Two days off from teaching six-formers and spending time in the spring sun is, arguably, a luxury for any busy Further Education teacher. To spend these days however among the company of Philosophers in Oxford is certainly a dream. This short piece intends to capture my highlights of the PESGB 60th anniversary conference at New College, Oxford, which I was most privileged to be able to attend.
Arriving at New College, I was immediately struck by its beauty. The archaic architecture of the college casts a real sense of academic grandeur. Just roaming the grounds, I was immediately humbled, aware of the huge privilege of simply being present in such a historically rich environment. Very quickly, with the aid of a welcome dinner (and wine!), I was warmly embraced by the PESGB community. The diversity of those attending was particularly striking to me, not just in terms of nationalities represented at the conference, but also in the professional backgrounds of those attending. Academics specialising in the philosophy of education shared tables with primary school teachers, secondary school teachers, further education teachers, and students studying towards a variety of qualifications.
No one was left feeling out of place, and everybody had something unique and important to say. Throughout the duration of the conference, every meal and coffee felt like a continuation of the symposiums and lectures we visited through the discourse that permeated. Indeed, it seemed the only respite from philosophy I could get was when I finally retreated to my room at night! Yet, even then, my thoughts remained active, and it must be admitted that little sleep could actually be had.
As someone who had only recently completed my PGCE just three years ago, I felt particularly humbled and privileged to attend my first PESGB conference. When recalling my PGCE studies, I am reminded of the almost complete absence of any meaningful philosophical reflection within the qualification. Philosophy of education, or perhaps even philosophy more generally, seems entirely disconnected or omitted from teacher training in the UK. Maybe indicative of the current teacher shortage crisis we face in this country, this omission might be symptomatic of the rapid and perhaps reductive transformation that is expected of trainee teachers. In just one year, we are expected to transition from being ‘experts’ in our chosen academic disciplines to becoming professionals prepared to manage and survive a classroom full of young people. The fast pace and pressure of a PGCE can inevitably then only prioritise basic training of pedagogical skills over a deeper philosophical reflection on the nature and purpose of education itself.
In this context, the PESGB’s annual conferences, and the organisation as a whole, can be seen as providing a necessary counterbalance to this problem. I believe that these spaces allow for teachers to engage deeply and philosophically with the purpose of education itself. Why as educators do we do what we do? What are our fundamental aims? What should they be? How ought we shape our daily interactions with students? The conference therefore offered an opportunity to reconnect with the existential core of teaching, something I suggest is worryingly absent from the more disinterested approach to teacher training in the UK. By this I refer to the recognition of teaching as not merely the instrumental transfer of knowledge or skills to students, but rather as a deeply relational act, one that involves an authentic engagement with students.
Many of the papers I had the opportunity to see presented drew from such existential themes, and, as a soon to be doctoral student of philosophy of religion, I found myself right in my element. Professor Yuriko Saito’s keynote speech in particular resonated with me. In her paper, she called for the embedding of ‘aesthetical education within the classroom’ (Saito, 2025), encouraging teachers to cultivate within students an ‘aesthetical appreciation for the mundane’ (Saito, 2025). Saito’s paper was reminiscent to me of the Heideggerian notion of Befindlichkeit, or attunement, finding oneself within their environment. She urged in her work that we slow down to authentically engage with the world around us, to adopt an aesthetical sensibility within our daily experiences (Saito, 2025). By extension, as teachers, we ought to foster more meaningful and less instrumental relationships with our students and our environment within our professional practice.
Louise Vincent’s presentation similarly stood out to me. Vincent proposed “A Nietzschean Framework for Teachers’ Self-Cultivation”, drawing upon Nietzsche’s metaphor in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883 – 1885) of the camel, lion, and child; namely, the three metamorphoses of the spirit (Vincent, 2025). Here, she advocated that as teachers our pedagogical practice ought be grounded in a journey of authentic self-awareness. By appealing to Nietzsche, she argued that we should seek ways of enabling us to reclaim a sense of authenticity (Vincent, 2025) – to teach from an authentic place – to allow us to connect authentically with our practice and subsequently our students.
Equally, Leonard Bibby’s paper prompted an exploration of epoché as a tool to be used within teaching. Bibby highlighted the importance of nurturing a classroom environment of genuine critical thinking. Bibby’s paper challenged what he saw as a tendency towards fallibilism in the classroom; that is, reinforcing students to hold judgments surrounding certain issues (Bibby, 2025). Instead, he argued that teachers should instead adopt a reflective epoché, actively suspending the immediate judgments of students when teaching to continue to preserve critical reflection. The importance of this is clear: students are to remain unbiased and free from preconceived judgements within their pursuits of knowledge, again reinforcing the notion that teaching ought be inherently philosophical.
The conference then concluded fittingly I believe with Professor James Conroy’s keynote. Conroy went on to explore the Augustinian notions of caritas and cupiditas, or the distinction between selfless love and selfish desire, albeit in the context of teaching education (Conroy, 2025). Conroy’s distinction between these two forms of love served to remind us that genuine teaching involves loving and appreciating students for who and what they are rather than what they might achieve. As teachers, we risk – to flex another Heideggerian term – enframing students in the context of our own expectations as teachers, or the expectations of the school itself. Instead then, we should actively seek to incorporate a sense of caritas within our practice, to recognise the value and wisdom of students within their own right, and, equally to recognise the value and wisdom of what we do as teachers (Conroy, 2025). Conroy’s paper, in my view, continued on with these same existential themes, seamlessly aligning with Saito’s call for the cultivation of aesthetic sensibility, a reminder then to be philosophical within our teaching practice.
Overall, my time at New College was as deep and meaningful as you might expect. After being bombarded with philosophy for four days in a row, I do admit that I felt exhausted – and perhaps this has been conveyed clearly if you find yourself exhausted after reading my summaries. That being said, however, I felt deeply reinvigorated by a reminder that education, at its core, is a deeply human and philosophical endeavour. I believe that among all the practicalities and daily demands of teaching, we can easily lose sight of this essential truth. I am humbled to be able to have attended conferences like that which PESGB continue to hold, to have been able to reflect critically, to have been able to remind myself what it means to be a teacher, and to be able to ask why it is we do what we do.
References
Bibby, L.C. (2025) “Epistemic Epoché in the Classroom: The case for scepticism” in PESGB Annual Conference Programme and Abstracts. PESGB.
Conroy, J. (2025) “The Shifting of the Appetites and Education Across Sixty Years” in PESGB Annual Conference Programme and Abstracts. PESGB.
Saito, Y. (2025) “The Role of Aesthetic Education in Everyday Life” in PESGB Annual Conference Programme and Abstracts. PESGB.
Vincent, L. (2025) “On the Three Metamorphoses of the Teacher: A Nietzschean Framework for Teachers’ Self Cultivation” in PESGB Annual Conference Programme and Abstracts. PESGB.
