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INNOVATIVE AND DEEP PEDAGOGY
(IN ITS SIMPLEST FORM)

—



^{"Teach just the essence of what the learner must understand to be able to apply in the real world"}
Paulo Sandroni, Brazilian Economist.

^{‘Curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment - in that order’}
Dylan Wiliam, 2023. Biesta 2022, p. 17

^{‘The education of the person always takes place within teh horizon of the world’}
Bohm (2016, p. 163) translated by Biesta 2022, p. 90
 
^{Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.}
Khalil Gibran 1923

^{“And in all of this, there is an even bigger question, which is whether human life is just a matter of ongoing adjustment to a changing world around us, or whether the dignity of our human existence also requires that we are able to judge whether the situation we find ourselves in is worth adjusting to or actually needs to be resisted. Human life is not a matter of just saying ‘yes’ to everything that happens around us. Sometimes it is of crucial importance to say ‘no’ and refuse to adapt and adjust. And for that, we need really useful knowledge, not just the useful knowledge that only allows us to ‘go along’ with the situation.”} Prof. Gert Biesta, Taking the Angle of the Teacher, 2024.


^{A close friend of Isidore I. Rabi (1898), Nobel-prize winner for physics, once asked him: “Why did you become a scientist, rather than a doctor, or laywer or businessman, like the other immigrant kids in the neighborhood?” Isidore’s answer was profoud, another friend, Donald Sheff, wrote to the New York Times:  ''My mother made me a scientist without ever intending it. Every other mother in Brooklyn would ask her child after school: 'So? Did you learn anything today?' But not my mother. She always asked me a different question. 'Izzy,' she would say, 'did you ask a good question today?' That difference - asking good questions - made me become a scientist'.}
Anecdote largely copied from Sheff (1988) himself, as sent in to the newspaper in memory of Rabi, who had passed away that month. In: Breimer 2014, p. 490



Are you curious for more? Would you like to get in touch? Feel free to contact our lead directly for any questions or inquiries you may have. tikvah@studioblended.com +31 6 42 47 29 69

Image: “Architectural Sketch by Cazú Zegers © Cazú Zegers – all rights reserved.”

You probably have a sense of the pedagogy for your subject; but activities, technology and communication may clutter this sense. Our Studio comes alongside to ensure your ideas, philosophies and experiments lead to a simple pedagogy that resonates with your own philosophy and method and deepens it. We dare to innovate - which to us means, leading the co-creation and selection of a bespoke deep pedagogy that resonates with your unique setting and content. We help you make the tough decisions that lead to simplicity.

What is pedagogy? Pedagogy goes beyond instruction and didactics. It involves theory, philosophy, context, culture, values, language and history. Our Studio stands out for its love for simple and deep pedagogy.

You can include deep pedagogy as a leading thread throughout your curriculum. ‘Curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment - in that order’ (Dylan Wiliam).

In this page, we would like to introduce you to some basic philosophical and pedagogical concepts by one of the influential European philosophers of our time, to broaden your horizon and give you a sense on what pedagogy means for your curriculum (and what it doesn’t). It is also a good way to get to know how our Studio approaches pedagogy - and our deep love for it. We choose this philosopher because of he ultimately brings simplicity into an otherwise quite complex and multifaceted world of pedagogy.

We curated a beautiful long read for your enjoyment, and gave this page extra space exactly because pedagogy is becoming so important, also in an age of measuring learning outcomes. Rather than paraprasing and summarising a ground breaking work, we decided to stay as close to the original text as possible, to resonate deeply with its meaning, and allow you to freely shape your own thoughts and identity. The original work, called ‘World-centered education; A view for the present’ is a really good base for understanding pedagogy and taking it from there. The respectful curation of literal sentences and the ‘bold’ font is entirely our own for the sake of clarity online, so kindly refer to the original work too.

Finding your way in contemporary educational debates is essential for a sense of direction. To us at StudioBlended, we believe that in curriculum design we should always balance between education for life and actual technical subject knowledge to be able to make a living later on upon graduation. Or as Max Ehrmann wrote in Desiderata in 1927: ‘Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.’ And whilst the world of work is changing rapidly, so that it’s hard to predict what jobs will hold future, we do see a strong relevance for a robust knowledge domain, coupled with skills and capabilities. In a curriculum that is resilient - and stands the test of time, by design. It’s all about the balance (see technical resilience). The below text is surely going to sharpen your thinking.

We love teachers. We love teaching. We explicitly partner with your teaching team, to make your teaching really great. It is your content and experience with students/your audience that infuses pedagogy into the curriculum, and we can come alongside you and partner with you to bring it to the surface and articulate it for you. We do that through ourselves deeply listening and dialoguing with you as a teacher - and then envisioning pedagogy for your unique course or degree - by design.

Biesta is merely one of the pedagogue philosophers out there, there are many more. But we hope we gave you a taste of this realm of work. Curious how we make all of this concrete and practical? How to bring all these broad horizons and pedagogy and philosophy back to simplicity? Have a look at our approach to the curriculum with big ideas.

