Utbildning brukar ses som lösningen på en rad olika problem i samhället, allt från sociala orättvisor till att servera näringslivet med adekvat arbetskraft. Få ämnen i den samhälleliga debatten väcker så starka känslor som utbildning gör. Inte sällan diskuteras utbildningen och dess roll med överhettade politiska och ideologiska tongångar.

We have all been told of the death of grand narratives. We have been told that the days of asking eternal metaphysical questions in philosophy are long since over. When Wittgenstein’s (1953/2009) famous spade hit bedrock it reminded us that we had better stop wasting our time on lofty questions without answers. Foucault (1970) prompted us to recall Borges’ story of a certain Chinese encyclopedia showing us that there are many ways of ordering the world and that each way changes the rules of the game a little bit. We found that history was contingent and that hierarchies, however firmly built, would all crumble in the end. In its place were the slightly disorienting feeling following the postmodernist’s proclamation of ‘the elusiveness of meaning and knowledge’ (Kirby, 2017). It turned out that the metaphysical questions of old were not so easily abandoned after all. While we might turn a blind eye to them we are still bound to them by our tacit presuppositions and they still tend to lurk in the shadow of our every endeavor to rethink the old. Educational philosophy is in need of a direction as it is always aimed at some kind of change. Metaphysical assumptions can provide us with a direction. If we assume a capacity of free will, education can achieve certain ends, and if we assume that free will is a myth then education needs to abandon certain claims and stake out new paths. Both assumptions may be valid but they will result in very different understandings of what education is and what it can achieve. While the door opened by the postmodern skepticism of eternal truths cannot be closed, it may be that we can benefit from acknowledging our need for addressing our most basic metaphysical assumptions without unlearning the lesson of postmodernism. Like Foucault’s encounter with the Chinese encyclopedia, we might find joy in revisiting the lost traditions of the past without assuming that they can salvage us from the perils of our future. The postmodern doubt not only shook things up, but it helped us see that we always rely on something, whether we know it or not. Rather than tear down the great structure of metaphysics once and for all, it helped reveal that the questions we ask always betray some kind of metaphysical assumption. Seeing this, we can return to the great metaphysical questions a little less innocent than before.

We have all been told of the death of grand narratives. We have been told that the days of asking eternal metaphysical questions in philosophy are long since over. When Wittgenstein’s (1953/2009, p. 174) famous spade hit bedrock it reminded us that we had better stop wasting our time on lofty questions without answers. Foucault (1970) prompted us to recall Borges’story of a certain Chinese encyclopedia showing us that there are many ways of ordering the world and that each way changes the rules of the game a little bit. We found that history was contingent and that hierarchies, however firmly built, would all crumble in the end. In its place were the slightly disorienting feeling following the postmodernist’s proclamation of ‘the elusiveness of meaning and knowledge’ (Kirby, 2017, p. 5).

How can we reconcile the fact that in order to act virtuously we appear to need to refer to the concept of a free will, while, at the same time, there are convincing philosophical arguments (aligned with a contemporary scientific understanding of natural causation) discrediting any viable notion of an unconstrained or uncaused will? Taking its cue from this important question, this chapter will proceed along the following lines. First, I aim to substantiate the link between contemporary character education and the concept of the free will so as to illustrate the interdependency between the two. Next, I will scrutinize the concept of a free will, raising some philosophical concerns about its validity in a contemporary educational context. This involves looking at the philosophical stakes involved in proposing a unique capacity to intervene with the causal order of nature. At this point, I will suggest that there is a way out of this conundrum, and I will continue by proposing a radically different understanding of the will, offered by the seventeenth century rationalist Spinoza. The chapter will close by looking at some of the practical consequences of grounding contemporary character education in a Spinozistic conception of the will.

Education and Free Will critically assesses and makes use of Spinoza’s insights on human freedom to construe an account of education that is compatible with causal determinism without sacrificing the educational goal of increasing students’ autonomy and self-determination. Offering a thorough investigation into the philosophical position of causal determinism, Dahlbeck discusses Spinoza’s view of self-determination and presents his own suggestions for an education for autonomy from a causal determinist point of view. The book begins by outlining the free will problem in education, before expanding on a philosophical understanding of autonomy and how it is seen as an educational ideal. It considers Spinoza’s determinism and discusses his denial of moral responsibility. Later chapters consider the relationship between causal determinism and autonomy, the educational implications of understanding free will and how free will can be utilised as a valuable fiction in education. This book will be of great interest to academics and postgraduate students in the field of education, especially those with an interest in moral education and philosophy of education. It will also be of interest to those in the fields of philosophy and psychology and specifically those focusing on the free will problem, on Spinoza studies, and on the relation between moral psychology and external influence.

In this keynote presentation I will offer some thoughts on the implications of different theories of free will and agency for educational research. In addition, I will draw on my own recent work in order to offer a Spinozistic understanding of autonomy that I believe holds some promise for investigations into the relationship between agency and education.

