Professor
Democratic Mobilization (DEMO)
The program “Democratic Mobilization” (DEMO) was established at the Department of Education to enhance the focus on democratic values in pedagogy and education. More insight of how democracy works on different levels in the educational system and how it interacts with other national and international regulations is required to get a holistic understanding of democracy as an educational issue. The program aims to mobilize, corroborate and strengthen the emphasis for democracy as an important issue within pedagogy and education and is meant to be a common umbrella with space for different views and research approaches for diverse project initiatives. The agenda of DEMO is to focus on research and movements within the topic, as well as to give impetus to new research ideas. Furthermore, its goal is to establish collaborations that facilitate and mobilize motivation among educators and researchers to deal with democracy as a topic.
Projects
- ERASMUS+ project (2022-2024) "Values in Democracy Education - enhancing competencies and beliefs of teacher students through a joint study program". (ValiDE). The project is a collaboration between the University of Education Weingarten (Germany), the Pedagogical University Krakow (Poland) and the University of Agder (Norway). One core aim was to develop a study course to foster students' value attitudes and didactic competencies. You can read about the first experiences here. .UiA-Contact: Kristin Endresen-Maharaj, Email: kristin.endresen@uia.no.
- ERASMUS+ project (2020-2023) "Loss of meaning – shaping of meaning in the teacher training programs in the Nordic countries” (MeShape). The project is a collaboration between institutions that offer teacher training programs: The University of Southern Denmark (Denmark), VIA University College (Denmark) and Högskolan Väst (Sweden), and the University of Agder (Norway). The project aims to innovate Nordic traditions of education to strengthen recruitment for teacher training programs, increase sensemaking among teachers and student teachers and, at the same time, and improve the legitimacy of this profession. UiA contact: Aslaug Kristiansen, E-mail: aslaug.kristiansen@uia.no
Publications
Research groups
The demo initiative is for all research groups at the Department of Education. Other research environments are welcome as well.
