cultural issues. Saul (2021) critiques schools as sites where such issues and similar problems can be solved because of their desire to manufacture positivity, infantilize young people and focus on short-term economics.

The promise of control or engineering education in the context of uncertainty leads to the establishment of false hope. In this regard, we show, using examples stemming from OECD’s “The Learning Compass 2030” framework, how the OECD is trying to engineer the contemporary reality with the aim of forming "the future we want" (OECD, 2019, p. 2), a controllable ‘future world’ without too many uncertainties. The question is what risks and constitutive effects, for example lacks, exclusions and impossibilities the OECD ‘machinery’ produces by its positiveness and how it frames students’ possibilities in the (future) world (Ruti, 2012)? On that basis, we suggest that researchers, teachers and policymakers as public intellectuals critically reflect on and discuss what impact the global OECD machinery has on our work so that we can resist ‘false hopes’ and identify the next steps based on our professional judgement (Heck, 2022) to influence the philosophy and functioning of contemporary schooling for the future.

The argument I intend to present at ECER relates to the pedagogical significance of post-truth, primarily in terms of the construction of political subjects. In the following I intend to argue that post-truth is one of the most powerful and dangerous pedagogical invention shaping our contemporary political status quo. What I find particularly significant is that in order to be addressed as a conceptual and political problem we must abandon defining it in opposition to ‘factual truth’ within the classical understanding of the term (as correspondence).

Epistemological and ontological perspectives I employ in order to discuss the relationship between post-truth and the question of the development of political subjectivities, relate to post-structural notions of truth (Deleuze 1991, 1994) and to regimes of truth (Rancière 1991; Deleuze, Guattari 1994), as well as the conceptualisations of 'the political' and 'politics' that permeate the political writings of Hannah Arendt and Jacques Rancière (Arendt 1998, 2005, 2006; Ranciere 1999, 2007). Within such a theoretical constellation, truth appears as a phenomenon that cannot be expressed by the explanatory order of language, and hence, it is unable to be transmitted in some direct way; its relation to 'facts' and 'reality' requires constant translation, interpretation and mediation through individual and intersubjective experience. 'The political' - is understood as a necessary ontological condition for forming practices of living together, for constitution of human freedom, and for the creation of a community of citizens - different and yet equal, for politics itself. Such a theoretical background leads me to emphasise the two key concepts around which the presentation is organised: post-truth and political subjectivity.

Post-truth is a fairly vague and ambiguous category. From the perspective of 'non-binary', post-structural epistemologies, it seems difficult to radically contrast the concept of post-truth with the idea of so-called 'factual truth'. Instead of arguing that the essence of post-truth is constituted by a simple negation of the classical notion of truth (where we are dealing with an assumption of a 'truthfulness' of thinking and being (cf. Allen 1993,15), I focus on understanding post-truth in terms of a linguistic construct involving a form of ‘co-created fiction in which the distinction between truth and falsehood has become irrelevant’ (Kalpokas 2019). Moreover, I argue that the social and pedagogical means of transmitting both truth and post-truth refer to 'an explanatory form of social order that involves an absolute confidence in the linguistic accessibility of facts, opinions, feelings, ideas, logics and narratives' (Bingham, Biesta, Rancière 2010, 122). Thus, post-truth, along with 'truth', is located within the epistemology of clarity and certainty that goes along with the imaginary of a fully transparent language that in its arbitrariness imposes explicit meanings and narrows down the human capacity of critique. At this point I want to stress that similar epistemological connotations underlie Arendt's concept of the political lie - a lie that 'never comes into conflict with reason' (Arendt 1973).

The question of political subjectivity is understood here in terms of political potentiality: natality, i.e. the ability to re-create the common world and to initiate political action. It is also deeply connected to human freedom and its capacity for ethical judgement. In the light of Arendt's political writings, there is an inextricable and mutual connection between the social experience of living in a community - including open communication under conditions of diversity - and the formation of political subjectivities of its citizens.

One aspect of our times is how finely balanced we are between dictatorship and democracy. Commentators are keen to find a method of renewing democratic processes. Naim (2022) suggested autocrats gain and maintain power through the exercise of ‘3Ps’, populism, polarisation, and post-truth. While recognizing the significance of the ‘3P’ tools used by authoritarians the language used in relation to the 3Ps is contested. Authoritarian challenges presented as the 3Ps are not necessarily new. In the 1920s John Dewey noted the rise of nationalism, unfettered power, and rapid technological change, he argued we can only change the world for the better on the basis of verifiable knowledge that results in action taken in association with others (Dewey 1929:3). A similar view is presented in Toulmin (2001) who argued that we need to continuously experiment and re-evaluate experience as it evolves across time. Temporal factors underpin critical realist theories of social change and social reproduction such as Archer’s (1995) morphogenetic approach. These philosophical and social theories directly address contemporary issues and analyze the processes of social change. This paper explores the role of education in democratic change and re-asserts a need for critical thinking, deliberation and systematic verification of knowledge that changes over time. We argue it is time to re-visit ideas of Dewey’s (1915,1929) to strengthen peoples’ capability to verify the warrants for assertions.

Citizen assemblies have been held up as response to the ‘3Ps’ of popularism, polarisation and post-truth (Naim 2002:237) and (Stewart 2023). We argue that new forms of representation such as citizen assemblies require an education that enables people to verify and assess evidence that inform decision making. How can we enable citizens to make better judgements of evidence? Dewey asserted the need for education to prepare people for democratic participation. Dewey argued this was achieved through systematic assessment of evidence and testing theory in practice. Is there a need to reassert a theory of knowledge and action for the 21^st century? That is, to consider the verification of information and warrants that underpin assertions. The paper will argue that Dewey’s, Toulmin’s and Archer’s accounts of social change can be used to build democratic capability that enables verification evidence which provides for warranted assertions in times of rapid social change.

In connection with what has been described as a turn towards “a post-critical educational philosophy” (Hodgson/Vlieghe/Zamojski 2018) several philosophers of education have in recent years aimed at reaffirming the value of “education to be for education’s sake (rather than for extrinsic goals such as global citizenship)” (ibid.). Rather than wanting to imply that education is apolitical, this shift is defended as itself a necessary political move in the context of contemporary educational research and theory. We agree that there is a problematic tendency of instrumentalizing education for political and economic gain, and that the intrinsic value of education is a worthy aim in its own right. However, we argue that a more fine-grained and nuanced analysis is necessary in order to be able to distinguish between different political takes on education, as well as to sharpen the discussion of the consequences of different ways of understanding politics, philosophy and education, as well as their relationship with each other. We argue that not all ways in which education is described, analyzed or conceived of in political terms are equally problematic cases of instrumentalization and that there lies an immense danger in such over-generalization. We suggest distinguishing between instrumentalization and reification in order to avoid that a call for “education for education’s sake” turns into a naïve gesture of strengthening tendencies of the status quo which contribute to increasing social inequality and injustice. Particularly, we want to show which preconditions are necessary so that affirmatively focusing on the educational in education does not contribute to further covering over current injustices rather than providing us with the language to describe and, also in affirmative ways, position ourselves differently in relation to the political aims of education we consider worthy.

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

The importance of sustaining an open and supportive classroom environment for students' academic achievements and socio-emotional development is well documented in educational research. Relying on ecological and metrological metaphors, classroom environment is generally defined as the climate, atmosphere, ambiance, or prevailing mood that is experienced directly and intuitively when we are in a classroom. Much like the natural environment of the planet, the pedagogical and socio-emotional environment of the classroom is characterized as perceptible, lingering, and as affecting ‘everyone within its influence’ (Evans et al., 2009, 4).