Self-causation, for Spinoza, is reserved for God (E1D3). Spinoza’s is a kind of self-causation that differs in some key regards from the standard interpretation of causa sui. For something to be self-caused for Spinoza does not mean that it may somehow contradict the law-like regularities of nature. It simply means that it encompasses the full causal explanation necessary for understanding and explaining why it is determined to act the way it does. God, Spinoza asserts, ’acts from the laws of his nature alone, and is compelled by no one’ (E1p17). Because Spinoza’s God is equivalent to Nature as substance (the immanent cause of all things), the laws of God’s nature are the same as the law-like regularities of nature. To act freely, then, is to act from the necessity of one’s own nature. It is not to act contrary to one’s nature as this would violate Spinoza’s definition of freedom as that ’which exists from the necessity of its nature alone, and is determined to act by itself alone’ (E1D7). The only thing that qualifies for this kind of freedom is God (E1p17c2). Everything else, whether human or otherwise, is causally determined and that ’which has been determined by God to produce an effect, cannot render itself undetermined’ (E1p27). Spinoza’s metaphysics allows for no exceptions here. Accordingly: ’In nature there is nothing contingent, but all things have been determined from the necessity of the divine nature to exist and produce an effect in a certain way’ (E1p29). This means that singular things in nature ’can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined to exist and produce an effect by another cause […] and so on, to infinity’ (E1p28). Self-causation, then, is out of the picture for humans. For someone to be the cause of him- or herself would mean acting contrary to the regularities of nature. With regards to this Spinoza concludes: ’It is impossible that a man should not be a part of Nature, and that he should be able to undergo no changes except those which can be understood through his nature alone, and of which he is the adequate cause’ (E4p4). As humans we are part of nature and being part of nature means being dependent upon antecedent causes for our existence.

Is the education of citizens a private matter or is it primarily a concern for the state? Throughout the history of political and educational philosophy, this question has remained central. Different philosophers have answered the question in different ways and different periods have witnessed different ways of organizing public education in response to it. At the root of this question is another question. This question concerns how we understand the state and how we construe the relation between the state and the well-being of its citizens. How we understand the state, in turn, depends on if we consider it the natural extension of the will and striving of its individual citizens or if we consider its main purpose to be to protect its citizens from each other and from external threats.

This paper discusses a contemporary debate concerning the separation of teaching qua instruction from the social needs of students and the implications that such a bifurcation might have for the overall idea of what a teacher is. Drawing from the work of Rousseau and Arendt, our aim is to argue for the necessity of understanding education as a process of formation, and by doing so, highlighting the importance of establishing trusting intergenerational relationships. Starting with Rousseau’s conception of formation in Emile, we will illustrate how education as formation necessarily entails a process of ethical maturation guided by the educator qua self-sufficient adult. The role of the educator, in this account, moves from a passive to a gradually more active educator as Emile passes from childhood to adolescence. We will then turn to Arendt’s critique of Rousseau’s ‘negative’ education and of the subsequent modern dismantling of adult authority. Having outlined some of the continuities and tensions between Rousseau and Arendt’s understanding of formation we will end this paper by arguing for the importance of appreciating the reciprocity of the teacher-child relation in a contemporary understanding of education.

In this essay, our point of departure is the tension between the modern idea of childhood associated with the notion of the child as being, and the idea, found in both Rousseau and Arendt, of education as formation and becoming. The idea of children as political actors has become increasingly influential within the contexts of childhood studies, educational as well as child-welfare policies. As a result, in the general understanding of the role of children in society, the conceptual boundaries between adults and children have become blurred. From the point of view of educational philosophy, this is interesting because it highlights the problematic tension between an image of the child as already complete and the foundational idea of education as a process of formation. Using Taika Waititi’s recent film Hunt for the Wilderpeople as an example we aim to illustrate some of the possible consequences of blurring the boundaries between generations and to investigate how this might impact our understanding of education as formation in the making of moral human beings.

In this article we aim to use the Swedish example of entrepreneurship in education as a springboard to discuss the unexpected alliance between student-centered progressive education and the commercialization of schools. In doing so we wish to highlight the effects of this alliance on the relationship between teaching and learning and, consequently, on the teacher-student relation. In order to do this, we will first examine the conditions for the commercialization of contemporary education, and its impact on the teacher-student relation. We will then turn to progressive education, and examine the curious link between the ideal of student-centeredness and the economization of the role of the student. The article will conclude with a discussion on some inherent tensions visible in entrepreneurial learning, being at once an effect of the commercialization of schools and a pedagogical project firmly rooted in progressive ideals.

The purpose of moral exemplarism is to render moral theory practically functional. It deals with how to make virtue theories about what is good for us work, and with being able to ground one’s account of virtue in a realistic understanding of human nature and of the cognitive mechanisms that govern human action. According to Linda Zagzebski’s conception of moral exemplarism, exemplars are to be understood as ‘supremely admirable persons who show us the upper reaches of human capability, and in doing so, inspire us to expect more from ourselves’ (Zagzebski, 2017, p. 1). From the point of view of Spinoza’s philosophy, the problem with hinging a practical moral theory on the emulation of “supremely admirable persons” is that it becomes an inefficient (perhaps even counter-productive) pedagogical tool insofar as it betrays a false (highly idealized) understanding of human nature. While Spinoza extrapolates on the traits of a supremely admirable person in the propositions on the “free man” in Ethics IV, this account does not seem to be intended to function as a pedagogical tool of practical relevance. Hence, it does not seem to correspond to the purpose of moral exemplarism. If we look for that kind of practical guidance, Spinoza’s political works seem more relevant. Interestingly, when we approach Spinoza’s political theory with moral exemplarism in mind, we find that instead of constructing his exemplar on the idea of a supremely admirable person, he emphasizes the concept of ingenium to chisel out an imperfect model of human behavior. The purpose for this seems to be to avoid a utopian and inefficient political theory and to work out a moral practice that is capable of assisting people (regardless of societal context and level of understanding) in ethical self-transformation.

This article deals with the significance and role of things and materialities in uses of the past. Taking an ethnographical fieldwork, conducted within the contemporary retro cultural mod scene, and inspiration from Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory as it’s starting-point, the article reflects upon how scholars interested in uses of the past can study things and materialities as actors in temporal networks. Also, it discusses analytical points that can be gained by this approach. The article argues that ethnographical observations and interviews can be used in tandem in a fruitful way when studying things as actors in uses of the past. Using such an approach, the article illustrates how things can function as an authenticating subcultural capital as well as a cultural substance giving stability to the temporal associations that the contemporary actors strive for. At the same time, things can be regarded as in-authenticating kitsch, which leads the actors to emphasise that the temporal associations with the past actually lies “beyond” material objects. The article thus show that this theoretical interest and methodological approach can reveal things and materialities as having complex and even contradictory roles in uses of the past.

