The Fourth International CHILDLIFE Conference

• 12.00–13.00: Registration. Light lunch available, P52. See map (mazemap.com).
• 13.00–13.20: Welcome and greetings
• 13.20–14.05: Keynote 1, P52 Festsalen: Professor Maria Appel Nissen, «Children’s needs as a contested phenomenon: on the need for research on and development of reflexive inclusion».
• 14.05–14.30: Break with refreshments, Conference center, P46
• 14.30–16.00: Parallel sessions 1, Conference center, P46
• 16:00–16:30: Coffee/tea and Poster presentations, Conference center, P46
• 16.30–18.00: Parallel sessions 2, Conference center, P46
• 19.00–20:30: Reception in Oslo Town Hall (included in the conference fee) 

• 08.30–09.00: Coffee and light refreshments, Festsalen, P52
• 09.00–09.45: Keynote 2, Festsalen, P52: Associate Professor Yani Hamdani, «Normal is not neutral: Ableism, developmentalism and disabled childhoods»
• 09.45–10.15: Break with coffee and light refreshments, Conference center, P46
• 10.15–11.45: Parallel sessions 3, Conference center, P46
• 11.45–13.00 Lunch, Conference center, P46
• 13.00–13.45 Keynote 3, Festsalen, P52: Professor of Professional Practice Jan Jaap Rothuizen, «Quo Vadis Paedagogia? – Directions in Contested Times»
• 13.45–14.00: Break, Conference center, P46
• 14.00–16:00: Parallel sessions 4, Conference center, P46
• 16.00–16.30: Break with refreshments, Conference center, P46
• 16.30–18:00: Parallel sessions 5, Conference center, P46
• 19.30–22.00: Conference dinner (charged separately) at Årstiden, Stensberggata 26-28

• 08:30–09.00: Coffee/tea, Festsalen, P52
• 09.00–09.45: Keynote 4, Festsalen P52: Professor Janet Boddy, «Changing the room? Making space for epistemic justice in policy-near research with children, young people and families»
• 09.45–10.00: Coffee and light refreshments, Conference center P46
• 10.00–11.30: Parallel sessions 6, Conference center, P46
• 11.30–12.30: Lunch, Conference center, P46
• 12.30–14.00: Parallel sessions 7, Conference center, P46
• 14.00–14.15: Break with light refreshments 
• 14.15–15.15: Closing discussion, Athene 1&2, P46 (Ground floor)

1A: Parental divorce and children’s rights

• Lindbekk & Sonander: «Vernacularizing the Best Interests of the Child: Comparative Insights from Three Legal Cultures»
• Eikrem: «Children's Meaning-Making in Parental Separation: An interaction Between Culture, Parents and Children»
• Burger & Symonds: «Democratic Participation in Contested Childhoods: The Feasibility of Adapting a Child-Focused Intervention in England and Wales»

1B: Participation and inclusive practice- the role of collaboration

• Skaar, Bjørbeckmo, Berg, Risum and Kalleson: «Interprofessional collaboration on inclusive physical education: Insights from physical education teachers' and physiotherapists' perspectives»
• Styczen and Groven: «Relational Work in Interprofessional Collaboration: Toward the Best for the Child»
• Stanghelle, Kalleson & Waage: «Systems approaches to physical activity promotion in Oslo (Sapapo)»

1C: Participation Across Research and Professional Practice

• Graarud & Sletten: «Inclusion of children and young people in child welfare research – democracy work in practice» 
• Guglhör- Rudan, Wölfl & Naab: «Children as Epistemic Partners? Potentials and Pitfalls of Participatory Elements in Methodological Triangulation in Quantitative Survey Research»
• Horwath, Buttler-Stöbich, Dale and Kohout: «Out-of-Home Care in Lower Austria: Promoting Diversity, Democratic Participation, and Child Development through Longitudinal Research»

1D Symposium: Children, nature and climate justice. Decolonial perspectives from Norway, Brazil and Uganda

• Akame: «Living Law through Children’s Eyes: South Saami Climate Consciousness, Relational Norms, and Intergenerational Justice»
• Rizzini & Ursin: «Temporal Inequalities: Rethinking Intergenerational Justice Through Race, Class, and Climate Crisis»
• Mariana Menezes Neumann, Irene Rizzini, Carolina Terra: «Children and nature: pathways to participation»
• Hoem, Ursin, Nakakawa-Jujju, Serwajja & Kisiri: «Deploying Obuntubulamu (Ubuntu) and Intergenerational Relationships to Address Climate Change on Mt. Elgon, Uganda»