As most teachers known, however, cultivating an environment that is both open and supportive when addressing difficult ethical and existential issues in the classroom is not an easy task. One of the most difficult issues to address in education today is the climate crisis and the planetarian situation we are in. Since the climate crisis is also an existential crisis, education for sustainable development (ESD) inevitably includes questions of loss and nonexistence, such as the uninhabitability of the planet, the potential extinction of humanity, the loss of biodiversity, the abandonment of our current ways of living (in the wealthier parts of the world), and the loss of hopes and dreams in face of an uncertain future. Moreover, research studies indicate that worry is one of the main emotions related to climate change, and that negative feelings of pessimism and hopelessness are common, especially among children and young people. At the same time, there seems to be a growing indifference to sustainability issues in the public sphere. While a language of crisis and emergency is used to emphasize the seriousness of the situation, the public concern of climate change has been declining in many countries, including the European ones (Stoknes). Hence, far from being a neutral educational space, the ESD-classroom is a dynamic pedagogical environment that accommodates different and conflicting emotions, ideas, and imaginaries about our present situation. As educational researchers, we can ignore or try to overcome this dissonance, but we cannot deny its influence on educational practice.

Against this background, the overall aim of the paper is to offer a way of analyzing the 'relational landscape' that constitutes the microcosmos of the pedagogical and socio-emotional environment of the ESD-classroom. Drawing on feminist theory of embodiment and the growing field of sensory-phenomenological studies (Todd), the more precise purpose of the paper is to offer an educational language about open and supportive classroom environments that takes the existential, affective, and embodied (rather than psychological, emotional, and cognitive) dimensions of education for sustainable development seriously.

In this presentation I examine the possibilities that Foucault’s notion of parrēsia offers to educational theory in addressing the tension between individuation and enculturation. The presentation starts by offering a Foucauldian critique of the enduringly valuable liberal aims of education, particularly as developed by John Dewey in Democracy and Education. Through the use and application of Foucault’s often misapprehended illiberal lens,¹ I aim to demonstrate how overtly liberal frameworks, such as those proposed by Dewey, lack a theory of power. This deficiency inadvertently grants concessions to the social body to impose its unwarranted architectonic principles of being in the world over subjects, diagramming the way they are to experience and interact with the world they have at hand. Subsequently I will turn to Foucault's later works,²³⁴ in which he presents us with a more pronounced, yet consistently cautiously liberal stance. I will argue that the notion of parrēsia which he develops therein could offer valuable insights for educational theory, addressing the limitation inherent in Dewey’s idealist framework, and providing a more nuanced approach to cultivating critical subjects who are socially responsible citizens.

Dewey conceives the human being as inherently social. In an almost poetic manner, he depicts the interdependence between the development of a community over time and that of the individual members. These individuals engage in its growth by absorbing what society would have presented them with and subsequently contributing to its development by critically and/or creatively using that knowledge to progress its evolution, simultaneously growing in their own right. Dewey is of the opinion that democracy, by which he means a genuine openness for every member to contribute critically and creatively to the communal knowledge of the group under the scrutiny of its fellow members, is key for the continuous growth of that very group, and that schooling institutions ought to be areas for such democratic processes. While Dewey accurately recognises the social nature of human beings, he errs in rendering the social evolution akin to biological evolution, and the subsequent reverence to an idealistic democracy that is meant to protect this trajectory. This error blindsides Dewey from acknowledging that unlike Darwinian evolution, the evolutionary trajectory of the social body of knowledge, and the logic it makes possible, is affected by power pressures that derail its evolution to territories of its own dictates.⁵ From this lens, Dewey’s call to become “robust trustees”⁶ of the “achievements” of the group which in turn provide us with a guide as to how we experience the world, becomes naïve at best, or outright dangerous at worst.

While the critique above which draws heavily from Foucault may be suggestive of fatalism as well as epistemological relativism, in his later works, Foucault draws up the concept of parrēsia which offers a path to creative, critical, and agentic selves who can challenge the power structures that his earlier works sought to expose. Interestingly, this sense of agency which Foucault deems possible precisely through a practice that runs counter to the handmaiden of relativism and that is the practice of rhetoric, and this counter practice is frank speech. In this context, agency however is not inherent in our very existence but something that we must actively pursue and develop, thus rather that “robust trustees” agency would require us to be “both […] partner[s] and adversar[ies] of the arts of governing.”⁷ In this presentation I contend that the notion of parrēsia can help transform the theory and practice of schooling education into a tool that fosters healthier individual-society interaction that can better address social, political, and economic uncertainties than liberal frameworks like that of Dewey’s ever could.

In recent years we live under “social and historical conditions of permanent crisis” (Hage 2009), so much so that Walter Benjamin’s famous claim that the “emergency” which we face has become the rule rather than the exception, seems truer than ever (Benjamin 2003). From wars to pandemics to recurring financial crises to rise in authoritarian regimes to the seemingly unstoppable climate change – any sense of the stability in the present and trust in the promise of the future seem to decline or even vanish altogether. The future is viewed as a series of crises and calamities bound to happen, each more dangerous than its predecessor.

From an analytical perspective, the concept of crisis is also challenging as it introduces many ambiguities and unclarities. It is often perceived as extreme hardship yet it is seen as an opportunity for change or growth; it is considered both as a distinct event and but also as part of historical continuity; it brings up fears of catastrophe, often identified as such, but it also inspires revolutionary hopes. To add to the concept’s lack of clarity, ‘crisis’ is used both literally and metaphorically, with no clear distinction between them. Originated as a medical term which delineates a dangerous imbalance that calls for a life-or-death decision, the use of crisis has now spread to many other fields – psychology, economics, politics and more (Koselleck 2006).

How should educators and educational policymakers think of crisis and act in such times of turbulence? As an activity often perceived as incremental and steadily progressive, education in times of crisis is challenged when faced with ruptures, breaks, and radical changes. Moreover, education’s strong connection to the concept of development – individual and social alike – puts it at odds with a reality shaped by sudden and non-linear changes. When teachers face crisis, the common educational impetus is to treat it as a problem in need of a solution; as hardship that must be endured and overcome. Thus, the teacher is expected to cultivate their students’ resilience. A somewhat similar approach sees crisis as a necessary and valuable part of life and emphasizes its role in development (eg. teenage crisis). In this case, the crisis’ resolution is connected to successful maturing and growth.

In the proposed panel, we examine various alternative ways to educationally confront crisis. Among the questions the presenters will ask are:

• What exactly is a crisis and what is its relationship to social change?
• Should education be directed to prevention of crises? And if a crisis did erupt, should education be concerned in overcoming it, paving the way back to normality? Alternatively, should education unlock the revolutionary potential of crisis?
• How do educational systems deal with external and internal crises? What are the relations between the two?
• How is education affected by the contemporary state of constant crisis?
• What is the relationship between crisis and catastrophe? And how are they expressed in teaching itself?

