What Teachers, What Citizenship, What Future? The challenges of teaching the social sciences, geography and history — Homage to Joan Pagès i Blanch

[Read the talk here.]

I am very pleased and honoured to be giving the keynote address at the XV International Conference on the Research of Teaching Social Sciences /XV Jornades Internacionals de Recerca en Didàctica de les Ciències Socials (February 8-10 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona), a homage to one of the leading scholars in the field in the past half century, Professor Joan Pagès i Blanch.

In my talk I’ll respond to the questions posed in the conference title “What teachers, citizenship, future for research in social studies education?”

What kind of teachers?
Those who understand their role in creating classrooms where students can develop personally meaningful understandings of the world and recognize they have agency to act on the world, to make change.

What kind of citizenship?
The dangerous kind.

What kind of future?
One where social studies education emphases the connection between the social and the individual, between the political and the existential; where a focus on institutional transformation is pursued in tandem with concerns for the existential dimension of meaning, that is personal desire for belonging, community, and moral commitment.