Facilitator(s)

Subject

Ayşe Durakbaşa (Sociologist) Ayla Turksoy (Literary figure)
Uncle Didem (Graphic Designer) Özgür S. Çelik (Photographer)

"My body is a battlefield."
(Feminist artist Barbara) (Inspired by Krueger)

About the Workshop: The way in which the female body is encompassed by institutional structures such as cultural judgments, norms, ideological-political discourses, and mechanisms of economic exploitation will be addressed through a critical feminist pedagogy approach.

This workshop will explore how gender shapes our relationship with our bodies; a collective production will be undertaken alongside the works of artists such as Barbara Krueger, Ana Mendiata, and Catherine Opie. Participants will expose ideological control over the body through writing and collage, transforming language from a passive means of expression into a tool of struggle.

The collaborative collage produced at the end of the workshop will be on display for participants in the exhibition area throughout the congress.

Workshop Format: A) Production Workshop (A tangible visual output and collage production)

Participant Limit: This workshop only female participants It is open and the quota 8 people Limited to (+2 reserves).

Participant profile: The group comprises women who wish to reflect on gender, the female body, ideological control, and feminist art practices, and to participate in a collective production process through writing and collage work.

Call for Participants / Preparation: Participants are expected to bring the following materials:

• Colored pencils and a notebook
• Newspaper and magazine clippings
• At least three photographs (as printouts) from childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.
• A recent photograph taken by themselves that reflects their body image (as a printout).

Işıl Ünal – Seçkin Özsoy 

Liberationist Education: Thoughts and Practices

About the Workshop: This workshop starts from the premise that education is not merely a space where power establishes and reproduces itself, but rather a phenomenon that acquires its content and form according to power relations, deriving its meaning and value from these relations. Therefore, an alternative vision of education necessitates confronting the reality that learning and learning spaces are centers of power.

Creating forms of democratic subjectivity in educational institutions is a matter of identification with solidarity-based, self-governing, emancipatory (émancipatrice), egalitarian, and democratic values. An emancipatory education is one that allows all oppressed and exploited groups to bring their own experiences and cultural resources to the center; to have their voices, experiences, hopes, and dreams reflected in the curriculum and the education system; and to become subjects in the teaching and learning process. It is an education based on real-life experience that opposes policies of marginalization, homogenization, assimilation, silencing, and rendering invisible. Throughout the workshop, the contributions that the struggle in the field of education can make to deepening democracy by uniting with the struggles of different segments of society against oppression and exploitation through a "common praxis" will be discussed.

Workshop Format: C) Thinking Workshop / D) Seminar + Discussion Workshop (A field focused on thinking and discussion, engaging in conceptual and critical inquiry)

Participant Limit: Ideally, 10-15 people (preferably no more than 15).

Participant Profile: Educators, researchers, students, and all participants interested in liberating educational practices.

Reading and Discussion Texts: The list of workshop preparation and discussion materials will be shared with participants via email during the congress.

Light Patience

Colorful Melodies, Shared Breath: Tracing Intercultural Solidarity Through Music and Movement

About the Workshop: This workshop approaches music and movement not merely as an artistic activity or a technical skill, but as a pedagogical space within which power relations, representation, and issues of belonging intersect, from the perspective of critical music pedagogy. While experiencing song, dance, and rhythm together, it aims to collectively recognize and question whose melody is considered "acceptable," whose culture is heard, and whose voice remains invisible in the classroom.

Instead of offering ready-made answers, we are establishing a horizontal space for thinking and sharing where we experience the songs, dances, and rhythms of Anatolia and the surrounding cultures together, and then analyze this experience from a critical pedagogical perspective. The aim is to collectively unlock the potential of music and movement to be a bridge between home, school, and society, and a "voice" for silenced cultures. The facilitator is positioned not as an "expert," but as someone who experiences together; hierarchies are loosened through shared singing and circle dances, body percussion, and dialogue circles.

Workshop Format: B) Experience Workshop (Experiential learning, body-based work, and developing awareness through direct experience)

Participant Limit: Ideally 20, maximum. 25 people (The number will be determined according to space availability, as flexible movement is required).

Participant Profile: The target audience includes teachers from all fields, especially classroom teachers, preschool teachers, and music teachers; teacher candidates; education volunteers; students; academics; education activists; and those working in the field of migration/multilingual education.

Kemal Inal
Murat Catal

Religious Education and Democracy

About the Workshop: This workshop critically examines one of the most fundamental problems of our time: the place and methods of religion in schools within a secular and democratic society. It opens up a discussion on the relationship between a secular, democratic, and rational society and religious citizens through school curricula, textbooks, and didactic materials.

The workshop will primarily focus on Murat Çatal's... "The Evolution of Religion in its Historical Development" and Kemal İnal's “The Relationship Between Religion and Democracy in the Context of Education (A Comparison of Germany and Türkiye)” The first half will include theoretical presentations on the topic of [topic name]. In the second half, participants will be divided into groups and will receive training provided by the facilitators. "Religious Education and Democracy Evaluation Form" They will design or analyze teaching materials together. The aim is to reveal, through a collective effort, the possibility and principles of religious education that does not contradict democratic values.

