Comparing and contrasting approaches to education for transition and transformation

ABSTRACT

A comparative analysis of two approaches to education in two academic literatures in two languages is the basis for discussion of how education systems should respond to contemporary transitions in the world in an Anthropocene age. The first approach is based on francophone literature and argues for an ‘individual pedagogical education’ in contrast to the ‘social normative education’ which dominates mainstream education in France. The second anglophone approach focuses on how education can – and in experimentation has already – prepare learners for social action as denizens of their community even before they are formally citizens, with voting and similar rights. The combination of the two approaches suggests that current global transitions demand responses which involve substantial transformations in learners and that education systems must accept this responsibility.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizenship
• education
• pedagogy
• interculturality
• transformation
• transitions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There is remarkably little concern with the difficulties of translation in comparative education studies. Phillips and Schweisfurth (2014) is an introductory text which devotes a page of commentary, but other such texts do not, and a search of major journals revealed no articles focussing on the issues. Alexander is, as we shall see below, an exception.

2. Education. In Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et lexicales. https://www.cnrtl.fr/definition/éducation.

3. There is a growing interest in and awareness of the role of languages, language repertoires, interpretation and translation in empirical research (Holmes, Reynolds, and Ganassin 2022) but here we refer to the problems of conceptual research which may easily be forgotten too.

4. Following Venel-Guignard (2012, 71) ’The gaze of the Other, through a game of mirrors, makes it possible to begin reflection on the relationship between language, culture and identity, which is necessary for the acceptance of the Other in his diversity’.

Additional information

Funding

Byram’s contribution to this article is financed by the European Union-NextGenerationEU, through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan of the Republic of Bulgaria, project No [BG-RRP-2.004-0008].