Essential philosophy and pedagogy

Often times, education is approached from the viewpoint of ‘effective’ learning. But what seems to be conveniently forgotten (after Biesta 2022, p. 2) is that students are not merely objects of interventions, but subjects in their own right (after Arendt 1958, 1994 in Biesta 2022, p. 48-49). Biesta (2022, p. 3) writes: ‘we are too quickly drawn into monitoring and measuring the learning itself, looking for interventions that produce the desired learning outomes, trying to control the whole machinery, and thus easily losing sight of the fact that (...) young people are human beings who face the challenge of living their own life, and of trying to live it well.’ Biesta calls this the lifelong existential question - ‘the question how we, as human beings, exist “in” and “with” the world, natural and social’ (...) and to do so in their own right (ibid. 2022, p. 3). The ‘work of the educator is aimed at safeguarding the “space” within and the conditions under which the child’s existing-as-subject can become a possibility’ (Biesta 2022, p.7 after Rousseau 1762).

Education should always be concerned with and orientated towards three domains of purpose - qualification, socialisation and subjectification (Biesta 2022,  p. 60).

Qualification ensures that young people are sufficiently equipped to act in the world. ‘Right now, qualification seems to occupy the centre of the universe.’ (Biesta 2022, p. 8). What could be a way forward? Yes, there is the difficult work of qualification, which is about providing students with the knowledge and skills that make it possible for them to act in the world. The difficulty and risk is in this: the desire to make the world of qualification efficient, effective and eventually “perfect” (see Biesta 2020, 2022). ‘This is a real risk in the “age of measurement”, an age obsessed with the production of measurable “learning outcomes” rather than that it focuses on encouraging (...) young people to become knowledgeable and skillful in their own right’ (Biesta 2022, p. 8). ‘We should (...) be concerned about the ways in which objectifications shows up within education itself, particularly through the well-intended but ill-conceived attempts at improving educational systems that turn the education of subjects into the “management of objects” (Biesta 2022, p. 101).

‘The task of education is about giving the new generation a fair chance in their existing-as-subject’ (Biesta 2022, p. 25). ‘It is about arousing a desire for wanting to try to live one’s life in the wrold without thinking or putting oneself in the centre of the world,’ (Meirieu 2007, p. 96 in Biesta 2022, p. 50).

The lively and very visible debate about the quality of education (after Biesta 2022, p. 14) has common misunderstandings. ‘The first has to do with the mistaken idea that the quality of education has to do with matters of effectiveness and efficiency.’ Because the real quality question has to begin with asking what particular educational processes and practices are supposed to be for. 

Socialisation is about arousing a desire for wanting to exist in and with the world. The paradigm of education, as “cultivation”, a prevailing description of educational reality, is insufficient or incomplete. Cultivation sees education as influence from the outside upon the student. Biesta (2022, p. 26) contrasts that with ‘a very different, existential “reality” which has to do with the fact that as human beings we lead our own lives from the “inside” out, so to speak’. It is impossible to educate “directly”  - we can only educate “indirectly by means of the environment” (John Dewey 1985, p. 23 in Biesta 2022, p. 31). ‘Human beings have the freedom to act or to refrain from action. This is not a theoretical construct or a complicated philosophical issue, but concerns the much more mudane experience that in many, and perhaps even all, situations we encounter in our lives we always have a possibility to say yes or no, to stay or to walk away, to go with the flow or to resist - and encountering this possibility in one’s own life, particularly encountering it for the first time, is a very significant experience (...) freedom viewed in this way, is fundamentally an existential matter; it is about how we exist, how we lead our own life - and there is no one else who can do it for us’ (Biesta 2022, p. 45). ‘Put differently, freedom is a first-person matter, just as, for example, walking, which is also something I have to do and no one else can do for me (see also Mollenhauer 2013). It is about how I exist as subject of my own life, not as object of what other people want from me’ (Biesta 2022, p. 45).

‘The question of democracy has everything to do with the limits that our living together poses to our own freedom. The ecological crisis shows us in a very forceful manner that our engagement with the living and the physical world cannot be limitless.’ (Biesta 2022, p. 48). ‘The educational work educators do with “the children” is interested in their existence as subjects of their own life. The educational work of educators is therefore orientated towards the freedom of those being educated, bearing in mind that this is not the freedom just to do what one wants to do, but grown-up freedom in and with the world’ (Biesta 2022, p. 58).

‘The question of subject-ness, is not the question of who I am but the question of how I am, that is to say, the question how I exist, how I try to lead my life, how I try respond to and engage with what I encounter in my life’ (Biesta 2022, p.52). It is not about ‘expressing one’s own personal opinion or inner feelings’ (Biesta 2022, p. 53). ‘It (...) includes the question of what I will “do” with my identity - and with everything I have learned, my capacities and competences, but also my blind spots, my inabilities, and incompetencies - in a given situation, particularly when I am called upon or, to put it differently, when my “I” is called upon.’ (Biesta 2022, p. 52). It is about ‘how opinions and feelings “encounter” the world’ (Biesta 2022, p. 53). It is about true ownership and empowerment. It is not about responsibility but about freedom (Biesta 2022, p. 54). ‘And the very encounter with one’s own freedom can be as wonderful as it can be difficult’ (Biesta 2022, p. 54).