Workshop Format: D) Seminar + Discussion Workshop (Mixed Workshop) (Combining expert presentations with critical discussion and group work)

Participant Limit: Maximum 20 people.

Participant Profile: This program is for educators, researchers, teachers, students, and all interested parties. No prior qualifications (training, language skills, etc.) are required.

Reading and Discussion Texts: The list of workshop preparation and discussion materials will be shared with participants via email during the congress.

Nejla Kurul

Rethinking and Acting on Schools with Plural Ecologies

About the Workshop: This workshop challenges the modern understanding of schooling, which halts, staticizes, and reduces life to a single form; instead, it opens up a radical space for thought and action that conceives of education as a continuous process of becoming, curiosity, encounter, and flow. Questioning hierarchical structures that view schools as merely classrooms and buildings where ready-made information is transmitted, the workshop re-examines the school as a vibrant living space where natural, social, cultural, intellectual, emotional, and digital ecologies intersect.

From Heraclitus to Bergson, to Spinoza's potentia This study, based on a philosophical background ranging from the concept of (life force) to the thought lines of Deleuze, Guattari, Dewey, and Bateson, explores the possibility of a school that enhances children's power to think, feel, and act together. Instead of offering ready-made answers, it encourages participants to examine the power relations of the modern school.potestasIt invites participants to critique the banking education model, reconceptualize the school along the lines of plural ecologies, and seek answers to the question, "What can we change at school tomorrow morning?"

Workshop Format: D) Seminar + Discussion Workshop (Mixed Workshop) (Horizontal interaction of theory and field experience, mutual dialogue and collective inquiry)

Participant Limit: Ideally 20 people (maximum depending on space availability and demand) 30 people (can be executed with).

Participant Profile: Teachers, students, academics, education activists, and all education stakeholders from diverse fields of subjectivity.

Reading and Discussion Texts: The list of workshop preparation and discussion materials will be shared with participants via email during the congress.

Sule Senol

From IQ to WeQ: Gaming, Interaction, and Co-production with T-Station

About the Workshop: This workshop explores ways to bring together people from different age, socio-economic, and political groups on common ground, rather than through hierarchical structures; it investigates possibilities for interaction through play, wooden toys, and natural materials. It is inspired by alternative educational approaches and reform pedagogy such as Fröbel, Montessori, Waldorf, Reggio Emilia, C. Freinet, and Jenaplan. T-StationIt offers a co-creative interaction space where the roles of player and instructor, learner and teacher, are reversed, based on the principle that "adults are not allowed to play."

In the workshop, participants engage by playing, creating, and deriving from T-shaped mind games and wooden geometric pieces, some of which are designed by the facilitator. Following the game experience, existing mind-intelligence game trainings, neighborhood-based learning spaces outside of school desks, and the education system that has become a "certificate republic" are critically examined. A learning ecosystem is designed where there is no reward, punishment, or pressure; where curiosity, collaborative problem-solving, and a WeQ (knowing/creating together) culture are central.

Workshop Format: A) Production Workshop / B) Experience Workshop (Co-creative production through tangible materials, wooden mind games, and direct play experience)

Participant Limit: Ideally 20 people (maximum depending on venue availability) 30 people).

Participant Profile: Educators, teachers, parents, designers, researchers, and all participants interested in alternative education/play-focused public spaces.

Reading Recommendation: The "Auntie Tariff" chapter from the T-Station book. The text will be shared with participants who have completed their registration.

Omer Solak

Language, Power, and Ideology: A Workshop on Critical Language Awareness

About the Workshop: This workshop is based on the premise that language is not merely a neutral tool for communication, but rather an ideological practice that constructs, reproduces, and transforms social reality. Drawing on Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy, Norman Fairclough's critical discourse analysis, and Hilary Janks' approaches to language, identity, and power, it introduces the Critical Language Awareness perspective in both theoretical and practical dimensions.

The theoretical part of the workshop examines how word choices, naming conventions, pronoun usage, modality, passive structures, metaphors, and discursive frameworks make social power relations visible or invisible. In the practical part, participants are divided into small groups to conduct critical discourse analyses of news texts, textbook excerpts, official discourses, advertising texts, and social media content. In the final section, the ideological functions of linguistic choices are discussed, and sample activities and lesson design suggestions that participants can use in their own educational settings are shared.

Workshop Format: A) Production Workshop / D) Seminar + Discussion Workshop (Mixed Workshop) (Presentation of theoretical framework, text analysis exercises in small groups, and production of concrete lesson materials/activities)

Participant Limit: There is no upper limit; the number of participants will be determined according to the venue's conditions.

Participant Profile: Educators, teachers, teacher candidates, researchers, and all participants interested in the field of language and education.

Call for Participants / Preparation: Participants are expected to bring paper and pens for group work and note-taking.