This article explores the role of psychiatry in the sorting of school- children in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden from 1920 to 1950. Whereas the role and rise of educational psychology and IQ-testing in the differentiation processes in schooling have been examined through earlier research, the role of psychiatry in the interprofessional collaboration has so far been largely unexplored when it comes to the Scandinavian case. In line with Michel Foucault, the article regards these professional efforts as part of the biopolitics, where psychiatry amongst other disciplines engaged in the development of means to involve strategically in the life of schoolchildren and their families, as part of shaping the future of the population. We argue that psychiatric sorting activities related to schoolchildren did not solely take place through IQ-testing in schools, but involved classification of children through a range of measures in various settings. We further argue that these processes took place due to local agents and initiatives in a broader context of interprofessional collaborations between psychia- trists, psychologists, and teachers, rather than top–down processes initiated by the state. The analysis in the article draws on different sources of the period: journals, articles, and monographs from the key- agents of the period.

The aim is to study children’s politics by exploring how children relate to and rework positions and identities offered to them and others in a residential narrative of ‘Swedes’ and ‘immigrants’. Children’s politics is defined as children practising politics when negotiating and challenging positions and defending identities. The results are based on a reanalysis of two studies. The results show that participating children use the narrative, and to it connected stories about neighbourhoods, to position themselves and to negotiate exclusion, inclusion, identity and belonging. In relation to this they deal with political issues connected to national and global discourses that blame the category of ‘immigrants’ for being the cause of local and national problems. They also reflect on the positions and identities offered in the narrative and use tactics to manage the positions and their consequences. From this point of view, the children practise politics in their everyday lives.

The ai m of the presentation is to discuss the possibilities of action research to make profound and long-lived educational changes. We discuss this in relation to an ongoing action research project carried out with pedagogues in a preschool section in southern Sweden. The section is in a phase when they need to review the organisation in relation to inner and outer structure and pedagogy. One challenge that has been identified during the research process is that the section is perceived as being 'isolated' and 'invisible'. This perception relates to the surrounding organisational, juridical and economic structures, which, according to the pedagogues, make it difficult to work with the organisational and pedagogical changes they feel are needed. Based on these results, we want to address the possibilities of change-making in an action research project in relation to power relations between different organisational levels of power (pedagogues, preschool management, municipality management, researchers). We draw on the concept of practice 'architectures' (Kemmis and Smith 2008; Kemmis 2009) to explore how scope for change at the section is shaped and formed by mediating preconditions for practice, that is, how cultural –discursive, material –economic and social –political preconditions shape and give content to the ‘thinking, ́doing ́ and ́relating’ that orient and justify the practices.

Den här antologin har till syfte att uppmärksamma barns och ungas livsvillkor i Malmö. Vissa av bidragen fokuserar på barn och unga indirekt via praktiker, medan andra berör deras erfarenheter mer direkt. Antologibidragen ger därmed inblick i hur barns och ungas vardag påverkas och begränsas av de materiella och sociala villkoren som finns i staden men också hur de själva erfar, använder och skapar sina och andras livsvillkor i den. Genom att betona såväl strukturella och institutionella aspekters påverkan som barn och unga som subjekt med potential, synliggörs inte bara dessa materiella och sociala villkor utan också hur de kan förändras och omskapas.

Vissa av bidragen i antologin är lösnings- och potentialorienterade, medan andra kritiskt nagelfar förhållanden så som de gestaltas i staden för barn och unga. Text och bildinslagen från utställningen Malmö, vad drömmer du om, producerade av elever från språkintroduktionen och de estetiska programmen vid Malmö Latin- skola, förstärker och befäster ytterligare vårt syfte med antologin.

The preschool education in Sweden can be perceived as having a double role. On the one hand it is seen as a mediator of dominant culture, language and imagined nationality, and on the other hand , as a promoter of values like multiculturalism and acceptance of difference. In the paper, we explore how this tension is embedded in the curriculum and in everyday routines in preschool, regarding language and culture. The results show that, while a multicultural approach is highlighted in the curriculum and by pedagogues, dominant cultural traditions and the Swedish language are given an emphasized role.

Earlier Nordic studies of music in preschool have often focused on learning rather than teaching (Vall- berg Roth 2018). Within the area of Early Childhood Music Education there is a lack of research con- cerning the teaching process itself and the theorisation of it. In this collaborative project with preschool teachers regarding music teaching, the didactic questions are used as a bridge between process and theorisation. These questions, together with the music teaching contribute to shifting the focus from learning to teaching. The aim of the project is to develop knowledge about possible characteristics of music teaching in preschool. Didactically oriented abductive analysis has been implemented using 349 written documents and 63 hours of video recordings from 121 preschools/preschool departments in ten municipalities. The result shows traces of multiple and varying approaches of a multi-voiced music teaching partly from the many dimensions of music (acoustic, emotional, existential, motor-kinesthetic and structural), partly from music teaching’s many aspects (art, craft, and science).

