EduCon 2025Conversation Title Democratic Schools and Learning Environments: What does that mean?
Democracy, as an ideal, guides our nation’s governance system, but as a practice, is rarely fully realized, especially with young people. Given our current political climate, young people must learn what it means to create, participate in, and maintain a democracy. Schools offer a setting to empower young people and let their voices shape their education. Linda Nathan and collaborators have drawn on decades of experiences and insights from across the globe to identify Four Pillars of Democratic Education.
In this democratic workshop, a community of students, teachers, and leaders from Philadelphia, Boston, and New York City will critically interrogate the four-pillar framework. We will engage in various activities to reflect on these four pillars, asking what they mean, how they (can) appear in our schools, and what changes need to be made to the framework. Importantly, we will try to live these four pillars as we engage in this work, culminating in a consensus-based decision-making process to amend the pillars.
Conversational Practice
Students, teachers, and leaders will do a short journal activity, reflecting on what democratic education means to them and a concrete example of how that can look in the classroom.
Annotating the Four Pillars Students, teachers, and leaders will annotate copies of the four pillars of democratic education to identify which words and phrases resonate with them and reflect their learning communities and which do not. Participants will highlight one sentence, phrase, and word in green that reflects their learning environment and one sentence, phrase, and word in red that isn’t reflected in their learning environment.
Reflecting on Democratic Education Students, teachers, and leaders will then share their annotations, identifying how they have lived these pillars and what’s been missing.
(re)Creating Democratic Education Students with teachers assisting will lead small break-out groups to workshop what these pillars look like, what steps need to be taken to realize them in their schools, and who, when, and where these pillars may not work. Students will then present their group’s work, identifying steps to realize these pillars and one change to the four-pillar framework.
Living Democratic Education The workshop will culminate through a consensus-building process to identify changes to the four-pillar framework. This will allow participants to experience firsthand what democratic education looks, feels, and sounds like.
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