The 17th Bergen educational conversation

CAN THE SCHOOL STILL BE A SCHOOL?

At the 17th Annual Bergen Educational Conversation, we invite you to take part in an urgent discussion about what the school as an educational institution ought to be about. Is the school still about emancipation, or has it become merely a tool to meet society’s demands? How do we navigate the tension between societal expectations and the school’s educational agenda?

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The 17^th Annual Bergen Educational Conversation will be a two-day dissemination event to be held in Bergen on 7 and 8 April 2025. The event will focus on a fundamental and in our view quite urgent question, namely whether the school can still be a school. The question is fundamental, because it allows us to explore what the school as an educational institution actually ought to be about. The question is urgent because contemporary schools are under significant pressure to meet a wide range of expectations from parents, policy makers, politicians and society at large. There is not just a feeling of system ‘overload,’ which is also very much felt in the everyday life of teachers. There is also the question which of these expectations are legitimate and proper, and which run the risk of undermining and distorting the school as an educational institution.

By approaching the school as an institution, we push back against functionalist views in which the school is exclusively seen as a functional sub-system of society; a sub-system that simply has to ‘deliver’ what society asks of it. As an institution, the school also has its own ‘concern’ to take care of. Since the Enlightenment this has been articulated as a concern for emancipation. The fundamental question is whether this articulation of education’s concern still suffices or whether other articulations and justifications are needed. The empirical – but also historical and political question – is whether the school is still able – and perhaps also: is still allowed – to take care of its ‘own’ concern. We do not envisage this as a choice for either an entirely functional or an entirely educational ‘agenda,’ as both can be seen as legitimate for the modern school. Our question is how they can be kept in a meaningful balance, and what this would require from all ‘actors’ in and around the school.

Part of the event will consist of six academic presentations in which these scholars speak to the overarching question of the event from their own research, expertise and background. In addition to contributions that are familiar with and speak to developments in Norway, there will also be contributions that speak to our overarching question with reference to other national settings, including North-America, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Our event is a dissemination event and, from this angle, is based on recent research and scholarship around our overarching question. But we do not think of dissemination as a one-way endeavour where academics disseminate their ‘findings’ to a wider, non-academic audience. For us the most meaningful form of dissemination is that of a conversation between a range of different ‘stakeholders,’ where all speak from their own expertise and experience. This has been the tried-and-tested approach of the Bergen Educational Conversation, which has been going on annually since 2009, and which forms the context within which we are proposing our event. In addition to the invitation to six academic scholars to speak to the overarching question of our event, we have also invited six other presenters, including teachers from a diverse range of Norwegian schools, and a journalist. We have invited teachers from public schools and from Steiner/Waldorf and Montessori schools, as we believe that they have different insights to share about how the school can still be a school today. We have invited a journalist, because we are interested in how a journalist views the public debate about and perception of contemporary schools, also in relation to expectations from parents, policy and politics and society.

The structure of our event is simple, in that we will ask each participant to speak to the question whether the school can still be a school, focusing both on the fundamental dimension of this question – what the school ought to be – and the empirical-political question – whether the school still can be what it ought to be. One key ambition of our event is to engage in a conversation so that the different perspectives that the participants bring can enrich each other. But we also envisage this conversation as a kind of ‘stock taking,’ that is, a joint analysis of what is happening with the school as educational institution, which developments are cause for concern, which developments are cause for optimism, which developments deserve attention and support, and which developments need to be pushed back. More than simply a one-way dissemination event, our ambition with the event is to be generative, that is, that it is a conversation where new joint insights will emerge.

In addition to the 12 invited participants we will issue an open invitation within our networks for others to participate in our event, with a maximum of 40 people in total. The wider significance and ‘impact’ of our two-day event, will partly rely on how each participant will take lessons and insights from the conversation back to their own setting. We have also invited three colleagues to act as ‘reporters.’ They will play an important role during the event, where we will ask them at specific points during the conversation to report back – that is, summarise main points and insights which will also serve as prompts for the further conversation with all present. We also plan to turn these reports into a document with key insights from the event, to be shared with participants and beyond.