Background: As an answer to a discourse on a Swedish school in crisis a large edu-political apparatus has been implemented. Arguments on e.g. decreasing results, segregation, and equal opportunities has reinforced a number of actors to enter the educational field – actors here called “edu-preneurs” (Rönnberg, 2017). The actors offer a multitude of products and services and essential parts of everyday schooling thus become outsourced on external actors using education as an arena to reach the core of the society – the children. This process, nurtured by political reforms such as the possibility to profit on public funds (Jober, submitted) has “re-calibrated” the Swedish school – from a government-dominated and unified educational system to an unruly free market (Ball, 2009; Hamilton, 2011). This market and its edu-preneurs will be investigated in the project ‘Education Inc.’, funded by the Swedish Research Council (Ideland, Axelsson, Jobér & Serder, 2016). The project aims to study how private actors and logics change the conditions for what counts as good education. Three forms of commodification of education, outlined by Molnar (2006), will be studied: (1) actors selling to schools; (2) actors selling in schools; and (3) actors buying for schools. In order to create a baseline for the Education Inc. project this paper describes one the first sub studies. This sub study aims to scrutinise foremost actors selling toschool when presenting themselves and engage with the school community at a school fair. Research Questions: The overarching aims of the Education Inc. project is to study under what conditions, in what forms and with which consequences ‘edu-preneurial’ actors engage in Swedish schools. This particular sub study focus on with what objectives do edu-preneurial companies, NGOs and their employees engage in Swedish school. Objectives: The aim of this sub study is to conceptualise and analyse processes on how good intentions and altruistic objectives are used as arguments to justify actors’ place in education. An earlier pre-study (Jobér, submitted) showed that tutoring companies, actors in the educational market, used arguments regarding children with special needs to justify their presence and actions. This pre-study raised a number of questions: Will the companies, whatever good intentions, overlook profit? Are arguments regarding children with special needs used as a lever for businesses to survive and profit rather than to help? Similar has been showed elsewhere (Dovemark & Erixon Arreman, 2017), therefore we claim there is a risk that actors in the educational market will not consider all children as profitable enough. There is therefore a need to scrutinize if money spent (through public funds) will increase profits and exclusion rather than to support inclusion, and in addition, if students with low exchange value fit into a neoliberal market. Theoretical framework: We argue that processes in Sweden, which is a traditionally strong and well-trusted welfare state, have become entangled with neoliberal rationalities (see e.g. Dahlstedt, 2009) and that ways of imagine and practice schooling today are shaped by neoliberal logics (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). The neoliberal state has opened up for a commodification of education (Steiner-Khamsi, 2016) and educational reforms become a way to make up a specific kind of subjectivity (Ong, 2007). The marketization of education is thus not only about earning money, but also about making up meanings and practices of schooling and a certain kind of ideal citizen (Olmedo, Bailey & Ball 2013). This is what Ong (2007) conceptualizes as a neoliberalism which concerns how possible and desirable subjectivities are produced. The questions are what kind of objectives the actors put forward and how this correspond with what kind of desirable subjects that are produced in this neoliberal logic. Method: The sub study presented here will take a closer look at the actors selling to school when they attend a large school fair, SETT, which will take place in Sweden in April. In a pre-study to the larger ‘Education Inc.’ project this kind of educational ‘trade fairs’ has been identified as one of the spaces where policy becomes translated and turned into business ideas (Ideland et al, 2006). Observations will take place at this fair by four researchers. The observations will be written down using an observation scheme. The observations will also include photographs of the showcases and the messages that can be found there. In addition the research team will gather advertisement such as flyers and follow ongoing twitter flows. These data will be reflected on within the research group and finally analysed employing an analytical framework developed from the work by Callon (1986, used by, e.g., Hamilton 2011). The aim with this analysis is to more carefully explore how a problem is articulated through the actors and their relationships i.e. the problematisation moment in Callons work (1986). Callon proposes that translation of actions and actors analytically can be studied as four different moments: Problematization, Interessement, Enrolment, and Mobilization. It is the first step, the problematization moment and how a problem is articulated through the actors and their relationship that is in focus here. The problematization is the moment when actors (such as those the selling to schools at the school fair) or clusters of actors articulate a problem. It often involves a focus on a particular goal or a problem to be solved where the actors locate themselves as gatekeepers and problem solvers. Within the problematisation moment, the analysis can show what problems actors enhance (for example, in schools or in society), how do they want to solve these problems, and the argument that makes them indispensable to the problem and action. With this framework we can thus scrutinise with what kind of intentions and objectives these actors engage in Swedish school. Expected Outcomes: The hypothesis is that the observations conducted at this school fair and its following analyses will give insights in with what objectives and intention edu-preneurial companies, NGOs and their employees engage in Swedish school. Building on a pre-study (Jobér, submitted) and earlier research (e.g. Dovemark & Erixon Arreman) the hypothesis is also that the actors will bring forward a number of altruistic arguments. These might regard supporting the society to decrease widening socioeconomic gaps, including children with special needs, opening possibilities to equal opportunities for all, and reaching out to students living in rural areas of Sweden. However, as shown in above earlier studies, these are complicated arguments, given for example that a number of initiatives in the educational market, such as private tutoring, is not used at all by those with low incomes (Björkman, 2014, 21 November). There are reasons to believe that the expected outcomes from this pre-study not only will show what kind of altruistic objectives the actors use to justify their presence but also bring forward initial data that in forthcoming studies can be used to identify if the actors in educational market desire profits rather than inclusion and equal opportunities for all. References: Ball, S. (2009). Privatising education, privatising education policy, privatising educational research: network governance and the ‘competition state’, Journal of Education policy, 24(1), 83-99. Callon, M. (1986). Elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay. In J. Law (Ed.), Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? London: Routledge, pp 196-233. Clarke, J. (2002). A new kind of symmetry: Actor-network theories and the new literacy studies. Studies in the Education of Adults, 34(2), 107-122. Dahlstedt, M. (2009). Governing by partnerships: dilemmas in Swedish education policy at the turn of the millennium, Journal of Education Policy, 24(6), 787–801. Dovemark, M. & Erixon Arreman, I. (2017). The implications of school marketisation for students enrolled on introductory programmes in Swedish upper secondary education. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice, 12(1), 1–14. Hamilton, M. (2011). Unruly Practices: What a sociology of translations can offer to educational policy analysis. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(1), 55–75. Ideland, M., Axelsson, T., Jobér, A. & Serder, M. (2016) Helping hands? Exploring school’s external actor-networks. Paper accepted for ECER, Dublin, August 2016. Jobér, A. (submitted). How to become Indispensable: Tutoring Businesses in the Education Landscape. Submitted to Special Issue of Discourse titled Politics by Other Means: STS and Research in Education. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Molnar, A. (2006). The Commercial Transformation of Public Education, Journal of Education Policy, 21(5), 621-640. Olmedo, A., Bailey, P. L., and Ball, S. J. (2013). To Infinity and Beyond…: heterarchical governance, the Teach For All network in Europe and the making of profits and minds. European Educational Research Journal, 12(4), 492–512. Ong, A. (2007). Neoliberalism as a mobile technology. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32(1), 3-8. Rizvi, F. & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. London: Routledge. Rönnberg, L. (2017). From national policy-making to global edu-business: Swedish edupreneurs on the move. Journal of Education Policy, 32(2), 234–249. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2016). Standards are good (for) business: standardised comparison and the private sector in education. Globalisation, Societies and Education 14(2).

