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Session Submission Summary

Translating and mobilizing ‘A new social contract for education’: Conceiving research for worldly and critical schooling

Wed, February 22, 8:00 to 9:30am EST (8:00 to 9:30am EST), Grand Hyatt Washington, Floor: Independence Level (5B), Independence G

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

This vision for the future of education is quite appealing . . . how do we make it a reality?
Steven Klees, UNESCO Futures of Education Ideas LAB.

Heightened is the awareness that our world is ‘in trouble’ with multiple ongoing and looming global threats and crises (Geiselberger, 2017; Lyons, 2019; UNESCO, 2021). In this context, it is no surprise that education has been called upon with greater urgency to ‘make a difference’ (Tarc, 2012; UNESCO, 2021). Indeed, schooling remains one key site to contribute to the goal of more just and sustainable human futures. Admittedly, some of these calls are part of the problem in asking too much of education and thereby obscuring other more direct/political domains of action (i.e. governments, legal systems, political activism…) (Topolski, 2008), or in instrumentalizing education as individuated human capital development (Ledger et al., 2019). Both neoliberal (human-capital) and ‘heroic’ notions of how schooling is to intervene in the crises humanity collectively (and unevenly) faces are unlikely to be helpful (Di Paolantonio, 2018; Tarc, 2015).

Still, schooling can do something, in the domain of awareness, learning and citizen-subject formation, especially where it is renewed and re-imagined as relevant and responsive to the global crises and opportunities humanity faces. Indeed, UNESCO’s (2021), Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education, is exemplary in making this case in calling for ‘a new social contract in education’ aimed at building and supporting existentially relevant, worldly and critical (justice-oriented) pedagogical practices in schooling. As the report states:
Our humanity and planet Earth are under threat. The pandemic has only served to prove our fragility and our interconnectedness. Now urgent action, taken together, is needed to change course and reimagine our futures. This report by the International Commission on the Futures of Education acknowledges the power of education to bring about profound change. (p. iii)

Moreover, the report generatively centers educational innovation in teachers’ collaborative practices and university school partnerships. As it states:
Research and knowledge about the futures of education begins with the work teachers perform, and indeed, many of the elements of a new social contract for education may already exist in the transformative pedagogy many teachers are practicing. Teachers’ work as knowledge producers and pedagogical pioneers must be recognized and supported, assisting them to document, share, and discuss relevant research and experience with their fellow educators and schools in formal and informal ways. Universities and higher education can imagine new institutional configurations that enable sustained research and professional relationships with teachers in support of their profession-wide knowledge production. (p. 150-151).
Our research team very much resonates with this understanding of the importance of teachers as ‘knowledge producers’ and ‘pedagogical pioneers’ who are highly engaged with university researchers, teacher educators and other educational stakeholders. As researchers we think it especially important that theories of (enhancing) worldly and critical pedagogies are grounded in the pedagogical conditions of schools and classrooms and in the practices and thinking of teachers. We seek to use this exemplary report as an entry into researching how teachers are understanding contemporary global crises and how it is impacting, and might impact, their praxis.

Although fond of the report’s stated vision, Steven Klees (2021) problematizes a number of elements in his critique, What is missing? First, Klees wants a deeper analysis of the crises and how they might be faced, as well as how education is embedded in some of the same (capitalist) preferences that are implicated in these crises. Further, as aligned with our caveat above, Klees remarks: “the Report leaves the impression that education alone can bring about the radical change needed, or at least that it is the only lever we have” (np). Klees further warns against neoliberalism’s conflation of civil society with the private sector. He also suggests that some of the core ideals/constructs as a ‘new social contract’ and the ‘public good’ need much unpacking.

While we agree with Klees, particularly with the need to operationalize the ambitious vision, the report represents a provocation / entry point. And while the larger conditions are in need of greater scrutiny (perhaps somewhat ‘above’ the purview of the report), the educational practices that need to be developed and operationalized begin on the ground with networks of educators, and are thus ‘below’ the vision level of the report. As the report states:
The visions, principles, and proposals presented here are merely a starting point. Translating and contextualizing them is a collective effort. Many bright spots already exist. This report attempts to capture and build on them. It is neither a manual nor a blueprint but the opening up of a vital conversation. (p. iii)
This panel presentation enters this conversation in conceiving research to translate and mobilize the UNESCO vision, toward deepening and expanding capacities for worldly and critical pedagogies in schooling. The three individual presentations conceptualize translation, contextualization and/or prospective mobilization from the angles of curriculum, teacher praxis and research.

Sub Unit

Chair

Individual Presentations