The affective and political dimension of citizenship education

Description

Symposium 19 at NERA 2024 (Malmo, Sweden).

The aim of this symposium is to initiate a broad discussion of the affective and political dimensions of citizenship education. In times of political unrest, polarisation, and crisis of democratic institutions, citizenship education is often seen as a solution to societal problems (e.g. Van Dyk, 2022). From such an instrumentalist perspective, it is through more knowledge, or stronger values, that citizenship education can facilitate political practice (e.g. Biesta & Lawy, 2006).

As an answer to the conference’s call for researchers to “challenge prescribed ways of learning and homogenised educational practices”, this symposium will turn away from this instrumentalist perspective on citizenship education. We will take as starting point an understanding that citizenship education is already political, in the sense that it is practiced by subjects who feel, think, and exists in relation to each other and in relation to shared societal problems (e.g. Todd, 2008). In conceptualising citizenship education as a relational practice, speakers in this symposium will assume the artificiality of the boundary separating emotions from rationality prevalent in instrumentalist approaches to citizenship education (eg. Zembylas, 2018), and instead seek to open discussion on different empirical and theoretical perspectives on the affective and political dimension of citizenship education.

The symposium will include five presentations. Brummer will draw upon empirical research with young people in Belgium to discuss the emotional dynamics of citizenship and belonging, particularly as young people practice flexible forms of attachment. Mikander will discuss how Finnish social studies textbooks reproduce antidemocratic forces by silencing hate speech as a democratic threat. Sant, Thiel, and Dennis will draw upon a conversation with primary teachers in England together with feminist and Spinozian accounts to consider alternative, more optimistic, forms of conceptualizing political difference. Sætra will examine the relevance of Winnicott’s notion of ‘facilitating environment’ together with empirical data collected in Norwegian schools for grasping the affective dimension of educational practices. Tryggvason & Nilsson-Tysklind will engage with the Nordic/German tradition of Didaktik to argue that, when theorizing emotions in education, scholars must recognize the distinctive positions that teachers and students occupy in the classroom.

By bringing together researchers from Finland, Norway, Sweden, the UK, and Belgium, the symposium aspires to move beyond both the simple emotion/rationality divide and the instrumentalist perspective on citizenship education. Through sharing empirical and theoretical research on citizenship education, we want to open up new (hopeful) conversations about citizenship education in the Nordic, and more broadly, European contexts.

References

Biesta, G., & Lawy, R. (2006). From teaching citizenship to learning democracy: Overcoming individualism in research, policy and practice. Cambridge Journal
of Education, 36(1), 63–79.
Todd, S. (2008). Democracy, education and conflict: Rethinking respect and the place of the ethical. Journal of Educational Controversy, 3(1), 1-11.
Van Dyk, S. (2022). Post-truth, the future of democracy and the public sphere. Theory, Culture & Society, 39(4), 37-50.
Zembylas, M. (2018). Political emotions in the classroom: How affective citizenship education illuminates the debate between agonists and deliberators. Democracy and Education, 26(1), 6.

Period	7 Mar 2024
Event title	NERA Malmo
Event type	Conference
Location	SwedenShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International