Non-affirmative education and Bildung: Emerging perspectives by renewing the European tradition

After more than three decades of globally operating neoliberal governance policy in education, there is an increasing uneasiness about whether such policy will provide a fruitful basis for education to address global social challenges. Many countries share similar dilemmas on how to handle political populism, cultural neo-conservatism and nationalism, economic protectionism, digitalization, religious fundamentalism, sustainability issues, mistrust in media and knowledge institutions, and tensions between East and West, North and South. It is not clear at all whether the major educational policies applied across the globe, like technocentrism in education, educational performativism, competence-based
education, conservative educational factualism, and educational activism can offer productive educational visions, methods, and conceptual tools for policy makers, teachers, and principals. This special issue draws attention to contemporary interpretations of the European modern heritage of educational theory, rethinking whether this tradition can navigate through the above-mentioned challenges. This special issue claims that the long tradition of educational theory and a related idea of Bildung in Europe, here conceptualized as the non-affirmative approach, can offer new openings and a way forward. The authors of this special issue investigate how educational theory or general pedagogy, and research have responded to the mentioned dilemmas and further, how educational theory relates to ideologies and proposed policies.