‘We want our students to go their own way, we want them to take up their own freedom and “own” it in a grown-up way, which means that they may go in a very different direction from what we envisage for them, up to explicitly refusing the future we may have had in mind for them. This risk is there (...) in education’ and it is a beautiful risk (Biesta 2022, p. 56). Indeed as Biesta 2022, p. 58 writes ‘part of the work of the educator (and maybe even all the work comes down to this) is to give the new generation a “fair chance” at their own grown-up freedom’. As educators, we risk ourselves in this work.

What does the existential paradigm of education look like, and what is the missing element in dominant ideas of education? Gert Biesta (2025) uses the historical example of Rosa Parks who entered a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1953, to illustrate a crucial educational point. The bus had signs at the entry indicating "White forward, colored rear". Even so, Rosa Parks, takes a seat in the front of the bus. Can she not read? Gert Biesta writes (2025):
‘Now, if your educational mind is completely colonised by (...) ‘basic skills’, then you might say, ‘Here we have a big problem because there is a very clear message, but Rosa Parks is not decoding the message, so she needs to go back to school—this is a case of educational failure’.
Biesta emphasizes that Rosa Parks was "perfectly able to read the message". Her action was not due to a lack of cognitive skill, but rather an act of judgment and resistance. She made up her own mind and decided to say "no" to a societal norm she found unacceptable, despite knowing the potential consequences. That, is what distinguishes knowledge, from really good knowledge. And a machine cannot assess this. Rather than a matter of identity, the educational question here is of ‘what we might refer to as our subject-ness, our way of and our attempts at existing-as-subject of our own life, not as object of influences from “elsewhere”’ (Biesta 2022, p. 29, see also Bohm 1997 and Benner 2015). ‘It is the paradigm of the “I” - a human who exists and stands for the challenge to lead his or her own life’ (Biesta 2022, p. 33).

Biesta (2022, p. 51) proposes a “flipped curriculum”, ‘where the work of qualification and the work of socialisation are always done with an eye on the question how, in this particular subject-area, with regard to this particular topic, for this particualr taks, in this particular curricular area, students can encounter the world, can encounter themselves in relation to the world, and can explore what it means to exist in and with the world in a grown-up way’.

Education has experienced “learnification” (a term coined by Biesta 2009), which ‘refers to the shift in educational discourse, policy, and practice towards learners and their learning and hence away from teachers, teaching and the curriculum’ (Biesta 2022, p. 42-43). You can recognise it by expressions such as “deep learning”, “brain-based learning” and “machine learning” (Biesta 2022, p. 60). Especially the “global education measurement industry” continues to promote a rather one-dimensional focus on learning. ‘The enormous power with which the global education measurement industry has managed to set the educational agenda in many countries - focusing on the production of a narrow set of learning outcomes and a narrow set of pre-defined identities (the lifelong learner, the good citizen, the resilient individual and so on) shows the problem with an approach that focuses exclusively on the intentional side of education and “forgets” about the “action” side (Biesta 2022, p. 76). And then there are also ‘authoritarian forms of education in which teaching is enacted as a form of control (...) including those that may look benign (Biesta 2022, p. 69). This is why, ‘it remains important to continue to engage in discussion about the purpose of education’ (Biesta 2022, p. 61). Because ‘the language of learning is insufficient to capture the complexities of education’ (Biesta 2022, p. 73). ‘Learning is at best one diemension of our human condition, bu tit neither defines nor exhausts our existence-as-subjects in and with the world’ (Biesta 2022, p. 73).

It is against this background that Biesta started to make an explicit case for the rediscovery of teaching (Biesta 2017 in Biesta 2022, p. 62). Because all these factors have ‘moved “the learner” to the centre of the educational endeavour and manoevered the teacher to the side-line - coach, facilitator, felllow-learner, friend, critical or otherwise’ (Biesta 2022, p. 69). Biesta (2012 in Biesta 2022, p. 62) writes: ‘This (rediscovery of teaching) is partly in order to restore teaching to its proper place in the educational endeavour - to give teaching back to education - and not to see it as something outdated and of the past that we should be embarrassed about as educators.’ Biesta (2022, p. 62) writes: ‘Wheareas learning is accidental to education, teaching, (...) is essential to education’.

Indeed, education is a verb, that is, something educators do (Biesta 2022, p. 58). Biesta does not focus on students and their learning, exactly because he considers education as a verb, and with a particular interest: in the grown-up existence-as-subject of those we educate (Biesta 2022, p. 58-59). ‘There is always the question what each of us will do with what we have learned and with how we have developed and, more specifically, what we will do when it matters’ (Biesta 2022, p. 75). ‘Without subjectification education runs the risk of becoming the “management of objects” (Biesta 2022, p. 76). 