1E Symposium: Exploring practitioners’ workday: Applying a shared interview guide based on the life‑mode interview across child and youth services

• Eriksen, Leripoll & Østrem: «The art of discernment: Concrete universals and ethical attention in narrative accounts of kindergarten life»
• Asbjørnslett, Kalleson and Rasalingam: «At the frontline of community child health: Professional practices of public health nurses, physiotherapists and occupational therapists in Norway»
• Sundnes: «Navigating the temporal axis in a life-mode interview: Interviewer practices in a study of workdays across child and youth services»

 2A: Kindergarten and home

• Kominato: «Bridging the Gap: Developing Programs to Address Teacher-Parent Collaboration Deficiencies in Japan's Gender-Neutral ECEC»
• Tengesdal, Romøren and Gram Garmann: «Implementing the interview guide “Hjemmespråk” in ECEC–parent conversations: Exploring multilingualism and cross-sector collaboration»
• Cavada-Hrepich: «Exploring children's perspectives in everyday family- practitioners’ collaborative practices in Early childhood»

2B: Children, youth and citizenship in digital times

• Lyså & Lorgen: «Contesting (digital) childhood: ambiguities of screen life in times of disconnection»
• Mortier & Bradt: «Strengthening the Right to Participate: Building Youth Participation Cultures through Ecosystemic Approaches» 
• Johansson: «Socially connected yet not belonging? A relational perspective on digital exclusion among Norwegian adolescents»

2C: Shaping Childhoods: Professional practices and institutional logics in ECEC

• Haals Brosnan, Nørregaard Hansen, Togsverd & Bjørnestad: «Bending the rules as democratic pedagogical practice»
• Munck & Testmann: «How Professionalism Is Produced in Daycare Institutions: An Analysis Based on Empirical Studies of Pedagogues’ Everyday Work with Children’s Opportunities for Participation»
• Wærdahl & Franck: «Pedagogical Report Templates as Governing Tools in Norwegian ECEC: A Qualitative Document Study»

2D: Method: Using different methods to explore phenomena

• Rutanen, Vuorisalo, Chaudhuri, Isotalo and Ukkonen-Mikkola: «Novel technologies in addressing pedagogical practices with young children – Ethical and methodological reflections on a pilot with young children’s eye-tracking glasses»
• Chahboun: «Where the Eyes Go, the Mind Follows: Social Understanding in Autism Spectrum Disorder»
• Røsvik, Gulløy, Lindvig & Follesø: «Everyday life as lens and landscape: four methodological approaches»

2E Symposium: Inequality and participation in the institutions of children’s everyday lives

• Charlotte Højholt & Gry Tybjerg: «How analyses of children's perspectives connect children's opportunities for participation to the conflicts about them»
• Rebekka Sylvest-Berg & Gry Tybjerg: «Analyzing inequality as situated in school life in a marginalized residential urban area»
• Tilde Mardahl-Hansen & Charlotte Højholt: «A professionalism striving to go beyond individual categories»

2F Symposium: Children’s perspectives on everyday life – challenges, dilemmas and possibilities

• Stegeager: «Young children’s learning across home and nursery: A first-person perspective on everyday participation» 
• Ørtoft: «Children’s everyday lives, participation, and well being in hybrid organisational models (Mellemformer) in Danish schools» 
• Mikladal: «Young children’s everyday Lives, participation, and institutional conditions in early childhood settings»

3A: School absence

• Smedegaard Nielsen: «Raising Concern: The affective economy of concern in municipal case files about school-absent children in Denmark»
• Farstad & Koppang: «School absence from the parents’ perspectives»
• Dindler: «Who speaks for the school-absent child? Media framings and the politics of recognition»

3B: Refugee and migrant children and families

• Komorowska, Stapor, Romøren, de Bortoli & Gram Garmann: «Polish families’ encounters with child language follow up in Norwegian CHCs»
• Iapadre: «Peace education and unaccompanied children with migratory backgrounds in Italy»
• Conte: «“Why do you call your room a house?” Rethinking children’s rights to home and home making in everyday lives at an asylum seekers and refugee center in Spain»

