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Thoughts and ideas on education, culture, psychology, social science and more from our academics, students, alumni and wider community to create lasting and evolving change. Podcasts brought to you by UCL Institute of Education (IOE), the world's leading centre for education and social science research, courses and teaching, and a faculty of University College London (UCL).
More from us: https://ucl.ac.uk/ioe
[Voiceover 1 Male]
You're listening to IOE Insights. The UCL Institute of Education podcast at University College London.
[Hans Svennevig]
Often peace education is criticized by people saying things like, well, we can't all sit on a cloud, there's a real world, real world has conflict. And my answer is yes, real world does have conflict, but wouldn't we hope to reduce that conflict? And to do that, you do that in classrooms with young people to learn how to resolve disagreements without leading to violence and those aspects. So that that's the peace education work I do. The sustainability education is in a similar realm because of the sustainable development goals, but also we can see the impacts of the climate emergency. So it's about how do we get young people and children to learn about what they can do within this circumstance. The evidence shows from UCL Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Education and others that children and young people are quite frightened about the world ahead.
[Voiceover 1 Female]
This is Research for the Real World. Conversations about education and social science research and its impact on policy, practice, and our everyday lives.
[Jason Ilagan]
This is Research for the Real World. Hello, I'm Jason Ilagan, and I am the executive producer of the IOE Insights Podcast and an occasional Research for the Real World presenter. We're in a time of deep social and political division, so there's a lot going on in the world at the moment, and you can be forgiven for struggling to keep up or just struggling in general. However, there's help at hand with folks like my guest here today and IOE research dedicated to navigating our way through uncharted territory. So today I'm speaking to Hans Svennevig He's the subject leader for the Citizenship PGCE and deputy program leader for the secondary PGCE at the IOE. With more than 20 years' experience in education, he's dedicated his career to improving citizenship education through teacher education, research, and curriculum development. His work explores how citizenship education can help address some of today's biggest societal challenges. Alongside his work at UCL, Hans is a trustee of the Association for Citizenship Teaching, co-editor of the Teaching Citizenship Journal, and has collaborated with a range of national and international organizations. His forthcoming book, Educating for Citizenship, Framing Knowledge for Teaching and Learning, will be published by UCL Press in early 2027. So without further ado, welcome to the podcast, Hans. It's great to have you here.
[Hans Svennevig]
Thank you very much, Jason. It's an absolute pleasure to be on this podcast to talk to you and your listeners.
[Jason Ilagan]
Excellent. All right, let's get started. So you're the subject leader for the Citizenship PGCE and the Deputy Program Leader for the Secondary PGCE at the IOE. I I think we just need to sort of establish some definitions. What is citizenship education?
[Hans Svennevig]
Good question. So citizenship education is helping young people learn about how to be active and informed. Citizens, members of their society. Citizenship education has been around for many, many years, but in the English context, it was established as a national curriculum subject in 2002, following the Crick report at the time. And since then, citizenship has been developing in the way that I described to create informed, active citizens. So when we think about what that means, so citizens who know about democratic processes, who know about rights, human rights, who know about their place in the world, identity, belonging, and also know about structures, systems of government, and so on. But most importantly of all, what citizenship is, is it's not civics in itself. Civics is just learning about the systems. Citizenship is about applying that knowledge to the real world and what people can do to further society and activate themselves. It's not necessarily activism, but it's about how we can think about how we work within our local community to improve services for the elderly by campaigning about those services, how we can write to an MP and champion the need for S E N D communities. It's about those actions. And often it's about small, meaningful actions that build over time.
[Jason Ilagan]
Gotcha, gotcha. So, what drew you to the field?
[Hans Svennevig]
My undergraduate was in law and international studies, and I also had a study period abroad, and I wondered how do I combine these passions? And also in my family, I have people who have been passionate in a range of uh aspects like peace education and uh campaigning for the NHS. So I thought, well, what would work? And I actually came across a graduate of the IOE citizenship PGCE from its first year, so that was 25 years ago. And I came across that graduate in Las Vegas of all places. Um and uh I just came across this person and we were talking. I said, So what do you do? I'm a citizenship teacher. What is that? And the rest is history, as they say. Um and I'm I was totally fascinated. And while I didn't study at IOE for citizenship PGCE I studied the University of Leicester. My subject leader was uh the now emeritus professor Hugh Starkey, who has worked at the IOE for many years. So that was the the birth of my career, if you say, if you wish.