‘Educational work is a given, not taken - which means that the basic educational “gesture” is that of teaching’ (Biesta 2022, p. 75). You can also understand this as the difference between “learning from” or “being taught by” (see Biesta 2013, and also Roth 2011 in Biesta 2022, p. 59, Marion 1998, 2002, 2022, 2016 in Biesta 2022, p. 63-64, 69). “Being taught by” is precisely not about what I try to learn from or about the world outside mel it is precisely not about how I try to make sense anad come to a degree of understanding of what is outside me. ‘Being taught by’ is about what comes to me, what is given to me, what arrives with me, irrespective of what I was looking for and irrespective of what I desired or was hoping for - which means that it always interrupts. This interruption is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s first of all a fact of life, even if it can be an inconvenient fact’ (Biesta 2022, p. 59).

An important gift of education- “being taught by” - that Biesta (2022, p. 70-71) highlights relates to the domain of curriculum, and is about “what” the student will encounter, and ‘being given what you didn’t ask for’. ‘The impact of neo-liberal, market-driven reforms of education in which students - and their parents - are increasingly positioned as customers on a “learning market” and teachers and educational institutions are positioned as the providers of “learning commodities”,’ builds on ‘the key idea that the responsibility of teachers, schools, colleges and universities is to satisfy their costumers by giving them what they ask for or, to put it more succinctly: by giving the what they desire’ (Biesta 2022, p. 70). But, argues Biesta (2022, p. 70) ‘an important (liberal) rationale for education (...) is precisely that it should give students what they didn’t ask for, first and foremost because they didn’t even know they could ask for it.’  Instead, the ‘work of educational professionals is not just that of giving students what they ask for, but is about engaging, with them , in a process of figuring out what it is they might “need” (Biesta 2022, p. 70).  

Another important gift is the existential “core”. Biesta argues it is particularly important to free teaching from learning, so that other “existential possibilities” that lie beyoynd learning can come into view and can be brought into play (see Biesta 2015, 2006, 2022). The educational request is to be a self, not to be a learner (Biesta 2022, p. 61). The task of education is to open up a range of “existential possibilities” to our studets (Biesta 2015b in Biesta 2022, p. 62), rather than only providing them with the position and identity of “the learner” (see also Biesta 2010 in Biesta 2022).

Following from the argumentation so far, about the existential dimension of education, Biesta next takes us to ‘pointing’. The teacher is not “just” a facilitator, or “just” a coach - in teaching ‘we give something that students didn’t ask for, so we might say’ (Biesta 2022, p. 56). ‘Education always “arrives” with the student as an act of power, as an univited, unwanted, and unwarranted “intervention”, even if the intervention is well-intended’ (Biesta 2022, p. 56). 

‘The main thing is to ensure that education doesn’t end up as something entirely practical, devoid of any intellectual dimensions, and also not as something enitrely instrumental, just the “executive arm: of agenda’s set elsewhere’ (Biesta 2022, p. 79). Prange (2012a p. 14 in Biesta 2022, p. 79) ‘observes that in the public discourse about education, other voices, such as from psychology, sociology, economics and organisational theory, have become much more prominent than the voice of education itself, which leaves education in the unenviable position of having to “translate” the insights from “elsewhere” into educational practice’. ‘Each academic discipline or field has its own particular concepts and theories - its own vocabulary and grammar, so we might say. These give each discipline their own “inner” identity and its particular perspective and interest in its interactions with other disciplines and fields of practice’ (Biesta 2022, p. 79). Prange (2012a, p. 20 in Biesta 2022, p. 79) suggests that since such concepts as educability and teaching, need to articulate what is “proper” about education itself, it makes more sense - (for a foundation for conceptual development) - to start from the operations that we recognize as characteristic of education’.

Form (how to do it) matters: teaching redirects attention (Biesta 2022, p. 76-78, see also Prange 2012a, p. 47). This form is about the ‘operation,’ the ‘practice of education’ - ‘or to be more precise: the ways in which education is enacted - and not from the (normative) agenda’s, intentions and ambitions that surround education’ (Biesta 2022, p. 79). ‘Teaching - or as Plato emphasizes: the art of teaching - is not about putting “the power of sight into the soul’s eye, which already has it, but to ensure that, instead of looking in the wrong direction, it is turned the way it ought to be” (Plato 1941, p. 232 in Biesta 2022, p. 77). The central idea is that the basic gesture of teaching is that of trying to (re)direct the attention of the student to something (see also Rytzler 2017, Prange 2012, p. 65) Biesta 2022, p. 77, 81). One might say that the assumption upon which all education is possible is that it is possible to redirect someone else’s attention. Biesta (2022, p. 78) points at the gesture of teaching as the “purest” and most basic form. This is ‘a from of intentional action (including intentional non-action) and hence the “gesture” of education as something that comes to the student, which is precisely what teaching is about’ (Biesta 2022, p. 86). Biesta (2022, p 78, following Prange 2022, Prange & Strobel-Eisele 2006, pp. 40-48) states that the basic “structure” of the gesture of teaching is that of what he calls ‘pointing’ (after Prange 2012, p. 25, p. 65) (Biesta 2022, p.77). Pointing always needs the hand, and ‘in this regard, education is literally a form of manual labour (Prange 2012, in Biesta 2022, p. 81). Pointing has a double character, it ‘both focuses the attetion, and asks for attention, or in a slightly stronger formulation demands attention’ (Biesta 2022, p. 81). Pointing is an evocative gesture.

