Rethinking Culture and Knowledge in Education and Educational Research
This keynote critically examines the concept of culture in education and educational research, challenging essentialist perspectives that portray culture as a container of presumed ethnic and linguistic differences or as a collection of fixed characteristics, traditions, habits, and lifestyles. Instead, the understanding of culture proposed here, drawing on insights from Cultural Studies and Critical Pedagogy, transcends these associations and conceptualizes culture as dynamic social practices and shared symbols, embedded within specific social and power relations, that are employed to give human lives meaning. Within this framework, knowledge production, dissemination, and reception represent manifestations of cultural practice.
Using educational research as an example, the keynote explores the notion of research cultures as cultural practices that have developed across diverse contexts. These research cultures are undergoing profound and often contradictory transformations, shaped by evolving scholarly communication practices. Anchored in theoretical frameworks such as the sociology of knowledge, knowledge organization, and systems theory, the keynote employs an international comparative approach, focusing on educational research publishing in Germany, Italy, and Sweden. Through bibliometric tools, it maps the landscape of educational research publications and analyzes the intellectual communication practices that shape these fields. The findings illuminate the formation of intellectual traditions, the intersections of national and international trajectories, and the enduring influence of nationally oriented scholarly paradigms.
The keynote further interrogates the eurocentrism inherent in the generation, dissemination, and reception of knowledge, and addresses issues of postcoloniality and the politics of knowledge production. It reflects on the ethical and scholarly responsibilities of researchers to critically and reflexively engage with the categories and classifications that order individuals, organizations, and institutions, thereby shaping research and its outcomes. Emphasizing the non-universal nature of research tools, including international databases, the keynote calls for greater recognition of inconsistencies, contradictions, and contextual specificities in knowledge production to navigate the complexities of knowledge production in ways that resist reifying hierarchical distinctions between the Global North and South. In doing so, it aims to foster a more nuanced understanding of culture and its use in education and educational research.
About Barbara Gross
Barbara Gross, PhD in Education, is Associate Professor in Intercultural Education at the Free University of Bolzano, former Junior Professor in Intercultural Education at the Chemnitz University of Technology, lecturer at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main and the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Roma. She is Board Member of the International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE), Scientific Board Member of and lecturer in the PhD in Peace Studies at the Sapienza Università di Roma, Associate Editor of the journal Intercultural Education (Taylor & Francis), as well as Expert Evaluator for the European Commission.
Her research interests include linguistic and migration-related diversity in educational institutions and society, social, educational, and ecological (in)equality and (in)equity, critical intercultural and diversity-sensitive education, and internationalization of education and educational research. She is currently leading different research projects on these topics, e.g., a school ethnographic research on Education for Immigrant and Refugee Minors in Educational Support Services in Chemnitz, Germany.
EERSS 2025 Dates
Applications
15 November 2024 - 15 January 2025
Information on acceptance
1 March 2025
Registration/Payment
2 - 31 March 2025
Summer School
2 - 6 June 2025
Contact
Academic questions:
Prof. Dr. Volker Bank
TU Chemnitz
volker.bank(at)phil.tu-chemnitz.de
Organisational questions:
Doretta Dow
EERA Office
dow(at)eera.eu