[Jason Ilagan]
Now good to know. I think you may have broken a golden rule about Las Vegas. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. But I'm but I'm sure it was a wonderful interaction.
[Hans Svennevig]
Well, not in this nonetheless. Yeah.
[Jason Ilagan]
Cool. Thank you for sharing, Hans. Can you quickly give an overview of your role at the IOE and how does research sort of fit within that space?
[Hans Svennevig]
Uh yes, thank you. So my overall role is teaching. So I have a teaching contract as people at the IOE, but also broadly for an audience, understand I teach. That's what I do, and I'm an educator, and I'm a teacher educator, and I very much understand my role as a teacher educator. Some people talk about a challenging situation between being a teacher and an academic and how that plays out. But I very much identify myself as a teacher educator. And so at the IOE I am helping to teach those who become teachers. So if you want to be a teacher, you have to do a PGCE or some other means to become a teacher. And at the IOE, we develop a significant proportion of the UK's teachers. Every year in secondary education, we have six to seven hundred student teachers who become teachers. So my role is teaching focused, and you've talked about what I do in terms of citizenship, but also in terms of the secondary PGCE overall, I'm a deputy program leader with my colleague Camilla Smith, who's also a deputy program leader. So we're looking at how to shape and develop teacher education within that setting. So then when we think about research, people say, So, where do you get the time to do research? So, in research, or for the IOE at research, we have uh scholarly time, and it's a small tiny fraction of our teaching responsibilities, our teaching contracts. However, I would say that I significantly maximize that fraction and probably go further than that fraction. And why I do that is because all the work I do is to further and improve citizenship education. So the IOE is one of the, well, it's the only provider of citizenship education as a single subject. It's one of few providers of citizenship education for teacher education more broadly, and it's the longest provider. So, as I mentioned earlier, it's been going for 25 years. We just celebrated our 25th birthday as part of UCL 200 birthday as well. So, all the work that I'm doing in research is to further and develop teaching and learning in citizenship education. So, while someone might say, How do you manage to do that for a tiny fraction? Everything about my job is citizenship education. So, whether it's research or growing the impact of citizenship education or marketing citizenship education, it all comes within the same package. Someone said to me once, you live and breathe citizenship education. And that is how I try to impart on the student teachers to see the world through a citizenship education lens. So when I'm walking down the street on my day off, I'm thinking about citizenship education. So that's I think that's why I managed to carve out the research time because I'm so dedicated to it and passionate about it. And that's because I have such an incredible, privileged responsibility to do this work. And I take that responsibility very seriously.
[Jason Ilagan]
I appreciate that. And it probably goes without sort of saying, and it'd be great for you to sort of just touch on it. Why is it such an important subject for young people today?
[Hans Svennevig]
Well, you you said at the beginning about the uncertain world we live in. I would say that the world has always been uncertain. I think that at the moment we face significant uncertainties that uh we may not have felt in a certain amount of time, but the world has always been uncertain for the people who live in it. And teaching about a subject that gives young people an understanding of their role and their rights and their ability to influence the world is very significant to change an uncertain world into something that's more stable for the participants of our society. We talk very much in citizenship education as children as rights holders. There's often the notion that children have no rights, they'll become adults, then they have rights, then they have influence in the world. But that's not true. Children have rights, and they have rights afforded to them specifically as children that adults don't have. The Children's Convention of Rights is afforded to them. So citizenship education helps young people, children to understand those rights and how to have agency in the world around them, but also how to feel settled with complicated issues and sometimes how to feel unsettled, but accept that that unsettledness is just part of life. So we often talk in citizenship education about controversial issues, and we teach children how to talk about controversial issues in safe and brave spaces. We teach them how to talk about the issue, not the person. We help them to think about the diverse and rich community that they live in. These principles help us to counter the ever-increasing polarized hate that we come across around uh social media and influencers and all this aspect, but also in the news, media, and different uncertain times of our world. But that's not just now, whenever you're listening to it now, whatever now is, that's in the future as well, when they become adults, that they come across an issue that concerns them and they have a method of verifying if that's true. That's the first part, but then also wondering where their views and ideas sit within that because they've been taught methods of considering those ideas through concepts, and those concepts are in citizenship education. I think the important thing to note is that in citizenship education, we're not teaching about every issue that ever pops up in the news because that would be impossible, and also a teacher wouldn't have the skills and resources to know the ins and outs in every issue. We're teaching children and young people concepts, ideas, knowledge that helps them through skills that they are given in citizenship education to grapple with any idea that comes up, have a view or informed opinion, or through deliberative democracy, be able to discuss an issue that frankly many of us discuss today and don't know the answer for, but can sit with that uncomfort and not become reactionary and hate-filled.
