This paper explores how a Bildung-making approach underpinned by embodied pedagogy and didactics can contribute to a learner becoming a person and a teacher’s development of artistry. We argue that the existing Cartesian divide between mind and body can explain the fundamental differences in how teachers and learners perceive Bildung within the Dutch educational system: either as an ‘academic’ phenomenon (for ‘the head’) or as vocational (for ‘the hand’). In this study, Dutch (pre)vocational teachers designed and co-created Bildung prototypes in professional learning communities (PLCs) and classrooms. The teachers used ‘real life’ questions from their teaching practices as their departure point to develop Bildung-making. The results of the study show that when Bildung education becomes an embodied maker’s process, it enables learners to transcend barriers to educational equity. Co-created enjoyment and social emotional learning come to the foreground during Bildung-making, thus fostering inclusive education.
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A Europe-wide revival of the idea of bildung as a goal for education has been gaining momentum for a couple of decades. The main idea is that bildung enables teachers, researchers and policy makers “… to explore the ways in which education might be about something more than simply the transmission of our facts and values to the next generation,” to use a quote by Gert Biesta, the Dutch professor of educational theory and pedagogy at the University of Edinburgh. Others often narrow bildung down to a process of becoming a whole person or cultivating one’s self towards civic excellence. Those ideas come from an older tradition with bildung thinkers such as the 19th century Prussian minister of education, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who promoted bildung as a key objective of public education.
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Educational policies in the Netherlands reveal that the current mainstream participatory approach to citizenship education jeopardises students’ autonomy. Especially in Dutch post-secondary vocational education, citizenship education has been shown to be mainly aimed at socialization: initiating students into tradition, internalising rules, societal norms and values. This article reports on the findings of a research project, which is grounded in the assumption that integrating Bildung, citizenship education and critical thinking is a promising way to grapple with the perceived overemphasis on socialization strategies. We justify the interrelationship of critical thinking, Bildung, citizenship education, and professional training from two perspectives – historical and contemporary. It is only by combining these concepts, we contend, that educational professionals can create teaching materials more geared to developing autonomy, and prepare students in vocational training to navigate the political and societal dilemma’s on the work floor. Furthermore, we also clarify our perspective by offering three educational principles, used in our project to guide the design of teaching materials, that form a context for integrating citizenship, critical thinking, and Bildung in vocational education. A practical illustration is subsequently discussed.
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