DELIBERATE research group (Julia Jaakkola, Hanna-Maija Huhtala and Katariina Holma) attended the FERA Conference on Education at Rovaniemi, Finland on 5.-7.11.2025. Members of the research group organized the theme group “Future-proof Democratic Education” which had three sessions with 10 presentations in total. Jaakkola and Huhtala chaired the theme group.
The presentations in the theme group explored democratic education from several viewpoints. Thursday’s presentations discussed the national Vision for Democracy Education which was released earlier this autumn by the Democracy Education Development Group, the contextualization of democratic education in the context of pluralism, and the psychological theory of mattering in the context of democratic education.
In addition, Jaakkola gave a presentation on mapping the empirical research on deliberative democratic education. Jaakkola and Tuukka Tomperi are currently co-writing a review article examining the empirical research on deliberative democratic education, focusing on how previous literature has defined deliberative education and what are the goals and criteria set for deliberative education.
On Friday “Future-proof Democratic Education” had two sessions, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning’s first presentation discussed how educational future imaginaries serve a viewpoint to democratic education. The second presentation discussed the aesthetic and embodied learning for democracy.
In addition, Huhtala gave a presentation on the role of emotions and community in deliberative democratic education. Huhtala and Holma are currently co-writing an article on the topic.
In Friday afternoon’s session, the first presentation discussed the dialogue between agonistic and deliberative theories and how they can both be combined to create a pedagogical model for dialogic democratic education. The second presentation discussed the creation of a framework for critical pedagogy. The last presentation discussed the representations for democracy in Finnish social studies textbooks.
The research group warmly thanks all the presenters and other participants in the theme group. We were very happy with the amount of participants in the sessions and the interesting discussions the presentations aroused. Hope to see you again at the next FERA Conference on Education!
From left: University of Lapland, Rovaniemi; Hanna-Maija Huhtala giving her presentation; Mikko Puustinen giving his presentation on the national Vision for Democracy Education.