This presentation will examine educational crises and the response to them through the lens of complexity theory. Initially developed in the natural sciences to address phenomena beyond the scope of traditional scientific approaches, complexity theory offers a unique perspective on crises. Central to our discussion is the work of French philosopher Edgar Morin (1976) and his "Crisiologie" concept, which provides a foundational framework for understanding crisis within complex systems. Building on complexity theory, crisis is defined here as having three distinct conditions: Firstly, it involves the disruption of systems, hindering them from achieving their objectives. In complexity terms, crises often lead systems to abandon their usual 'attractors' (Gilstrap 2005) Secondly, these disruptions are beyond the control of existing principles or methods (Nsonsissa 2011). Thirdly, they bear significant consequences, impacting the system at a fundamental level (Novalia & Malekpour 2020). Additionally, the presentation differentiate between crises stemming from external elements versus those arising internally, emphasizing the role of antagonistic elements in line with Morin's theories (Morin 1976). Focusing on the education, it is argued that crises in it are predominantly externally induced, stemming from political, economic, or other exterior influences. These crises typically prompt responses aimed at minimizing deviations through negative feedback, viewing the crisis as a threat to be neutralized (Folke 2006). This defensive posture, while aimed at preserving the system, ironically diminishes its capacity to handle future crises and adapt to change. It curtails the productive potential of the system, which is essential for fostering positive changes and necessary transformations (Novalia & Malekpour 2020). To counteract this trend, a divergent approach is advanced. It is maintained that by diversifying and strengthening the active powers within educational systems, we can enhance their resilience and adaptability in the face of crises. To substantiate this argument, the historical responses of educational systems to economic crises will be examined, highlighting the detrimental effects of conventional approaches and underscoring the need for a paradigm shift inspired by complexity theory. This presentation aims to start and dissect the nature of educational crises and chart a forward-thinking path for educational systems to thrive amidst continual change and challenges.

Folke, C. 2006. Resilience: The emergence of a perspective for social–ecological systems analyses. Global environmental change, 16(3), 253-267. Gilstrap, D. L. 2005. Strange attractors and human interaction: Leading complex organizations through the use of metaphors. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 2(1), 55-69. Morin, E. 1976. Pour une crisologie. Communications, 25(1), 149-163. Novalia, W., & Malekpour, S. 2020. Theorising the role of crisis for transformative adaptation. Environmental science & policy, 112, 361-370. Nsonsissa, A. 2011. Pour une «crisologie» 1. Hermès(2), 139-144.

Evaluation comments for last semester’s Theory of Education class were not disheartening. They were disavowing (me). My past--my teaching and the philosophical tradition that nurtured it, cycles of endeavors to reenchant student engagement with theory and its history--was aborting me. Palinodes of neoliberalism’s takeover of the university could help understand what was happening. Lyotard could explain how my teaching’s language games failed performativity; Schulman could explain the gentrification of the mind; Brown could explain what else has been happening beyond and besides the regimes of metrics and competences: the economization of political affect was expanding to the psychic life of learning. Yet this was not just discomfort with aporia; this was the undoing of temporalization. Students opted for self-presencing of meaning, without oblique [dis]orientation, without past, without me. “The art of losing’s not too hard to master”, writes Bishop, “though it may look like (Write it!) disaster”. Exergue to Halberstam’s Queer Art of Failure, Bishop’s verse both anticipates and defies success’s alignment with heteronormative performativity. This paper does not argue for navigating between ‘cynical resignation’ and ‘naive optimism’. Bishop’s ‘Write it!’ does not induce hope; it animates Benjamin’s Angelus Novus. The storm irresistibly propels me into the future to which my back is turned because I refuse to subscribe to a hope that growth will eventually come from the future (Benjamin recited). While cast into dismay by the storm ‘we call progress’, I choose to hold into the pile of debris before me, without hope. This reading of Benjamin’s Angelus Novus attempts to theorize the state of being alienated from one’s intellectual genealogy and relegated, without redemption but also without remorse, to an unmarked grave of a-sociality and a-temporality. This reading holds onto the pause before catastrophe without holding onto leftist melancholia against ‘quietism’. Blown by the storm of progress is theorized as a queer temporality of backwardness (Love 2009) whereas the ruins, i.e., uncongested, aborted, trivialized and overpassed ‘pieces’ of teaching are picked up: “unclear examples”, confusing bind[ing]s of concepts, images and excerpts from texts deemed inappropriate or superfluous, anything that defied and defiled possession. The debris is collected and rearticulated as fragments of mythology (Benjamin). In parallel, the collected are recollected towards queer disidentification and sociality with texts and authors we love (but failed to teach efficiently) through what Elizabeth Freeman calls “temporal drag”.

Ahmed, S. 2006. Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Duke University Press. Benjamin, W. 2010. Theses on the Philosophy of History. In Critical Theory and Society, ed. S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner, Routledge. Brown, W. 2015. Undoing the Demos: Neoliberlism’s Stealth Revolution. Zone Books. Brown, W. 2003. Resisting Left Melancholy, in Loss: The Politics of Mourning, ed. David L. Eng and David Kazanjian. University of California Press. Freccero, C. 2006. Queer/Early/Modern. Duke University Press. Freeman, E. 2010. Time binds: Queer temporalities, queer histories. Duke University Press. Giroux, H. 2011. Neoliberalism and the death of the social state: remembering Walter Benjamin's Angel of History. Social Identities 17.4: 587-601. Halberstam, J. 2020. The queer art of failure. Duke University Press. Love, H. 2009. Feeling backward: Loss and the politics of queer history. Harvard University Press. Lyotard, J. F. 1994. The postmodern condition. Cambridge University Press.

This presentation is concerned with teaching students in times of external crisis and with the corresponding internal crisis in the practice of teaching itself under such conditions. The first question is how educational goals change, or should change, when external reality moves from a state of normalcy to a state of crisis, and the second question is how an incremental and largely progressive endeavor such as education can be reframed to suit crisis’ notable characteristics of nonlinearity and rupture. Critiquing the depoliticization of crisis, and education’s common compliance with it, I argue that crisis should be recognized educationally as such, instead of ignored, “solved” or normalized, and that when recognized, it allows for new emancipatory possibilities. The definition of crisis is notoriously ambiguous as the concept experienced several significant changes in the last 200 years, and is often imprecisely overused. Therefore, I first briefly present the historical development of the concept while focusing on its temporal and political implications (Freeden 2017; Holton 1987; Koselleck 2006). I then discuss crisis as a phenomenon that lacks the capacity to be “confirmed by unambiguous observational evidence” (Lukton 1974), especially when it is no longer a rare exception but an almost regularly recurring event. I also critique the problem-solving approach – educational and otherwise, in which crisis is viewed negatively as merely an obstacle to endure or overcome. Reading in Walter Benjamin’s early work on both crisis and on education, I show that such a view misses the uniqueness of crisis and the learning opportunity it presents by being an occurrence that, by its very essence, “tears away facades and obliterates prejudices” (Arendt 2006). Finally, I argue that in order to teach students to recognize crisis and understand it as an open-ended (possibly emancipatory) phenomenon, teaching itself should change and embrace unexpectedness and nonlinearity.

Arendt, H. 2006. ‘The Crisis in Education’, in Between Past and Future. London: Penguin Benjamin, W. 2003. ‘On the Concept of History.’ In Selected Writings IV: 1938-1940. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Benjamin, W. 2004. Selected Writings I: 1913-1926. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Freeden, M. 2017. Crisis? How Is That a Crisis?! Contributions to the History of Concepts 12, 12-28 Koselleck, R. 2006. Crisis. Journal of the history of ideas, 67:2. 357-400 Lukton, R. 1974. Crisis Theory: Review and Critique, Social Service Review 48:3, 384-402

Davina Cooper (2013, p. 3) describes an everyday utopia as a ‘form of attunement, a way of engaging with spaces, objects, and practices that is oriented to the hope, desire, and belief in the possibility of other, better worlds’. Departing from the conventional understandings of utopia as an abstract ideal yet to be attained, or a compensatory fantasy that makes the unideal present ‘liveable’, an everyday utopia can be understood as an orientation or a method (e.g. Bennett, 2001; Bloch, 200), enacted through experiments with new ways of living together that ‘stay with the trouble’ (e.g. Haraway, 2016).

