A democratic school: Teacher reconciliation, child-centred dialogue and emergent democracy

Abstract

This article is an exploration of a democratic school where the author spent several years researching and engaging with teachers and students while investigating the practice of Philosophy for/with Children (P4C) within Irish Educate Together schools. I offer an account of how teachers in these contexts seek to reconcile and harmonise their P4C practice with their own educational and democratic outlooks. These perspectives were uncovered through a ‘lived enquiry’ study involving deep immersion in the day‐to‐day life of a school as a researcher and P4C practitioner. Teachers seeking to reconcile their practice with their views in this context resulted in the children in their classrooms learning through democratic processes, where democracy is not merely prescribed, but instead becomes a way of life. By drawing upon excerpts of teacher interview data from my doctoral studies, I suggest that there is a ‘rough ground’ of practice where diverse and unique perspectives can be revealed when lived, deeply immersive and sensitive approaches are taken towards practitioners and their communities. The intertwining of Educate Together and P4C philosophies of education is explored, with particular emphasis on the notion of child‐centredness, dialogue and philosophical enquiry with children. Expanding on the democratic educational ideas of Biesta and Fielding, I argue that there is a deeply contextual and philosophically compelling connection between teachers engaging in P4C, the atmosphere or environment in which dialogue with children can occur and a different understanding of democracy through education that may result.

A New Approach Towards the Acquisition of Democratic Skills in Children: Building Skills Through Training Therapy Animals

“…Democratic education philosophy in an open schooling method that allows students to connect with real-life actors was the theoretical point of departure for this project. Furthermore, in the analysis of the impact of the project on the single activities done, we departed from democratic education and open schooling theory (Wahlström, 2022;Motherway, 2022;Burman, 2016;EU Commission, 2015), and we inscribed this in the key competences reference docu-ment that the EU provided in 2018, to obtain a clear reference grid to measure the impact of the project. The Council of the European Union adopted a recommendation on key competences for lifelong learning in May 2018, identifying eight key competences essential to citizens for personal fulfilment, a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, employability, active citizenship and social inclusion.…”

“…Democracy is commonly associated with both decision-making and a wider ethical idea about how to live together in society (Wahlström, 2022). This process in state schools requires the agreement of teachers, as well as in terms of how teachers consolidate various modalities of being both teacher and citizen (Motherway, 2022). Therefore, it is important to analyse whether schools assume the general will of the people as a single body for an educational system in which the values of a stable society are reinforced and take precedence over the encouragement of critical thinking (Wahlström, 2022).…”

“…Therefore, it is important to analyse whether schools assume the general will of the people as a single body for an educational system in which the values of a stable society are reinforced and take precedence over the encouragement of critical thinking (Wahlström, 2022). According to Motherway (2022), the structural life of the school and the desire to be more democratic in their teaching could balance and harmonise, and sometimes compete. However, this is a critical point that crucial attitudes for democratic education in schools are not by nature in society.…”

Development and validation of a sustainable education scale

“…Education serves to sustain and encourage democratic principles throughout the transition to a democratic system and democratic education involves diverse institutional frameworks and curriculum elements designed for the education of individuals (Gutmann & Ben‐Porath, 2015). To address these elements, we need a cultivation of democratic values among students, teachers, and educational administrators since “…democratic school can provide a connection within the community that encourages participation in school governance, providing and creating resources and knowledge to the community and affecting civic and political action” (Motherway, 2022, p. 1009). With this in mind, we included democratic education as a factor and included items (i.e., 13, 14, 15) that include individuals regardless of their cultural, religious, ethnic, and language backgrounds and democratic environment in educational contexts.…”

Leadership matters in democratic education: Calibrating the role of Principal in one democratic school

“…This also seems to be in keeping with your sense that to create optimal democracy, aspiring democratic schools need to attend not only to political dimensions of decision‐making but also to social and epistemic dimensions of everyday classroom practice and relationships, searching for ways to make these more consistently inclusive and democratic. Gillen Motherway's doctoral study (2020) and his paper included in this collection (2022) document the synergies between ET and P4C values and how they are interpreted and enacted by teachers. You have highlighted the calls that this attention to democratic principles in everyday life makes on teachers and other staff working with children in classrooms.…”