Bearing with Strangers looks at inclusion in education in a new way, regarding education as a discipline with practical and theoretical concepts and criteria which emanate from education and schooling itself. By introducing the notion of the instrumental fallacy, it shows how this is not only an inherent feature of inclusive education policies, but also omnipresent in modern educational policy. It engages schooling through an Arendtian framework, constituted by and in a specific practice with the aim of mediating between generations. It outlines a didactic and pedagogical theory that presents inclusion not as an aim for education, but as a constitutive feature of the activity of schooling. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, the book offers a novel and critical perspective on inclusive education, as well as a contribution to a growing literature re-engaging didactic and pedagogical conceptions of teaching and the role of the teacher. Schooling is understood as a process of opening the world to the young and of opening the world to the renewal that the new generations offer. The activity of schooling offers the possibility of becoming attentive toward what is common while learning to bear with that which is strange and those who are strangers. The book points to valuable metaphors and ideas – referred to in the book as ‘pearls’ – that speak to the heart of what schooling and teaching concerns. Bearing with Strangers will be of great interest to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of philosophy of education, inclusive education and educational policy.

In this paper, the notion of pearl diving as a metaphor for historical methodology is explored as a possible conceptual contribution to pedagogical thinking and practice. Pearl diving in the thinking of Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin refers to a process of bringing to life and coming to terms with a fragmented past, and requires of the thinker a form of Homeric impartiality. This they contrast with the processual and functional modern understanding of historiography, where events and things are subsumed by a causal linearity. According to Arendt and Benjamin, our past cannot be understood as though in one piece, but should rather be engaged as fragmented and crystallised into events—or pearls—which can be retrieved and can help us to illuminate our past and to understand our present. This paper considers what such an approach would entail for pedagogical theory and practice, as well as for the work of the pedagogical thinker and the teacher.

This paper explores the concepts of commons and commoning from an educational vantage point. These concepts point to places and activities that are shared, communal and un-privatised, in other words they point to places and practices not yet enclosed or appropriated by capital and market logics. Education is certainly a place and an activity that is increasingly being enclosed and appropriated by these logics, but at the same time education seems to always find ways of escaping this enclosure, and teachers and students find ways of being that escapes appropriation. Exploring the concepts of commons and commoning from an educational vantage point is thus an attempt at describing schooling as an activity that takes place in common and makes something common. By sharing and introducing a subject matter to the students, the teacher offers a shared space of exploration and study that can escape the instrumental and proprietarian framework of the neoliberal education agenda.

This paper explores the role of exemplarity in education through a conceptualisation of two different dimensions of exemplarity in educational practice. (1) Pedagogical exemplarity, which relates to the pedagogical and ethical dimension of educational practice. In other words, this dimension explores the educational moments when someone takes up an exemplary function in educational practice. (2) Didactical exemplarity, which relates to the exemplary function of subject matter or educational content. In other words, this dimension of the project explores the educational moments when something takes up an exemplary function in educational practice. Through an initial conceptual exploration of these two dimensions, via the works of Linda Zagzebski and Martin Wagenschein, the paper sets out to lay the foundation for a deeper understanding of the role of exemplarity in education.

This paper explores the role of exemplarity in education through a conceptualisation of two different dimensions of exemplarity in educational practice. (1) Pedagogical exemplarity, which relates to the pedagogical and ethical dimension of educational practice. In other words, this dimension explores the educational moments when someone takes up an exemplary function in educational practice. (2) Didactical exemplarity, which relates to the exemplary function of subject matter or educational content. In other words, this dimension of the project explores the educational moments when something takes up an exemplary function in educational practice. Through an initial conceptual exploration of these two dimensions, via the works of Linda Zagzebski and Martin Wagenschein, the paper sets out to lay the foundation for a deeper understanding of the role of exemplarity in education.