In this sense, everyday utopias must be thought of in terms of the concrete, embedded possibilities that reach towards an emergent future, as that which sits within a particular tension of latency and tendency, the imagined and the actualised. Crucially, everyday utopias are practical. They do not serve to deny or escape from the present but put into practice a set of values underpinned by commitments to organising – and routinising – new ways of living.

Everyday utopias can be axiomatic in nature, insofar as these commitments may be regarded as fictional, nonexistent or impossible, but that nevertheless lend themselves to new imaginaries for living. Take the work of Jacques Rancière (1991) as an example, particularly his idea of acting on an axiom of equality. Rancière advises us to act as if people were equal in order to let what seems impossible appear in the here and now. Although the axiom itself is “theoretical” (in the conventional sense), it is also “practical”, insofar as it requires practical decisions and arrangements that confirm it, instead of some lofty, purely future-oriented declarations.

Affirmation of a so-called “fictional” axiom involves more than simply a critical awareness of the impossible. Although critique is implicit in everyday utopias (e.g. they can reveal/contest prevailing social norms, unsettling commonsense appropriation of concepts), they also move us beyond any vague assurances of ‘future emancipation’. Rather, “everyday utopias might contribute to a transformative politics by sustaining what is’ (Cooper, 2013, p. 15). Naturally, this would not mean simply conserving the status quo, but might instead refer to (im)possible trajectories of the present invented and explored in the practices of speculative fiction (e.g. Stengers, 2015). Or it might involve sustaining what is, an affirmation of which requires an attitude of care and responsibility for our world, for protecting what is still worthwhile within it. In the case of education, everyday utopias therefore point towards a post-critical rather than critical orientations – a way to discern and preserve particular practices and to explore their future (im)possibilities, rather than an approach that exhausts itself in the debunking critique of the present.

In this symposium, three papers converge to explore the existence and/or the possibility of everyday utopias in education. The first paper serves as an introduction to utopianism in educational theory and turns to the concept of performative utopias as connected to utopias in the everyday sense. The second paper asks what a renewed attunement to the present might mean for education, connecting this to Heidegger’s notion of “poetic dwelling” and the possibility of transformative politics in “making oddkin” on a damaged earth (Haraway, 2016). The third paper turns to the concept of “slow spaces” as an example of an everyday utopia that is possible (and yet threatened) in the modern university.

In this contribution, I examine the various ways that utopian thinking can reinvigorate educational practices following their radical critique. Departing from the meaning that debunking has for our ability to imagine and theorise possible forms of the social world other than the status quo, I contend that the more critique reveals fundamental structures of oppression, the more difficult it seems to oppose them, i.e. the more unimaginable resistance becomes. In other words, radical critique leads to the 'secondary naturalisation of the world' (Vlieghe & Zamojski, 2020) which eventually results in cynicism (Sloterdijk, 1987). For that reason, radical critique is usually paired with utopia – especially in educational theory – as the hope-giving instance. I will refer to the work of Henry A. Giroux (1983; 2011) to make this case. Subsequently, from within this example, I will argue that working in the conditions “after critique” always relate to at least four ways of forming utopias (i.e. of forming our hope). Two of them ('totalitarian' and 'escapist' utopias) represent the reasons utopian thinking was itself an object of critique in the 20th Century. In order to reconstruct these, I refer to the arguments Hans Jonas (1984) laid out against Ernst Bloch (1995). What Giroux proposes is a different kind of utopian thinking, however, which I refer to as 'debunked' utopia. Debunked critique pertains to utopias as regulative ideas for political struggle, insofar as they are aware of the injustices, inequalities, and oppression, and therefore function as an ontological expression of a gut-scream for justice, equality, and freedom. Given that these are so attached to the critique of the existing status quo, I argue that they are “utopias of the possible”, representing desires of the negative (desires for what’s not) rather than an alternative one would be able to affirm. With Jacques Ranciere (1991), I reconstruct a fourth option of utopias that can be practised – namely, 'performative' utopias - where actors make what seems impossible (from the point of view of our critical knowledge about the world) happen here and now. In such cases, they act not against the existing status quo, but in spite of its existence, forming, in such a way, a particular breach in the existing order of things, a sphere of exception. I argue this understanding of utopia is crucial for theorising education today, examples of which can be found in “everyday utopias” explored in the subsequent papers.

Bloch, E. (1995) The Principle of Hope. N. Plaice, St. Plaice, P. Knight transl. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press Giroux, H.A. (1983). Theory and Resistance in Education. A Pedagogy for the Opposition. Massachusetts: Bergin & Garvey. Giroux, H.A. (2011). On Critical Pedagogy. New York – London: Continuum. Jonas, H. (1984). The Imperative of Responsibility. In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age. Transl. H. Jonas, D. Herr, Chicago – London: The University of Chicago Press. Rancière, J. (1991). The Ignorant Schoolmaster (Kristin Ross, Trans.). Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press. Sloterdijk, P. (1987), Critique of Cynical Reason, transl. M. Eldred, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press Vlieghe, J., Zamojski, P. (2020) Towards an immanent ontology of teaching. Leonard Bernstein as a case-study, “Ethics and Education” vol. 15 no. 1, s. 1-17, https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2019.1700444

Cooper’s (2013) everyday utopias can be taken as a call to reorient educational theory and practice towards a renewed engagement with the present. But how can attunement to the present be cultivated in and through education? How can the required openness to the unforeseen be conceptualised given the nature of education as a perpetual departure from ‘what is’ that requires normative direction? To reflect on these questions, drawing mainly from Heidegger and Haraway, I connect Cooper’s idea of everyday utopia with the concept of ‘dwelling’. ‘Dwelling’ resonates with everyday utopias as practical attempts to not only think differently but to be in the world differently. For Heidegger, dwelling is attained through building for dwelling’s sake, which includes both cultivating (tending to and preserving our surroundings) and constructing (“raising up edifices” (Heidegger 1971, 145)). An education oriented towards ‘dwelling’ is not about creating a particular future, but about truly inhabiting the present moment with care, openness, responsiveness and responsibility; an engagement with the world that is educationally meaningful. Keeping with the spirit of Cooper’s everyday utopias, ‘dwelling’ is not about the idea of ‘future emancipation’, but about authentic being and participation as means for present emancipation. Primordially connected to being, building that contributes to dwelling “corresponds to the character” (Heidegger 1971, 156) of things, responding to the inherent potentiality of Dasein. Heidegger uses the term ‘poetic’ to further elucidate the nature of ‘dwelling’ as authentic ‘presencing’ – both of the self and others. The poetic, following Heidegger, is about “the saying of the unconcealedness of what is” (71). As such, ‘dwelling’ is inherently utopian: it opens present avenues for transformation “by sustaining what is.” (Cooper 2013, 15) Heidegger’s notion of ‘poetic dwelling’ resonates with Haraway’s call in 'Staying With The Trouble' (2016) for the need to be present in, with and “on a damaged earth” (2016, 2). This “requires learning to be truly present […] as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings” (1); it “requires making oddkin [through] unexpected collaborations and combinations” (5). Haraway allows us to conceptualise co-construction outside an anthropocentric idea of continuous progress through rational discourse. The commitment to ‘staying with the trouble’ is itself utopian (114). Haraway draws an arc between the educational (practical and theoretical), ethical and political aspects of dwelling (Stengel 2019), and connects to Cooper’s vision of everyday utopia as a form of transformative politics.