‘What makes the pointing educational lies in the fact that the educator hopes or expects that the student will do something with what the educator tries to focus the students’ attention on. “Hope” and “expectation” are the right words here (Biesta 2022, p. 81). ‘As Plato (1941) already knew, the educator doesn’t produce the students’ attention but rather acts on the assumption that the possibility to pay attention is already there. Pointing is a matter of (re)directing attention. But “hope and “expectation” are also the right words because at a very fundamental level the educator has no control over what the student will do once his or her attention is “caught”. There is in other words, no causal connection between the pointing and what may happen on the side of the student - which shows why “effectiveness” is such an unhelpful notion in this context - although it doesn’t mean of course that the work fo the educator is pointless (Biesta 2022, p. 81). ‘Learning is simply there, and can also occur without education’ (Prange 2012a, in Biesta 2022, p. 81-82). 

Prange (2012) argues for a very close connection, in very concrete terms, between teaching and learning (Biesta 2022, p. 82). Thereby ‘he makes the fascinating claim that learning is basically invisible (e.g. Prange 2012a, p.88) - sometimes he also refers to this as the intransparency of learning (e.g. Prange 2012b, chapter 11)’ (Biesta 2022, p. 82). Prange (2012a, p. 83) ‘formulates “three fundamental insights about the meaning of learning for (educational) pointing”: [1] Learning exists; [2] learning is individual and [3] learning is invisible’ (Biesta 2022, p. 83). ‘The claim that learning exists (...) means for Prange, that learning is a reality in itself, independent from education (...), learning itself (...) is not something that can be learnt’ (Biesta 2022, p. 83). ‘Education does not cause learning’ because learning ‘exists as an anthropological fact’ - ‘learning goes on with or without education’ (Biesta 2022, p. 84). ‘The claim that learning is essentialy invisible, has to do with the fact that learning is individual’ (Biesta 2022, p.83). ‘The claim that learning is invididual basically means that no one else can do my learning for me, just as no one else can eat for me or die for me (see Prange 2012a, p. 89)’ (Biesta 2022, p. 83). ‘While education is visible because it is a social act, learning is not, because it its a form of “reception” by the individual, as Prange (2012a, p. 92) calls it, which is only visible in an indirect way, “just as a litmus-test” (Biesta 2022, p.83). As Prange (2012a, p. 91) puts it: parents and teachers can see progress in what young people are able to do, but cannot observe the learning itself’ (after Biesta 2022, p.83). Prange (2012a, p. 171) emphasises ‘that the learning “itself” remains hidden. It only becomes “[artially transparent” in the light of educational provocations’ (Biesta 2022, p. 84).

Prange (2012b, p.176) urges that ‘the intransparency of learning should not be understood as a kind of “darkness” that still needs ot be brought to light, but has to do with the fact that the one who learns (the student), in their response to what is being pointed out to them, respond in a reflexive way, that is, with reference to themselves, and not in a purely reactive or mechanistic way’ (Biesta 2022, p. 84). ‘This has everything to do with the fact that human beings not only have an “outside” of observabel behaviour and action, but also an “inside” of thoughts and feelings that is not observable from the outside, although in everyday interaction we try to “read” the outside for clues of what’s going on inside’ (Biesta 2022, p. 84). This is exactly why from an educational point of view, ‘the question is then not whether we can say more about learning’, (...) but about the question of the co-ordination of pointing and learning, and particularly the coordination of pointing and learning over time (Prange 2012a, chapter 5, in Biesta 2022, p. 83-84). ‘Educating as pointing is a form through which learning is provoked’ (Prange 2012b, p. 169 in Biesta 2022, p. 84).

‘The evocation entailred in the act of pointing - the “You look there!” - calls upon the student not just to look, not just to (re)direct his or her attention, but to do something with what is “found” there.’ (Biesta 2022, p. 84). It is a double gesture - we are ‘directing sometone’s attention to something - yet at the very same time we are referring to someone (...) we are after all trying to direct someone’s attention. With the double gesture of pointing we are therefore calling someone to attend to the world’ (Biesta 2022, p. 87).

Prange (2012a, p. 137) emphasises ‘the moral dimension of education’: ‘education has a contribution to make to the morality of those being educated’ (...) ‘as a standard for and aim of education’ (Biesta 2022, p. 85). Prange ‘suggests, not surprisingly,’ to ‘rather than focusing on the question of what education achieves (or produces)’ to ‘turn to the question of the form of education, by asking when (educational) pointing itself is good. Or, to put it slightly differently, by asking what good (educational) pointing is’ (Biesta 2022, p. 85). 

