Democracy is a popular construct in use in everyday language today and despite widespread claims that democracy is under threat it is a term widely used by very different groups from across the political spectrum. Democracy has a special place in education, where education is not only understood as an academic discipline and a professional field of practice but pivotal in promoting spaces, content and public interest values for the support of political policies.

    Concepts such as democracy as procedure and as a form of life (Dewey, 1916), thin and thick democracy (Armando & Apple, 2002), and shallow and deep democracy (Furman & Shields, 2005) all give the impression that democracy stands between two distinct choices. Rather than either–or alternatives, we maintain that it is rather a question about where the scope of the responsibilities linked to democratic aspirations should be drawn. A thicker democracy stresses the need to work with reflection in which citizens understand themselves as taking part in a public society where they have rights, knowledge, values, obligations to strive for the common good of society and where participation and plurality is cherished.  A thinner and more authoritarian democracy is founded on narrower and at times unscrutinised knowledge that emphasizes certain standards as the measure of a good national citizen (Zyngier, 2016).

    In the academy of education, democracy is a deeply contested construct that is frequently overused and under-theorised (Arnot & Weiler, 1993: Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020; Fraser, 2022; Lynch, 2022; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2019: Young, 1996). In this study, we are interested in a broad, deep and dynamic view of the construct of democracy, for a (re)constructivist worldview of democracy and education that is constantly evolving depending on rapidly changing societal, environmental and planetary needs and needs to be in the direction of justice, equality and care.  Dewey (1916) claimed that education is the midwife of democracy and that the needs of democracy change with each new generation. It is not therefore a static construct that can be pinned down and implemented in a linear rational and neutral way.

    Our understanding of democracy, found in our theorisation of Teachers’ Democratic Assignment (TDA) encompasses issues of discursive ethics, the presence of uniqueness, is always framed in the direction of equality, justice and care of the marginalised, and always inclusive of the messiness of the human condition, what Hannah Arendt called the plurality of the human condition (Arendt, 1958). Arendt reminds us that there are only a small number of policy changes that need to be made to assure a totalitarian state, one change being the stifling of joy and spontaneity and the second, the stifling of the plurality of the human condition.

    These important dimensions of democracy are threatened in contemporary education by the rapid increase of hyper masculinity in education research and policy working to narrow down horizons of thinking, being and acting. This hyper rationality presents education and democracy as a fixed entity that can be (mathematically) modelled, controlled, and predicted as a state-centred system of performance management (Selwyn & Gašević, 2020).

    This globalising imperative can be seen across OECD countries, in the constant comparison of PISA and TIMSS standardised test scores, and is paralleled today with an anti-science populist movement advocating violence and hatred of the ‘other’ (Verma & Apple, 2021). Instead, we are interested in a construct of democracy that can value and learn from histories and cultures, and at the same time make way for something new to emerge, with transformative possibility for new mutual care relations for humans, non-humans and the planet (Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020).

In this study, we conducted a holistic and feminist critique of the writings of a number of feminist and critical theorists who can offer an expansive theoretical underpinning for an ethically sensitive, socially just and dynamic framing of democracy and education, and in ways that support the building of a just, care-full and inclusive education for peaceful and pluralist societies (Fricker, 2007; Haraway, 2016; Lynch 2022). Our theoretical perspectives were drawn specifically from critical sociologists and feminist philosophers including the work of Judith Butler, Madeline Arnot, Nancy Fraser, Miranda Fricker, Kathleen Lynch, Irish Young, and Donna Haraway. Taken together they illuminate the construct of democracy and education in new ways that push the boundaries of a system of education that is oriented more toward a closed system. Creswell and Creswell (2018) posit that educational research that is positioned within an emancipatory-transformative paradigm involves both research and advocacy. Our study argues that a critical scrutiny of the democracy construct as found in education is long overdue. What might democracy mean today in Europe and across the globe when educators experience weak affordances for critical mediation with the wider political world including the social consciousness necessary for mutual care relations in a democratic way of life. As a point of departure we emphasize the necessity for opening spaces in schooling and higher education for deep professionalism and thick democracy that speaks to the social consciousness and the post-humanist relational fluidity needed for our times to assure a just political world and sustainable planet in an age of uncertainty (Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2020, 2016; Mooney Simmie & Edling, 2019, 2017).

Preliminary findings reveal the importance of ‘academic freedom’ for securing a dynamic democracy. Butler (2017) asserts that academic freedom confers the right and the obligation on educators to hold open the discursive spaces between the state (e.g. state agencies) and the people (e.g. students) in order to speak (testimonial epistemic justice) (Fricker, 2007) on issues about ones experience, to interrupt the discourse, to have capacity to ‘sap power’, to speak ‘truth to power’, and to make space for the emergent and the ‘not-yet-thought’. Fraser (2022) argues that we need to use this third wave of feminism to critique the framing of problems in order to reveal that which is hidden, silenced and otherwise excluded. Lynch (2022) asserts the need for affective equality in the recognition of human interdependencies and dependencies (vulnerabilities). Feminism foregrounds the intersectional politics of education and speaks to advocacy for egalitarian relations rather than (re)productive conservative relations. Insights from Young (1996) suggest that democracy as a relational and fluid construct is much more than an aggregation of votes (e.g. ‘electoral democracy’), and/or the more virtue laden stance of ‘deliberative democracy’ advanced by some leading philosophers. Young argues that ‘deliberative democracy’ with its ethical rules seeks to stave off dark aspects of human nature, e.g. the will to power, and is set up on a platform where experts always have an unfair advantage when the aim is about ‘winning’ the better argument. Young speaks to the need for a de-centred deliberation for all social groups to contribute to the public space and for the radical care needed for a pluralist democracy in the direction of equality and justice for all. Similarly, Haraway (2016) urges us not to move away from the complexity and messiness of a dynamic, just and pluralist democracy and instead to ‘stay with the trouble’ in this age of uncertainty.

Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. University of Chicago Press. Arnot, M., & Weiler, K. (1993). Feminism and Social Justice in Education: International Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge Falmer. Butler, J. (2017). Academic Freedom and the Critical Task of the University. Globalizations, 14(6), 857-861. DOI: 10.1080/14747731.2017.1325168 Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J.D. (2018). Research Design Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches. Fifth Edition. Sage Publications Inc. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and Education. Macmillan. Edling, S., & Mooney Simmie, G. (2020). Democracy and Teacher Education. London & New York: Routledge. Fraser, N. (2022). Cannibal Capitalism. New York and London: Verso. Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice Power & the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haraway, D. J. (2016). Staying with the Trouble. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Lynch, K. (2022). Care and Capitalism. Why affective Equality Matters for Social Justice. Cambridge: Polity Press. Mooney Simmie, G., & Edling, S. (2019). Teachers’ democratic assignment: a critical discourse analysis of teacher education policies in Ireland and Sweden. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 40(6), 832-846. DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2018.1449733. Selwyn, N., & Gašević, D. (2020). The datafication of higher education: discussing the promises and problems. Teaching in Higher Education, 25(4), 527-540. Verma, Rita, & Apple, Michael, W. (2021). Disrupting Hate in Education Teacher Activists, Democracy, and Global Pedagogies of Interruption. London and New York: Routledge. Young, I. M. (1996). Chapter 6 Communication and the Other: Beyond Deliberative Democracy. In Democracy and Difference Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Edited by Seyla Benhabib, pp.120-135. Princeton University Press, New Jersey: Princeton.