ConCrit

You can now see pictures from the conference in Barcelona, Spain. They are available trough filckr.com and can be seen by clicking one of the pictures below or in the sidebar to the left. A slideshow is also available:

The ConCrit conference in Barcelona is now over. Well over 100 people joined the conference on Plaça de la Virreina in Gràcia, Barcelona and the feedback from the participants has been very positive.

If you don’t want to get back all the time, to check if there is any new post on concrit.org please consider using concrit.org’s RSS-feed. This way you will be notified if any news is available on the site. Read more about RSS-feed here.

Well over one hundred people have all ready registered for this years ConCrit Conference in Barcelona. The conference will, like the ConCrit conferences before, be held outside in the open. This time on a square in Gràcia, Barcelona called Plaça de la Virreina. Please download and print a map here. Look for this years banners on the square - they looks like seen above.

Read some of the proposed speeches that will be discussed and the discussion papers made by some of this years keynote speakers during the conference below in this blog and read the suggested themes that conference participants would like to discuss with you here.

You can download the invitation as a PDF here which also feature the agenda of the conference.

If you are looking for a place to stay during the conference find some here.

And you can still register for the Barcelona 2009 ConCrit Conference on this email address:

register2009@concrit.org

Important! Please provide us with your name, organisation, mail and mobile phone details. Write these informations in the email. Thanks!

Looking forward to see you in Barcelona this Friday and Saturday!

You can now register for the Barcelona 2009 ConCrit Conference on this email address:

register2009@concrit.org

Important! Please provide us with your name, organisation, mail and mobile phone details. Write these information in the email. Thanks!

Please use the comments below to write your suggestions for themes or tasks used in the working groups. Get some inspiration from the suggestions that are already present in the comments.

Here you can download and read the paper to be presented by keynote speaker Professor Jan Kampmann, DK at the ConCrit conference in Barcelona this year.

Introduction:
By beginning my presentation on children, democracy and participation in urging us to take our point of departure in a focus on children’s everyday life, I have already laid out the structure of my talk.

By focusing on children’s everyday life as a crucial crystallization for our considerations, I have implicitly established four perspectives, which I want to elaborate in what follows: an ethnographic approach to children’s everyday life, an interpretive approach to the everyday life, the concept of everyday life as a critical sociological term, and the insistence that potential transformations and hope for another future are hidden in the chinks, ruptures and ambiguities of everyday life.

You will find the discussion paper as a PDF here (Español and Català).

Please feel free to download and read the discussion paper made by keynote speakers Former President Mary Compton, UK and Professor Lois Weiner,USA for the conference in Barcelona this year.

You will find the discussion paper as a PDF here.

Mary Compton and Lois Weiner are the editors of the book “The Global Assault on Teaching, Teachers, and their Unions: Stories for Resistance“.

The book description:
Increasingly public education’s character is under assault. This collection of essays by noted scholars, teacher activists, and teacher union leaders from around the world fuses personal stories, research, and political analysis, explaining why such profound and damaging changes are being made to schools and teaching, and how teachers, their unions, and supporters of public education can make real the goal of quality education for all the world’s children.

What the reviews said:
“In a time of attacks on the entire public sphere, we need to hear the voices of articulate defenders of more democratic visions. No institution can claim to be democratic when its employees are treated with disrespect. Compton and Weiner have produced a powerful collection that helps restore these voices and helps us understand why they are so deserving of our respect.“—Michael W. Apple, John Bascom Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Educational Policy Studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Author of Educating the “Right” Way

“Acomprehensive and vastly enlightening read for any teacher interested in the wider implications of what it is they do for a living. If you are a teacher and have ever wondered who it is that is pulling your strings, and how and why they are doing it, you’ll find this book fascinating and frightening in equal measure.“—Phil Beadle, Education Guardian columnist and UK teacher

Please find some information of the place where the ConCrit conference is held here below. The town square is situated in neighbourhood of Gràcia in Barcelona and is called Plaça de la Virreina.

You can download a map here and see some pictures here and a little movie here.

See ya soon!

Here you can read several ‘written speeches’, translated into English and ready for further translation. The speeches deal with different subjects as Diversity, Learning, Critique, Civil Disobedience and The simplistic view of Children and they are intended as an inspiration.

Download the speech about Diversity as a PDF here.
Download the speech about Learning as a PDF here.
Download the speech about Critique as a PDF here.
Download the speech about Civil Disobedience as a PDF here.
Download the speech about The simplistic view of Children as a PDF here.

We invite you to participate in a two-day international meeting with discussions and analyses of trends in pedagogics and educational policy. The meeting will be held in an unconventional set up and serves the purpose of establishing international networks for the introduction and development of critical and alternative ideas and thoughts on pedagogical institutions and national educational systems. Focus this year will be on aspects of democracy.

The meeting will be held in Barcelona, on May 15-16, 2009

(Download the invitation as a PDF here)

We are witnessing a combination of neo-liberal marketized solutions to educational problems and neo-conservative returns to higher standards.

