Conference Agenda

In the context of multiple crises, democratic ideals and systems as we know them are eroding from within (Lührmann et al., 2021). Responses from education have been varied, offering a range of different approaches to democracy citizenship education, e.g. deliberative, participatory, radical, etc. (Sant, 2019). Still, these responses continue to work under a range of potentially misguided assumptions, i.e. that: a) democracy is inherently and universally good (Zembylas, 2022); b) education is the answer to the world’s problems (Hofman, 2025); c) that there is an ideal democratic citizen that education can educate for and d) that this process will lead to a certain, pre-defined, outcome. Consequently, these approaches reinforce rather than challenge the role of education as a vehicle for reproducing the status quo (Sant & Tryggvason, 2025). It seems, then, we need a different sort of response from education that not only critically interrogates our assumptions about democracy (da Costa, 2023) but also critically engages with our educational responses. Reflecting on democracy’s seemingly approaching demise, we were inspired by Vanessa Andreotti’s concept of hospicing and how it conceptualises caring for a system that is in transition and, in fact, complicit in producing and sustaining the very same (entangled) crises education is meant to be addressing (e.g. climate crisis, democratic crisis, time crisis, etc.). Thus, caring for democracy during this transition stage, calls us to sit in the discomfort of a system in transition, facing and learning from democracy’s harms (as well as its gifts) while experimenting with other ways of being democratically, and developing collective stamina for what’s to come, rather than succumbing to hopelessness (Andreotti et al., 2015). We find that acknowledging democracy’s imperfections, and being willing to navigate and confront its tensions, is not the same than leaving democracy behind or thinking that other systems would surpass democratic imperfections.

So, what does caring for democracy look like in democratic citizenship education? As we learn from history, what democratic values and practices do we want to keep/leave behind/initiate? Drawing on the work of Tronto (2013), we understand care in democracy as deeply political, relational, and participatory. This second part of the two-part symposium offers four papers that will explore how we might care for democracy in education through these different dimensions. The papers conceptualize caring as response-ability, ungrading, agonistic ritual, and centering emotions, discussing what is worth caring for in democratic citizenship education, and what requires radical change.

Across the globe, concerns about a crisis of democracy have intensified. Scholars highlight the rise of authoritarian and exclusionary politics within democratic regimes, and the deepening of socio-economic and racial inequalities as indicators that democracy is under threat (Toscano, 2023). These concerns are echoed in education research, where democracy is frequently invoked as endangered and in need of rescue and renewal (e,g, Giroux, 2022; Bruce, 2025). Yet, despite the widespread agreement that democracy is in crisis, far less attention is given to democracy’s complicity in producing the very conditions that now threaten it (Toscano, 2023). Education is often positioned as the answer to democracy’s implosion through a wide range of conceptualisations of democratic education which, despite divergences, tend to share the assumption that democracy is inherently good and universally desirable (Sant, 2019). In these theoretical conversations, democracy is often seen as in opposition to systems of oppression – e.g. racism, capitalism (see e.g., Giroux, 2022), or disentangled from them through more inclusive re-conceptualisations (see e.g., Hytten & Stemhagen, 2021). Often, these responses can also assume that education is separate from society, so democratic education is about preparing students for democratic life through the acquisition of the ‘right’ knowledge and skills (Biesta, 2011). Instead, this paper starts from the position that democracy is part of the problem, having originated through and continued to be entangled in systems of oppression (Mbembe, 2019); and rejects the education/democracy divide (Biesta, 2011). Accordingly, democracy is understood, following da Costa (2022, drawing on Elizabeth R Anker), as ugly – a practice of both freedom and oppression; and, in line with Thiel and Sant (2025), as ontologically contingent, relational, and material‑discursive. From this recognition of democracy’s complicity in violence and the porous boundaries between democracy and education, the paper explores a conceptualisation of care in democratic citizenship education as response-ability, drawing on Hofman (2023, who builds on Haraway’s work). Hofman (2023) reconceptualises response-ability as relations of care that are non-innocent, ubiquitous, and political. She articulates response‑ability as: (1) worldmaking – sustaining particular worlds while neglecting others; (2) an etho‑ecological practice – shaped by, yet not reducible to, immanent contextual obligations; and (3) careful experimentation – ongoing, situated tinkering rather than radical breaks or abstract critique. Thus, the paper explores the possibilities this reconceptualisation of care might open for reconfiguring the aims, subjects, and practice of democratic education.