In this symposium, we don´t want to defend conventional pedagogies over and against theories of learning, and we don´t want to enter into the debate about which methods, old or new ones, are the most effective and efficient. Rather, we want to take a particular existing practice at face value, i.e. as a practice that has a meaning which can only be (re)discovered by a careful analysis of what it is we exactly do when making notes in a ´traditional´ pedagogical context such as the lecture. This is, the educational value of this ‘mundane’ practice is to be found by engaging in a close phenomenological examination of the concrete things we do and experience as students and teachers in a classroom

In this article, Morten Korsgaard and Mathias Aldinger examine the educational thinking of Hannah Arendt and accompany their analysis with an educational reading of Soren Kierkegaard's "The Seducer's Diary." The authors argue that their readings of Arendt and Kierkegaard point us to a pitfall in how we often approach the educational process: expecting the generation that is coming of age to satisfy the desires of the older generation. This expectation, which pervades present educational reform efforts, undercuts the possibility of education for (existential) freedom and, indeed, serves to manipulate the young into adopting the ideals and desires of the older generation. Reading "The Seducer's Diary" educationally allows us to interpret Johannes as a (mis)educator of Cordelia in the mold of the progressive and instrumental educators that Arendt critiques in "The Crisis in Education." In this way, Arendt and Kierkegaard alert us to the perennial paradox of educating for freedom without attempting to determine how this freedom is to be lived out and thus undermining the endeavor in advance.

This paper presents Gert Biesta’s ontological critique of ‘the global evidence movement’, and performs a critique of his use of systems theory as a foundation for his ontological counter-position. We attempt to show how systems theory, as well as the prevailing understanding of evidence based education, are inadequate for describing and conceptualizing educational processes. Through his use of systems theory as a starting point for an educational ontology, Biesta approaches an acceptance of a functionalistic and anti-humanistic position, which we show is incompatible with educational processes, and thus inappropriate as a foundation for an ontology of education. As an alternative, we offer a reading of Hannah Arendt, and present her concepts of natality and plurality as more suitable starting points for a formulation of an ontology of education.

This article describes the results of a digital survey of 41 Polish immigrant parents’ views on mathematics activities at home and at preschool as parents’ views potentially provide a range of perspectives on mathematics activities for young children. Parents were asked to describe and justify their views about how children engage with mathematical ideas and nominate activities that children engage in at home and at preschool. When parents justi ed their views about young children and mathematics, they tended to align themselves with the norms and values of the Swedish preschool curriculum. The ndings suggest that parents, like children, are socialised into Swedish preschools. However, this alignment could limit possibilities for broadening perspectives about mathematics education in preschool, which could be available by incorporating input from immigrant parents’ di erent cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

In this paper, a methodology is proposed for gaining insights into preservice teachers’ understandings about young children’s mathematics learning. Using data from a Swedish and Norwegian pilot study, it is possible to see how a set of questions about a stimulus photo of children playing with some glass jars provided insights into the preservice teachers’ mathematical and pedagogical understandings. Although the preservice teachers seemed to be able to recognise a range of mathematical activities and respond to children engaging in them, they often gave only implicit, general information. This raises questions about teacher educators’ expectations about whether preservice teachers, at the end of their courses, should be able to provide more explicit descriptions of what children are doing and suggestions for how to develop their mathematical understandings. Information of this kind can inform teacher educators about what could be improved in future mathematics education courses in early years programmes.

For a long time, one of the most important tasks for education in liberal democracies has been to foster the next generation in core democratic values in order to prepare them for future political responsibilities. In spite of this, general trust in the liberal democratic system is in rapid decline. In this paper, the tension between the ambitions of liberal-democratic educational systems and contemporary challenges to central democratic ideas is approached by reconsidering Hannah Arendt’s critique of political education. This will be done informed by her analysis of the tension between the concepts of state and nation. By showing how education, depending on its role as a tool of the state or the nation, may be a fundamental requirement for the establishment of a common world or the most efective tool for its destruction, the paper argues for the need to understand Arendt’s educational thinking in light of her wider political analysis. Rather than downplaying the provocative aspects of her critique, the paper argues for the need to use it as a starting point for thinking again how education may become an emancipatory undertaking capable of disarming contemporary threats to human plurality and freedom.

Taika Waititi’s recent film ‘Hunt for the Wilderpeople’ (2016) portrays the coming-of-age of a young boy, Ricky, in a world with few recognisably responsible adults. While the film does not engage explicitly with formal education, it raises several questions central for understanding education as formation, highlighting the generational aspects of educational relations and pointing to the importance of an adult world taking responsibility for the formation and upbringing of the younger generation. Departing from a discussion on the role of formation and intergenerational relations in Rousseau and Arendt, we will draw on the film’s portrayal of an adult world in crisis in order to discuss some of its possible consequences for understanding education in terms of intergenerational relations and formation. This involves raising questions about the educational consequences of the absence of recognisably responsible adults and it involves investigating how this absence might impact our understanding of education as the formation and upbringing of educated human beings.

The aim of this chapter is to describe some fundamental developments within Swedish educational policy focusing especially on the idea of educational individualization as a way of placing the child at the center of the educational activity and thereby as a vital agent in the construction of a more equal and just society. We argue that these historical trends, coupled with the neo-liberal influences within contemporary educational policies, have created a strong discourse of childhood within Swedish society, centered on the concept of ‘the competent child’. However, contemporary neo-liberal transformations of the idea of educational individualization have far-reaching consequences in terms of what competencies children are to develop as well as for the overall relationship between the state and the individual in Sweden.

Allyson Larkin raises important questions concerning the promotion and consequences of ideals of global citizenship in the context of Canadian higher education. More specifically, she aims to problematize taken-for-granted assumptions about the discourses of global citizenship that correspond to the type of graduate Canadian universities are seeking to produce. In this comment, we aim to, very briefly, address similar questions in relation to the context of Sweden. Using the example of volunteer work, we will give a short historical background to Sweden’s international commitments in relation to developing countries as well as a brief sketch on how such commitments are organized within contemporary Swedish society. Finally, we will also comment on possible consequences for contemporary constructions of discourses of global citizenship and internationalization in relation to the field of Swedish higher education.