 3C: Kindergarten cultures and values

• Sugano & Okamoto-Omi: «Cultural Understanding of ECEC practices in Norway and Japan, #1 – Focuses on Norwegian childcare philosophies»
• Pedersen: «Navigating expectations in early childhood education: Insights from parents and ECEC practitioners»
• Sæbbe, Greve & Aaserud: «The Norwegian kindergarten in the welfare state – A historical perspective on values»

3D symposium: Early intervention in ECEC in Denmark – children’s life in the welfare state

• Line Togsverd, Benedicte Bernstorff, and Lene Krogstrup Jakobsen: «Early intervention practices in three ECEC Settings. Counseling services.»
• Hjørdis Brandrup Kortbek and Anna Busk Rasmussen: «“One, two silence do”: Child perspective and calm‑producing structuring in ECEC»
• Anja Hvidtfeldt Stanek and Kurt Bendix-Olsen: «Exploring contradictions in the support system: Struggles and bridge-building practices between ECEC and the educational and psychological»

3E Symposium: Contact visits as a relational landscape on the participation of children, parents and foster parents in child protection practices

• Maria Appel Nissen: «SIMBA - a contextual, relational and value oriented approach to contact visits»
• Mona Ravn: «Relational participation: doing and saying ‘the social’ in and around supervised contact»
• Tanja Røed Larsen: «Supervisor’s understandings of children’s reactions during contact visits»
• Marianne Buen Sommerfeldt: «Child welfare employees’ understandings on contact visits for children in public care and their parents»

3F Symposium: On the borders of belonging. Transitions to early childhood education and care

• Costa: «Sitting at the margins»
• Harju, Vuorisalo and Rutanen: «ECEC service guidance preconditioning transitions to ECEC participation for migrant families»
• Vuorisalo, Harju and Rutanen: «Longitudinal ethnographic insights into children’s transitions: Paths into early childhood education and on to school»

4A: Diversity, children’s experiences in different spaces

• Sevon & Rutanen: «Exploring superdiversity in early childhood education and care.
• Nooraddin: «Child city: Towards building children’s architecture» 
• Haile: «Situated childhood knowledge in Ethiopia: Counter topography perspective
• Kharkevic, Røe-Indregård and Gram Garmann: «How do ECEC directors perceive staff members’ multilingual competence as contributing to the pedagogical work in Norwegian ECEC settings?»

4B: Growing up unequal: Poverty, participation and everyday life

• Wölfl, Guglhör -Rudan, Naab, Weis and Chabursky: «How social inequality shapes children’s everyday lives: Selected findings from the UNICEF report on the situation of children in Germany» 
• Wenzig and Globisch: «Growing up with limited resources: A mixed-methods study on intra-family-inequalities and children’s social participation in Germany« 
• Seeberg: «Family poverty and parental violence against children»
• Langfeldt: «Arts education as worlding and belonging under conditions of inequality»

4C: Inclusive practice in kindergarten and school

• Johannessen and Ødegaard: «Values and the idea of inclusion»
• Ulvseth and Riis Jensen: «Children as beings and becomings in schools»
• Tøhaug, Lefstad, Page, Storås and Chahboun: «Bridging the first step: special educators, routines, and predictable transitions to school for children with ASD in Norway»
• Raanes and Chahboun: «More than a tool: Educators’ experiences of augmentative and alternative communication in preschool practice

4D: Kindergarten practices and everyday life

• Pettersvold and Løvig-Larsen: «Rehearsing – a way for kindergarten teachers to strengthen professional autonomy and professional judgment»
• Uemura and Yoshizawa: «Formation of children's understanding of meals through kindergarten lunch duty in Japan» 
• Okamoto-Omi and Sugano: «Cultural understanding of ECEC practices in Norway and Japan. Confusion and clarification of two borders between outside–inside and adult-child 

5A: Participation and democratic practice

• Vestvik and Tranvåg: «User participation as a catalyst for health promotion among young people with complex needs: A qualitative study»
• Pernelle Rose Hansen: «“Ask. Listen. Do something” – Child participation in everyday democracy in schools»
• Rusert and Doll: «Democracy workshops for teams in early childhood education»