[Jason Ilagan]
That absolutely makes a lot of sense. And I think this is a really good opportunity for us to pivot to the research focus. And I think what you've touched upon sort of forms a basis of this question. So much of your research focuses on the knowledge citizenship teachers need. So, what kinds of knowledge then are most essential for teaching it well? And how has your research helped clarify this?
[Hans Svennevig]
So I think it's best at this point to mention again what you mentioned about the book that's forthcoming. So we have the book Educating for Citizenship, Framing Knowledge for Teaching and Learning, coming out on the 1st of January 2027 by UCL Press. Myself and my co-editors, so Professor Lee Jerome, who's Professor of Citizenship Education and Children's Rights Education, Sarah Shortland, who's a head of citizenship in a school called Herewood Academy in Leicester, and uh chair of ACT Council, ACT being the Association for Citizenship Teaching, so the membership body of uh citizenship educators, and I mentioned previously Emeritus Professor Hugh Starkey. We've edited together this collection of chapters looking at knowledge and its role in developing teaching and learning, and that really helps to explain the answer to your question. So I'm just gonna talk a little bit about that. So in the last 25 years, there hasn't been a concrete understanding of where teachers get their knowledge from to teach citizenship education. There have been some books around teaching for citizenship, there's been some books around human rights, for example, from Hugh Starkey around citizenship education and those aspects. But there's never been a let's think about knowledge and what that means for a citizenship teacher. So in 2021, as a principal investigator, I received some small funding from the Center for Teachers and Teaching Research to explore teachers and citizenship knowledge through a series of masterclasses. So a teacher who had some experience would come and teach a masterclass to the student teachers about the theme that they were considering, and then we would look at how the student teachers responded to that material. That resulted in a CTTR Center for Teachers and Teaching Research report, and that was the basis of this book. So it's been a five, six-year project developing that work out into a more developed sequence of uh chapters. And some of the original teachers who were involved in the TAC project that I mentioned before, they were also involved in writing the book and some charity partners and so on. So the book is a series of chapters about issues such as racism, climate, and sustainability education, issues such as rights, human rights, peace and peace education, critical media literacy, how we influence political decisions as citizens, how we counter extremism. So these kinds of issues. Now we weren't saying that those are the only issues in citizenship education, because there are more issues in citizenship education and more case studies to draw upon, but we use these case studies to help frame a knowledge framework that teachers can use in their practice to build knowledge in their classroom. And those knowledge concepts range around things, as I've said before, democracy, cosmopolitan citizenship, these aspects. But our framework thought about things like how a teacher thinks about things like policy knowledge in the curriculum, the different policies that they have to draw in from the government and other aspects, how the teacher thinks very crucially about the context that they're in. So the contextual knowledge of what the students in their area know already about a topic, what the students don't know about a topic, what the demographic of the area is and how it may, how it may impact a topic in a certain way. We thought about these kind of broad elements. I what I don't want to say at all because it's
[Jason Ilagan]
about the book away.
