This article explores the possibilities of the “za-dane” perspective as a local, critical response to the dominant concept of qualitative research referring to data. Writing from the periphery, from a country which is non Anglo-Saxon, we show that for us, the term “data” is a symbol of (positivist) power, and the research practice based on data objectifies the world, making social change/emancipation difficult or even impossible. In contrast to the essentially necrophiliac data, the local Polish term “za-dane” we propose is a turn toward biophilia, toward critical qualitative research understood as a challenge, a constant movement of co-creating the world in uncertainty, as a nomadic and anarchist act, a field of subversive and joyful play without a methodological shelter filled with methods and tools that are used to “hunt for data.” We argue that “za-dane” can enrich educational research by attuning researchers to forms of extended, embodied knowing – such as listening, tasting, and touching – that go beyond the positivist focus on visual observation. This multisensory turn simultaneously opens educational inquiry to the non-human. By engaging with local “za-dane,” we also introduce global, though often marginalized, perspectives – post-humanist and post-qualitative – into the field of educational research.
The pervasiveness of the ‘digital imperative’ has heightened the importance of digital citizenship education, with the Council of Europe being a significant proponent. Using a Foucauldian-inspired critical discourse studies analytical approach, this study analyses selected Council of Europe publications addressed to parents, trainers and teachers. Neither the digital nor digital technology is explicitly defined in any of them, and this absence is itself productive. Left undefined, the digital and digital technology acquire determinate form through recurrent grammatical, figurative and classificatory operations, appearing inevitable and self-evident while users are positioned as those who must adapt. We describe this configuration as the productive silence surrounding the digital. The paper further shows that the political and economic dimensions of digital technology are not absent from this discourse. When they come into view, they are described in some detail, yet their significance is promptly redirected into the register of individual competence and conduct, a discursive manoeuvre we describe as concession and recuperation. The broader implication is that digital citizenship education forms subjects within socio-technical arrangements whose political and economic constitution is not made available for critical interrogation and contestation.
This paper reconceptualises education by foregrounding a constitutive paradox: education depends on learning but cannot observe it. Drawing on Niklas Luhmann’s social systems theory, it argues that education operates through communication, while human learning remains an operation of consciousness and is therefore irreducibly external to the system. To manage this condition, education relies on evaluation. Assessment renders learning visible through proxies such as performance and measurable outcomes. However, evaluation does not merely represent learning but progressively transforms it. The paper introduces the concept of secondary distortion to describe how evaluative indicators become stabilised as operational equivalents of learning within the system. Educational reforms that seek to re-centre learning are therefore analysed as attempts to reorganise the communicative conditions through which learning becomes observable and attributable. While they may expand what counts as learning, they remain structurally entangled with evaluation. The paper concludes that the invisibility of learning is not a failure but a structural condition shaping the limits of educational reform.
This article examines Finnish teachers’ descriptions of differentiated instruction (DI) in practice. Aiming to foster inclusive education, DI comprises a pedagogical approach designed to meet the needs of all students in each classroom. There is nonetheless a lack of research concerning teachers’ experiences of and reasonings about DI. We conducted a thematic analysis of semi-structured interview produced in primary schools in Finland. Biesta’s theory on the three educational domains (qualification, socialisation, subjectification) was further applied to analyse teachers’ reasonings about DI in school, resulting in three themes: (1) structural-level DI: following the logic of qualification, (2) group-level DI: balancing between qualification and socialisation and (3) individual-level DI: enabling subjectification through qualification. Findings show how the domain of qualification permeates all three levels, having implications for social justice in schools. Hence, the research calls for greater awareness and critical discussion about DI in practice.
This publication looks at which role individual and collective agency of community actors have played in the implementation of language education programmes under the umbrella of the Macedonian Red Cross/Red Crescent. Further, it aims to clarify along which positional lines inclusion/exclusion is negotiated in practice and which role social and cultural capital play in this process. This is achieved by using an explorative ethnographic research design. The data set consists of semi-guided interviews with language teachers, course participants, volunteers and other responsible people in the organisation and extensive field notes taken during the duration of the field stay, containing accounts of diverse informal and semi-formal conversations with members of the Ukrainian Community as well as civil society activists in the field. Language courses for Ukrainian migrants in Macedonia rely heavily on community-driven efforts, particularly by a key individual with high social capital acting as a representative of the Ukrainian community. These classes are exclusively for Ukrainians, fostering ethno-national solidarity and cultural capital within their community. Access is informally structured by social and cultural capital, with participation depending on connections to informal networks which concentrate cultural capital. While these community-based initiatives potentially offer tailored learning, they risk reinforcing nationalism and class-based inequalities.
