This project aims to contribute to the general debate and culture of inclusion and academic freedom at FSS and UU by working  ‘bottom-up’, and program-based, from (the common analyses of) particular and concrete experiences. 

Background information

In our current academic context, the balance between academic freedom on the one hand and our ability to debate and confront has gained new urgency. Illustrative of this context is the discussion whether ‘woke’, or a cancel culture is threatening academic freedom, a discussion lead amongst others by our rector magnificus: Is ‘woke’ een bedreiging voor de academische vrijheid? (Deel 1) | DUB (uu.nl), or the concern our Minister of Education has voiced that in academic education it is key that there is room for confrontation.  

Aims

The aim is to develop and continue developing a ‘living code of conduct’ or ‘code to dialogue’ for teachers and students to address sensitive issues in our teaching programs at the faculty of social sciences, as well as offering a long term commitment to a dialogical space in which this code of conduct is tested and accustomed.

Project description

Besides Pedagogy, Educational Sciences will participate in the project. We will develop a code to dialogue for both the Bachelor and Master (YES) of Pedagogical Sciences, and for the Bachelor of Educational Sciences. 

• We wil develop a flow-chard for other teaching programs that will help them setting up a similar procedure for their programs. 
• We will give a presentation for the educational staff about what we have learned  
• We will share out the ‘lived code of conduct’, not as a fixed document, but as an temporally example to inspire others. 
• We will present  a generic code to dialogue to offer for more general implementation at faculty or UU level 

Results and conclusion

• To address conflicts, differences of opinion, ideology and perspective within our teaching programs; 
• To make such  conflicts, differences of opinion, ideology, perspectives educational; 
• To establish a practice and create a space in which students and teachers learn to address sensitive issues; 
• To lay down such experiences in a program based ‘code to dialogue’ as a possible supplement of the current (general) UU code of conduct. Since the ‘code to dialogue’  is build ‘bottom up’, in the project phase the codes we develop will be program-based codes, and might thus differ per teaching program. 
• To create a generic code to dialogue to offer for more general implementation at faculty or UU level (to possibly implement in the UU code of conduct).