[Hans Svennevig]
Yeah. Yeah. These kind of broad elements to consider how knowledge is constructed. Part of the work is also thinking about what is knowledge, and the book sits in the IOE's knowledge and curriculum series. So we do think about what is knowledge in that way. And there's many discussions about what is powerful knowledge and those aspects. So we grapple with that. We also grapple with how teachers learn their craft. So in my case, how I teach the student teachers of citizenship education. So we look at that. So that's also in the book. And the idea of that is not just to inform new teachers who are becoming student who are becoming citizenship teachers, so new student teachers, but this is to inform non-specialist teachers of citizenship, because there are many non-specialist teachers of citizenship. But there's also the opportunity now that as we move to a new curriculum in 2028 September, that there is an opportunity to help schools develop their next generation of citizenship teachers in classrooms in the country because the Children's and Wellbeing Schools Act just that recently came out, it requires all schools, no matter whether they're academies or not, to teach citizenship education. So a book like this helps all of those and helps those across the world who are interested in citizenship education. We are reflecting our commitment as editors of the book and authors of the book to demonstrate citizenship education as a vehicle for social justice. Citizenship education is a contested term in many countries and has ways and means about it that we know can sometimes be quite problematic. So in this book, we're reflecting that commitment to social justice through citizenship education.
[Jason Ilagan]
Got it, got it. No, thank you, thank you for giving us a bit of a flavor. I don't want to try and get you to give too much about the book away, but what I'm curious about is with that CTTR project, the Center for Teachers and Teaching Research project, there is uh something about an underlying model with regards to teacher education and citizenship. Don't know if you're in a position to be able to describe what is so distinctive about this model and how do you hope it will influence teacher education?
[Hans Svennevig]
So because citizenship education has had this broad history and many different ways of coming to it, and there hasn't been work on this knowledge aspect in citizenship education, especially in the English context, the framework model helps a teacher think about the key concepts and ideas and knowledge they are to engage with with whatever issue or topicality. We use those elements I mentioned before: peace, sustainability, racism, human rights, to help a teacher understand the framework. But the purpose of the framework is that whatever aspect of the national curriculum they encounter have to teach about, they can apply the framework to help build very strong and effective teaching of citizenship. There's often situations whereby teachers who are non specialized would be asked, you have a space in your timetable. We're going to put this lesson in your timetable, this subject in your timetable. And the teacher won't have enough expertise or development of how to teach that. I use the example of maths. If someone asked me to teach maths, that would be very bad. While I have qualified with a maths qualification, because I am a teacher and all teachers need a maths qualification, I am not good at maths. And to teach maths would be ridiculous. So why are we asking a non-specialist to teach a subject that relates to political engagement with society, that relates to international agreements that we make as a nation, that relates to critical media literacy and how we examine the news, that relates to legal literacy and how we as citizens inform and shape the law and all the processes and engagement of all of that, let alone economics and financial literacy and all these things. You need a specialist to do that. And so the book informs those specialists, but also those who are emerging specialists who are interested in all of those areas and wish to learn about how to improve their effective citizenship teaching. The framework model helps them to do that. And that's the real-world impact of this work. So that's why the research informs the practice.
[Jason Ilagan]
So turning away from the book, I would be interested to hear about sort of your work from a practical sense. So you've collaborated with organizations such as charities, schools, research networks to improve peace and disaster education. Are you able to share an example, please, of how these partnerships have translated your research, your work into classroom practice?