Cooper, D. (2013). Everyday Utopias: The Conceptual Life of Promising Spaces. Durham: Duke University Press. Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press. Heidegger, M. (1971). Poetry, Language, Thought. New York: Harper Colophon Books. Stengel, B. S. (2019). Com-Posting Experimental futures: Pragmatists Making (Odd)Kin with New Materialists. Studies in Philosophy and Education 38(7), 7-29.

Attenuating the modern logic of efficiency, several international “slow movements” have spawned. The most famous is perhaps the “slow food movement” (Petrini, 2005), but they also appear in tourism, art and cinema, urban design – and, indeed, in education (Berg and Seeber, 2016). For those advocating slowness, the growth of the so-called “edgeless city” is intimately connected to the thoughtlessness that characterises modern forms of consumption, where our capacity to dwell in such spaces is limited, and where we are left with a sense of dislocatedness and disenchantment. Slow movements are examples of what Cooper (2013) calls ‘everyday utopias’: they seek not merely to critique, but to put into practice a set of concrete actions underpinned by commitments that make possible alternative forms of living, alternative ways of engaging with worthwhile activities. Lamenting the so-called “reading crisis” in modern society, Waters (2007) argues this relates not only to our failures to address structural inequalities but also the sense in which we no longer find time to engage in contemplative – or slow - forms of reading. Where reading is taught, it is in the form of “speed reading”, resulting in the reduction of literature to "graphs and charts". Waters asks: what happens if we go inside a book - becoming still, slow? These time-consuming practices produce a "deeply profound quiet that can overwhelm your soul, [in which] you can lose yourself for an immeasurable moment of time". To read literature is, indeed, "…to mess with time, to establish… its own rhythm.” Waters’ (2007) argument might easily slip into a neo-Luddite critique of modern technology, particularly considering recent concerns around students’ use of AI tools/speed-reading apps. Although originally a critique of the accelerating forces of modernisation, the value of slowness in this paper points to existing contemplative practices in the university that enable heightened aesthetic or sensory experiences through which the possibility of fully immersing ourselves is allowed. It calls for the protection of these spaces - both physical study spaces threatened by the logic of efficiency with increased student numbers, the growth of digital resources etc. (e.g. Carnell, 2017; Mathews and Walton, 2014), as well as conceptual spaces that include ‘slow ways of thinking’. Slowness is also made possible through what Sedgwick (2002) calls reparative reading – an orientation that seeks to preserve rather than deconstruct the text, that instead requires radical receptivity, and that represents an example of a particular "utopia-in-practice”.

Berg, M. and Seeber, B. K. (2016). The slow professor: challenging the culture of speed in the academy, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Carnell, B. (2017). Connecting university spaces with research-based education, Journal of Learning Spaces, 6 (2). Cooper, D. (2013). Everyday utopias: the conceptual life of promising spaces, USA: Duke University Press. Matthews, G. and Walton, G. (2014). Strategic development of university library space: widening the influence, New Library World, 115 (6/7), pp. 237-249). Petrini, C. (2004). Slow food: the case for taste, USA: Columbia University Press. Sedgwick, E. K. (2002), Touching Feeling, Durham, USAL Duke University Press, Durham. Waters, L. (2007). Time for reading, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 53 (23).

There can be little doubt that examples and exemplarity are key aspects of any educational practice. Either in the use of examples in teaching, or in the fact that teachers themselves function as exemplars (good or bad ones) while teaching. Yet exemplarity does not seem to feature very prominently in research and theorising on education. Occasioned by the publication of Retuning Education. Bildung and exemplarity beyond the logic of progress (Korsgaard, 2024) this symposium aims to rethink the role of exemplarity in education in order to escape some of the functionalist and conservative tendencies that have been associated with thinking about exemplarity in education. These have been prominent in ideas about a certain canon of examples in for example literature and science and in the emerging ideas around exemplarist ethics and education where a reductive admiration-emulation model is pervasive (see Zagzebski, 2013). These ideas tend to understand the use of examples in functionalist terms with a clear aim or objective in view which subsumes the particular example under a simplistic transactional function, with a specific outcome in mind. What we wish to explore is whether we can think of the function of examples and exemplars in education in a way that escapes such reductive logics (see also Harvey, 2002); a way that keeps the outcome of educational processes radically open, keeping to the Arendtian credo of not determining in advance how students should relate to subject matter, i.e., the examples they are presented with in education (Arendt, 2006). We will focus our attention mainly on the use of examples in teaching, or in the vocabulary of the abovementioned book, didactical exemplarity. Roughly speaking this concerns moments when something functions as an example in education. This is contrasted with educational exemplarity when someone takes up an exemplary function in education (Korsgaard, 2019; 2024). Didactical exemplarity concerns what is to be placed on the table in education and how this is to be presented to the students. One aspect concerns the content [inhalt] of education and the other the substance [gehalt] of education (Klafki, 2007). Choosing the right example or experiment to present the law of gravity to students (e.g. an apple falling from a tree) to students is not enough. It must be arranged and presented in a way that can capture the attention of the students (see Wagenschein 1956; 1977). In this symposium, we wish to explore this pivotal aspect of education in ways that reflect the multifaceted and complex process that lies behind any presentation of subject matter, while attempting to escape the usual reductive and outcome-oriented approaches to these challenges.

The three papers and the response circle the issue from different starting points yet attempt to outline new ways to think about the use of examples in education and, given the centrality of this aspect, education itself.

Education is a field that concerns the commonness of the world and teaching can be viewed as a gift given to the young generation. However, the world tackles difficult matters, where injustice and conflicts are present in different ways, in schools and outside it. War, poverty, atrocities and inequality are a part of our common world. In my contribution to the symposium on Korsgaard’s book Retuning education (2024), I will give a response to when that which is put on the table, the example, consists of sentimental narratives of injustice or conflicts (cf. Hållander 2020, Zembylas 2023). I will do so by doing an emotional reading. We all use examples, within philosophy, teaching and in daily life telling stories that exemplify what is presented. Examples constitute a didactic and ontological singularity, which speaks for itself (Agamben 2009, Hållander 2024). To give an example (in teaching) is a complex act, since “what the example shows is its belonging to a class, but for this very reason the example steps out of its class in the moment it exhibits and delimits it” (Agamben, 2009, s. 18). An example, stands for itself, speaks of itself, but in this singularity, it is also related to that which stands alongside it. This relatedness of the example allows for the possibility to create a knowability (Agamben 2009, Hållander 2024). Education is a matter of placing objects, and ideas in front of the students, so “that they are invited to touch, taste, smell, listen to, think about. Put simply, they are invited to study them” (Korsgaard 2024, p. 5). Teaching examples therefore concerns and creates understandings and knowability. Sometimes this understanding and knowability is emotional. Scholars in various fields of the humanities and the social sciences have explored the significance of affects and emotions in different educational settings (cf. Zembylas 2023). For example, sentimental narratives are used to invoke empathetic feelings, and create not only feelings but also shape identities and formations of ‘us and them’ (Ahmed 2006). Through emotions we react, and act. Dealing with students’ emotions is a part of teachers’ work, and different examples can evoke different emotions (Zembylas 2023, Hållander 2020). In my contribution to the symposium, I will argue how emotions and affective logics of examples of injustice and atrocities can be addressed pedagogically in critical rather than sentimental ways.

