T&L Conference - General Presentation > Main Theme of the 2023 conference : Empowering Students

The T&L 2023 will address the following main theme:

Empowering Students for Tomorrow.

Empowerment is a multidimensional concept that aims at empowering individuals or communities to take control of their lives and their environment by acquiring skills, knowledge and resources to act autonomously. It’s a process that strengthens people's ability to solve problems, make decisions and act in ways that impact their lives. The concept has some of its roots in Foucault's work on knowledge and power (Broom, 2015) and was theorised by the psychologist Julian Rappaport (1987).

Empowerment in education promotes:

• Autonomy: students learn to make informed decisions, set their own goals and take action to achieve them; it deeply develops their ability to act.

• Engagement: it offers to learners more control over their learning, they are more likely to be actively engaged in their own development.

• Self-efficacy: by acquiring disciplinary and transversal skills, knowledge and resources, students feel more confident in their ability to succeed.

Empowering students is an objective that finds its full place in pedagogies that aim at developing the skills necessary to face the challenges of the 21st century (ENLIGHT Competence Framework). Training a new generation of impact entrepreneurs is one concrete way in which ENLIGHT universities can make a difference, in addition to our wider aim of educating engaged citizens who will lead the transitions of our societies (Luna Scott, 2015, UNESCO).

The conference programme will highlight good practices and observations from the classroom and institutional levels and will reflect the diverse perspectives on empowering pedagogical practices within the ENLIGHT alliance.

POSSIBLE PATHS OF REFLECTION

We invite contributors to engage in a collective discussion on innovative teaching practices and student empowerment. Some paths of reflection are suggested below. Please note that the sub-topics list is not exhaustive and is provided as a guide only.