We are delighted to welcome Liselott Mariett Olsson to our 2024 Fall Conference.

Small children ask big questions. Very young children pose questions about, for instance, language, the environment and the current climate-crisis, about robots and artificial intelligence, but also about how we are to live, and live well, together. Children, including the very youngest, ask questions and have ideas of some of the most fundamental features of our common existence, such as what it means to share, care and cooperate; what it means to include and be included and into what anyone is supposed to be included.

However, one big question for adults is how we listen and respond to these questions. Listening to small children’s big questions does not seem to be the forte of adults. We, in fact, rarely hear what children say and we underestimate both the seriousness and the size of their questions.
During the Conference, we will engage in questions of how we conceive and listen to children and their questions. We will look at the obstacles and opportunities for such listening, including:

• obstacles for listening to children in contemporary educational policies marked by a certain kind of “abstract formalism, including an all too strong focus on result-orientation and accompanying standards- and accountability movements,
• opportunities for listening to children with support from pedagogical-philosophical theories and methodologies,
• opportunities for listening to children through the creative use of such theories and methodologies, for instance through engaging in project-work and pedagogical documentation.

Through lectures, discussions and vivid examples from two projects with children, The Magic of Language and Children and Adults Explore Human Beings Place in Nature and Culture, we will together during the conference draw some conclusions on how active listening to small children’s big questions may, if not derail, at least enrich the educational system.