Conference Agenda

We are living in an age of multiple crises. There is devastating war and conflict, ecological crisis, social inequality, and a global surge against democracy; all this in a time where everything seems to be speeding up, and time itself is part of the multilayered constellation of crises confronting us. In light of these multiple and entangled crises, democracy is facing an uphill battle. Empirical evidence shows that the present trend is towards autocratization, whereby democratic qualities, such as civil rights and the rule of law, are being eroded from within by rulers who have gained power legitimately (Lührmann et al., 2021). The global rise of anti-pluralist parties constitutes a core threat to democracy, and it continues to gather momentum and support across Europe, including among young people, leading to widespread concerns about the future of democracy (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018). For democratic citizenship education, living with the notion of multiple crisis presents an increased challenge (Schulz et a., 2023; Mikander et al., 2025). What remains constant, however, is that new groups of children enter the school system every year, ready and willing to learn about the world, how to live in it, and how to change it. We argue that much of democratic citizenship education around Europe has not responded to this challenge. We are concerned that democratic citizenship education in its current form might not have what it takes to respond to the social reality of multiple and entangled crisis.

Education needs to acclimatize to the current situation of conflict and uncertainty, rather than pretend that it is business as usual. Thus, in this symposium, we start from the position that responding to the multiple crises requires that we first explicitly articulate and critically reflect on the problem(s) at hand. What is the problem-space (Scott, 2004) that we are currently imagining for which democratic citizenship education might offer a response to? Each paper addresses this question by discussing one of the many crises shaping the world today. Together, they illustrate a reality where democratic citizenship education, both in theory and practice, continues as if it hasn't recognized the crises or believes it can be avoided by repeating past approaches from the last few decades. We show that a change is necessary. This is the first part of a two-part symposium.

Despite conceptual and methodological difficulties in measuring democratic trends (Levitsky & Way, 2024; Weyland, 2024), there is empirical evidence to show that today the main threat towards democratic qualities, such as civil rights or the rule of law, come from democratically elected rulers who gradually erode democratic norms from within once in power (Lührmann et al., 2021). The global rise of such anti-pluralist parties, which constitutes a core threat to democracy, continues to gather momentum and support across Europe, including among young people (Lizotte & Kallio, 2023), leading to widespread concerns about the future of democracy (Giroux, 2022; Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018; Müller, 2021). Meanwhile, the current theoretical assumptions about democratic citizenship education are not compatible with the way that anti-pluralist ideologies circulate among young people, leaving the teacher with few tools to handle anti-democratic actions in class (Mikander et al., 2025). The field of democratic citizenship education has responded to these anti-pluralist threats through re-conceptualisation of democracy and democratic education, with the aim of saving democracy from its own crisis (Zembylas, 2022). In this presentation, we focus on this response. Our attempt is to trace this problem backwards, asking what kind of crisis the crisis of democracy is, from an educational perspective. While plenty of democratic education research has focused on disentangling democracy from fascism(s) (Hytten & Stemhagen, 2021), we aim to explore how these entanglements can be explored pedagogically, so that we can ask different questions about the current crisis, and hopefully identify alternative paths in response (Scott, 2004). What work does this continuous revision of the concept of democracy, and democratic education, do in sustaining anti-pluralism itself, especially in reinforcing a European onto-epistemological position (da Costa et al., 2024)? To us, addressing this question requires that we start by interrogating the assumptions informing current conversations about threats to democracy, particularly: what is missing in current conceptualisations of the crisis? Drawing on Toscano (2023), da Costa et al. (2024) and Mbembe (2019), we suggest that doing this work might require targeting the Eurocentric imaginary that continues to frame conversations about the crisis of democracy, by starting and staying within the troubling understanding that democracy is entangled with and complicit in harm, whilst resisting the urge to return to a position of innocence and search for a newer, purer, understanding of democracy.

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.   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 Zembylas, M (2022) ‘Decolonising and re-theorising radical democratic education: Toward a politics and practice of refusal’, Power and Education, 14(2),157–171.

