Epochal key questions for the reformed Danish teacher education

TY - CHAP

T1 - Epochal key questions for the reformed Danish teacher education

AU - Knudsen, Lars Emmerik Damgaard

PY - 2024/1/1

Y1 - 2024/1/1

N2 - In this chapter, I will propose two epochal key questions for Danish teacher education by providing a careful description of the background and reasons for each suggestion. I acknowledge that many other issues are also important and that future developments might render these key questions outdated. Nonetheless, they form what Thomas Højrup (2003) has termed a problematique, denoting insolvable but characteristic and formative questions and, in the context of Danish teacher education, are significant for the role of teachers today.1. With a departure in a combination of Klafki’s key questions of ‘the ecological crisis’ and ‘peace,’ I suggest an ethical awareness when teaching about global crises is addressed in Danish teacher education. The multiple world crisis forces teachers into an ethical dilemma of what and how to talk about these issues with the students. This issue concerns the development of teachers’ ethical awareness and judgment when pedagogically deciding the proportionality of how to present and discuss global crises (such as financial or ecological crises, pandemics, and war) without either traumatizing or harming students or mollycoddling them. In a survey of 13,679 children in 23 countries conducted by UNICEF, 41.2 % of respondents said they feared climate change (UNICEF, 2018), which, according to Susan Clayton (2020) and Maria Ojala (2012), can lead to mental health issues.2. With a departure from Klafki’s key question of ‘communication technologies,’ I suggest teachers’ critical uses of online teaching platforms, which threaten the teachers’ professional and ethical judgment. Online platform solutions have been mandatory but are now voluntary in Danish schools; meanwhile, research has criticized the intense digitalization in Danish schools, arguing that the autonomy of teachers is being lost, leading to a homogenization of teaching methods and narrowly steering teaching through performance appraisals. In an international review, Tamborg et al. (2017) documented issues with the implementation of online teaching platforms. Recently, the new Danish Minister of Education, Mathias Tesfaye, has entered the debate on digitalization in Danish schools, expressing a critical stance on the rise of computer-based teaching (Dresling, 2023). A similar tendency is seen in Sweden where the Minister of Education claims digitalization in schools is a failed experiment and will now invest in making learning materials on paper available to teachers (Edholm, 2022).

AB - In this chapter, I will propose two epochal key questions for Danish teacher education by providing a careful description of the background and reasons for each suggestion. I acknowledge that many other issues are also important and that future developments might render these key questions outdated. Nonetheless, they form what Thomas Højrup (2003) has termed a problematique, denoting insolvable but characteristic and formative questions and, in the context of Danish teacher education, are significant for the role of teachers today.1. With a departure in a combination of Klafki’s key questions of ‘the ecological crisis’ and ‘peace,’ I suggest an ethical awareness when teaching about global crises is addressed in Danish teacher education. The multiple world crisis forces teachers into an ethical dilemma of what and how to talk about these issues with the students. This issue concerns the development of teachers’ ethical awareness and judgment when pedagogically deciding the proportionality of how to present and discuss global crises (such as financial or ecological crises, pandemics, and war) without either traumatizing or harming students or mollycoddling them. In a survey of 13,679 children in 23 countries conducted by UNICEF, 41.2 % of respondents said they feared climate change (UNICEF, 2018), which, according to Susan Clayton (2020) and Maria Ojala (2012), can lead to mental health issues.2. With a departure from Klafki’s key question of ‘communication technologies,’ I suggest teachers’ critical uses of online teaching platforms, which threaten the teachers’ professional and ethical judgment. Online platform solutions have been mandatory but are now voluntary in Danish schools; meanwhile, research has criticized the intense digitalization in Danish schools, arguing that the autonomy of teachers is being lost, leading to a homogenization of teaching methods and narrowly steering teaching through performance appraisals. In an international review, Tamborg et al. (2017) documented issues with the implementation of online teaching platforms. Recently, the new Danish Minister of Education, Mathias Tesfaye, has entered the debate on digitalization in Danish schools, expressing a critical stance on the rise of computer-based teaching (Dresling, 2023). A similar tendency is seen in Sweden where the Minister of Education claims digitalization in schools is a failed experiment and will now invest in making learning materials on paper available to teachers (Edholm, 2022).

KW - Dannelse

KW - Læreruddannelse

KW - Klimakrise

KW - Online læringsplatforme

UR - https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003407775/teacher-ethics-teaching-quality-scandinavian-schools-lars-emmerik-damgaard-knudsen-merete-wiberg-karen-bjerg-petersen-lisbeth-haastrup

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85184557281&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.4324/9781003407775

DO - 10.4324/9781003407775

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781032526676

SN - 9781032509303

SP - 96

EP - 110

BT - Teacher Ethics and Teaching Quality in Scandinavian Schools

A2 - Knudsen, Lars Emmerik Damgaard

A2 - Wiberg, Merete

A2 - Petersen, Karen Bjerg

A2 - Haastrup, Lisbeth

PB - Routledge

CY - London

ER -