Authors: Andreas Rogler, Vihtori Kylänpää, Tuija Kasa, Selja Koponen, and Riikka Suhonen

Between the 18^th and 20^th of June 2024, GERIF had the great opportunity to join the “The Reimagining Teachers and Teacher Education for Our Futures conference” in Helsinki.

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/reimagining-teachers-and-teacher-education-our-futures

The conference highlighted the crucial role of teachers in providing quality instruction and shaping the critical, transversal skills necessary for our futures. 

Education has become a mission and transformative force through which global ideologies and ideas such as the SDG 4 are to be realized. Today, however, socially, culturally and ethnically diverse communities are more apparent than ever before and teachers must balance expectations of parents and politicians, manage large and diverse classrooms, provide personalized instruction and deal with the impact of emergencies and crises while building hope for the future.

During the conference, we joined discussions on several questions that educators all around the world are facing, including:

How can teachers and education systems address tensions between the global and the local?

Whose voices matter in defining what is important in education?

Can our sites of education be inclusive of all or just inclusive of some? What should teacher education do in order to prepare and support current and future teachers? 

The conference was divided into 3 different sub themes:

• Access
• Equality and equity
• Emergencies and crises 

GERIF members at the conference

Several GERIF members contributed to the discussion on these subthemes and the crucial role teachers have in shaping the critical, transversal skills necessary for creating a more sustainable and inclusive future. 

Andreas Rogler from the University of Oulu for example explored in his presentation how virtual exchanges can be used to create informal intercultural learning opportunities to make internationalization of higher education more equitable and accessible.  

Tuija Kasa from University of Helsinki co-chaired with Eva Harðardóttir from University of Iceland a symposium on Transformative human rights, democracy and global citizenship education: Pedagogical and philosophical insights. Presenters introduced their research from Iceland, South Africa and Finland. The symposium was organised together with Sue Gollifer from University of Iceland and Janet Gbam from the University of Pretoria. The aim was to critically discuss the purpose(s) of education amid global crises.

Selja Koponen from the University of Helsinki presented her PhD article on reimagining democratic education with care ethics. The article is co-written with Tuija Kasa. This philosophical research suggests a more care-full democratic education and draws on Selja’s field work in upper comprehensive school.

Vihtori Kylänpää from the Non-Military Service Centre presented an ongoing post-doctoral study “Student viewpoints on actions for human rights that young adults consider valuable”. The aim of the study is to find ways to educate young adult students with diverse backgrounds to undertake actions for human rights, and to investigate whether young adult students’ answers and their diverse backgrounds are related. During the first phase of the study in 2023, five students were interviewed to find actions for human rights that are both relevant to the students but at the same time ones that are not necessarily easily found in the literature. During the second phase in 2024, other students answer a survey which includes both choices that can be found in the literature and those that students told the author during the interviews. 

GERIF and ANGEL pre-conference “Reimagining our futures together through global education”

In addition to the individual presentations by GERIF members, we organized a pre-conference together with the ANGEL (Academic Network for Global Education and Learning) sub-network for Early Career Researchers on the 17^th of June. 

After some opening remarks from the conference organizer and UNESCO chair Prof. Arto Kallioniemi, we had a small introduction about GERIF and ANGEL networks. The main focus during the first part of the event was on networking and we had various different activities in which participants could introduce themselves, their research and try to reimagine education. This was a great learning opportunity for everyone involved since we were a very diverse group with educators, scholars and students coming from all over the world including countries such as Japan, Finland, Germany, India, Malaysia and Namibia.  

After the networking part, we had lunch at the University before heading out to a Helsinki walking tour with a small twist. Instead of visiting different tourist locations, the walking tour included places related to themes such as human rights, decoloniality or the climate crisis. For example, we visited the urban garden “Galleria Kasvihuone” at the Faculty of Educational Sciences and ended the tour at the Global Centre in Helsinki. There, we were able to take a peek behind the curtain and learn how global education NGOs in Finland operate. After a very interesting presentation, we were divided into groups and joined workshops organized by Amnesty International Finnish Section, Peace Union of Finland and Taksvärkki, Operation a Day’s Work. The workshops tackled issues such as sex education, peace education, and drama education. 

After the event, we exchanged contact information with everyone in the hope for continuous collaboration. We are grateful to all the speakers, participants who made both the conference and the pre-conference a success. We look forward to continuing this important dialogue in the future.

Authors: Andreas Rogler, Vihtori Kylänpää, Tuija Kasa, Selja Koponen, and Riikka Suhonen