As BİRARADA Association and TÖZ Publications, following the successful 1st Critical Pedagogy Congress we held in 2024, we are pleased to organize our second congress this year with the theme"Critical Pedagogy for Hope, Solidarity and Social Transformation". This year's congress aims to rethink the egalitarian and libertarian potential of critical pedagogy in an increasingly authoritarian, conservative, and market-oriented neoliberal world, and to discuss the opportunities it offers for resistance and democracy.
Critical pedagogy is not merely an educational approach; it also provides us with a transformative foundation for rebuilding social justice, solidarity, and democratic resistance. Within this framework, our congress aims to discuss the political, economic, and technological transformations that education has undergone in the world and in Turkey, the restructuring of education systems in line with authoritarian and conservative policies, the increasing erosion of autonomy and academic freedom in universities, and the shaping of educational programs with dominant and market-oriented ideological orientations. It also plans to examine important dimensions of this transformation, such as the limitation of the autonomy of education workers, the deepening of social inequalities by centralized examinations, and the increasing regulation of education based on surveillance, performance, and efficiency logic.
In the face of this transformation, the theoretical and methodological foundations of critical pedagogy must also be re-examined. In this context, the congress will reinterpret the critical education tradition around current problems; discuss ecofeminist, queer, ecopedagogical, and postcolonial approaches that are beginning to take root in our current conceptual world; Re-examining the place of concepts such as hope, solidarity, transformation, and resistance within critical pedagogy is among the goals of our congress. The relationships between transformative learning processes and ethics, truth, and liberation in critical pedagogy are other issues in this problem area. Questioning the limitations and possibilities of critical pedagogy today, the inequalities created by new digital technologies in education, and discussions on pedagogical transformation in the context of pedagogical possibilities, feminism, care work, and family policies are among the agendas of our congress.
The relationship of critical pedagogy with broader social movements and struggles that extend beyond schools is also one of the priorities of our congress. Our congress will address democratic school models and alternative learning spaces, as well as egalitarian and libertarian, community-based transformative learning experiences. The relationship between action, art, and education, the participation of academics, teachers, and students in democratic processes, their forms of involvement in education policies, and grassroots solidarity networks, as well as the internationalization experiences of critical pedagogy, are also among the discussion topics within this scope.
Our congress invites researchers, academics, teachers, students, civil society representatives, and activists to discuss the transformative possibilities of critical pedagogy together through presentations, panels, and workshops. Your participation will strengthen the pursuit of justice, equality, and freedom in education, and will contribute to building the paths that critical pedagogy offers for a democratic future.
With scientific solidarity,

II. International Critical Pedagogy Congress Organizing Committee