This symposium focuses on how different concepts of ‘quality’ in teaching and education can be identified, understood and further developed in ESE theory and practice.  Throughout the development of ESE research and practice there have been a steady influx of different implicit and explicit approaches to quality as a way of understanding the core of education and teachinng (Poeck & Lysgaard, 2016; Poeck, Öhman, & Östman, 2019). From emphasis on facts, knowledge and behavior to critiques drawing on a Bildung-infused focus on critical thinking and democratic participation, ESE theory and practice continue to be highly contextualized in relation to local and national educational structures. The ongoing mainstreaming tendencies within the field highlights the importance of developing a more nuanced language of how notions of quality are present and can be developed in order to strengthen research and practice. Through the symposium, we will approach quality in ESE education and teaching as a multidimensional concept (Elf, 2021). We will explore how different concepts of quality are present in the ESE field and how we can understand them as expressions of 1) logical, 2) psychological, 3) moral and ) aesthetic dimensions of quality. The symposium is drawing on insights from pragmatism (Dewey, 1916) that emphasizes the experiential and communicative nature of quality in education and teaching: Quality is experienced and appraised in specific communicative settings (e.g. problem-based teaching) by someone (e.g. student, teacher) about something (e.g. subject matter) in order to be the quality that it is. Quality is thus not considered to be existing objectively, in itself (Wittek & Kvernbekk, 2011). Further, quality eludes satisfactory measurement by singular quantitative or qualitative processes (Berliner, 2005; Dahler-Larsen, 2019). Thus the symposium explores experiential conceptions of quality inferred interpretatively from qualitative and quantitative data (Stake, 1995).

As an effort to open up conceptualizations of quality in ESE, the symposium will engage with an interest in the role of 1) intended, 2) documented and 3) experienced aspects of quality in ESE education and teaching. Furthermore, we aim at conceptualizing and analysing crossdisciplinary as well as monodisciplinary/subject-specific ESE qualities (Kumar, 2010). An ambition of the symposium is to explore how the intended and documented aspects of quality has been the main focus of large parts of the ESE research field and that further focus on exploring experienced aspects of quality in ESE education and practice has great potential for the further development of the field.

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