My research connects the philosophy of education with social and political philosophy. I examine how educational relationships shape the ways people attend to themselves, others, and the world, and what this means for the organization and governance of education.
My current research examines how pedagogical relationships and educational institutions can support the development of responsible attention: the disposition to notice what matters in a situation and how one’s actions may bear on it. Such attention is one part of responsible agency, alongside judgment, motivation, and the capacity to regulate one’s conduct.
I investigate how repeated pedagogical exchanges shape what students come to notice for themselves. I focus on affection, mutual attentiveness, and legitimate authority as qualities of relationships that can support this development, while also considering their value for children’s lives in the present.
On the institutional side, I study teachers’ attentional autonomy: their ability to orient and sustain attention in response to what matters educationally. I examine how working conditions, professional relationships, and institutional expectations support or constrain teachers’ attention and professional judgment.
This leads to questions about educational decision-making. How can schools learn about relational quality without reducing it to a performance indicator? How should decision-makers compare feasible improvements while considering other educational goods and the distribution of benefits and burdens?
This research is supported by the FNRS and based at UCLouvain’s Hoover Chair. I am currently preparing a book, Becoming Responsible: Pedagogical Relationships, Attention Formation, and Educational Decision-Making, that examines these relational and institutional conditions in depth.
Resonance and alienation. Drawing on Hartmut Rosa’s work, I investigate how schools can support meaningful relationships with the world, including through experiences of estrangement and difficulty. With Amaël Maskens, I am preparing a special section of Constellations on the political potential of resonance theory, following a workshop we organized with Olivier Struelens.
Children and democratic participation. With Amaël Maskens and Maëva Herriau, I examine the case for including children in citizens’ assemblies, the objections to their participation, and the institutional arrangements needed for deliberation across generations.
Dialogue and generative AI. I also explore the relational conditions of democratic dialogue and the possibilities and limits of generative AI in responsibility development. Both inquiries ask how educational encounters can help learners attend to perspectives and considerations they might otherwise overlook.
My doctoral research examined recognition, identity development, and school governance, leading to my 2021 book on identity skills. At EPHEC, I subsequently worked on responsibility development and led an applied research project on first-year student engagement. The latter combined more than sixty interviews and four focus groups with quantitative analysis to inform institutional recommendations.