[English title: The Constitution of Special Education in a Child-centred Preschool for All: To Analyze Political Steering Instruments with a Discourse Theoretical Frame]

This paper identifies and analyzes what constitutes special education in the (revised) Swedish preschool curriculum. The paper also contributes with an analytical mode of understanding political, as well as other, documents, in, for example, an educational system. The analytical strategy is built upon discourse theory, using the ideas of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. The results show a fortified hegemonic discourse about a preschool for all children, where child-centred and inclusive approaches are dominant and where special education, to a large extent, is constituted by more management, stimulation and special support. The paper raises questions about the possible effects the hegemonic discourse may contribute to.

In a time when the pursuit of equivalent quality is high on the Swedish ECEC (Early Childhood Education and Care) policyagenda, teachers’ responsibilities for evaluating educational practice, based on documentations of individual children’sdevelopment and learning, is emphasised. To aid teachers in this work, the Swedish National Agency of Education published anddistributed a support material promoting ‘pedagogical documentation’ as a tool and a method for documentation and evaluation,framed within a so called postconstructionist/posthumanist theoretical framework. In the support material, the (social)constructionist approach, previously associated with the tool pedagogical documentation, is criticised for having an excessive focuson interpersonal interaction and the constitutive power of language. Instead, an understanding of the world that acknowledges theforce and impact of nonhuman subjects and material objects on children’s subjectification and knowledge construction is called for.The theoretical ideas that are expressed in the support material corresponds to what broadly has been explained as a “material” turnin the humanities and social sciences. Against the backdrop of the alleged material turn, not only is the superior position oflanguage being questioned, but also the unique and ontologically superior position of the human mind. The theoretical stance takenby the National Agency of Education can be considered unique and raises questions concerning the meaning and aim of theoreticalintervention through research and policy, and of its subsequent consequences.The overall aim of the dissertation is to critically examine the figuration of the posthuman child in both a Swedish and internationalcontext of early childhood education. Part of this work involves investigating how posthumanist concepts and ideas travel,how they are picked up in policy and how posthumanist theory is being translated to fit the framework of early education. Thisinquiry concerns fundamental questions about the making of the preschool child in the intersection between educational research,educational policy and pedagogical practice. In the different studies of the dissertation, Claudia Castañeda's (2003; 2014)interpretation of the concept "figuration" is being used as an analytical tool for “unpacking” the practices, knowledge and meanings,that are built into the posthuman child as figure.

I kölvattnet av en ny Skollag och revidering av förskolans läroplan (98/10) publicerar Skolverket (2012) ett stödmaterial ämnat att bistå pedagoger i det förstärkta uppdraget att dokumentera, utvärdera och utveckla förskolans verksamhet. I stödmaterialet, som distribueras till nationens samtliga förskolor, föreslås ’pedagogisk dokumentation’ som verktyg inom ramen för en så kallad ’posthumanistisk’ teoretisk förståelse. Utifrån ett, till förskolan översatt, posthumanistiskt perspektiv sätts barnet i relation till en värld där också icke-mänskliga subjekt och materialitet tillskrivs agens. Här beskrivs subjektets gränser som flytande och barnet som i ständig tillblivelse i och genom sina intrasslade relationella förbindelser med världen. Det teoretiska ställningstagande som görs i stödmaterialet kan te sig paradoxalt i ljuset av den reviderade läroplanens skärpta målfokusering, vilken snarare visar på den socialekonomiska diskurs och globaliseringstrend som genomsyrat utbildningssystemet sedan 1990-talet. Här figurerar barnet snarare som utbildningsbart humankapital och resurs för att driva social och ekonomisk utveckling. Hur kommer det sig att dessa till synes diametralt olika barn kan figurera samtidigt inom ramen för svensk utbildningspolicy och förskolediskurs? Frågan löper som en röd tråd genom mitt avhandlingsarbete där jag vidare undersöker det posthumana barnets möjlighetsvillkor. Varför påstå att barnet är posthumant? Varför nu? Vad kan ett sådant antagande innebära för hur det blir möjligt att tänka och tala om barnet?

Traditionally, the school pupil has been regarded as an important actor, both in the preservation of society and in encountering predicted outcomes of the future. Today, even the youngest children are included in the educational project, fabricating 1-5-year-olds as universal pathfinders for the somewhat conflicting mission of creating both economic growth and sustainable development (European Commission, 2010). Considering this process, it is worth examining how the young child is articulated as an educable subject within the framework of dominating perspectives in the ECEC field. We do so by focusing on two contrasting discursive movements: the policy-driven social economic and the philosophically inclined posthumanist discourses. These discourses provide seemingly opposing basic assumptions about the subject within the same educational context, that is, early education. Yet, education is accentuated in both discourses as the single most important factor in handling contemporary and future global economic, social and ecological crisis. In what many scholars, as well as educational policy actors, call a precarious time long-term challenges such as globalisation and the pressure on resources are intensified (e.g. Malone, Truong & Gray, 2017; Taylor & Giugni, 2012; European Commission, 2010). In Early Childhood Education policy, the child figures as a social, economic and political project, mirroring both the existing society and current political endeavours in trying to control the outcome of the future. Recurring in the history of the young institutionalised child is the idea that the child can be emancipated and released from a future predestined by unfavourable background conditions (connected to culture and socioeconomic environment), through education. This assuming that children will participate in education early on, which is why the goal of providing preschool activities for all children (even when the economic or the social incentives are missing) is prominent in the international education policy for younger children (Nagazawa, Peters & Swadener, 2014). This idea of the educable child focuses on individual cognition and receptivity in relation to predefined subject knowledge, where education is the “intervention” that captures political intentions and expectations (Eurostat, 2017) through, what we call, a social economic discourse. The social economic discourse is not uniform but contains several different intentions within the governing field of education, which together produce a particular subject: the entrepreneur, ready to invest in her/himself and in the future (Bacchi, 2009). However, the social economic discourse, albeit historically dominant within the ECEC field, has not been unopposed. The emergence of critical pedagogies and the growing interest in the sociology of childhood in the 1980s and 90s, offered alternatives to the developmentalist and social economic view on the child. In the wake of these movements, posthumanist theory has gained an increasing influence in early education research at large, and in the ESD field in particular. According to the proponents of posthumanism, in order to thrive and survive we (as humans) need to re-evaluate our position in the world by realising the complex relational nature of existence. In this endeavour, early education becomes crucial and posthumanist theory is proposed as an invitation to reconsider the humanist notion of “human” through the child (Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Taylor, Pacini-Ketchabaw and Blaise, 2012). By studying the terms and conditions of the social economic and posthumanist discourses, we examine what is represented as being at stake (e.g. growth, competitiveness, the environment and not least human survival) and offer a critical reflection on the different, but surprisingly consistent, articulations of the educable young child.

