Amsterdam: Global Philosophy of Education

I eagerly look forward to visiting Amsterdam soon as an Invited Speaker for what promises to be a unique and exciting event:

The Global Philosophy of Education Field Launching Conference (at VU Amsterdam).

This explanation is from its Call for Papers:

“This conference aims to establish the field of Global Philosophy of Education, understood as a research space and practice where central issues in philosophy of education are defined, discussed and researched jointly by philosophers working from different cultural and philosophical traditions and perspectives. This entails not the establishment of a global philosophy in the sense of a universal or hegemonic philosophical theory, but the development of a global practice of philosophy of education.”

 

Here is the abstract for the speech I have developed for this event:

 

Learning Beyond Borders: Seeking Synthesis in Global Philosophy of Education

 

Prof. David G. Hebert

Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

 

Abstract

It is common in Northern Europe for educational foundations to mostly rely on the ideas of German and Nordic thinkers from more than a century ago (e.g. Humboldt, Grundtvig, etc). Recently, countries that boldly deviate to some extent from this tradition, such as Finland, tend to attract attention for their educational innovations. Still, it seems reasonable to ask whether teacher education remains the most ethnocentric field in all of academia. In two recent books, I collaborated with colleagues from diverse cultural backgrounds to rethink philosophy of education from a comparative and decolonial perspective. One book is an anthology that aims to demonstrate the usefulness of efforts to challenge Eurocentrism and cultivate a global philosophy of education (Hebert, 2023). The other is a monograph co-authored with a Chinese scholar that aims for a synthesis between Asian philosophies, contemporary western philosophies, and systems science, to develop a novel philosophy of music education that is responsive to the new challenges from AI (Xie & Hebert, 2026). Here I will share some reflections on the processes and main ideas from these projects as well as prospects for future work. Along the way, I will demonstrate how the field of global philosophy of education has been quietly developing for some time, as seen in the work of luminary African scholars like Yusef Waghid, Indigenous (Maori) scholars like Linda Tuhiwai Smith and Carl Mika, and laudable internationalists such as Martha Nussbaum, Michael Peters and Liz Jackson. I will also outline the benefits to be gained if European universities would do more to promote cosmopolitan scholarship that stimulates pedagogical reflections beyond outdated visions of Bildung, particularly in this uniquely challenging age of AI.