5B: Social policy II: Contested democratic rights

• Karlsson: «Challenging censorship with children's literature in an authoritarian society. Hong Kong’s Sheep Village»
• Ceylan: «Measured into being: Survey design and the governance of diaspora families in European early childhood education and care» 
• Salminis, Anastasia and Llobet: «Protecting childhood? Moral panic, cultural rights, and educational controversies in contemporary Argentina»

5C: Professional responsibility and institutional responses to contested childhoods and youth lives

• Romefort and Buchman: «Leadership time and directors’ wellbeing: Enabling high-quality ECEC within the context of contested childhoods»
• Skjesol, Kalleson, Hexeberg, Kloster Jensen and Riiser: «Supporting families with migrant backgrounds: A comparative study of a municipal and an NGO-driven family centre in Norway»

5D Symposium: Professional and educational initiatives towards children and youth on the margins

• Sund Jensen: «Exploring professionals’ perceptions of internal collaboration in youth flexible ACT teams in Norway: A mixed-methods study»
• Hogstad: «Alternative learning arrangements and possibilities for participation»
• Botslangen and Engh: «Challenge‑based learning on a tall ship»
• Moltubak: «The position of health- and social workers in Norwegian compulsory education»

5E Symposium: Perspectives on (multi-)professionality in early childhood education and care. Insights from Germany and Austria

• Sylvia Nienhaus: «Professionals’ perspectives on diversity in (E)CEC – Empirical insights from an ongoing applied research project»
• Melanie Holztrattner: «Multi-professional cooperation in the context of child protection. Perspectives of Austrian professionals working in ECEC as well as Child Protective Services (CPS)»
• Marius Mader: «Professionality in the context of commodification – Parents‘ images of the professional subject in ECEC»
• Samuel Kähler: «From kindergarten teacher to early childhood educator? Discursive subject formations of early childhood professionals in kindergarten picture books (1992–2019)»

6A: Methodological approaches to exploring children's lives, learning and social realities

• Pettersvold and Løvig Larsen: «Using literature in teacher education»
• Cruz and Viana: «Cultural assimilation of Caboclo–Ribeirinho children in the Amazon through play»
• Zahav: «Reframing sexual harassment on campuses through the lived realities of young people: Restorative feminist approaches»

 6B: Interprofessional collaboration

• Mathisen, Andersen, Skiple and Gundersen: «How can interagency collaboration contribute to secure adequate education for young people in vulnerable life situations?»
• Styczen and Groven: «Interprofessional collaboration: Supporting the participation of children with physical disabilities in peer communities»
• Herbern: «“Improvement means less collaboration”: Coming behind collaboration in responding to families’ needs»

6C: Identity, belonging and representations of childhood 

• Bringedal, Bruland Selseng, Skjær Ulvik and Berg Titlestad: «"I Had a father, but not a dad": Narrative agency and identity negotiation among youth bereaved by a parent's substance-related death»
• Sethre: «Stories about children – representations of children in district court judgements»
• Yang: «Imagining childhood otherwise: Adult gatekeeping and rethinking children’s lived experiences»

6D Symposium: Tanu Biswas. Childism: Conceptual pluralism and / or conceptual confusion I

• Therrien: «Rallying childisms: Dispersed conceptual genealogies and the (revisited) case for an emancipatory definition»
• Hedegaard: «Enacting more child-empowered futures through our conceptual frameworks»
• Biswas: «Adultism, and the analytics of naming»

6E Symposium: Reframing disability and transition to adulthood: Exploring structural ableism in policy and practice through collaborative, critical and creative inquiry

• Peddigrew: «Constructing the ‘not-yet’ adult citizen: Ableist assumptions in transition to adulthood policies for disabled youth»
• Parsons: «Re-imagining the future: Youth labelled with intellectual and developmental disabili1es (IDD) push back against structural ableism through creative inquiry»
• Mistry and Hamdani: «Disrupting structural ableism through inclusive, partnered research»

7A: Children in public care: out of home care – sibling relations – parent-child contact and reunification 

• Nyambe and Thembu Punkuku: «Cultural dimensions of family reunification processes: comparing Norwegian and Immigrant parents’ experiences with Child Welfare Services»
• Hege Sundt: «Supervised contact for children in care and their parents – the impact on the quality»
• Ghimire and Hean: «Exploring the perspectives of key adults towards sibling relationships of children in contact with Child Protection Services (CPS)»