Biesta, G. (2011) ‘The Ignorant Citizen: Mouffe, Rancière, and the Subject of Democratic Education’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 30(2), 141–153. Bruce, B. C. (2025) ‘Creative Democracy How Democratic Education Can Restore and Enrich Democracy’, Education and Culture, 41(1), 31–61. da Costa, M. (2023) ‘Ugly Democracy: Towards Epistemic Disobedience in Development Education’. Policy & Practice: A Development Education Review, 36, 14–32.   Giroux, H (2022) ‘Resisting Fascism and Winning the Education Wars: How we can Meet the Challenge’, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, vol. 35, Autumn, 111–126. Hytten, K., & Stemhagen, K. (2021). Democratic theory’s evasion of race. Educational Theory, 71(2), 177–202. Hofman, L. B. (2025) ‘Immanent obligations of response: articulating everyday response-abilities through care’, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, 26/2: 245–26. Mbembe, A (2019) Necropolitics, London: Duke University Press. Sant, E. (2019). Democratic education: A theoretical review (2006–2017). Review of Educational Research, 89(5), 655–696. Thiel, J. and Sant, E. (2025) ‘Democracy as intra-action: Some educational implications when we diffract John Dewey’s, Karen Barad’s and Ernesto Laclau’s work’. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 57(6), 563–574 Toscano, A. (2023) Late Fascism: Race, Capitalism and the Politics of Crisis. Verso

Across the globe, democracy is increasingly framed as “in crisis.” Rising populism, declining trust in institutions, and widening social inequalities have reshaped how young people relate to democracy. Recent studies indicate a decline in youth satisfaction with democracy, particularly in established Western democracies (Bordeleau, 2025; preprint). While some scholars interpret this trend as democratic apathy, others argue that it reflects a reconfiguration of democratic engagement, rooted in everyday experiences, relational practices, and affective investments. At the same time, populist movements, often explicitly challenging democratic norms, have gained traction among younger citizens (Foa & Mounk, 2019), in part by offering emotionally resonant critique of the status quo, that give voice to frustrations with democracy’s perceived and lived structural deficits. Building on this literature, this conceptual paper explores how young people perceive and imagine democracy in times of crisis. Rather than treating emotions as secondary to rational political engagement, the paper conceptualizes affect as central to how young people make sense of democracy’s promises and failures (Shuffelton & Stemhagen, 2020; Zembylas, 2020). These affective orientations are situated within broader processes of democratic erosion, where young people encounter exclusionary rhetoric, unequal recognition, and the normalization of anti-democratic practices, shaping their sense of agency and belonging. To deepen this analysis, the paper draws on Tronto’s (1993) ethics of care to reconceptualize democratic engagement beyond formal participation and institutional trust. Care ethics foregrounds relationality, interdependence, and responsibility as inherently political, challenging narrow, public–private distinctions that dominate traditional accounts of citizenship. From this perspective, everyday acts of care can be understood as democratic practices that sustain collective life, illuminating how emotions such as care, frustration, and moral concern function as civic resources rather than signs of withdrawal. The paper identifies a key paradox in existing research: while affective politics has been extensively examined in relation to adult publics and right-wing populism (Westheimer, 2019; Zembylas, 2020), the emotional foundations of democratic commitment among youth remain underexplored. Drawing on insights from previous qualitative research on citizenship education and youth participation as empirical touchpoints, the paper proposes a research agenda that treats affective disillusionment not only as a challenge but also as a potential starting point for democratic renewal. In doing so, it invites scholars and educators to rethink democratic education as an affective and relational practice of care, oriented toward uncertainty, plurality, and shared responsibility rather than the transmission of stable democratic values (Mårdh & Tryggvason, 2017).

Bordeleau, J. N., (2025, preprint). Young people are less supportive of democracy and more tolerant of a wide range of undemocratic practices. https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/5y2mq_v1 Foa, R. S., & Mounk, Y. (2019). Youth and the populist wave. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 45(9–10), 1013–1024. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453719872314 Mårdh, A., & Tryggvason, Á. (2017). Democratic Education in the Mode of Populism. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 36(6), 601–613. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-017-9564-5 Shuffelton, A. B., & Stemhagen, K. (2020). Democracy in Crisis and Education: Educating for Citizenship in the Age of Populism. Educational Theory, 70(6), 685–699. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12456 Tronto, J. C. (1993). Moral Boundaries; A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003070672 Westheimer, J. (2019). Civic Education and the Rise of Populist Nationalism. Peabody Journal of Education, 94(1), 4–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/0161956X.2019.1553581 Zembylas, M. (2020). The Affective Modes of Right-Wing Populism: Trump Pedagogy and Lessons for Democratic Education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 39(2), 151–166. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09691-y