Why point? What is the point of educational pointing? ‘What is very clear is that pointing is not about control’ (Biesta 2022, p. 88). ‘This is not, (...) the freedom for the student to do what he or she wishes to do , where the world is just an instrument or playground for the student’s desires. It rather is the freedom to exist as subject “in” and “with” the world, not just pursuing one’s own desires but also, and first and foremost, meeting the world, and encountering what the world may be asking from us’ (Biesta 2022, p. 88).

Biesta (2022) speaks of world-centered education as a specific approach to education that he has been pursuing in his work. He writes (2022, p. 90) ‘Rhetorically the idea of world-centered education tries to create an opening’ in the ‘opposition between (proponents of) student-centered education on the one hand and the (proponents of) curriculum-centered education on the other. While the pendulum appers to keep swiming back and forth’ (...) Biesta refers to John Dewey (1984, p 59) who at least understood that education needs both the student and the curriculum, and that one-sided approaches to or conceptions of educcation simpliy make no sense’ (Biesta 2022, p. 90). The idea the Biesta (2022, p. 90) brings forth, world-centered education goes over and beyond overcoming this ‘opposition between one-sided conceptions of education that may have rhetorical appeal but mean little for everyday practice of education’. The idea of world-centered education first of all highlights that ‘educational questions are fundamentally existential questions, that is, questions about our existence “in” and “with” the world, natural and social, and not just our existence with ourselves’ (Biesta 2022, p. 90-91). 

‘What makes pointing world-centered is the fact that pointing is always a pointing to something; what makes pointing educational, so we might say, is that pointing is always a showing of something to someone’ (Biesta 2022, p. 91). How might we conceive our “encounter” with the world, and what does it mean for how we understand and “do” education? (after Biesta 2022, p.91). ‘The point is that the world is not just there as an object for us, to put it crudely, but exists in its own right and its own integrity. The world in other words is real’ (Biesta 2022, p 91). ‘If the “gesture” of learning, understanding, and sense-making goes from me to the world, there is, therefore, another “gesture” that runs in the opposite direction, from the world to me’ (Biesta 2022, p. 91). Biesta (2022, p. 91) seeks to articulate in the idea of world-centered education that both gestures matter; they matter for education and they matter for our (co-)existence as human beings on a planet with limited capacity to fulfil everything we may desire from it, and in societies where not all desires can be realised in equal measure all the time’. There is an “imperative” (after Lingis 1998, Dijkman 2020 in Biesta 2022, p. 91) that ‘the leading question here is not what I might want form the world, but what the world may want from me, that is, what the world is asking from me’. (...) ‘I become aware that there may be a question for me - not for someone else, not for anyone or everyone; a question, in other words, that singles me out’ (Biesta 2022, p. 92).  

Encountering the world - may come as a surprise (after Biesta 2022, p. 92). ‘The idea that the world speaks, (...) may at first sight, be quite an alien idea for education. After all, much work that goes on in education, particularly around the curriculum, is precisely about how we can present the world to our stduents and, more specifically, how we represent the world for our students (see Mollenhauer 1983) - which comes with all the difficult educational and political questions about selection and modes of (re)presentation’ (Biesta 2022, p. 92). 

‘There is an entirely different attitude and hence an entirely different encounter with the world possible, one where the world comes to us, gives itself to us, surprises us, and where, (...) the world commands us and sommons us to come to experience it (after Marion 2017, p. 83)’ (Biesta 2022, p. 97). Moreover, ‘in world-centered education it is the world that provides the demand, and not the teacher. This is not to discharge the teacher from his or her responsibility, but it is to see that the key task of the teacher is to point the student to the world, to (re)direct the studetn’s attention to the world, so taht it becomes possible, without guarantees of course, that the studetn may meet that which the world is asking from him or her’ (Biesta 2022, p. 97).

‘The significance of pointing, of the act of pointing and of the form of pointing is that it doesn’t force the student into anything, but appeals to his or her freedom and, in a sense, reminds the student of his or her own freedom. Precisely because of this, precisely beuase the freedom of the student is at stake and, more specifically, because the freedom of the stduent is called upon, the work of teaching is without guarantees. Yet the fact that there is no mechanical causality in education, that teaching cannot produce the subject-ness of the stduent just as it cannot produce learning outcomes or stduent achievement, as all this depends on what students do or don’t do, doesnt’ make the work of education pointless, precisely because, as I (Biesta) have argued, the work of education is of a different order than the order of effective production of things’ (Biesta 2022, p. 99).

Prange (2012a, pp. 155-163) discusses “educational causality” (following an idea from Herbart) which is ‘not of the order of “a causes b” - “teaching intervention causes learning outcome” - but rather of the order “a calls b” - which in its shortest formulation, can be read as the world calls for the “I” of the student. Or in a slightly more precise formulation (by Biesta 2022, p. 100): the teacher calls for the student to attend to the world - “You, look thre!” - which is, (...) ultimately for teh student to respond to what the world may be asking.’ ‘Educational causality, therefore is evocative causality, so to speak’ (...) By raising the question whether anyone is “there”, we at least try to give them (the students) a fair chance at their subject-ness, whatever the way in which they will respond to what the world may be asking them’ (Biesta 2022, p. 100).