7B: Social policy I – Leisure time, peer relations and adoptions

• Sønneland: «International adoption, quo vadis?» 
• Sevon, Hanhikoski and Palojärvi: «The politics of peer relationships in early childhood education and care in Finland»
• De Visscher: «Overcoming differences. Bridging the gap between theory, practice and policy in supporting accessible out-of-school care and leisure activities»

7C Symposium: Childism: Conceptual pluralism and / or conceptual confusion II

• Sundhall: «Children in the paradigm shift. Negotiations on the category of children and the concept of childhood in Sweden from the theoretical perspective of childism»
• Alminde: «Childism in Interaction with other theories»
• Warming: «De-essentializing childhood and children’s lived experiences»

Title of keynote

"Children’s needs as a contested phenomenon: on the need for research on and development of reflexive inclusion"

Abstract

Children’s needs have long been a phenomenon contested. Such controversies arise from political ideologies and utopian visions, as well as from divergent systemic approaches to understanding and responding to children’s needs, whether in relation to social support, education, or treatment.

Shifting understandings of the inclusion and exclusion of children in vulnerable positions—and explanations offered for social problems —constitute a key example of this. Professionals such as social workers, pedagogues, teachers, and psychologists have historically contributed to critical knowledge adding nuance and complexity to our understanding of children’s needs. Their work has challenged simplified and categorical interpretations of social problems and processes of inclusion and exclusion. 

However, in recent years there are indications that the social and systemic ‘patience’ for this to unfold is diminished. In some cases, a simplified, harsh, and sanctioning approach to children and families in disadvantaged positions emerge — this justified in the name of the child’s best interests. Against this backdrop, it becomes crucial to understand what is contested in interpretations of children’s needs and why. Such an awareness is essential if researchers and professionals are to promote good childhoods without reinforcing inequality and disadvantage. 

Therefore, this keynote theorises and empirically illustrates children’s needs as a contested phenomenon, how this shapes our perceptions of social problems and inequality, and why there is a particular contemporary need for research on and the development of reflexive inclusion in the interpretation and articulation of children’s needs.

About Maria Appel Nissen

Maria Appel Nilsen is a Professor of Social Work at Aalborg University (vbn.aau.dk).

The aim of her research is to contribute to foundational knowledge about and development of social work theory, practices and possibilities for social change, grounded in theoretical and empirical studies of social work with children and families in vulnerable positions.

Key research informing this keynote stem from explorations of Views on human being in social work – Welfare Policies, Technologies and Knowledge about Human Beings (2014-2019), Does Social Work Care? Exploring Relational, Emotional and Embodied practices in social services for vulnerable children and families (2018-2023), Contact: Sustainable development in vulnerable children’s everyday life (2023-2027) and recently Creating a new language for advancing capacity to act on children’s well-being (2025/2026-2027).

The concept Reflexive Inclusion, a guiding concept behind her research, was already developed in her PhD thesis 2005 and theorised in New horizons in social work. A reflection theory (Nissen, 2010; published in Danish).

Title of keynote

"Changing the room? Making space for epistemic justice in policy-near research with children, young people and families"

Abstract

Across diverse global contexts, the legal and cultural legitimation of particular kinds of family informs policy and provision of services and welfare entitlement. This tendency can be understood as a form of elite capture, as ‘public goods and resources such as knowledge, attention, and values are unfairly distributed, just as much as material wealth and political power are’ (Táíwò 2022: 23).

Empirical research and evaluation studies play a critical role in this process, providing the epistemic resources to justify policy judgements about who is amenable to, deserving or worthy of help. Categories of research interest also reflect current socio-political priorities, such that some families’ characteristics or experiences might be subject to concern or investigation, but others are not.

Thus, the people most affected by the structures of injustice can end up being left outside: families who are socio-politically defined as vulnerable, risky or at risk are most often included in (rarely archived) risk- or problem-focused studies or evaluation of interventions and are otherwise marginalised or simply missing in mainstream studies and datasets on childhood and family lives.

The consequence is that we fail ‘to fix the social structure itself—the rooms we interact in, and the house they make up’ (Táíwò 2022: 74). So what can we do? Reflecting on my experience of research with people who are navigating everyday lives in varied contexts of systemic precarity, I examine the ethical and methodological implications of these theoretical questions for the practice of policy-near research with children, young people and families. 

