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EDiTE Supervisors Awarded for Excellence in Education Abroad Curriculum Design

In celebration of International Education Week, The Forum on Education Abroad announced the 2016 recipients of the Award for Excellence in Education Abroad Curriculum Design: Hana Cervinkova (supervisor and program director in EDiTE) and Juliet Golden (co-supervisor in EDiTE), for their course in cooperation with Syracuse University “Negotiating Identities Across Europe’s Borders,” offered as part of the Culture and Politics of Reconciliation in Central Europe program, based in Wroclaw, Poland. The Forum’s Award for Excellence in Curriculum Design honors faculty who develop and implement innovative and effective education abroad curricula. It is the education abroad field’s only award presented to an individual or group of individuals for excellence in the design of an education abroad course. Through visits to cities and villages in Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and Lithuania over the course of a semester, “Negotiating Identities Across Europe’s Borders” analyzes conflict and reconciliation in European history, to better understand the reasons that the European Union was awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in “the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights.” Forum President and CEO Brian Whalen stated, “Professors Cervinkova and Golden’s important and timely course is a wonderful example of faculty innovation and creativity in education abroad.”
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Negotiating Identities Across Europe’s Borders (Poland, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania)

The Program Director of the Culture and Politics of Reconciliation in Central Europe, Professor Hana Cervinkova, and core curriculum Professor Juliet D. Golden have run this outstanding and recently awarded Study Abroad Program with the Syracuse University of New York for 12 years. Also in this year’s fall semester, the University of Lower Silesia became the academic home to American Syracuse students who together with some of the Polish EDiTE researchers entered the journey of exploring Central and East Europe’s borderlands from Lithuania to Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. The program invites analysis and reflection on memories of conflict and reconciliation as well as civic organisations that initiate the building of bridges between the past and present and fragmented societies of today. The program is accompanied by a rigorous study plan, including courses, such as Exploring Culture and Society in Transition: Gender, Sexuality, Class, and Race in Poland, Discord and Unity: Engaging the Contemporary World Through Ethics and Philosophy, and Civil Society East and West.

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Seminar with Prof. Julia White

On October 31, 2016, Julia White, Assistant Professor at the School of Education of Syracuse University, New York, gave a seminar on Inclusion to EDiTE researchers at the University of Lower Silesia. Prior to the meeting, students were equipped with an extensive list of readings that stretched from literature on critical disability theory (Baglieri, Bejoian et. all 2011; Leonardo & Broderick 2011) to aspects of qualitative research designs in special needs education (Brantlinger 2005, 2004). The five-hour-session was a unique experience to discuss and reflect with Prof. White on current issues in teacher education, student learning, and trends apparent in international education policies. Drawing from her PhD thesis on the schooling of Romani children in Slovakia, Prof. White gave insights into practices of inclusion and exclusion in the United States as well as the Central European context. As a high school teacher of English for children with disabilities and a scholar in fields, such as Critical Race Theory, Disability Studies, and Comparative Education, she shared a vast and fascinating range of expertise with her audience.

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Announcing the EDiTE Knowledge Portal

It is with great pleasure that the team at University of Lower Silesia announces the EDiTE Knowledge Portal. The portal is in testing phase (Beta version). We’ve already started a second development phase, during which we are going to add extra functionalities, and the Slack integration. Through the Knowledge Portal you can get to know our doctoral researchers and their work, explore the personal profiles which include areas of academic interest, theoretical and methodological frameworks as well as recent and prospective research activities and make use of the contact information given and get in touch to receive more details in areas of interest to you. As an online collaborative space the Knowledge Portal invites external partners to connect to the community. We would like to encourage cooperation between our partners and offer our own contributions to research as a source to anyone who might see our work fit to develop their own practical and theoretical approaches.

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Public lecture and seminars with prof. Thomas Wallgren

We had two extremely interesting seminars with professor Thomas Wallgren (University of Helsinki) at University of Lower Silesia and we were pleased to welcome an EDiTE Researcher from Brno, Dev Raj Paneru (Masaryk University). EDiTE researchers had the honourable opportunity to have a conversation with prof. Wallgren (elected to the Helsinki City Council as a Social Democrat from 2008) and discusse among others the manifold dimensions of language games, the role of science in constructing the Truth, the challenges of rationality in the crisis of modernity, and the possible contributions of Wittgenstein in the discourse of pedagogy posing the questions “What to learn?”, “How to learn?” and “Why to learn”, placing pedagogy as an ethical problem. On the 19th of October prof. Wallgren held an open lecture on “Wittgenstein, philosophy and the crisis of modernity”, which was streamed on facebook. The lecture was organized by the EDiTE programme and IISCE (International Institute for the Study of Culture and Education). We highly recommend prof. Wallgren’s book “Transformative Philosophy: Socrates, Wittgenstein, and the Democratic Spirit of Philosophy” published by Lexington Books in 2006.

