WHY STILL EDUCATION 2015

Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory (University of Belgrade, Serbia) organises the second international conference Why still education? The conference is conceived as an open scientific forum which seeks to contribute to reflection on and development of educational strategies, to provide a space for exchange of experience and knowledge, and to encourage fruitful challenges to the existing educational practices.

Conference topic:
ACTORS AND DISTRACTORS IN EDUCATION

This year we wish to thematize the role of the participants in the educational process. What actors are indispensable to the educational process, and who are the intruders? Who are the loyal actors and who are the distractors? What type of understanding of education do we have in mind when we make judgements about this? And is the conflict between those “factors” inevitable, or can they be possibly harmonized?

The hidden assumption behind these questions is that there is some kind of educational front which pits adversaries against each other, as friends and foes of education. But the discussion tends to become more complex if we take that actors may sometimes also be distractors, and vice versa. The position of a good or a bad component in the educational process is not warranted in advance. It is always established anew by the enacting (or the failure to enact) its role. But what role is a successful one? Who is the screenwriter, and who is the director in this educational drama?

The state, the society, the local community, and the school board, to begin with the most general factors, may certainly be seen as useful organisational pillars of educational activities. However, they can also act as obstacles to their enactment. Immediate ‘executors’ – teachers, professors, lecturers, animators, pupils and students – can contribute most directly to this or that desirable vision of education, but their contribution may also prove the most perilous. Finally, there are also other ‘institutions’ which, if in less apparent and more roundabout way, have a profound influence on the character and the quality of education. Parents, school, media, technologies and the like, represent those particularly sensitive (distr-)actors.

We strongly believe that many other influential factors condition the existing models of education, or impact on how educational programmes are being articulated. Those span from more or less incontrollable underground currents, such as tradition and globalisation, to ideologies, new styles of life and labour market constellations. Problematizing of desirability of their influences and effects, as well as their interactions, is also most welcome.

Potential applicants include:

* Theorists of education in the fields of philosophy, sociology, pedagogy, andragogy, psychology, political theory, anthropology, history, as well as experts in education management;
* Practitioners – teachers, textbook writers, initiators of supplementary and extracurricular educational activities, representatives of the alternative educational programs, etc.

How to apply
http://wse.instifdt.bg.ac.rs/presentation-proposals-2/

Fees
http://wse.instifdt.bg.ac.rs/fees/