Professional Development: Education for All as praxis

Jane Wilkinson, Laurette Bristol, Petra Ponte

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317286745
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This edited collection presents several research projects which examine issues concerning professional development, professional learning, and the 'Education for All' (EfA) ethos. The overall aim of the book is threefold: firstly, to explore the consequences for the education profession of EfA, and how professional development and professional learning may be made manifest as part of an EfA practice. Secondly, to examine how EfA practices intersect with theoretical notions of EfA. Finally, to explore how this intersection of theory and practice is rooted in different (Anglo-American, Continental and Northern European) traditions and contexts, and their implications for professional development and learning in education.

Underpinning these three foci is a key principle of education as a human right in terms of participation, information and capacity building, regardless of people's ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds and/or physical and intellectual capacities. This book illustrates the complex conditions created in the nexus of social justice, EfA and professional development. The contributions highlight the educative nature of multi-relationships. In so doing, tensions, opportunities for learning, and the power relationships associated with professional development emerge, providing a resource for learning about good educational practice, authentic social justice practice, and genuine professional learning. This book was originally published as a special issue of Professional Development in Education.

Education for All as praxis: consequences for the profession

Petra Ponte^a,b and Ben H.J. Smit^c

^aResearch Institute for Professional Practice, Learning and Education (RIPPLE), Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga, Australia; ^bFaculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia; ^cICLON, Leiden University Graduate School of Teaching, Leiden, The Netherlands

In this paper we explore the concepts that form the framework for the different research projects that are reported in this special issue. All projects were part of the international Pedagogy, Education and Praxis research network. The main goal of this paper is to set the theoretical ‘mis-en-scène’ for the other papers in the issue. First, based on literature, we explore different meanings of concepts such as ‘Education for All’, ‘social justice’, ‘praxis’ and ‘pedagogy’. Secondly, we explain why we rely on these concepts and, finally, we investigate the consequences of these decisions for the profession, including professionals in schools as well as in universities.

Differences between children as the norm and not the exception

The right to education – on the basis of equality of opportunity – is one of the formal and legally binding human rights set down in various declarations and legal conventions. The foundation for the right to education was embodied in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and then subsequently in the European Convention on Human Rights in 1954, the Declaration of the Rights of the Child in 1959 and the International Convenant on Civil and Economic Rights in 1966.

The human rights set down in these conventions and declarations are conceived by Nickel (1987) as public moral norms that aim to secure, for individuals, the necessary conditions for leading a minimally good life. These minimal rights are universal; that is to say, they apply to everyone worldwide without exception. However, children were not initially considered to hold these rights. That only came later, on 20 November 1989, when the General Assembly of the United Nations ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Convention has been ratified by almost all countries in the world, except the USA (because the Convention prohibits the death penalty for minors) and Somalia (because there was no government personnel in that country able to sign it). Since ratification, all countries have had a duty to observe the agreements. The most important principles behind these agreements are as follows:

(1) The principle of non-discrimination, in the sense that all rights are applicable to all children without any form of discrimination whatsoever, regardless of race, skin colour, sex, language, religion, political or other convictions, national, ethnic or social origin, financial resources, disability, birth or other circumstance of the child or of his or her parents or legal guardians.

(2) The principle that the best interests of the child must guide any decision taken in connection with the education of children.

(3) The principle that every child has the right to life, survival and development to its maximum potential.

(4) The principle that children have the right to express their views in all matters affecting them and for their views to be given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity.

‘These underlying principles’, according to UNICEF/UNESCO, ‘make clear a strong commitment to ensuring that children are recognised as active agents in their own development and that education is designed to promote and respect their rights and needs’ (2007, p. 8). The right to education is therefore defined in terms of universality, participation, respect and inclusion.

In 1990 the Education for All movement was launched at the World Conference in Jomtien, Thailand. Representatives from 155 countries and 150 organisations pledged to provide Education for All by the year 2000 via the EfA Fast Track Initiative. UNESCO has been mandated to lead the movement and coordinate the international efforts to achieve Education for All. In the text Education for All: Meeting our Collective Commitments, adopted by the World Education Forum in Dakar (Senegal) in 2000, the aim of the Education for All movement was re-established:

We re-affirm the vision of the World Declaration on Education for All (Jomtien 1990), supported by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, that all children, young people and adults have the human right to benefit from an education that will meet their basic learning needs in the best and fullest sense of the term, an education that includes learning to know, to do, to live together and to be. It is an education geared to tapping each individual’s talents and potential, and developing learners’ personalities, so that they can improve their lives and transform their societies. (UNESCO 2000, p. 8)

Consequently – unlike what many still think – Education for All is not about a policy for specific target groups, such as students with special needs, but about the proactive creation of tailor-made education, where differences between children are the norm and not the exception. It is ‘Education-for-All-by-All’ and therefore – as the contributions in this special issue illustrate – it constitutes the fundamental responsibility for all those working in the profession, whether in schools, universities or policy.