Agamben, Giorgio. (2009) The signature of all things: On method. Zone Books. Ahmed, Sarah. (2004) The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press. Hållander, Marie. (2024) Exemplets didaktik: singularitet och subjektivitet i religionsundervisning. Speki. Nordic Philosophy and Education Review. Hållander, Marie. (2020) The Pedagogical Possibilities of Witnessing and Testimonies Through the Lens of Agamben. Palgrave Macmillan,. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55525-2_5 Korsgaard, Morten. (2024) Retuning Education: Bildung and Exemplarity Beyond the Logic of Progress. Routledge. Zembylas, Michalinos. (2023) Challenging sentimental narratives of ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ in postcolonial settings: thinking with and through affective justice in comparative education, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 53:7,1152-1169, DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2021.2017766

To discuss Korsgaard's (2024) argument, we want to rethink the ideas of Martin Wagenschein (2010) in view of Hannah Arendt’s (1961) conceptualisation of education as the introduction of newcomers to the old world. Wagenschein frames his ideas as didactical and introduces the notion of entry point or Einstieg to criticize the widely acknowledged principle of the learning ladder. We argue that his idea of Einstieg as the starting point into a domain of knowledge is not only fundamental for teaching, but also revolutionary for educational theory as such. The Einstieg serves as an example, but a particular one – we would argue – i.e., it is the thing that a teacher invites her pupils to study together. Therefore, as Wagenschein reminds us, it has to be complex enough to contain a mystery of some kind, an aspect that is unknown, concealed, and therefore, interesting, attractive, if not seductive. The reason for a teacher and her pupils to study this thing is not to acquire some predetermined knowledge, competence, or skills. What is at stake is what is opened by this entry point. This thing is the path through which pupils enter a particular domain of our common world. Studying it allows them to look around and find other interesting matters to study. Perhaps – with time – they will find this domain (mathematics, chemistry, history, poetry, woodcraft, etc.) their habitat. Teaching focused on the thing studied together with pupils requires therefore to lose time and to lose oneself in it: to “grow roots” and “linger” in a thing. This goes counter to the rush that characterizes curriculum-centred teaching focused on ticking the boxes of subsequent themes being delivered. This also goes counter to the neoliberal personalised learning strategies focused on the most efficient way to install new functionalities in the cognitive apparatus of an individual child. In addition, it differs from the liberal student-centred pedagogies focused on children’s needs and talents. Hence, we will present Wagenschein's exemplarist proposal as a clear case of a thing-centred pedagogy. Our analysis is fully in line with Arendt, for whom education is essentially about responding to the condition of natality, meaning that it concerns the meeting of an old and a new generation. Wagenschein adds to this that teaching also always starts with a thing, and orients itself around the thing, i.e., the entry point to our common world.

Arendt, H. (1961). The Crisis in Education. In Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought. The Viking Press: New York Korsgaard, Morten. (2024) Retuning Education: Bildung and Exemplarity Beyond the Logic of Progress. Routledge. Wagenschein, M. (2010) ‘Teaching to Understand: On the Concept of the Exemplary in Teaching’ in Westbury, I., Hopmann, S. & Riquarts, K. eds. Teaching as a Reflective Practice: The German Didaktik Tradition. Mahwah-London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, pp. 161-175

The middle voice denotes a grammatical construction that is virtually absent from English not least because our “somewhat stubborn ordering of subject-verb-object” (Standish 2018, 10) leads to a binary presumption of agency: we act or are acted upon; we are agents or patients; active or passive (Lewin 2011). This grammatical bind forces English thinking and discourse down rather narrow channels. For instance, in the philosophy of technology we schizophrenically leap from asserting our agency (it is up to us how we use machines) to lamenting our impotence before almighty autonomous technology (Lewin 2006). We struggle to express, or even conceive, of a more nuanced interplay between human agency and the ‘agency’ (or as Heidegger put it, ‘das Geschick’) of technology (Heidegger 1977). Similarly, philosophers of religion have tended to assert that an experience of ‘God’ is either a projection of the human subject (in which case false), or a revelation in which the subject is rendered passive - consider William James’ classic definition of religious experience (James 1902). We struggle to conceptualise a harmonisation between the speculations of the religious subject, and the revelations that may thereby occur (Dupré 1998). There is, in short, an insensitivity concerning how experience, thought and language operate in a space between ‘subject’ and ‘object’, between thought and being. That insensitivity risks occluding insights about the nature of technology, religion, or, as I will focus on here, education. Korsgaard’s book (2024) is sensitised to the possible constructions of thought that language brings forth, to inhabit a middle register: education is described here in terms of (re)tuning and resonance through exemplarity. Resonance isn’t something that an agent does, nor do they only undergo resonance. It is active and passive: naming something that takes place between person and world. For Korsgaard resonance is at the heart of the educational relation precisely because education is relational. Building on this argument, I will show how the concept of attention, also key to education and exemplarity, is not something that agents simply control (either by demanding or paying attention). Rather ‘attention’ names something that takes place in a middle realm (Lewin 2014). Through the evocation of the archaic term ‘behold’ I will show how the relations between the three corners of the educational triangle, educator, student and world (Friesen and Kenklies 2022) are brought to life through a trialectic of beholding in which examplarity plays a key role.

Dupré, L. (1998) Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection. Eerdmans. Friesen, N and Kenklies, K. (2022) Continental pedagogy & curriculum. In Tierney, Rob and Rizvi, Fazal and Ercikan, Kadriye, eds. International Encyclopedia of Education. Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 245-255. Heidegger, M. (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Harper and Row. James, W. (1902) The Varieties of Religious Experience. Longmans, Green and Co. Korsgaard, M. (2024) Retuning Education: Bildung and Exemplarity Beyond the Logic of Progress. Routledge. Lewin, D. (2006) Freedom and Destiny in the Philosophy of Technology. New Blackfriars, 87(1011), 515–533. Lewin, D. (2011) The middle voice in Eckhart and modern continental philosophy. Medieval Mystical Theology, 20 (1). pp. 28-46. Lewin, D. (2014) Behold: silence and attention in education. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 48 (3). pp. 355-369. Standish, P. (2018) Language, translation, and the hegemony of English. Tetsugaku. International Journal of the Philosophical Association of Japan, 2 pp. 1-12.

The competency-based educational approach is a project that generates significant interest in global educational policy, as it is promoted by highly influential international organizations such as the OECD (Rychen, 2016) and UNESCO (2015), along with other supranational organizations like the EU (Council of the European Union, 2018) and OEI (2010). Since the 1990s, numerous countries worldwide have undertaken reforms in their national curriculum to introduce the competency-based approach at all educational levels (Anderson-Levitt & Gardinier, 2021).

This educational approach interprets the learning process as the acquisition of a set of competencies necessary for students to overcome life situations (Levine & Patrick, 2019). Competence is defined as a combination and mobilization of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that enable individuals to confront problematic contexts (Le Deist & Winterton, 2005; Westera, 2001).

However, the approach is not without its criticisms. Firstly, there is a lack of universal acceptance of the competency definition, with ambiguous interpretations contributing to the absence of a single model (Le et al., 2014; Westera, 2001). Furthermore, competencies and learning outcomes are often considered equivalent, leading to evaluative processes determining if students’ performance aligns with expected standards (Le et al., 2014); in other words, assessment is performative. Additionally, criticism arises regarding the influence of international organizations compelling countries to hastily implement policy reforms introducing competencies into their education systems, following global trends and causing these changes to become impositions (Krejsler, 2019; Díaz-Barriga, 2019).