[Hans Svennevig]
Yeah, absolutely. I think that this is a point about how do you motivate others to do research when they have limited time. And I would always say that a little bit over a long time adds to a lot of impact. So that is a motivator. My advice that I would give anyone is form networks. I'm reading a great book at the moment about how we engage with networks in a democracy. I won't say the name of the book for obvious reasons, but the power of networks really helps inform working in this area to develop citizenship education, but because that's my vision, but it also informs the research work. And a colleague of mine said many years ago, build networks, build networks, because then you can work with all sorts of unique and varied people. So, in terms of practice itself, as you mentioned at the start, I'm co editor of Teaching Citizenship, which is the Association for Citizenship Teaching Practitioner Journal. I've been doing that since 2016. And so the work that we do within that is teachers, charity colleagues, workers, and academics writing for teachers in the classroom to think about how do they develop their practice, how do they teach effectively, resources that we share, provocations that we share, book reviews, and so on. So I edit that and uh draw together many different people from the networks that I have to write for the teacher in the classroom, which then has a multiplying impact because if we take one teacher, they could teach thousands of children over their career. So if you're writing for many teachers, there's many thousands of children that are being that are learning from the effective teaching of citizenship. So the most recent journal that we wrote uh just came out of the Association for Citizenship Teaching National Conference of the Victoria and Albert Museum for 2026. It was also the 25th year of ACT. So that recent journal, its name is Navigating Uncertain Times, the role of citizenship education, which I think fits to what you were just saying about these uncertain times at the beginning of the podcast. And we have all sorts of articles in the journal, including how we teach around controversy in the classroom, how we help students with SEND, so special education needs and disabilities access their rights and access controversial issues. We have consideration about the development towards votes at 16 and how we help those in classrooms right now prepare for voting when that legislation is passed. So those are the impact aspects that I engage with. But from the peace and disaster aspects that you talked about, I've been involved in peace education. I would say it's in my genes because my mother and my grandmother were doing things related to peace education way before I was born. But that work, I I've worked a lot with charity colleagues to improve access to peace education, which is a sustainable development goal, that everyone should have access to peace and sustainability education, and try to help develop the idea that peace education is an essential tool for children and young people to manage conflict. Often peace education is criticized by people saying things like, well, we can't all sit on a cloud, there's a real world, real world has conflict. And my answer is yes, real world does have conflict, but wouldn't we hope to reduce that conflict? And to do that, you do that in classrooms with young people to learn how to resolve disagreements without leading to violence and those aspects. So that that's the peace education work I do. The sustainability education is in a similar realm because of the sustainable development goals, but also we can see the impacts of the climate emergency. So it's about how do we get young people and children to learn about what they can do within this circumstance. The evidence shows from UCL Center for Climate Change and Sustainability Education and others that children and young people are quite frightened about the world ahead. But actually, there is hope, and we can build meaningful hope, meaningful action, small things that can have an impact. And I was at a conference recently, and Dr. Helen Pankhurst quoted a young person as saying, by doing something, you change your relationship to the problem. And I think we can all do something instead of feeling the anxiety by doing something we're having an impact. So there's sustainability work and then also in disaster education. So I did my master's in uh at the University of Manchester in international disaster management. People were surprised because they thought I would do it in education, but I was interested in disaster management for a long time, so I did it in that. And so through that work, I also took a citizenship lens and thought about how do we improve access to disaster education. There is a requirement that everyone has disaster education, and in some disaster prone countries, that is built into curricula. Yeah. And you can imagine where they are. But in England, we don't have disaster education. So as a disaster education person, I would say that the reason we don't have it is because we have a crowded curriculum already. So where do you put it? And my uh work has been to say, well, it can be done through citizenship education, through the citizenship pedagogies that exist already, and it can be added through that vehicle to help build communities that are able to respond in a disaster. Many researchers in disaster management say that in a disaster, who do people turn to? They turn to their neighbors, they turn to their community leaders. And in my work in disaster education, I said, well, if the neighbor and the community member doesn't know what to do, what's the outcome of that? No one knows what to do and the disaster. So if we create disaster education through citizenship education and through active citizenship communities, then we are improving disaster education for everyone for that eventuality. And when people think disasters, I think they're thinking, you know, the most horrific outcome. But actually, the UK is facing a climate emergency which will lead to increases in flooding disasters. And that's the form of disasters we're talking about. You can scale this up to big, massive national emergency disasters, but the local area, it's about how we make sure no one's left behind in a flooding situation or some other weather-related uh disaster, a hurricane, etc. So that's the disaster education work.
[Jason Ilagan]
I'm actually reminded we have on a previous episode of Research for the Real World, we actually spoke to Kaori Kitagawa, one of our esteemed IOE colleagues, who has a lot of expertise, especially with tsunamis and things like that in in Japan. So for avid listeners or who want to or for those who want to kind of dive deeper into in into her field of work, I'll make sure I link to the to the episode in the show notes. But yes, her episode is definitely worth a listen, especially from a in an international sort of context.
