Developing students' responsibility through resonant pedagogical relationships. Resonance as a critical conceptual tool for improving decision-making in school governance
Funded by the FNRS, located at the Hoover Chair at UCLouvain
This project seeks to examine the practical potential of the concept of resonance, developed by sociologist Hartmut Rosa in his recent work, in the field of education governance. It’s first goal is to articulate the link between resonance and the development of students’ responsibility and, more largely, to analyze the conceptual framework’s capacity to promote a wide range of educational objectives. The project will then use these results to develop a conceptual and normative tool capable of orienting educational decision-making processes. The ultimate goal will be to provide a conceptual architecture for appreciating the normative primacy of the pedagogical relationship beyond individualizing abstractions, in order to further research in education governance and to reinforce the justification of educational decisions on the basis of a relational logic.
The concept of resonance describes the opposite of alienation and thus a mode of relationship characterized by four moments: contact (being affected), self-efficacy (response), assimilation (self-transformation) and unavailability (letting things come as they may). Its essence lies in a dynamic of self-transformation made possible by the responsiveness of a relationship with another person that we do not control.
The first work package follows the hypothesis according to which resonant pedagogical relationships develop the attentional component of responsibility, which is irreducible to a skill. This hypothesis is based on a critical reading of recent works in cognitive psychology of the development of responsibility, which insist on the responsive dimension of any responsible relationship with the world or other people. The project’s second package pursues the hypothesis that decision-making in education governance can be improved thanks to a conceptual shift that reframes educational objectives according to a mode of relationship, rather than variables linked to individuals.