Democratic citizenship education surfaces in many corners of everyday school life: in lessons, community events, student councils, classroom dialogue and everyday choices. This perspective aligns with whole-school approaches to democratic citizenship education (Council of Europe, 2018) and with ideas of education through democracy which stress the importance of democratic learning as a lived, relational practice in which students become subjects capable of acting and engaging with difference (Biesta, 2006). From an agonistic perspective (Mouffe, 2013), democratic experience is also about dissent - about the moments when disagreement, conflict, and plurality are allowed to surface. These moments are often small, fleeting, and easy to overlook, yet they are precisely where tension becomes pedagogically meaningful - a point emphasised in educational research that frames conflict as an opportunity for democratic learning (Ruitenberg, 2009; Lo, 2017). Caring for democratic education therefore also means attending to these fragile and rarely acknowledged instances. But this raises a central problem: in ordinary, everyday school life, where do such moments occur, and how does an ordinary student actually come to encounter them? This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Lithuanian lower-secondary school in 2025 and examines a seemingly mundane weekly practice: a duty-assessment practice in which randomly selected students evaluated classmates who had completed classroom duties, allocating them a number of social-civic hours. Despite appearing routine, the practice functioned as a structured public arena that opened space for expressing opinions, exercising judgement, negotiating disagreement and engaging in collective reflection. The analysis shows that this ritual brought together four dimensions of democratic experience that usually appear separately in everyday school life: (1) real power and agonistic struggle, as students’ decisions carried concrete consequences for peers; (2) fairness and sincerity, which acted as shared boundaries guiding how disagreement could unfold; (3) meaningfulness, grounded in the social stakes and in the practice’s refusal to become insincerely symbolic; and (4) individual participation and communal gathering, collectively sustaining the ritual through their responses, tensions, and emotions. By concentrating these otherwise scattered elements into a coherent agonistic ritual, the practice made democracy visible in everyday school life - not as an abstract ideal or predefined method, but as something emerging through the lived frictions, conflicts, and relationships. To care for democratic education, then, is not only to support such agonistic rituals, but to care for each of their elements and to nurture the everyday interactions from which they draw their force.

Biesta, Gert (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future. Routledge. Council of Europe. (2018). Reference Framework of Competences for Democratic Culture – Volume 3: Guidance for implementation. Council of Europe Publishing. Mouffe, Chantal (2013). Agonistics: Thinking the world politically.Verso Ruitenberg, Claudia (2009). Educating political adversaries: Chantal Mouffe and radical democratic citizenship education. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 28(3), 269–281. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-008-9122-2 Lo, Jane C. (2017). Empowering young people through conflict and conciliation: Attending to the political and agonism in democratic education. Democracy & Education, 25(1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.65214/2164-7992.1271

This theoretical paper argues that ‘ungrading’ can foster a more caring and more democratic education system. I begin by outlining the ungrading movement. Its main aim is to raise ‘an eyebrow at grades as a systemic practice’ (Stommel, 2023:online) because grades (a) reduce students’ interest in learning, (b) make students choose easier tasks, and (c) produce shallower thinking (Kohn, 2020, p. xiv). I contribute to this list by arguing that grading, as the process of one entity grading another, is undemocratic. This is because grades are often “done to” people (rather than “with” people); they are a monologue (rather than a dialogue) (Green, 2019). Even “self-grading” – as in quantitative self-assessment – could be considered a problematic form of self-regulation (cf. Foucault, 2008). As I have argued elsewhere, it is the disciplinary nature of “rating” (i.e. a form of grading) that creates atomisation and division amongst students and between students and teachers (Thiel, 2022). Secondly, I introduce some key pillars of democratic education. Democratic education can mean educating for and educating through democracy (Biesta, 2007): educating for democracy seeks to prepare students for future democracy, whereas educating through democracy aims at embedding democratic processes and structures directly into educational practice. Schools can, for example, educate through democracy by implementing meaningful democratic votes in classroom settings, creating an open classroom climate (Angyagre, 2025), and practising agreeing as well as disagreeing (Sant et al., 2020). On this basis, I conclude with three provocations: A) educating through democracy – e.g. by fostering the ability to “disagree respectfully” (cf. agonism, Mouffe, 2009) - should not only be built into pedagogical practice and curriculum design, but also extend to assessment. Ungrading is simply the next logical step to avoid an excessive, and as I argue, authoritarian quantification of learning and performance. B) Using the example of the English education system, I argue that ungrading needs to happen at various levels of scale. We have to avoid teachers grading pupils, schools grading teachers, and inspectors grading schools. C) I turn to Andreotti (2021) to suggest that we need to “hospice” grading, so we can allow for a different, more democratic educational “world” to be born, from the classroom, to schools, to policy. In summary, this paper presents ‘ungrading’ as an essential component of furthering democracy, in education and perhaps beyond.

Andreotti, VM (2021) Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity's Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism. North Atlantic Books. Angyagre, S. E. (2025) 'Democratic education and the teaching of controversial issues in polarising times: Students’ views and experiences', International Journal of Educational Research, 134. Biesta, G. (2007) 'Education and the Democratic Person: Towards a Political Conception of Democratic Education', Teachers College Record, 109(3). Foucault, M. (2008) The Birth of Biopolitics. LECTURES AT THE COLLÈGE DE FRANCE 1978–79. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Green, S. (2019) 'What students don't make of feedback in higher education: An illustrative study', Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 38. Kohn, A. (2020) 'Foreword', in Blum, S.D. (ed.) Ungrading : Why Rating Students Undermines Learning (and What to Do Instead). Morgantown: West Virginia University Press. Mouffe, C. (2009) The democratic paradox. Radical thinkers Place of publication not identified: Verso. Sant, E., et al (2020) 'Pedagogies of agonistic democracy and citizenship education', Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 16(3). Stommel, J. (2023) Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop. Hybrid Pedagogy, Incorporated. Thiel, J. (2022) Ratings and Rankings in Higher Education: A New-Materialist Exploration of How They Control Society. Concepts for Critical Psychology London: Routledge.