Agonism in education: a systematic scoping review and discussion of its educational potential

Abstract

Within political philosophy and particularly in the work of Chantal Mouffe and Hannah Arendt, "agonism" has been described as representing the notion of being able to challenge and dissent in a productive way. However, little is known about how agonism is used in the educational literature, other than some applications relevant to democratic education. This paper considers the use of agonism in the educational literature drawing on the findings of a systematic scoping review exploring how it has been used in the context of education. Five databases were searched for literature published using agonism within the context of education to map the existing body of work in a systematic fashion, and to explore how agonism has been differently conceptualised and utilised by researchers in the field of education. The findings suggest that there have been a range of attempts to apply agonistic principles in different educational sub-fields (including, citizenship education, early years education, initial teacher training, arts education and international education), and different interpretations of such principles into education based on different philosophical underpinnings (dissociative and associative approaches). As agonism is mostly explored in a theoretical way, we also discuss the potential of abstract theoretical agonistic principles from different philosophical traditions to be translated into meaningful practical applications for education in order to inform curriculum development, infuse democratic principles into classroom practice, and help to negotiate deep-running tensions amongst key stakeholders in education.

Why agonists should stop discussing with deliberative theorists

“…The richness and diversity of this heritage has not yet been included in educational research (Koutsouris et al, 2021). Instead, agonists in educational research tend to pick one agonistic line of thought and stick to it.…”

Navigating disagreement in democratic education: The potential of the Community of Philosophical Inquiry

“…It adopts an agonistic theoretical framework and offers a timely approach to democratic education that has the potential to reduce polarisation and enable political renewal (Ruitenberg, 2020;Sant, 2021). However, agonistic educational scholarship is fragmented and in need of integration (Koutsouris et al, 2021). The first contribution of my thesis is thus conceptual: it synthesises the agonistic literature in education to develop a novel framework outlining the key goal, objectives and methods of agonistic democratic education.…”

“…This framework posits that agonists aim to educate "political adversaries" (Ruitenberg, 2009), able to sustain disagreement, address political issues and harness their political emotions (Lo, 2017a;Sant et al, 2021;Tryggvason, 2017). Moreover, agonistic scholarship suffers from a major pedagogical gap: as noted by recent reviews (Koutsouris et al, 2021;Sant e al., 2020), its work is mostly theoretical and lacks concrete pedagogical practices. This gap is significant because it prevents agonism from propelling the educational and political changes that our democracies urgently need.…”

“…Moving on to democratic education, I follow the same structure, describing both the agonistic critique of deliberative theory and agonism's own approach to democratic education. However, agonistic educational scholarship is fragmented and in need of integration (Koutsouris et al, 2021). Thus, in this chapter, I make my first contribution: I develop a novel framework outlining the key goal, objectives and methods of agonistic democratic education.…”

“…However, the relatively small size of the extant body of work should not be considered grounds to dismiss it. Agonistic democratic education is expanding rapidly, a growth fuelled by the lively debate between deliberative and agonistic theories in political philosophy (Koutsouris et al, 2021).…”