The purpose of this paper is to discuss the educational specificities of attention.The concept of attention has been a well-researched topic during the last 150 years (Parasuraman, 2000; Mole, 2011). Much of this research has been conducted within psychological or neurobiological frames and do not easily harmonize with critical educational perspectives, where ethically and existentially oriented questions about uniqueness, equality and difference are addressed (Säfström, 2005; Biesta, 2014) These perspectives have in common that they seek to ground education as a science in its own right, pulling it away from psychologically oriented conceptions. Ethical at its core, this science approaches education as a relational endeavor of calling forth and placing self-active subjects in a world, rather than as a goal-oriented practice of providing learners with a world constructed by cognitive units. As much of the psychological literature define attention in quite different ways and also lack clear definitions of what attention is (Mole, 2011), phenomenology can be used as a complement, as its task is to describe attention as it unfolds in the world of lived experience. A model that takes into consideration both empirical results from psychological research and first person experiences of attention, is P. Sven Arvidson’s sphere of attention (Arvidson, 2006). In this model, attention is framed as an active engagement with a marginal field, a thematic field and a contextual field that are all interconnected and dependent upon each other. Educational practices are specific forms of attention formation as they, by calling self-aware and self-active subjects into being, also bring about awareness of an outside world that sets up the concrete as well as ethical limits of these subjects (Rytzler, 2017). As these practices are embedded in a sort of inter- and/or intra-subjective context, Arvidson’s model can contribute to a better understanding of the educational specificities of attention. By investigating the function of the margin of the attentional sphere, Arvidson’s analysis is helpful when addressing sudden changes of context and subjectivity, as those connected to educational events and practices. The complex of relations that unfolds in an educational setting, can be said to bring about different fluctuations within the sphere of attention. As such, educational activities lead to a sort of deconstructing of attention, where the boarders between the context and the margin dissolve in order for new thematic fields to appear, together with new possibilities for both educators and students.

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