In this seminar, professor Hannu Heikkinen, professor Kirsi Tirri and postdoctoral researcher Lari Launonen present their research, followed by a joint discussion. The seminar focuses on the interrelated concepts of flourishing, meaningfulness, and purpose — concepts that are increasingly used in discussions about the aims of education. What do these concepts mean? How do they relate to each other? And what should education look like if it aims to promote flourishing, meaningfulness, or purpose?
10.15-10.30 Professor Hannu L. T. Heikkinen (Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä)
Flourishing as the Aim of Education: Hopping on and off the Bandwagon
In recent years, international education policy discussions have increasingly framed the purpose of education in terms of human flourishing. This has been especially evident in recent OECD Human Flourishing program which can be seen as a serious attempt to shift the focus elsewhere from the human capital theory. Drawing on Aristotelian notions of eudaimonia and contemporary neo-Aristotelian educational theory, the presentation addresses concerns that the fashionable talk about flourishing - the “Flourishing Bandwagon” - may easily become superficial and individualistic if detached from its background in virtue ethics and the ecological challenges of our time. It is argued that flourishing must be understood within a planetary framework, emphasizing ethical responsibility, ecological sustainability, and genuinely transformative learning as central aims of education.
10.30-10.45 Professor Kirsi Tirri (Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki)
The purposeful teacher and purposeful teaching
William Damon and his colleagues (2003) have defined purpose in life as “a stable and generalized intention to accomplish something that is both meaningful to the self and of intended consequence to the world beyond the self”. This definition of purpose is moral in nature because it benefits also others and not only yourself. I have built on this general definition of purpose to define the purposeful teacher and purposeful teaching in the context of German Didaktik (Tirri 2018). Purposeful teachers are ethical professionals with long-term commitment to their students and educational goals they intend to meet in their teaching. In this work, they need to find meaningful purposes for themselves that at the same time go beyond themselves and serve their students and school communities. The core of purposeful teaching in the classroom context is based on the didactic relationship between the teacher and the student’s relation to content. To be able to create a didactic relation in learning, a teacher needs to illuminate the meaning of the subjects she teaches to her students. Purposeful teaching takes place when a teacher creates conditions for learning that help students to find personal meaning from the contents and subjects taught. The practical case method for purposeful teaching, the didactic approach, is modified from the methods used in moral education to guide teachers to purposeful teaching.
10.45-11.00 Postdoctoral researcher Lari Launonen (Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki)
Meaning in Life: What It Is and Why It Matters In Education
Meaningfulness or "meaning in life" is a distinct aspect of a good life, alongside happiness and morality. Most definitions of flourishing and purpose include the idea of living a meaningful life, but scholars who write on these topics rarely engage with philosophical debates about what meaningfulness is. For example, is meaningfulness purely a subjective experience or can it be evaluated objectively? Do claims to objective meaningfulness depend on one's worldview? Importantly, how should these debates be acknowledged in education that seeks to foster meaningfulness in students' (future) lives?
11.00-11.45 A joint discussion