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EDiTE crew with Peter McLaren

EDiTE at the 6th International Conference on Critical Education

EDiTE researchers and supervisors attended the 6th International Conference on Critical Education (ICCE), previously held in Athens (2011, 2012), Ankara (2013), Thessaloniki (2014) and Wroclaw, Poland (2015). ICCE is a forum for scholars, educators and activists committed to social and economic justice.  The 6th ICCE: Dialogue, Solidarity and Resistance against Neo-liberalism and Neo-conservatism in Education took place in London at Middlesex University, 10 – 13 August 2016. 

Presentations

Professor Hana Cervinkova (supervisor and program director in EDiTE): “Neo-conservatism, Precarity and New Citizenship Education in Poland”

Professor Lotar Rasiński (EDiTE supervisor): “What Does it Mean to Be Critical?”

Tamás Tóth (EDiTE researcher) and professor György Mészáros (EDiTE co-supervisor): “Critical Pedagogues in a Post-Socialist Country. Collaborative Auto-Ethnography of two Academic Selves in the Hungarian Neoliberal Context”

Vasileios Symeonidis (EDiTE researcher): “Moving from Global Policies to Local Practices: A Critical Study of Teacher Education Discourse in Europe”

Josefine Wagner (EDiTE researcher) presenting “‘I-Kind’ a body of power struggles”

The International Conference on Critical Education (ICCE) provides a vibrant and egalitarian, non-elitist, platform for scholars, educators, activists, students and others interested in critical education and in contesting the current neo-liberal/ neo-conservative/ nationalist hegemony, to come together and engage in a free, democratic and productive dialogue. 

See the full conference book here!

 

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Democracy and Diversity Institute 2016

From July 5- 21, 2016 the Transregional Centre for Democratic Studies of the New School for Social Research, New York, organised the 25th Democracy and Diversity Institute in Wroclaw, Poland. The institute themed In unsettling times: An Effort in Understanding provided an intimate international forum for lively but rigorous debate on critical issues of democratic life. The summer institute brought an interdisciplinary, comparative, and highly interactive approach to the social, political, and cultural challenges facing today’s world. The 25th Anniversary session hosted a very special series of lectures and events featuring some of today’s major scholars and public intellectuals, among them two iconic philosophers, Agnes Heller and Richard Bernstein. In close partnership with the University of Lower Silesia and in particular the International Institute for the Study of Culture and Education, all EDiTE researchers had the unique opportunity to join into this extraordinary experience of studying side by side with international students in classes of Elzbieta Matynia (Professor of Sociology and Liberal Studies, NSSR), Alice Crary (Associate Professor of Philosophy, NSSR), and Richard and Carol Bernstein (Professor of Philosophy, NSSR and Professor of English and Comparative Literatureophy, NSSR).
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EDiTE Summer School 2016

EDiTE Summer School 2016

Research as Social Change
28.06-1.07.2016, Brno, Czech Republic

We had our 1st Summer School with a strong focus on “research as social change”. Researchers presented their individual research plans and the alignment of their research projects within the programme theme “Tranformative Teacher Learning for Better Student Learning within and Emerging European Context”.

Main Organiser and Host:
Department of Educational Sciences, Faculty of Arts. Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

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EDUPRO Conference

From June 22-24, 2016, the EDUPRO conference themed: The ways of Lifelong Learning – Towards socially relevant quality in European universities took place in Wroclaw. This was the first occasion for all EDiTE researchers at the University of Lower Silesia to practice a joint presentation. We participated in a simple yet effective presentation format – the learning café – that enabled us to share our professional life stories as examples of life long learning. The University of Lower Silesia served for us an example of softening boundaries for non-traditional adult students in Higher Education. We introduced examples of our research project in order to show how we contribute to the idea of lifelong learning by encouraging reflection and empowerment of teachers as adult learners. Conclusively, the plenary sessions were pleasant experiences and great stimulants for interaction with professors attending and listening to our presentations. This exchange proved fruitful for our further research work and presenetation skills.

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Seminar and public lecture with prof. David Ost

On the 23th of May 2016, professor David Ost (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) gave a public lecture with the title “Po solidarności” (After Solidarity) at the University of Lower Silesia. The lecture was organized by the EDiTE programme and IISCE (International Institute for the Study of Culture and Education). EDiTE researchers had the honourable opportunity to have a seminar with professor Ost, and discussed among others his concepts of solidarity – from above (state socialism), egalitarian (social-democratic), exclusionary (fascist) -, possible varieties of capitalism (liberal market economy, coordinated market economy, etc.), and the managerialization and decline of unions with a special focus of the possibilities of teachers’ unions and how the post-socialist heritage makes these unions weak in contemporary neoliberalizing East-Central Europe. We recommend here two of his recetn articles, discussing the Regime Change in Poland, Carried Out From Within and his Thoughts on the Hungarian and Polish New Right in Power.

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