In this chapter, we take the recent Covid-19 crisis as an occasion to investigate three central concepts within phenomenological pedagogy: embodiment, attunement, and sociality. We take it that during the Covid-19 pandemic those dimensions, which usually are forming the background rather than the foreground of pedagogical practices, have become explicit and pressing in specific ways: namely in the form of disembodiment, disengagement, and disconnectedness. The methodological framework of our paper is phenomenology and the interdisciplinary field of Studies in practical knowledge. We will start with an example of online teaching in philosophy in upper secondary school in Sweden right at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and analyse it regarding possible experiences of disembodiment, boredom, and isolation. The chapter provides a reflection about the exposed role of teachers and the vulnerability of educational practices in situations of crisis.

The status of the police as a profession in democratic societies is a contested issue. At stake is whether the police have an autonomous field of action related to a set of important values, or whether they are simply upholding and executing a set of given rules. In recent research, this issue has been framed in terms of two opposing sets of attitudes among police officers: legalism and autonomy. Even though their precise definitions vary the terms have recently, perhaps most prominently in Scandinavia, become a standard framework for describing the ends of a continuum. Core elements of legalism is strict adherence to the law and a rejection of discretionary innovation. The autonomous police favor practical police work, focus on efficiency, and honor the internal code of silence. This paper presents an alternative approach, modelled on Aristotle's conception of the virtue of justice, that questions the usefulness of the legalism-autonomy-axis as a starting point for a normative discussion. Our alternative is a form of police professionalism we call decent policing. Central to our argument, developed with the help of concrete examples, will be the idea that lawfulness, properly understood, does not stand in tension with at least one important sense of autonomy, but in fact requires it. In addition to contributing to the normative discussion of these terms, the paper should thus also be seen as a conceptual intervention, enabling a more precise and nuanced discussion of the ethical and epistemological dimensions of police work.

Empathy is said to be central to the lifeworld of professional practices, especially to educational-didactical practice. Most standard accounts of empathy are based on face-to-face encounters between two people: one in need of help and one providing help. In those descriptions, the emphasis is often on the helper’s capacity to understand the verbal or bodily expressions of the other person rather than on the more tacit dimensions such as the co-embodied situation as a whole, including its spatial and habitualized embeddedness. This article develops a different account of empathy. Instead of proceeding from the dual model of the helper–helped, we view empathy as emerging in aesthetically and existentially significant situations that are shaped by limited time and space, where what we call “empathetic timing” is needed. Empathetic timing describes a practice of musical interplay in relation to the specific existential landscape of an ongoing event. Starting from a concrete example from early childhood education in which a group of children and teachers are gathering in a hallway to get ready for an outdoor visit, the notion of empathetic timing is developed in dialogue with concepts based on analogies to dance, Edith Stein’s phenomenological-existential theory on empathy, and Tim Ingold’s concept of landscapes. The sensuous, moving everyday life at the preschool is understood as a challenge where ethical and aesthetical dimensions are intertwined. 

Empati beskrivs ofta som centralt för förskolans praktik. Inom empati­forskning mer allmänt undersöks ofta möten mellan två personer – då beskrivs empati som något som äger rum mellan en som behöver hjälp och en som ger hjälp. I sådana beskrivningar ligger fokus ofta på hjäl­pa­rens förmåga att förstå den som behöver hjälp genom att tolka tal och uttryck. Vardagen på förskolan omfattar sällan den typen av möten mellan två subjekt som i lugn och ro kan försöka förstå varandra. För­skoleliv beskrivs snarare som rörligt och i gemenskap; barngruppen och pedagogerna gör förskoleliv i samspel med varandra. Vi vill därför ut­veckla ett annat sätt att förstå den empati som försiggår i förskolans värld genom begreppet empatisk timing. Empatisk timing beskriver en praktik som kan liknas vid musikaliskt samspel mot bakgrund av det specifika existentiella landskapet som ges i en pågående vardag. Utifrån ett konkret exempel från förskolepraktiken, när en grupp barn och pedagoger samlas i en hall för att förbereda sig för en utflykt, utvecklas begreppet empatisk timing i dialog med begrepp baserade på analogier till musik samt Edith Steins teori om empati. 