Society faces profound environmental challenges, with climate change recognised as one of the most critical issues of our time. Although the exact impacts of these challenges on European societies are still uncertain, it is evident that much is at stake and everyone will be affected. While the need for a shift toward sustainability is evident, it remains conflictual. While most young people are concerned about climate change and other environmental issues (ICCS, 2022; UN, 2023), resistance to sustainable transformation is also present among young people (Ojala, 2015; Urberg & Öhman, 2024). Some groups of young people feel that their values and interests are neglected in the larger conversation about sustainable transformation, which could lead to harmful conflicts between ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Urberg & Öhman, 2024). At the same time, education is often viewed as a democratic space where young people can discuss with others who hold different views from their own. Unfortunately, many education systems today struggle to fulfil this potential role (ICCS, 2022). For example, the Swedish education system has become increasingly segregated, with some arguing that it is losing its role as a democratic arena (Dahlstedt & Fejes, 2020). Additionally, education systems in Europe have become increasingly instrumentalised, emphasised by accountability and efficiency (Lindblad et al., 2018). Meanwhile, the role of education as a knowledge authority is being challenged by discourses that undermine trust in democratic institutions. (cf. ICCS, 2022; McCright & Dunlap, 2011). Thus, today's youth face a system-threatening climate crisis while growing up in a society marked by increasing political polarisation, where some extreme positions even deny the scientific facts about human-induced climate change. In this context, they enter an education system expected to be a democratic space, but it is shaped by segregation and instrumentalisation. In this presentation, we will engage in these environmental and democratic issues from the vantage point of agonistic educational theory (Ruitenberg, 2009; Tryggvason & Öhman, 2019). Agonistic educational theory highlights the democratic value in young people’s diverse viewpoints. However, engaging with these issues from an agonistic educational perspective is not about seeing education as an instrument for solving environmental and societal problems (cf. Tysklind & Tryggvason, 2025). Instead, by considering the strong commitment to sustainability and the widespread resistance and disinterest among young people, agonistic education theory provides a way to think educationally about the democratic role of education and teaching during times of climate crisis and political polarisation.

Dahlstedt, M., & Fejes, A. (2020). Det svenska marknadsexperimentet. In A. Fejes & M. Dahlstedt (Eds.), Perspektiv på skolans problem. (189–204). Studentlitteratur. ICCS. (2022). Education for Citizenship in Times of Global Challenge. International Report. Lindblad, S., Pettersson D. & Popkewitz, T. (Eds.). (2018). Education by the Numbers and the Making of Society. Routledge McCright, A. M., & Dunlap, R. E. (2011). The Politicization of Climate Change and Polarization in the American Public’s Views of Global Warming, 2001–2010. The Sociological Quarterly, 52(2), 155–194. Ojala, M. (2015). Climate change skepticism among adolescents. Journal of Youth Studies, 18(9), 1135–1153. Ruitenberg, C.W. Educating Political Adversaries: Chantal Mouffe and Radical Democratic Citizenship Education. Stud Philos Educ 28, 269–28 Tryggvason, Á., & Öhman, J. (2019). Deliberation and agonism. In K. Van Poeck, L. Östman, & J. Öhman (Eds.). Sustainable Development Teaching. 115–124. Routledge. Tysklind, E.N., Tryggvason, Á. Politicised or Political: On Agonism and School as ‘Free Time’. Stud Philos Educ 44, 305–316. UN. (2023). Youth and climate change survey. Urberg, L., & Öhman, J. (2024). Resisting sustainable development: An analysis of young people’s online discussions. Journal of Youth Studies, 1–17.