Key projects

StudioBlended is currently partnering with an institute for capacity building within a European University, to co-create an impactful MOOC for this client (2025-mrch 2026).

In this assignment, we found a pedagogy that resonates deeply with the content, centered on (preparations for) dialogue and on a socio-emotional approach to the topic, followed by a concrete way forward of reflection and then into perspective for action.

European funded program. e follows.

More information follows soon.

Our Audio Podcast

Prefer to read? Transcript
Listen on: Acast Spotify Apple
Release spring ‘25

Further Readings

^{‘Only dialogue truly communicates.’}
Paulo Freire, Brazilian Pedagogue in his book, Education for critical consciousness 1974 (2013, p. 43).

^{‘Listening is a disruptive practice’}
Pauline Oliveros (2005) in Deep listening: A composer’s Sound practice

At StudioBlended we excel in Paolo Freire’s approach to pedagogy, coupled with cognitive psychology/neuroscience on deep learning and the so-called ‘transfer of understanding’. Freire is perhaps the most important educator of the 20th century and his legacy still grows strong in new interpretations. These pedagogics infuse our work, including deep listening, and dialogues. We can combine our advice work with bespoke training for you as coordinator in conducting dialogues to ensure deep learning and transfer of understanding to new contexts.

Freire stubbornly refused to be cast in the role of charismatic guru dispensing wisdom to unwilling disciples. How to integrate dialogue in curriculum design? How can it enrich your teaching - by design?

2015 Our lead and independent senior advisor, spent time in North East Brazil to better understand, in an anthropological way, the context in which Freire lived and worked. Find a storyboard for students on Instagram ‘Urban Beyond the City’.

Photo: the far periphery of a sattelite city of Recife, North East Brazil. The world in which Paolo Freire grew up and developed his thinking and pedagogics. Read more about the fieldwork by Tikvah Breimer in the Erasmus Magazine, p. 20-21.

^{‘No contemporary writer explores the many dimensions of critical consciousness than Paulo Freire. A multi-cultural educator with the whole world as his classroom, notwithstanding the totally Brazilian flavor of his emotions, his language, and his universe of thought’} (Goulet in Freire 2013).

Therefore, to truly do justice to his message, it is pivotal to understand that universe. The North East was and is the poorest region of Brazil. Our independent senior advisor’s stay infused and inspired her understanding of his writings, and the application thereof in advice to course and training coordinators today. 

<sup>‘Only dialogue, which requires critical thinking, is also capable of generating critical thinking. Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education.’ 

(...) Only through communication can human life hold meaning. The teacher’s thinking is authenticated only by the authenticity of the student’s thinking. The teacher cannot think for her students, nor can she impose her thought on them. Authentic thinking, thinking that is concerned about reality, does not take place in ivory tower isolation, but only in communication.

If it is true that thought has meaning only when generated by action upon the world, the subordination of students to teachers becomes impossible.’</sup>
Paulo Freire, Brazilian Pedagogue in his book, Pedagogy of the oppressed 1970 (2008, p. 92-93, 77). It inspires our Studio to speak not of capacity building, but capacity development - a two way direction.

Freire still is a great inspiration to young movements. More than anyone he demonstrated that education is the foundation of all freedoms, that it alone can give people mastry over their destiny. Find here a detailed historical account of his life and work.

<sup>“Eu gostaria de ser lembrado como alguem que amou o mundo, as pessoas, os bichos, as arvores, a terra, a agua, a vida.“

“I would like to be remembered as someone who loves the world, people, animals, the trees, the land, the water, life.”</sup>

Paulo Freire, Brazilian Pedagogue. To “meet” him saying these words, watch the 1997 video clip.

Our pedagogy - by design, mainly centers around dialogue, asking really good questions, and listening as a disruptive practice. However, based on your unique course or degree, we can also source a bespoke pedagogy that resonates best with your content. Let’s explore dialogue though first.

"Only dialogue truly communicates" wrote Paolo Freire in the 1970s. Dialogue is fascinating. Perhaps it's the only way in which true learning and teaching happens.

We must move away from the default theory, the so-called transmission model of education. Consciously, or unconsciously, it remains quite a strong model at universities and beyond when the knowledge domain comes in. Or, in Wegerif words (2025, p. 18): ‘The story that facts found first outside of students in books move inside their brains, perhaps stored in neuronal assemblies of some kind and are then expressed outside again on an exam page’. (Read more on our page on neuroscience).

Building on Freire (1970), Wegerif (2025, p. 18) argues, ‘the growth in education is not the storing of facts as one may store money in a bank, but a process of transformation whereby that which is originally encountered as external becomes internal and available for use in creative thoughts and actions that can change the world’. Dialogue is not about getting the learner to see things the way you do, but to both transform through the act of the dialogue.