In this extended editorial, we highlight six published contributions that are part of the journal’s special theme on higher education and professional judgement. We summarize some of the overall theses of the contributions and even present our own reflections on the subject matter. The published contributions show that the question of how to educate the professional judgement plays a central role in various professional training programs. The contributions bring out different dimensions, such as the challenge of incorporating professional practice into university teaching, the importance of using examples for initiation of reflection, as well as the temporal and spatial aspects of judgement. All contributions also present different approaches when it comes to addressing and cultivating professional judgement in higher education. Thus, we have chosen to collect some “good advice” from the texts in this introduction. Finally, we pose the question whether professional judgement is threatened within higher education. ©2024 Eva Schwarz, Carl Cederberg, Petra Lundberg Bouquelon & Maria Pröckl.

I den här utökade ledaren vill vi lyfta fram sex publicerade bidrag som ingår i tidskriftens särskilda tema om högre utbildning och det professionella omdömet. Vi sammanfattar några av bidragens övergripande teser kring begreppet och presenterar våra egna reflektioner. De publicerade bidragen visar, som vi ser det, på att frågan om hur man utbildar omdömet är central inom olika professionsinriktade högskoleutbildningar. Bidragen lyfter olika dimensioner såsom utmaningen med att ta in praktiken i högskolans lokaler, exempels betydelse för att få i gång en reflektionsprocess och omdömets rumsliga och tidsliga aspekter. Alla bidrag presenterar också olika former för att arbeta med det professionella omdömet inom högre utbildning och vi har i den här inledning valt att samla några “goda råd” som man kan hittar in bidragen. Avslutningsvis ställer vi frågan huruvida det professionella omdömet är hotat inom den högre utbildningen.

As a discipline, practical knowledge is relatively new. Over recent years it has emerged and grown, but there are still only in two places internationally where you can explicitly study it (Nord University in Norway and Södertörn University in Sweden). On the other hand, the main questions of practical knowledge, as they relate to knowledge, are age old philosophical questions, while other questions dealt with implicate other disciplines (cognitive science, pedagogy, work-life research, etc.). As such, practical knowledge is interdisciplinary and should perhaps be considered a set of questions rather than a discipline. But if it can be considered a discipline, then it needs a principle of unity. Perhaps this is the lived exercise of practice and joint philosophical reflection. In the proposed chapter, this is fleshed out in terms of consideration of (a) who the students and researchers of practical knowledge are – what is it that motivates them to study (participant and field plurality)? (b) what are the key resources of practical knowledge that can allow us to ask these questions (disciplinary plurality) and how is practical knowledge related to philosophy as a discipline? (c) what are the spaces of the study of practical knowledge, what happens here and what is the potential for development? Based on this analysis, we will develop a core idea of practical knowledge as a unity that is based on plurality and put in in a framework of a contemporary debate on the relation between science and lived experience as well as philosophy and practice.

What does it mean to “understand each other” in the framework of a concrete plurality of subjects? What are the limits of our moral concern? In current philosophical discussions on the ethical relevance of empathy, the concept of empathy is largely discussed in an individualist framework with some standard examples of face-to-face-meetings. The encounter with another is often thinly described, with a focus on the feelings or experiences of persons, rather than on the wider situation and complex interaction in which they are involved. Instead, I will start from real-life situations, using examples from professional practice where subjects do not only relate to each other, but where they also step into each other’s lives. In taking my starting point in practices, I hope to develop a more realistic understanding of empathy that is not only directed at an understanding of another subject but also of complex situations. This exploration will be rooted in two examples, one from policing and the other from nursing. The cases will be discussed in the light of Simone de Beauvoir’s idea of engagement and Hannah Arendt’s concept of plurality. Ultimately, a notion of empathy will emerge from out of an ethics of engagement.