About Janet Boddy

Janet Boddy is a Professor at University of Sussex (profiles.sussex.ac.uk), Head of School of Education and Social Work, and an Adjunct professor at NOVA, OsloMet.

Her research is concerned with family lives and services for children and families. She has an interest in methodology, particularly qualitative longitudinal and narrative approaches, cross-national research and research ethics and governance. She will talk about how researchers can pay attention to marginalized knowledges and work with own relative privileges. 

Title of keynote

"Normal is not neutral: Ableism, developmentalism and disabled childhoods"

Abstract

Ideas of normal development are deeply embedded in policies, professional practices, and everyday understandings of childhood. Similarly, disability is most often framed as individual deficits in relation to normal bodies and abilities. While often presented as neutral or benevolent, these ideas carry powerful social, moral, and political assumptions about how disabled children should grow, who they should become, and what constitutes a “good” adult life.

In this talk, I examine how ableism and developmentalism operate together to govern disabled childhoods and shape the everyday lives of disabled young people. Drawing on my research, I explore how taken-for-granted social values and beliefs, particularly those surrounding independence, productivity, and self reliance, function as key markers of “successful” development toward adulthood that have significant consequences for disabled young people across the life course.

I highlight the often hidden social and emotional effects of development driven interventions, including stigma, anxiety, exclusion and constrained life possibilities. When young people cannot or do not wish to approximate social and developmental norms and expectations, they are positioned as perpetual “adults in the making” that are excluded from full participation and citizenship.

I conclude by proposing that professionals hold ethical responsibilities to contest normative frameworks of disability and development. I argue for shifting from deficit-focused approaches toward more affirmative understandings of disability and development that support lives shaped by disabled young people’s own desires, identities, and circumstances and embrace diverse ways of being, becoming, and doing childhood.

About Yani Hamdani

Yani Hamdani is PhD, OT Reg. (Ont.) Associate Professor at the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy and Rehabilitation Sciences Institute, and Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto (oy.utoronto.ca), and Scientist at the Azrieli Adult Neurodevelopmental Centre, Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada. 

Dr. Hamdani is an interdisciplinary researcher with combined training in rehabilitation, public health, critical social sciences, disability studies and qualitative methodologies. Her research program examines the health, wellness and social inclusion of people labeled with neurodevelopmental disorders. Shifts in how disability is understood and addressed in health and social care policies and practices are central in her research. 

Title of keynote

"Quo Vadis Paedagogia? – Directions in Contested Times "

Abstract

Over the past two decades, three distinct tendencies have shaped the scientific discourse on early childhood pedagogy: the development of practice oriented theories focused on the “how”, the rise of critical positions addressing the instrumentalisation of childhood, and an increasing fragmentation of the research landscape. In this keynote I argue for a renewed commitment to pedagogical foundation thinking—one that emphasises purpose, responsibility, direction, and a certain moral courage to insist upon these. 

For more than three decades, from 1989 to 2022, globalization fostered a belief that societies—and education—were engaged in a competition over qualifications. Today, that assumption appears naïve. The world, and our position within it, has become uncertain in fundamentally different ways. This rupture also challenges pedagogy. 

Rousseau pointed to this already: upbringing must prepare the child to cope no matter what. How might this offer us a renewed sensibility for the aims and course of education? 
Historically, we have moved from a condition in which the individual was a tutelary background figure in a predetermined world, to a condition shaped by the illusion that the world—all of it—is at our disposal. Both positions lead to totalitarian disasters. A third position suggests that we can actively inhabit the world. Pedagogy, then, is no longer primarily about adaptation but about worldrelations: making oneself at home in the world, cultivating responsiveness, and discovering one’s voice. 

This third position is aligned with a phenomenology of practice in research and a practiceepistemological approach to education. 

About Jan Jaap Rothuizen

Jan Jaap Rothuizen is Ph.D., Docent (Professor of Professional Practice) at VIA University College, Denmark (ucviden.dk).

His academic background is in the field of general or philosophical pedagogy. His work focuses on understanding the practices of upbringing and education as inherently human and cultural phenomena, always intertwined with questions of value. Educational research inevitably engages both with empirical realities and with normative considerations of purpose. In times of social and political contestation, the question of what constitutes good education becomes especially pertinent.