With respect to this fundamental responsibility, inclusion is seen by UNESCO as a rights-based approach to education, with the recognition that full realisation of this right is not merely a question of access, but rather is a holistic approach. This approach encompasses: access to education; the right to educational quality; and the right to respect for human rights in the learning environment. Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child implies the need for education to be child-centred, child-friendly and empowering. It demands the attention of schools, universities and policy to the content of the curriculum as well as to the nature of the teaching, and to the quality of the learning environment.

Having or doing?

Although children’s rights as such date from quite recent times, people have been thinking about the position of children in education from time immemorial. The Enlightenment made this thinking much more explicit, although educational ideas were not so much inspired by formal political and legal motives (as is usually the case with children’s rights) but more by philosophical issues. Nowadays, political and legal motives are more dominant. In this respect, Verhellen et al. (1999/2000) note some important shifts in the rights of the child and the Education for All movement compared with earlier declarations of human rights:

It is important to note that there has been a shift from a reactive (defensive) dynamic to a proactive (offensive) dynamic. This means that attention is no longer only directed at combating violations of human rights, but is also aimed at bringing about more respect for human dignity […] We also see that the conversion of the declarations into legally binding conventions is accelerating all the time. This provides the moral intentions with a statutory basis on which people can act. (1999/2000, p. 366; authors’ translation)

Verhellen et al. (1999/2000) conclude from this that the convention aims to coerce respect for the rights of the child by legal means. They are right to question the extent that this coercion is possible. Offering pupils equal opportunities to high-quality education implies both a legal–political task for the government and an educational task for those working in educational practice. Legal–political guidelines in the form of rights of the child are very important. They contribute to the definition of the essential preconditions – to be realised by government – within which teacher educators, teachers and pupils work (such as free access to education, accessibility of schools, minimum frameworks for the curriculum, investment in teacher education, mechanisms for claiming rights). However, legal–political guidelines are by necessity general and open to multiple interpretations. They are not intended as concrete instructions for practice, certainly not if that practice is in education, in which situation-specific and individualised normative and moral choices constantly have to be made when deciding how to act. Legal–political guidelines in the form of rights of the child are about frameworks and basic assumptions that remain valid and useful over a long period of time and in many different contexts. In the case of UN declarations and conventions, there are always compromises that have to be endorsed by almost 200 countries with many diverse and different cultural backgrounds. This means that while the formal rights of the child can indeed give out a strong educational message, they cannot prescribe the form that Education for All will ultimately be given in concrete educational practice.

The key question for us, then, is what mechanisms in the daily thinking and actions of teacher educators, teachers and pupils lead to just education. In their contribution to this special issue, Laurette Bristol and Petra Ponte examined this question through the lens of Young’s (1990) social justice theory. Young distinguishes between approaches that mainly see democracy and social inclusion as ‘having’ and approaches that mainly see them as ‘doing’. The ‘having’ perspective refers to legal and material rights that are distributed and can be ‘consumed’: work and income, healthcare, social services and education. Young argues that this perspective is necessary but too limited, because the processes that lead to dominance and oppression are not taken into consideration. That is why she adds the ‘doing’ perspective, referring to something that has to be realised within interpersonal interactions and which is geared to participation and self-determination:

It includes any structures or practices, the rules and norms that guide them and the language and symbols that mediate social interactions within them, in institutions of state, family and civil society as well as workplace. These are relevant to judgments of justice and injustice in so far as they condition people’s ability to participate in determining their actions and their abilities to develop and exercise their capacities. (Young 1990, p. 22)

When translated to Education for All, the ‘having’ perspective emphasises the material function of education. It restricts discussions about inclusion to the allocation of resources to specific groups of pupils, such as special needs education, counselling services and personal budgets for children with special educational needs. De Winter (1995) calls this ‘provision policy’, in which children are seen as the ‘objects’ of care rather than co-constructors of their own lifeworld. The ‘doing’ perspective emphasises the inherent moral significance of education for all pupils. It analyses inclusion in terms of communication processes and human relationships. This perspective allows us to understand how well-intended help sometimes leads to oppression and dominance; how the unconscious suppositions and reactions of people who mean well lead to subtle processes of marginalisation. In consonance with the having and doing perspective, Verhellen et al. (1999/2000) argue that:

It is important to note that these rights […] cannot be safeguarded merely by establishing formal rules and agreements. Recognition of a legal status for children in education refers to being mindful of the quality of the interaction in the context of the school, but that recognition is not an automatic indicator of increasingly respectful relationships between all parties concerned. The attitude and mentality of all who are involved with […] children and their parents is crucially important. (1999/2000, p. 338; authors’ translation)

This is where we come up against the limits of the desire to achieve educational aims through political–legal coercion, which does not allow for the realisation of respect in the educational relationship between teacher and pupil; the educator and student. The realisation of that relationship is praxis; that is, a socially embedded situation – limited in time and space – in which the adult purposefully tries to help the child to become an adult or – in education – the teacher educator or teacher tries to teach the students something. ‘Trying to teach them something’ is always connected with normative and moral assumptions about ‘what is’ (What is actually happening?), ‘what ought to be’ (Where should that lead now and in future?) and how to develop from ‘what is’ towards ‘what ought to be’ (Ax and Ponte 2010). These assumptions are connected with historically and culturally determined views about humanity (Ponte and Ax 2009, Biesta 2010, Groundwater-Smith et al. 2012).

Praxis and views about humanity

The praxis concept originates from Aristotle (1955), but was revived in the Enlightenment thinking from the seventeenth century when a number of philosophers developed a view about humanity that still dominates our thinking today and which made it possible for conventions on the rights of the child to be enacted. In this section we focus on these views about humanity. In the next sections we further examine the praxis concept that is central to this special issue.

The Enlightenment and humanist philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries ‘discovered’ human beings as individuals who are able to influence their own lives and the context in which they live. Human beings are seen as autonomous thinkers who are able to take responsibility for their own actions. Human beings are therefore free to think what they will, without being bound by the authority of higher powers that cannot be questioned. In this outlook, therefore, everything they do is based on dialogue with themselves and with those close to them. The same freedom of thought and action also applies to the development of children. They are no longer seen as God-given or pre-determined by their social origin. In the words of Nietzsche in the nineteenth century, the human being turned out to be ‘dass noch nicht fest gesteltes Tier’, a creature with the capacity to learn, a creature that relies on being raised by adults.

With the discovery of human beings as autonomous individuals came the ‘discovery’ of the possibility and need to raise children in certain ways. Kant, for instance – one of the most influential philosophers of the modern age – contended that human beings only become human through their upbringing. He argued that human beings are not determined by inborn instincts or divine powers, but essentially by their capacity for autonomous moral judgement and actions. Human beings fulfil themselves as creatures of pure reason and so they need to be brought up with an ethical–moral outlook. The main task is to bring up children to be virtuous people and that does not happen as a matter of course. It was from the ‘discovery’ of human beings as autonomous individuals who are dependent on their upbringing that pedagogy as ‘human science’ or, more precisely, ‘the science of the child’s upbringing’ developed. It is a science with strong German roots, traditionally dominant in many European countries (particularly in the north and east, including Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Finland) (Ponte 2007, Ax and Ponte 2010, Biesta 2010).

In their contribution to this special issue, Carlos van Kan, Petra Ponte and Nico Verloop describe continental European pedagogy as the science that studies the child’s upbringing in different domains, such as education, social work, child welfare and law (for example, van Manen 1994, Ponte 2007, Ax and Ponte 2010). In continental Europe, pedagogy is a separate discipline apart from, for example, philosophy, psychology and sociology, often located in separate departments within university faculties. The discipline seeks answers to questions about what kind of human beings children are, what kind of human beings children should become (and for what kind of society) and how they can be raised toward becoming such human beings, taking into account the context in which this process of upbringing takes place. In the ongoing academic debates, researchers take different positions based on the p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Professional development: Education for All as praxis
• 1. Education for All as praxis: consequences for the profession
• 2. Practice architectures of university inclusive education teaching in Australia
• 3. Multiplicity in the making: towards a praxis-oriented approach to professional development
• 4. ‘Muddying the space’: social justice, action research and professional learning
• 5. Professional development facilitators: reflecting on our practice
• 6. Young people as co-researchers: enabling student participation in educational practice
• 7. Ways in which teachers express what they consider to be in their pupils’ best interest
• 8. Teachers’ professional development as enabling and constraining dialogue and meaning-making in Education for All
• Index