[Hans Svennevig]
So I'll just and I'll just say Kaori and I work very closely together. Myself, Kaori, uh Kitagawa, and some other colleagues set up the disaster and climate education network with colleagues in Spain, Germany, and England to do work together on a range of these issues. And we have worked with a Japanese researcher and published in a book called Disaster and Climate Climate Risk Education: Insights from Knowledge to Action, where we talk about citizenship pedagogy. So the networks are so important because, as you mentioned, Kaori Kitagawa is someone I know and uh admire very much.
[Jason Ilagan]
Excellent. Excellent. Cool. Thank you, Hans. So, Hans, in your view, how are emerging developments like AI changing what it means to educate active and informed citizens?
[Hans Svennevig]
Very good question, Jason. Thank you. Because I'm gonna I'm gonna answer the question, but I'll also highlight another piece of work that I was involved in. So last July, the report was published of the IOE ethics research task and finish group in AI and tech wearables, that I had the very privileged position of chairing this task and finish group. And our question basically was how do we respond in a research ethics capacity to AI and tech wearables? There is another podcast about that, so I'm not going to speak so much about it with Hakan Ergül and our recommendations and how the report worked. And someone asked me recently, What why did you chair this task and finish group? And I said, I think it's because I was talking about AI and tech wearables in the citizenship uh community since 2017, 18, something like that. And so I had all these networks again and uh resources to draw on. And so I was asked by Nicola Brown to do this work, and it was a privilege, a pleasure, and equally terrifying. The idea that we would have volunteers across the IOE a year, a few meetings to come up with recommendations for uh an exponentially changing, fast-changing technological transformation was terrifying. And as I said, I talk about that in this other podcast. But that also I came to as you're as listeners are going to not this again, probably, uh, through a citizenship lens, through a citizenship education lens, thinking about all the concepts and ideas that I've referred to in this podcast and how we navigate technological advancements that can be deeply ethically complicated. That actually also helped me to think about how do we teach about these things. So, in answer to your question, I don't I think that this is a place of discomfort for everyone. I I don't think anyone can say entirely how we should go about this. We sit in this, the vehicle has left the station. AI and tech wearables and all these aspects are being used by everyone, or many people, uh, all the time. And we're trying to work out how to drive the train while the vehicle while the train has left the station and drive it effectively. And I think that's a really big task, a really big ask for educators in classrooms, have enough things to be thinking about and worrying about. And of course, we can see policy decisions around this in the way that we've seen around social media and mobile phones, how to ban them or whatever to regulate them, or this, that, and the other. So we're sitting in this very complicated scenario where everyone has a very, very interesting opinion. And so I think more research needs to uh happen about the impacts and how to respond in a positive way. So many friends and family know that I'm quite critical about AI, particularly, and how it's used and so on. But I want to also say that there are significant positives. The development of AI technologies in the advancement of medicine is quite frankly incredible and really, really helpful. So research in those areas will is and has transformed people's lives and save people's lives. So I'm not entirely negatively critical, but I think when we see that there is cognitive dissonance in people who use AI over a very short period of time and cognitive dissonance, so people finding it difficult to learn new things and engage critically. That's what I mean by cognitive dissonance, and stereotypes and biases emerge from uh using AI very quickly in a very short period of time, with people who think that they're very intellectually gifted. So there are people who are very advanced, like highly intelligent people who have significant cognitive dissonance. Now that means that this new emerging technology makes every single person vulnerable and vulnerable to exploitation. So we need to think very carefully about how we learn about these technologies ourselves, but also how we teach others in classrooms. And that work has begun so by many colleagues in many subjects, but also at the Association for Citizenship Teaching, we have written, talked, and had conferences about AI and how to use it. I would I would also say it doesn't just stop with AI, generative AI, there's also agentic AI and how that will transform the world. And of course, there's conversations all the time about artificial general intelligence and the money that's put into that and what that will do. And then there's robotics and glass, like spectacles and cameras and VR and all this stuff. So in many ways, we're at an exciting time, but there are inherent dangers. And I think there is a, and I always hope this human beings are so they have so many gifted opportunities. And I think they are starting to think we need to regulate this technology. We need really carefully to think about how will this impact democracy. We need to think about what are the safeguards in place. But I would say that maybe we need to do it a bit faster because the social media example shows that we we had a long time to think about that, and we're still grappling with it. So that's my view about the AI aspect.