Despite the abundance of empirical material on the competency-based educational approach, it faces numerous criticisms due to the perceived tendency to impose a global educational agenda linking formative processes with economic needs (Preston, 2017; Tröhler, 2013). Therefore, Díaz-Barriga (2019) advocates for continuing conceptual studies on this approach to unravel its educational implications and contribute to knowledge in this field.

This conceptual study aligns with the current that critiques the competency-based educational approach. We argue that the competency-based educational approach is an instrument of the capitalist system designed to connect educational processes with economic needs. The study aims to provide a comprehensive view of the competency-based educational approach. To achieve this, we will follow the trilateral analysis proposed by Barnett (2022) to understand the educational implications of any pedagogical project: the political, the epistemological, and the anthropological.

International acceptance of the competency-based educational approach should not hinder the ongoing task of questioning its project, exploring the relationship between this approach and centers of power, and considering alternative approaches.

The question of how to live an ethical, meaningful, and purposeful life is one of the most fundamental issues in education. In Kemmis’ words, education is about ‘living well in a world worth living in’, and for Biesta, education is the ‘how’ of existence. This existential turn is certainly a welcome alternative to narrow conceptions of education as preparation for future employment. A deep challenge arises however, when attempting to determine how to live well or what it means to exist. This is not because these are difficult topics but because they seem to beg the question. An answer to the question of what is education is presumably the result of some educational enquiry and is therefore asking how we are to educate ourselves about education. As one attempt to explore this challenge, this paper takes a radical alternative. Instead of understanding education as about existence, it explores what it might look like for existence to be about education.

I begin with a thought experiment that brings the existential question into sharp focus – imagine having one minute left to live. Clearly undesirable, I expect most would experience a crushing sense of anxiety. However, for the sake of argument, suppose you wanted to determine what you should do with the rest of the time you had left. Two immediate responses spring to mind. The first would be to do nothing, perhaps paralysed by indecision or an awareness of the meaninglessness of any decision. A second response might be to somehow quickly attempt to do that which you think, or feel is the most important thing that you must do before your time is up. And yet there are further ways to increase the existential angst. There is the question of determining which of those two responses is the best. And then the question of by what purpose or criteria such a decision is to be made. At this point, I would wager that anyone’s response would be that these are impossible tasks given only a minute left to live. Yet what is the difference between one minute and one year, or 100 years? What makes answering the question of what to do any more possible simply by extending the time available?

I have framed the situation in terms of time because of the immediate resonance of its force upon our experience. However, this thought experiment draws attention to another equally taken for granted concept, perhaps even more fundamental than the nature of time. It is the presupposition of making any educational progress at all. Whether presented as one minute or 100 years, both cases betray an underlying assumption of something that can be done, with time simply being a limiting factor. In fact, we would not feel the pressure of time in constraining what we can do unless we already believed we can do something. Regardless of time, what reason do we have for thinking we can make any progress at all on questions such as what to do?

This symposium was provoked by and constitutes a response to Emile Bojesen’s critique of the humanist legacy in education.

In his book, Forms of Education: Rethinking Educational Experience Against and Outside the Humanist Legacy, Bojesen (2020) argues that in embracing humanism’s values of rectitude (i.e. self-sufficiency; autonomy; rationality) and redemption (i.e. moral and intellectual improvement; harmonization of the individual and the social order), as foundational, education (as in schooling) becomes nothing more than an means to “social hygiene and economic productivity” (p. 45). He makes a compelling case for a broader understanding of education as “a multitude of experience which are perceived and interpreted – in the service of the perpetual formation (and deformation) of non-stable subjects” (p. 5). While sympathetic to Bojesen’s perspective, it does beg the following questions: If all experience is educational, what differentiates education from life? Are there any specifically educational commitments that can guide educators who wish to abandon the humanist legacy? Without recourse to some ‘foundation,’ are educators not left with the problem of adequately justifying our values and practices? The author offers a rich repertoire of concepts that begin to affirm educational experience – ‘passive education’ connoting ‘restrained’ or ‘non-impositional’ relations between individuals who ‘let the other be’ (p. 106); and, ‘conversation’ envisioned as the ‘fluid movement of thought’ among speakers (p. 114) being two examples. In doing so, Bojesen’s work takes an unexpected ontological turn and it is this turn that the papers in this symposium wish to examine and extend.

Embracing Bojesen’s concerns and inspired by Stephen White’s (2000) assertion that it is possible to develop ‘positive’ or ‘affirmative’ accounts of life without abandoning a critique of foundationalism, we wish to propose ‘a weak ontology’ of education. An ontological turn implies a greater awareness and interrogation of taken-for-granted conceptions – of education and the educated person – in the modern West. What distinguishes this ‘weak’ characterization of education from a ‘strong’ version, is that it enables us to articulate some educational commitments while appreciating that the latter are contestable and contingent; they cannot be “fully disentangled from an interpretation of present historical circumstances” (p. 10-11). Significantly, however, these commitments a) are key to how we articulate the meaning of our lives, individually and collectively; b) are intertwined with questions of identity and history; and c) offer parameters within which to think ‘education’ and its relation to the human subject.

Set against present circumstances – a neoliberal preoccupation with progress, hyper-individualism, and performativity – symposium papers identify and explore three ontological commitments: 1) the ‘event’, that the unexpected occurs in life and human subjects have a capacity for radical novelty; 2) ‘inclination’, that the existence of others summons ethical and political responsibility in each of us; and 3) ‘conversation’, that humans subjects are distinct and in need of making ourselves understood and this requires relentless, collective engagement. Each commitment is borne of an existential reality but with historical dimension. A weak ontology of/for education hinges on these realities and schooling becomes one site of their contingent negotiation. Therefore, what it means to be human and to be educated are always in play; they are, in Biesta’s (2206) terms, “radically open question[s]” (p. 4, 5).

In summary, each paper presentation engages Bojesen’s (2021) critique of the humanist legacy while attempting to affirm and sustain educational formulations. Respectively, presenters (from Australia, Canada, Denmark, England and Scotland) draw upon ontological sources – the event (Badiou), inclination (Cavarero), and conversation (Blanchot) – examining their value for rethinking education in our time. The session concludes with a commentary by Discussant, Dr. Gunnlaugur Magnusson, Uppsala University.

Worldwide, schooling has for decades been criticized for its Enlightenment heritage and how it links education to a rationalistic logic of progress (Korsgaard, 2024). Much of what goes on in schools is – as a result of this logic – pre-determined, planned and measured against certain objective standards. The upshot is that school as a form of education reflects the ordinary and everyday realm (Badiou, 2001) and has become largely a matter of socialization and qualification (Biesta, 2020). As such, students’ experience is confined to taken-for-granted understandings about themselves (i.e. seemingly coherent identities), the world (i.e. rule-based order) and the meaning of life (i.e. pursuit of personal interests such as individual success) (Ruti, 2012). Following Bojesen (2020) this is one of the reasons why it is necessary to encourage and support teachers to create free spaces in which “plural speech between non-stable subjects” can become possible (p. 115). Against this backdrop, we posit and examine a second sphere of human existence – the extraordinary – that exists in schools but often goes unnoticed. The domain of the extraordinary is that of unexpected and disruptive events which, when they happen in education, reveal its historical and antagonistic character (Badiou, 2001), its “incompleteness or cracks'' and disturbs its “taken-for-granted coordinates” (Taubman, 2010, p. 197). Being faithful to such disruption – or to the intrusion of events – has educational potential, we argue, as it can dislodge us from ordinary life, make the impossible possible and enable teachers and students to perceive and engage reality – including the different subject matters that inform their perception and engagement – in ways that can resist or suspend the above-mentioned logic of progress. Put simply, a perspective that wasn’t evident becomes available. Trying to grasp the enigmatic ‘truth’ that is attached to the event is, we suggest, an educational process par excellence. It means that teachers and students in collaboration seek to put the different pieces together “bit by bit, by [their] fidelity to the event” (Ruti, 2012, p. 90). In such a faithful (educational) process the teacher and the students find themselves occupied in the ‘here and now’, studying the event without any interference from the logic of progress. In other words, they allow themselves – as un-stable subjects – to be ‘captured’ in space and time, in the present moment, without losing their sense of the past and future (Vlieghe and Zamojski, 2017).