In this presentation I will address questions of speed and time relating to the crisis of democracy and discuss their consequences for democratic citizenship education. Quick, polarizing emotional expressions, such as political rage and laughter, have become a central medialized feature in contemporary politics. Rapid, split-second emotional response is highly valued, perhaps most significantly in social media, but also in more formal forms of politics, where politicians with a pronounced and visible ability to publicly show outrage or amusement have become increasingly central (Davies, 2019; Zembylas 2020). With the sense of acceleration in politics follows a yearning for change that comes immediately. Populism often speaks to this yearning, promising speedy action (Davies, 2019). Politics is increasingly situational, reacting to situations as they emerge (Rosa, 2013). In hyperpolitics (Jäger, 2023), politics is everywhere but changes comparatively little. Today, political energy and sense of importance is located in the immediate and the very long term. The mid-term, a cycle of a couple of years, which is where formal democracy is organised, gets squeezed (Runciman, 2025). The acceleration of politics arguably has consequences for democratic citizenship education. A point of departure in this presentation is an expectation that the high-profiled politicians involved in speedy, emotionalised, polarised politics are viewed as successful by young adults. There is a risk that democratic citizenship education, which traditionally has focused on knowledge, facts, and rational debate (Mikander et al., 2025) is not connected to how young people meet ‘successful politics’ outside of the teaching. It might be disconnected from students’ experience and miss out on a re-enchantment of politics in the hyperpolitics-era. Another risk is that speedy emotional expressions increase the difficulty to know whether they are ‘sincerely meant’ or used to confuse and trigger the people exposed to it. In quick emotional expressions such as quick anger there is a ‘brief liberation from conscious intentions, honesty or reasons’ (Davies, 2020, p. 13), which makes them hard to decipher and act upon for teachers. Quick emotional expressions open for misunderstandings and misrepresentation, maybe particularly so when humour, irony and sarcasm is involved (Mikander et al., 2025). Does democratic citizenship education need to speed up to match the acceleration of politics and harbour the interest of young people? Or does it rather need to defend slowness: How, then, could democratic citizenship education build and safeguard slower, but still enchanted, spheres of discussion?

Davies, W. (2020) Anger fast and slow: mediations of justice and violence in the age of populism, Global Discourse, vol 10, no 2, 169–185 Davies, W. (2019). Nervous states: how feeling took over the world. Vintage. Jäger, A. (2023). Hyperpolitik: extreme Politisierung ohne politische Folgen. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Mikander, P., Aashamar, P. N., & Högström, J. (2025). Anti-pluralist parties in Nordic classrooms: negotiating the boundaries between us and them in social studies education. Acta Didactica Norden, 19(1), https://doi.org/10.5617/adno.10867 Rosa, H. (2013[2005]). Social acceleration: A new theory of modernity. New York: Columbia University Press. Runciman, D. (2025). Podcast The History of Bad Ideas: Polycrisis 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.

Not too long ago, it seemed like common sense that democratic education constituted a central task for the schooling system in most democratic societies. According to Nel Noddings (2007, p. 8), educators in democratic societies “almost universally” took it to be part of their job “to prepare students for democratic life”. While educators might still believe this ought to be the case, in many societies the notion that schooling should prepare students for democratic life is not common sense anymore. Rather, democratic education is under pressure from both neo-liberal and conservative forces in places where it has traditionally had strong support, such as for example the UK and the US. While neo-liberal forces wants to abandon democratic education in favor of preparing students for life in the workforce (Tam, 2023), conservative critics are increasingly skeptical of the aims and content that falls within its scope (Stitzlein, 2024). For proponents of democratic education, this poses a challenge. How can we rationally defend and legitimize the need for democratic education in a time where democracy is challenged and democratic education is losing political support from groups in society? In this article, we try to tackle this challenge by means of resources from both political theory and philosophy of education. We start from the basic assumption that the conditions of legitimation will be more or less ideal, and that strategies of legitimation must take these conditions into account. This is significant, most importantly, because highly idealistic strategies of legitimation are likely to fail under less ideal circumstances. Second, we engage with some principles from philosophy of education that might be helpful for addressing different forms of skeptical challenges leveled against democratic education. We first discuss some of the principles from the Beutelsbach consensus, as well as non-affirmative theories of education, in order to evaluate their usefulness for facing present challenges. While we believe that thoughtful and pragmatic engagement with these principles holds the potential to help us convince some conservatives skeptical of democratic education, we argue that the disagreement with neo-liberal education policy cuts deeper. This is because neo-liberal policy tends to ignore the right children have to democratic education that eventually will help them form take part in shaping the society in which they live. Lastly, we make an argument for why we believe that this is a profoundly mistaken conception of education that we ought to fight against politically.

Noddings, N. (2007). Aims, Goals, and Objectives. Encounters on Education, Volume 8, Fall 2007 pp. 7-15 Stizlein, S. (2024). Shaping New Aims and Practices of Teaching Controversial Issues in Response to Conservative Critics. Studies in Philosophy and Education, Volume 44, pp. 45–67 Tam, H. (2023). Who’s Afraid of Political Education? The Challenge to Teach Civic Competence and Democratic Participation.