Many practitioners, philosophers and researchers around Europe are concerned about these trends. There is a general impression that techniques of accountability, measurement and “management” are increasing while the pedagogical opportunities are being limited and that we are seeing an unfortunate standardisation taking place. The pedagogical environments of Europe are able to provide much more than that, which is what Europe needs:

– Is pedagogics the victim of a global competitive trend?
– Do political trends contribute to turning pedagogics into a technical quick fix?
– And do we narrow down childhood to a question of skills as a result of the policy pursued?
– Are the European democracies moving away from the idea of providing general education on a broad basis in favour of a kind of thinking dictated by the needs of the educational institutions?

Therefore, it is time to take the international perspective seriously and to stage discussions that invite broader reflection and analysis in addition to strengthening the democratic dialogue between the populations of Europe.

For this reason, we invite you to take part in an unconventionally organised conference on:

Friday May 15 and Saturday May 16

We will meet on Friday, May 15 in Barcelona, Spain, and we will finish on Saturday, May 16, after we have exchanged ideas about the movements future activities. See the exact programme, schedules and location on www.concrit.org from the end of March.

The challenge to you is to take care of your own transport, food and accommodation in Barcelona and to be generally prepared to participate and contribute something, to work, think, discuss, reflect, be productive and critically constructive and to network across national boundaries.

Mail this to people you know might be interested in participating. You may register for the conference on the web page www.concrit.org which will present the latest news, papers as well as an update on the number of participants.

Please suggest which kind of subjects you would like to discuss within the theme of democracy and how you wan’t to work with these themes (i.e. discussions, happenings, writings, theatre, singing, painting, you name it…)

You can now register for the Barcelona 2009 ConCrit Conference on this email address:

register2009@concrit.org

Important! Please provide us with your name, organisation, mail and mobile phone details. Write these information in the email. Thanks!

We would like to recommend and inform you about nice and affordable hostels/hotels in walking distance to the conference area (called Barri de Gràcia). Please check this list of hotels:

1) Sun & Moon youth hostel
2) Alberguinn Sants Youth Hostel
3) HelloBCN Hostel Barcelona
4) Hostal San Medin
5) Hotel La Ciutat
6) Pensión Norma
7) Verdi Gracia Apartment 12
8) Hostel Barcelona - Booking site for Hostels in Barcelona
9) Hostels Club - Booking site for Hostels in Barcelona

We invite you to participate in a two-day international meeting with discussions and analyses of trends in pedagogics and educational policy. The meeting will be held in an unconventional set up and serves the purpose of establishing international networks for the introduction and development of critical and alternative ideas and thoughts on pedagogical institutions and national educational systems. Focus this year will be on aspects of democracy.

The meeting will be held in Barcelona, on May 15-16, 2009

You can download the invitation for the conference in Barcelona 2009 as a PDF here.

We are witnessing a combination of neo-liberal marketized solutions to educational problems and neo-conservative returns to higher standards.

Many practitioners, philosophers and researchers around Europe are concerned about these trends. There is a general impression that techniques of accountability, measurement and “management” are increasing while the pedagogical opportunities are being limited and that we are seeing an unfortunate standardisation taking place. The pedagogical environments of Europe are able to provide much more than that, which is what Europe needs.

Looking forward to see you in Barcelona

Friday May 15 and Saturday May 16

You can register on this email address now:

register2009@concrit.org

Important! Please provide us with your name, organisation, mail and mobile phone details. Write these information in the email. Thanks!

If you would like to see a little trailer of the upcoming video recorded and edited by Anders Øgaard at the last conference in Bologna in 2008, you can see it here in the .mov-format or download it here in either the wmv-format or the nicer looking .m4v-format.

This post is written in Italian. You are very welcome to translate the text into other languages. Please write the translation in the “comments” (read more about comments here) - see the link below this post.

Dalla Democrazia verso il mercato

Di Marie Bille per Information, 21 Maggio 2008
-L’articolo è stato pubblicato sul giornale danese Information il 21 Maggio 2008

Le tendenze neoliberali e nazionalistiche nell’ ambito dell’educazione e della pedagogia, prese di mira in una conferenza europea a Bologna, dove i ricercatori si sono incontrati con gli addetti ai lavori.

BOLOGNA - “Una conferenza ai Giardini Margherita?” Chiede il tassista italiano con una voce scettica e le sopracciglia aggrottate. Quando la destinazione gli viene confermata, ride platealmente.

“Una conferenza in mezzo a un parco non è così male” dice mettendo in moto e uscendo lentamente dal parcheggio della stazione centrale di Bologna verso questa destinazione atipica per una conferenza.

È il terzo anno che la conferenza ConCrit, che ha il suo focus su educazione e pedagogia, si è svolta a cielo aperto in una città europea.“ConCrit” significa “critica costruttiva” e la conferenza unisce un gruppo misto tra ricercatori, educatrici, insegnanti, studenti e sindacalisti. Per due giorni devono superare le barriere date da lingua e differenze culturali, per essere insieme “critici costruttivi e creare una rete che superi i confini nazionali”, come riporta l’invito.

Comunque ci sono più danesi, ma anche un gruppo di spagnoli, qualche italiano e un
tedesco.
Read the rest of this entry »

Please download the presentation slides made by keynote speaker professor Stefan Hoffmann, Austria, who held a speech with the title: “A critical approach to Pisa” at the conference in Bologna Friday 16. May 2008.

The slides in the Adobe pdf-format can be downloaded here