Badiou, A. 2001. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Translated by Peter Hallward. Verso. Biesta, G. (2020). Risking ourselves in education: Qualification, socialization, and subjectification revisited. Educational Theory, 70(1), 89-104. Bojesen, E. (2021). Forms of Education: Rethinking educational experience against and outside the humanist legacy. Routledge. Korsgaard, M. T. (2024). Retuning Education: Bildung and Exemplarity Beyond the Logic of Progress. Rotuledge (forthcoming) Ruti, M. (2012). The Singularity of Being: Lacan and the Immortal Within. Fordham University Press. Taubman, P. M. 2010. Alain Badiou, Jacques Lacan and the Ethics of Teaching. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42 (2): 196-212. Vlieghe, J. and Zamojski, P. (2017). The event, the messianic and the affirmation of life. A post-critical perspective on education with Agamben and Badiou. Policy Futures in Education, 15(7-8): 849-860.

Schooling in the neoliberal era relies on an ethic of competitive individualism that has been characterized as a “theology of the individual” (Sennett, 1998, p. 105). Deploying the performative resources of data and evidence, and enabled by the pervasive reach of digital technology, neoliberalism restages the time-honoured strategy of ‘divide and rule,’ as it pits individuals and institutions against each other through logics of competition. This competitive logic relies on an ontology of rectitude – of right-thinking and right-acting, self-sufficient and self-supporting, autonomous and responsible, individuals, standing on their own two feet – that, in turn, draws on a deep-rooted intellectual lineage: “the figure of the righteous-erect man, as a model of virtue, traverses the entire history of philosophy” (Cavarero, 2021a). In the face of this destructive individualism, our challenge as educators is to find “new ways of relating that contest the damaging structures of institutionalized individualism and neoliberal forms of individualism” (Layton, 2020, p. 71). This paper engages with this challenge by drawing on the work of Italian philosopher, Adriana Cavarero. Specifically, the paper draws on her geometries of rectitude and inclination, “two postural paradigms referring to two different models of subjectivity, two theaters for questioning the human condition in terms of autonomy or independence, two styles of thought, two languages: the first relates to individualistic ontology, the second to a relational ontology” (2016, p. 10). For educators, an ethics of rectitude seems to give license to an unforgiving form of competitive individualism that goes hand in hand with, and is exploited by, the sort of hierarchical management structures and authoritarian leadership practices experienced by many teachers in schools. By contrast, an ethics of inclination foregrounds our co-dependency and suggests “that what gives life to politics, intended in terms of an embodied democracy, is an interacting plurality that displays its ontological and relational status through the material uniqueness of resonating singular voices” (Cavarero, 2021b, p. 178). Cavarero’s notion of inclination thus offers conceptual, ethical and political resources for resisting rectitude, i.e. for thinking seriously about interdependence, relationality and care, and for seeking to create ways, individually and collectively, for realising these notions within our practices and our institutions. As such, inclination is characterized by an (‘weak’) ‘altruistic’ ontology – in the sense of being ethical and in the more literal sense of being ‘other’-oriented (Cavarero, 2000, p. 87) – that contrasts with the (‘strong’) rigid, individualistic ontology of rectitude.

Cavarero, A. (2000). Relating narratives: Storytelling and selfhood (P. Kottman, Trans.). New York: Routledge. Cavarero, A. (2016). Inclinations: A critique of rectitude. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cavarero, A. (2021a). Scenes of inclination. In T. J. Huzar & C. Woodford (Eds.), Toward a feminist ethics of nonviolence (pp. 33-45). New York: Fordham University Press. Cavarero, A. (2021b). Coda. In T. J. Huzar & C. Woodford (Eds.), Toward a feminist ethics of nonviolence (pp. 177-186). New York: Fordham University Press. Layton, L. (2020). Toward a social psychoanalysis: Culture, character, and normative unconscious processes. New York: Routledge. Sennett, R. (1998). The corrosion of character: The personal consequences of work in the new capitalism. New York: Norton.

This paper offers a study group’s collaborative response to and a possible exemplification of Emile Bojesen’s (2021) conceptualization of ‘conversation’ in relation to ‘education’. Conversation “exceeds dialogue and dialectic” (p.114), he writes, specifically resisting development-focused forms often promoted in discourses of education. Instead, Bojesen draws on Blanchot’s (1969) notion of ‘plural speech’ to favour a more anarchistic formulation: conversation as movement of thought through discontinuity, uncertainty and without intended outcome. This form of conversing begins from a point of uncertainty into the unknown; perhaps the ‘intention’, if any, is one of destabilisation, “a disestablishment of the subject and the scientific framing of research” (p.114). In exploring the potential fruitfulness and constraints of Bojesen’s (2021) ideas, we look to the plurality and free association underpinning Blanchot’s (1969) notion of conversation. We begin from the uncertainty of a unified response to Bojesen, and continue with what comes into our minds when engaged with issues such as the humanist legacy, (de)formation, conversation, and un-stable subjects, and what they might mean for our understandings of this thing we habitually refer to as ‘education’. Process? Status? Institution? We strive to “hear what is new and different in what the author [here Bojesen] says as opposed to simply hearing what we want to hear or expect in advance” (Fink, 2007, p. 10). Such attentiveness lets us float with utterances and see what will happen when we converse and think with them. Our conversation thus takes unpredictable pathways; it is an explorative ‘essai’, an effort of calligraphic weaving of thoughts to grasp at an idea. Conceptualizing conversation in this way is, as Bojesen (2021) suggests, an attempt to construct ‘other’ spaces within existing school formations: spaces not regulated by pre-determined means and ends, but rather particular situations in which we “with our own distinct interests, and in a manner where our forms of knowledge, including our embodied knowledge, contribute to a movement of thought that does not have to be externally validated or approved” (p. 125). For it seems meaningless to speak of plurality if this is framed by a powerful dictum of usefulness and logics of growth, progress, and development. We find in Bojesen’s work a strong defence of concrete situations and present moments, in which life enriching ‘educational’ possibilities and life-enhancing friendly relationships can emerge, ‘freed’ from authoritative masters and political (instrumental) restraints and released from desires for rectitude or dreams of redemption.

Blanchot, M. (1969). L'entretien infini (Vol. 6). Gallimard. Bojesen, E. (2021). Forms of Education: Rethinking educational experience against and outside the humanist legacy. Routledge. Fink, B. (2007). Fundamental of Psychoanalytical Technique: A Lacanian Approach for Practitioners. W.W. Norton & Company.