Editorial; Education for Democracy

The Editorial presents how The Education for Democracy Consortium over the last 17 years has i) built a robust evidence base for redesigning curricula in support of democracy with impartiality to ii) train Bridge Leaders to lead their profession to know how to teach with impartial, sensitive cultural responsiveness, with an emphasis on students’ active participation and engagement in this process. The Consortium rejects education is a commodity in a market where demand has been artificially whipped up to create the stratification of society that perpetuates class warfare and VUCA. The Education for Democracy Consortium sees education as a public good and has developed toolKits with High Technology Readiness for enhancing the humanistic and civic aspects of education for democratic citizenship, with a view to promoting active democratic citizenship and empowerment, including through experimental approaches. The ToolKits, presented in this journal, strengthen democratic processes in education through the involvement of citizens in defining educational contents, learning environments and goals. The consortium includes Professor Arto Kallioniemi from Helsinki University who brings the inspirational Finnish education system to the Education for Democracy project exemplifying The Finnish way to World Class Schools that trust teachers (Sahlberg, 2021). This is contextualised by social historiographical analysis of Finnish education policy from World War II to date (Risku, 2017) as part of our Education for Democracy’s Consortium’s policy analyses in 25 nation states, of shifts in education policy and their causes (Taysum et al, 2012; 2014; 2017; 2020; 2021). These policy analyses are critical and provide a road map for how robust evidence bases inform education policy, developed by the teaching profession in which we trust, drawing on psychologies, philosophies and ethics of trust to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals that support Education for Democracy.