Keynotes

Teaching Complex Ideas in Simple Words: The Minimal Languages Approach in Language Education and Beyond

Susana S. Fernández is Professor of Foreign Language Pedagogy at the School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University. She is co-head of the research program Language and Communication and head of the research unit Language Acquisition and Pedagogy at Aarhus University. Her research areas include foreign and second language pedagogy, with a particular focus on intercultural semantics and pragmatics, grammar teaching, and teacher cognition. She has recently led the research project “Danish in the Making: Intercultural Pragmatics for Learners and Teachers of Danish as a Second Language,” funded by the Velux Foundation.

Translation as a strategy and practice in the English language classroom

Nigel Musk is a senior associate professor in English at Linköping University. His research interests concern language teaching and learning as well as bilingualism/multilingualism. What these research areas share is a conversation analytic and interaction analytic perspective, but also an educational setting.

Whose responsibility is it? Rethinking democratic citizenship education in and across subject teaching

Democracy and citizenship education have long been seen as a task predominantly assigned to social science education and social studies. But climate change, misinformation, and social inequality do not respect subject boundaries. This keynote argues that all school subjects carry a shared responsibility for educating tomorrow’s citizens, and suggests a common framework that can help bridge disciplinary boundaries.

Johan Sandahl is Professor of Social Science Education at the Department of Teaching and Learning, Stockholm University. His research focuses on social science education, geography education, citizenship education, and the role of teaching in supporting pupils’ democratic formation and critical citizenship. He has been active as a teacher and in teacher education for many years and serves as Assistant Head of Department with responsibility for doctoral education. Sandahl is currently PI for the project “Critical citizenship: Trust and democracy in Social Science Education on theoretical and vocational tracks.

When Worldviews Collide – The Importance of Understanding Religion in a Pluralistic Democracy

Malin Löfstedt is Associate Professor at the Department of Theology, Uppsala University, in the research environment Social Sciences of Religion and Practical Theology. Her work is situated in religious education and the didactics of religion, with particular attention to religion and worldviews in school and society, pupils’ learning, teachers’ professional judgement, and the role of religious education in addressing complexity, stereotypes, democratic competence, and worldview literacy.

Advancing disciplinary knowledge and Bildung from interdisciplinary perspectives: The case of integrating science and technology in SHAPE subjects

In recent decades, we have observed an attempt to reimagine subjects and re-organise the(ir) curriculum by establishing new cross-curricular and transdisciplinary fields both in research and practice (Klausen & Mård, 2023). Addressing such developments, this keynote focuses on the ongoing large-scale interdisciplinary research project Advancing Bildung in Scool: Science and Technology in SHAPE (ABIS). SHAPE is an acronym referring to Social sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and Economy. ABIS focuses on three subjects within the SHAPE umbrella: L1, History and Social science involving 19 researchers from five research institutions in Denmark.

The purpose of ABIS is to explore whether it would be possible to advance Bildung in school by empirically investigating the role of science and technology in the three SHAPE subjects focusing on the LIFE Foundation intervention initiative STEM-in-SHAPE that develops learning resources from primary to upper-secondary education in a Danish context. These resources are currently being rolled out in school practice and explored in ABIS through ethnographic field work. In addition, the project conducts historical analyses of the role of Bildung in Danish school subjects from early 1900s up to now.

One assumption in ABIS is that science and technology are fundamental to modern culture and Bildung, and thus key to understanding Bildung processes across the curriculum (Krogh, 2020; Sjöström et al., 2017). Addressing grand societal challenges, such as climate and biodiversity crises, requires the ability to understand and engage with science and technology across past, present, and future contexts. However, their integration into education – particularly within SHAPE subjects – remains challenging.

Thus, this keynote explores, historically, conceptually, and epistemologically: What are the current disciplinary practices of technology and nature in SHAPE subjects; what assumptions about Bildung are found in those subjects; what might happen if learning resources integrating science and technology intervene in educational practices; how would an apt theoretical and methodological framing look like for trying to grasp such intervening practices; and might such an intervention lead to reconfiguring and reimagining SHAPE education specifically, and subject education more broadly?

References:

Klausen, S. H., & Mård, N. (Eds.). (2023). Developing a Didactic Framework Across and Beyond School Subjects: Cross- and Trans-Curricular Teaching. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003367260-16.

Krogh, E. (2020). Bildung and Literacy in Subject Danish: Changing L1 Education. In B. Green & P.-O. Erixon (Eds.), Rethinking L1 Education in a Global Era: Understanding the (Post-)National L1 Subjects in New and Difficult Times (pp. 157–176). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55997-7

Sjöström, J., Frerichs, N., Zuin, V. G., & Eilks, I. (2017). Use of the concept of Bildung in the international science education literature, its potential, and implications for teaching and learning. Studies in Science Education, 53(2), 165–192. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2017.1384649

Literature Teaching and Democracy – Empirical Perspectives on a Theoretical Debate

Olle Nordberg is Associate Professor at the Department of Literature and Rhetoric, Uppsala University, and Visiting Senior Lecturer at the Department of Education. His research is situated in literature didactics and Swedish subject didactics, with a particular interest in empirical reading research, students’ literary competence, reading attitudes, and the educational and societal relevance of literary reading. He also has extensive experience as an upper-secondary school teacher, which informs his research on literature education and classroom practice.

Title to be confirmed

Karin Stolpe is Associate Professor at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, where she is affiliated with the Division of Learning, Aesthetics, Natural Science. Her research is situated in science and technology education, with a particular focus on biology education, programming education, assessment, and students’ meaning-making in teaching and learning processes. Her work contributes to understanding how complex scientific and technological knowledge can be made accessible, meaningful, and assessable in education.