[Jason Ilagan]
Hans, we've covered so much ground today. And I I guess to wrap things up, what's next for you?
[Hans Svennevig]
Oh, thank you very much. So, and it's been a pleasure to be on the podcast and talk about these things. And I'm I'm thinking about all the other things that I could have talked about and the amazing teachers that I work with who work in all sorts of areas around dealing with the uncertain times we live in, navigating complicated issues around racism and hate and things like that, and uh how we need to continue to improve social justice. But there is also another book that I wanted to share, which will be published by Palgrave. And I've had the great privilege and opportunity to work with colleagues Professor Cosette Crisnan Professor Eleanor Hargreaves, and Dr. Emma Newell as editors of the book Researching Transformative Learning in Higher Education: Case Studies of Practice. And in this book, with many researchers and educators, teacher educators, and others across the IOE, we thought about Professor Mesero and Professor Kemis's work around transformative learning and critical participation and action theory, which helped shape this book of these case studies where we grapple with issues within higher education, teacher education, and we are many of the authors in the book are colleagues of the Researching Own Practice in Education Network at the IOE. And so there's many different chapters around these case studies. Particularly, I would mention the chapter that I've worked with Professor Caroline Daly, uh, Dr. Aisha Craig, and Associate Professor Jane Tillin on investigating intensive training and practice, which was a Department for Education requirement of all teacher educators, teacher education program, to put this process in place. And we researched the tensions that a putting in place an initiative from a Department for Education mandated requirement at fast pace and scale would have on notions such as professional expertise, notions such as social justice. And so we examine that as a chapter in the book, and we'll probably continue that work forward because I'm interested in how this idea of ITAP intensive training practice would develop political literacy or not in citizenship teachers. So there's all sorts of things that I get involved in from a research perspective and all sorts of networks that I have. And I would also like to highlight work because I was on the National Advisory Board for this project that's just finished and has a really big impact on gender empowerment and politics in classrooms, helping girls develop their efficacy in political awareness in classrooms. So there's I we could go on. There's so many projects and things that I do, but I come back to the reason and aim is for the development of citizenship education to make it as effective and as well taught as possible and to give access to all children and young people to higher quality citizenship education.
[Jason Ilagan]
Fantastic. Cool. Um, Hans, it has been a real pleasure getting to know you and your extensive work for over two decades and sort of, you know, the and also getting a better understanding of the ways and citizenship education's role in, you know, um helping develop, you know, and sort of empowering young minds with the sort of the skills and the knowledge they need that they can, you know, carry on throughout their life and and as I said in the intro, you know, navigate uncharted waters. And I think also to your point that, you know, there's always been uncertainty, but you know, trying to have a good degree of comfort amongst the discomfort that uncertainty brings. So your insights have been really, really helpful today. And I hope our listeners have that the things that Hans has said, you know, resonates with them in some way. So thank you so much again for joining us on the podcast. It's been a real pleasure. Thank you.
[Hans Svennevig]
Thank you so much, Jason and IOE team, for having me. And it's a pleasure to talk about these things. And I look forward to making more networks, maybe with some of your listeners as well.
[Jason Ilagan]
Indeed. You've just heard from Hans Svennevig. Some of what we've covered today is also available in the episode notes. If you've enjoyed this episode, why not listen to another? Search IOE Insights to find episodes of Research for the Real World including those episodes that I did mention in our chat, as well as more podcasts from the IOE. And a quick favor before you go, if you're listening to us on Apple or Spotify, we'd really appreciate it if you could give the IOE Insights podcast a rating. Five stars would be nice if you're enjoying the show, and that will help us reach more people who are interested in hearing about such important work. I'm Jason. Thank you for listening.
[Voiceover 1 Female]
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