Education and meaningful living/education for a just and caring society

Field of Research:  Education for florishing and social justice

Increasingly, the purpose of education is described as the educators’ intent to assist the new generation to be able to flourish as adults. Equally, we see an increase in attention to social justice in educational research. Human flourishing and social justice are often researched separately, but there are important questions to be asked when they are both pursued as aims of education.

Firstly, various conceptions of ‘flourishing’ abound in academic and professional literature. If teachers pursue the flourishing of their pupils, what do they actually aim for and how do they do it?  

Secondly, aiming for one’s own flourishing (or one’s family or community) could be detrimental to the flourishing of others. Thus, there could be a tension between both aims of education. However, it could also be argued that one only flourishes if one is just and aims for a just society. What should educators teach?

- Is aiming for human flourishing compatible with aiming for equal opportunities for all pupils?

 - Does it make sense to aim for human flourishing when pupils grow up in circumstances of  adversity?

- Should educators teach adhering to the principle of justice as a necessary characteristic of a flourishing person?

 - Is the conceptualisation of human flourishing worldview dependent and if so, what does that mean for education?

1 external PhD candidate

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Field of Research: Humanistic Humanistic Education for the anthroposcene

Independence and autonomy have been fundamental values of humanism. However, in the Anthropocene, humanists are challenged to reconsider their anthropocentrism. The ideal of the autonomous human makes way for interconnectedness in complex and entangled ecological processes (Latour, 2017) Connolly (2017) speaks of “entangled humanism”. UNESCO (2020) suggests that the current conditions require a “complete paradigm shift: from learning about the world in order to act upon it, to learning to become with the world around us.” 

The Anthropocene does not just challenge fundamental values of humanism, it also poses new questions for humanistic education. What do pedagogies that cultivate new sensitivities and generate relational opportunities to engage with life in the Anthropocene involve? Drawing on the expertise of members of our Department, we are interested in supervising theoretical and/or empirical research that focuses on education and pedagogy in the Anthropocene, with particular attention to its implications for humanistic education.

- How are notions of humanism and flourishing shifting in the Anthropocene and how do ideals of interconnectedness and interdependency relate to humanistic values in Education?  

- What forms of moral and citizenship education would best equip students to flourish in the Anthropocene?

- How are Anthropocentric challenges conceptualized and acted upon by teachers and learners in (higher) (humanistic) education, and what barriers and opportunities do they identity in transitioning to Anthropocene-centred teaching and learning?   

- How do transdisciplinary collaborations between art, science and lived experiences in education (Latour’s Ateliers for example) (aim to) foster new ways of learning in the Anthropocene?

1 external PhD candidate

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Field of Research:  Educational Technology (EdTech) for Humanistic Endeavour

TTechnological advances in the last few decades have changed the landscape of formal and informal education. From educational media (radio, TV, smart boards) to personalized devices, from MOOCs for public education to tailored, self-paced adaptive learning, and now, the increasing platformization and use of artificial, generative intelligence, educational technology (EdTech) continues to intensify, especially post covid-19. Critiques of EdTech have ranged from increasing commercialization and strengthening of the big-tech companies to quantification of education, (mis)use of student bodies for data, and a dilution of citizenship and democratic values. On the other hand, communities, educational institutions, youth, and teachers have also found newer ways of connecting, sharing, and organizing for socio-political change through EdTech. This project engages with EdTech’s intersection with various humanistic dimensions – socio-political, historical, moral philosophical and planetary justice. We invite conceptual and/or empirical projects that investigate EdTech’s imaginaries, affordances and/or limitations. 

Research questions can include (but not limited to): 

- What possibilities of flourishing/ well-being, care, and inclusion are imagined and created via EdTech? 

- What social imaginaries are assumed in the development and adoption of EdTech? 

- How do discourses and materialities of EdTech interact with the various aims of education, for instance, civic, moral, relational? 

- How does (specific projects or policies on) EdTech interact with democratic citizenship? 

- What, if at all, are the affordances of EdTech (for instance, social media) on the moral and civic development of youth?

1 external PhD candidate

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Field of Research:  Teacher disclosure in discussing moral-political issues in schools

Discussions of open (unsettled) moral-political issues arguably represent one of the most potentially meaningful tools for developing democratic citizenship skills. Yet, even experienced teachers tend to avoid topics about which they have strong views or choose silence or neutrality to protect themselves against charges of dogmatism or indoctrination.

To deepen insight into how teachers can best cultivate democratic citizenship and promote well-being for all students in schools, PhD students are invited to investigate teacher disclosure practices and student experiences around morally or politically sensitive issues, such as support for LGBTI identities, religious identities or minority culture identities.

Field of Research:   Role modelling in schools  

 Moral education refers to more or less intentional efforts to enable (young) people to live a good life, individually and with others. Most approaches to moral education recognise that role modelling is an important method to promote young people’s moral development, also in schools. It is fundamental, in the sense that if teachers do not model the behaviour they expect from children, other methods are not likely to be effective. Moreover, when asked how young people morally develop in schools, role modelling is mentioned most by teachers. However, it remains a mystery how role modelling works, when it is justified, and what effects may be expected from it.

Field of Research:  Pedagogies of Well-being

Field of Research:  Citizenship education and (in)equality

Over the last twenty years, citizenship education has received growing attention in educational science, policy and practice. This ‘citizenship offensive in educational policy’ (Van Rees 2021) assumes that democratic citizenship is a matter of individual competences that can be improved measurably through education (Dijkstra, Ten Dam & Waslander 2019). Several critics claim that competence-based citizenship education fails to address the educational, ideological, cultural, political and social contexts in which citizenship education functions (Biesta 2011; De Jong 2021; Van der Ploeg 2019; Van Rees 2023). 

How could democratic citizenship education be more responsive to these diverse contexts to reach its stated aims of promoting freedom, equality and solidarity and the quality of democracy? For marginalized groups democratic citizenship is not primarily a matter of their own individual competences, but rather of social and political (mis-)recognition. I welcome projects on the diverse forms of (in)equality in citizenship education.

Field of Research: Decoloniality and Decolonizing (Higher) Education

There are plural meanings for decolonization and decoloniality, partly varying on ones’ understanding of colonialism. Decolonial scholars assert that all forms of colonialism have resulted in the denigration and decimation of knowledge (de Sousa Santos, 2013; Mignolo, 2018; Mbembe, 2021).  Decolonization aims to redress colonial legacy in processes which are “contextual, relational, practice-based and lived” (Walsh, 2018). In education and research, it seeks to analyse, critique, and disrupt sedimented and codified colonial practices and draw from plural ideas, social practices, histories, identities, and beliefs in knowledge production in pursuit of ‘epistemic justice’. What does/would it mean for universities to be open to epistemic diversity and how does context matter? I would like to supervise theoretical- and/or empirical research that focusses on what happens when educators and learners rethink and enact decolonization of the academic curriculum and its institutional structures.  

Field of Research:  Teacher disclosure in discussing moral-political issues in schools

Discussions of open (unsettled) moral-political issues arguably represent one of the most potentially meaningful tools for developing democratic citizenship skills. Yet, even experienced teachers tend to avoid topics about which they have strong views or choose silence or neutrality to protect themselves against charges of dogmatism or indoctrination.

To deepen insight into how teachers can best cultivate democratic citizenship and promote well-being for all students in schools, PhD students are invited to investigate teacher disclosure practices and student experiences around morally or politically sensitive issues, such as support for LGBTI identities, religious identities or minority culture identities.