In this article, Therese Lindgren and Magdalena Sjöstrand Öhrfelt compare two discourses that have been influential in the field of early education: the social‐economic and the posthumanist. Studying how the young educable child is articulated in these seemingly contradictory discourses, Lindgren and Sjöstrand Öhrfelt have found that the discourses not only overlap, but, to some extent, they also reinforce each other. Both discourses depict the future as precarious, and along with identifying deficiencies of our time, they seek to justify the need for early intervention in terms of education. The young child is portrayed, on the one hand, as not‐yet‐realized human capital and, on the other, as a site for change and new beginnings. That is, the child figures as the key to a better and more sustainable world. In both discourses, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is depicted as an emancipating project, detaching the child from the child's social and cultural contexts and historical past, making the young educable child an “orphan.”

Central values promoted in a national curricula are often uncontested (Arnot, Hopman, & Molander, 2007; Colnerud, 2004; Popkewitz, 2009). Therefore, a critical understanding of these values is crucial, as is an understanding of how students are affected by interpretations of certain values as fundamental. The aim of this study is to cast light on how educators in a Swedish compulsory school interpreted the values promoted in the national curricula, when they formulated local work plans. Using critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2010) combined with the sociology of childhood (Corsaro, 2005; James & Prout, 1997; Lee, 2001), the analysis focuses on the constitutions of childhood through local interpretations of values promoted by the curricula. The results suggest that the values upheld in the local work plans were closely intertwined with the educators' own under-standings of what children in the school's neighborhood needed. The educators identified social problems in the community, such as crime, and built the curriculum from there. As a consequence, the local work with core values risked constituting an even more segregated and stigmatized childhood. However, the study did show that the process of revising allows educators to gain insight and take a salutogenic approach.

In this paper I focus on the leisure-time center as an arena for promoting critical digital literacy. The main research question addressed in the paper is: How do Swedish leisure-time teachers work to promote critical digital literacy in the leisure-time center? In addition to this, the paper poses the more specific question: How do Swedish leisure-time teachers approach internet advertising in the leisure-time center, and do their approaches to advertising encourage a critical understanding? 

The paper draws on an interview study conducted in 2018 with 21 leisure-time teachers working in the south of Sweden, and David Buckingham’s (2006) conceptual framework for critical digital literacy is used to analyze and discuss the interview data. 

The results reveal a broad range of approaches and practices among Swedish leisure-time teachers; from not promoting critical digital literacy, to planned learning activities and spontaneous discussions that encouraged critical reflections about digital media. The participants concentrated on source criticism, photo manipulation, and discussions with children about their digital media usage, which are central aspects of critical digital literacy (Buckingham, 2006). There were also different approaches to internet advertising; from not addressing this issue at all, to critical reflections regarding the role of advertising. There were also uncritical ways of approaching internet advertising, such as discussing advertising as a source of information for consumption purposes. The paper discusses the implications of these results for policy, practice, and future research.

This article focuses on the leisure-time center (LTC) as an arena for developing critical digital literacy. The main research question concerns how Swedish leisure-time teachers (LT teachers) work to promote critical digital literacy. In addition to this, the article directs attention to one specific aspect of critical digital literacy, namely, critical understanding of Internet advertising. The second research question thus concerns how LT teachers approach Internet advertising in the LTC, and whether their approaches to advertising encourage a critical understanding. The study is based on 20 in-depth interviews with Swedish LT teachers, and Buckingham’s (2015) conceptual framework for critical digital literacy is used to analyze and discuss the data. The results reveal a broad range of approaches and practices, from not promoting critical digital literacy at all, to planned learning activities and spontaneous discussions that encouraged critical reflections about digital media. The participants concentrated on source criticism, photo manipulation, and discussions with children about their digital media usage. There were also different approaches to Internet advertising, from not addressing this issue to critical reflections regarding the role of advertising. The participants also described uncritical ways of relating to Internet advertising, such as approaching advertising as a form of entertainment. The article discusses the implications of these results for policy, teacher education, and future research.

Digital and mobile games are an important part of many children’s daily media usage, and are used by children for, among other things, entertainment and relaxation purposes. Mobile games are commonly ‘free-to-play’ and have revenue models based on in-app purchases and advertising. These revenue models affect the content and structure of mobile games, and, consequently, also the gaming experiences. Drawing on group interviews with nine- and 12-year-old children, this article analyses how children view and engage with advertising in mobile games, and what consequences in-game advertising have for children’s game experiences. The results show that children’s engagement with in-game advertising takes the form of a struggle, and that children both resist and resign themselves to the advertising strategies. Advertising brings about negative experiences of deception, enforcement and confrontation, and interrupts moments of enjoyment, achievement and immersion during game play. These results suggest that playing advertising-based free-to-play mobile games is a demanding environment for children.