Rethinking educational theory, also brings in a so-called double dialogic (after Wegerif 2025, p. 28).

The first loop of dialogic education is the induction into short-term dialogues in the classroom. This teaches how to ask good questions, how to listen well, and how to think both critically and creatively. The second loop is the induction into the much longer-term dialogue of culture.

Long-term dialogues of culture, such as history, maths, art and science, are strands in a single evolving, unbounded dialogue.

‘While dialogic education is normally understood only in terms of the first loop, (...) it should also be understood in terms of the second loop, inducting learners into participation in a cultural tradition understood as itself a dialogue; a long-term collective dialogue. It is not possible to participate usefully in a long-term cultural dialogue without already knowing things. Induction of students into long-term dialogue requires teaching the dialogue so far the scientific canon, for example-the best of what our ancestors have done and said up to now.

But this must not be taught as dead, fixed, final knowledge but as a living tradition that the students can themselves participate in, question and take further. Rather than a fixed body of knowledge, it is better thought of as the story of the dialogue up to this point: a history of challenges, debates, about-turns, false paths, experiments, and reasons why people changed their minds. Overall, it is the story of a slowly expanding shared space of dialogue in which evidence and reasoning are inseparable from a range of voices arguing together about what it all means’. (Wegerif 2025, p. 28).

Pedagogy is what is going to ground AI. In educational design, we don’t follow novelty, we follow pedagogy.

Relevant Publications

When it comes to educational theory, prof. Wegerif (2025) shows a third way. So if:
1. one way is, a revival of the knowledge domain - but still, a view of education as transmission, the teacher as a lecturer, an expert. You recognize it also by a tendency for a strong focus on optimising the performance of the learning brain to take in this knowledge.
2. And another way is education as merely facilitating the learner, the student as central, and the teacher as a 'guide' (constructivism).
3. The third way is dialogical education. A way that combines both, the outside world, and the inside world.
‘Dialogical education unites transmission and construction.’ The first, is about ‘the ‘dialogue so far’ in your domain, generations of teachers. The second, ‘is reformulated as teaching students how to participate in learning through dialogue and thus how to create new knowledge together with others’ (Wegerif 2025).

‘Double dialogic is the recognition that dialogues do not only involve specific speakers (...) they also involve a dialogic interaction with the cultural context (Phillipso & Wegerif, 2016). A dialogue about a science question in a classroom is not only between the different views of the students; it also has to invoke and react to the slowly changing views of the relevant community of scientists represented by the teacher, the textbook or the Al-edubot. This concept of the double dialogic can enable us to understand how direct teaching can be compatible with dialogic education.

More design angles we use

Technical resilience
Big ideas
Paradigm shifts/decade strong
Simplicity and decluttering
Human resilience
Modular
Innovative and deep pedagogy
Assesment / evaluation
Time dimension
Evidence-based design
Financial health and resilience by (re)design
Multi- Inter- and transdisciplinary
Flexibilisation and personalisation
Blended



Curios? Feel free to contact our independent senior advisor directly:
tikvah@studioblended.com

References

Biesta, G. (2022) World-Centered Education; A view for the present. New York and London: Routledge.

Biesta, G. (2020) Perfect education, but not for everyone: On society’s need for inequality and the rise of surrogate education. Zeitschrift for Padagogik, 66(1), pp. 8-14.

Biesta, G. (2015) Freeing teaching from learning: Opening up existential possibilities in educational relationships. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 34(3), pp. 229-243.

Biesta, G. (2013). Receiving the gift of teaching: from ‘learning from’ to ‘being taught by’. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 32(5), pp. 449-461.

Biesta, G. (2009). Authority is relational. Rethinking educational empowerment. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Biesta, G. (2006). Beyond learning: Democratic education for a human future. London/New York: Routledge.

Biesta, G. (2004) Against learning, Reclaiming a language for educaiton in an age of learning. Nordisk Pedagogik, 23 (1), pp. 343-351.

Cardozo, M.L., Wessels, K. and Van den Berg, B. (2025) The Art of Regenerative Educatorship. London: Routledge. Available: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003705321/art-regenerative-educatorship-mieke-lopes-cardozo-koen-wessels-bas-van-den-berg(Accessed: October 27, 2025)


Freire, P. (1974) (2013) Education for critical consciousness. London New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Freire, Paulo (1970) (2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. 

Gibran, K. (1923) The Prophet. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Rousseau, J-J (1979 (1762). Emilie, or on education: Trans.Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books.

Surma, T. et al. (2025). Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking. The knowledge revival. Cham: Springer. Available: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-74661-1 [Accessed: October 27, 2025)

Taveras-Dalmau, V., Becken, S. and Westoby, R. (2025) ‘From paradigm blindness to paradigm shift? An integrative review and critical analysis of the regenerative paradigm.’ Ambio (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13280-025-02232-7Available: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-025-02232-7#citeas(Accessed: October 27, 2025).


Wegerif, R. (2025) Rethinking Education Theory; Education as Expanding Dialogue. Chantelham, Northhampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Resilient education that stands the test of time - by design.