Invited Speakers: Kari Facer, Terry Sheddon

Network 28 was established in 2010 and had three main objectives (Europeanization, standardization and epistemic governance) which has now been successfully attracting papers for nine years. In the proposed workshop the intention is to look to the network’ future and to try and agree a collective vision for what it will be and what it will have achieved by 2040.

 In order to do this the workshop will be organised around the concept of backcasting. Being a part of a larger category of normative scenarios-building (Borjeson, L.,Hojer, M.,Dreborg, K.-H.,Ekvall, T.2006), the approach of backcasting enables participant to put aside existing vocabularies and train of thoughts in order to generate suitable transititon paths to alternative institutional structures (Király, G. at al. 2013 ). Instead of attempting to forecast on the existing spatial, temporal, relational context this line of futurology links acceptable or desirable conditions of future back to the present (Wangel, J 2011; Quist, J., Vergragt, P 2006; Kiraly, G. at. al. 2013). Hence, it enables the different values and value-laden assumptions to be overcome and to explore what the desired framework of future enables participants to achieve and construct. Two speakers will be asked to present their ideas about the future in terms of three key areas of activities (community, reflexivity, environment), which will be circulated beforehand. At the workshop these ideas will be explored through group work.

Speaking and contemplating about future necessarily entails thoughts on how different ideas on society are at work. In recent years, there has been a growing concern on ‘sociology of expectation’. Research is persued in response to how future expectations  are  foreclosed,  colonized or managed (Facer, K 2013; Adam, B. 2011, 2018; Beckert, J. 2016; Mische, A.2014; Brown-Michael 2003). At times when education is being re-narrated from different national–transnational discursive positionings and locations it is insightful to look again at the interpretation and problematization of future (Sheddon,T 1993,2014; Facer 2013).

In this context, the workshop offers to reconsider challenges and opportunities of transnational spaces within the field of sociologies of education through envisioning a desired future scenario and from that perspective backward elaborating possible spots of action. In accordance with the call, visions will be provoked and discussed in the following areas: • Community: Who is the sociology of education for? How is it possible to engage multiple publics in multiple ways, connecting professional, critical, policy, and public/lay knowledge in the field of education? • Reflexivity: What are the aims of sociology of education in the current scenario? How can we deal with the ‘traditional’ tension between instrumental and reflexive knowledge (Burawoy, 2005)? • Environment: What are the epistemological, theoretical, methodological and thematic challenges that the sociology of education is called to address? What are the different traditions of the sociology of education across Europe? To encapsulate the philosophical and political potential of NW28 the reflection of invited speakers leads us to question, reflect upon and finally leave the current understanding of EERA in a view to collectively create a vision. Participants, thus, can ladder up and down the field of future expectations and define steps on the route backwards illuminating original lines of discovery, practice and reflection.

The workshop will most probably produce: • arhivable documents, photos of story-cubes, charts and audiotapes transcribed and sent to participants for further remark and approval • four key aspects and four actions fundamental in a short, middle or long run realization of institutional change concerning community, reflexivity and environment • situational analysis of the discourse The innovative character of the proposal corresponds to EERA mission since it acknowledges transnational context with social, cultural, and political applicability.

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