The British Sociological Association

Learning, sharing and caring: Pedagogical features of parents’ educational activism
Dr Nathan Fretwell (Senior Lecturer in Education and Early Childhood at Middlesex University)

Scholars of social movements have afforded increasing attention in recent years to pedagogical processes and practices within activist organisations (Choudry, 2015; della Porta and Doerr, 2016; Novelli et al., 2024; Ollis, 2012). This article contributes to the ‘pedagogical turn’ (Ollis, 2020) in social movement studies by exploring pedagogical features of parents’ educational activism. Drawing on qualitative data collected from parent-led campaign groups operating in England, UK, the article attends to three aspects of activist pedagogy evident within the campaigns. The first concerns the learning that occurs through engaging in activism. The second, internal and external processes of knowledge-sharing. And third, parents’ perceptions of the educative potential of activism as a means for imparting democratic values to their children. I argue that the pedagogical dimension is a central feature of parents’ activism. Indeed, such activism constitutes itself a form of civic education in which democratic values and ideals are transmitted from one generation to another.

Contentious Pedagogies of Hope: Social Movements as Agents of Educational Justice
Dr Kai A Heidemann (Professor of Sociology at Maastricht University)

Decades of sociological research has shown that educational systems have a remarkable way of reproducing the very kinds of structural inequalities and injustices that they are supposed to transcend.  In this presentation, I merge insights from the sociology of social movements with the sociology of education to consider how grassroots actors can act as impactful agents of justice-based educational reforms. Dialing into the role of 'hope' and 'hopefulness' in social movements, the session will proceed in two parts. In the first part, I will raise some guiding questions and then draw on aspects of my past and ongoing research on social movements and education reform over the past fifteen years in order to shed a light on lessons learned from a variety of initiatives in Europe, South America and the United States. In the second part, I will invite participants to join me in a collaborative sociological discussion that contemplates the question of how contemporary justice-oriented movements can effectuate emancipatory changes in schools and universities despite the monumental ideological and institutional challenges that they are facing today.