Stefan Ramaeker
Biographic Data
| ID | 4690378 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stefan Ramaeker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stefan |
| FAMILY NAME | Ramaeker |
| SIGNATURE | RAMAEKER S |
| AFFILIATIONS | KU Leuven |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3528-7238 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Letters to My Parents
Revisiting parental engagement
Persisting divides between ‘multilingual homes’ and ‘monolingual schools’ exist around the world, including Flanders, the Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Applying the lens of space production, we explore how ‘parental engagement’ is established, and the role it plays in shaping language separation. Discourse analysis on interviews with 24 parents of multilingual children revealed parental engagement as striving for parental access to schools, f…
Toddlers as soul workers
In this article, we provide a critical philosophical analysis of contemporary early childhood education practices on emotions and well-being. We develop our argument against the backdrop of an intensifying preoccupation, since several decades, with the psychological, social and emotional well-being of pupils and students. Our focus is on one exemplary case: Het Toverbos (The Magical Forest), a Flemish nursery educational method evoking the princi…
The Red Fish in a Shoal of Greenish‐Blue Fish? A Critique of the Biomedical Model of Autism Spectrum Disorder
The biomedical model states that autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, called autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this article, Joyce Leysen, Delphine Jacobs, and Stefan Ramaekers argue that this is a narrow way of looking at autism and, further, that the biomedical view has implications for our understanding of parenthood and circumscribes the pedagogical agency of parents of children diagnosed with ASD. The authors adopt a critical stance tow…
Digitisation, securitisation, and upbringing
In recent years a tightening of safeguarding legislation and protocols that overlap with anti-terror legislation have given particular shape to discourses and practices of risk management and early intervention, particularly in early childhood education and parenting. Such developments have taken place in a context in which digital technology has become ubiquitous, enabling the role of surveillance in modes of governing to take on new forms. Here…
Response to Alexis Gibbs’ Review of Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children
Parenting apps and the depoliticisation of the parent
In educational research, digital technology has received considerable attention, and in early childhood studies this has largely focused, understandably, on children. Our concern here is with the figure of the parent and on a specific digital technology – apps designed for parents. While apps can be seen as a digital extension of existing information and advice that has proliferated in the turn to parenting, and exhibits many of the characteristi…
Understanding children's spatiality in cancer care environments
Conversations between procedural and situated ethics
2019). Conversations between procedural and situated ethics: Learning from video research with children in a cancer care ward. The Design Journal: Vol. 22, Running with Scissors: 13th International Conference of the European Academy of Design, Dundee, 10-12th April, 2019, edited by Louise Valentine, Joanna Bletcher and Leon Cruickshank, pp. 641-654
Love for the World in Education
In my response, I will not go into the manifesto as such, or as a whole. I will limit myself to responding to the authors’ claim that “[w]hen we truly love the world, our world, we must be willing to pass it on to the new generation,” which is a refer-ence to (a short transcription of ) Hannah Arendt’s (by now, I guess) famous passage where she brings together education and love for the world: “Education is the point at which we decide whether we…
Love for the World in Education
Old and new generations in the 21st century
(Introduction to INPE Special Issue)
Infants, childhood and language in Agamben and Cavell
In this paper we explore a new way to deal with social inequality and injustice in an educational way. We do so by offering a particular reading of a scene taken from Minnelli's film The Band Wagon which is often regarded as overly western-centred and racist. We argue, however, that the way in which words and movements in this scene function are expressive of an event that can be read as a new beginning and that it is for this reason in and of it…
The Family as a “Gathering
Despite the obvious importance of “family” in people’s everyday lives, there is little consensus on what family is. Nevertheless, every answer to the question has important (social, political, legal) consequences. In our research we do not set out from a substantial description of what “family” is. We shift from top-down perspectives on what the family is (or should be) according to some description of it, to concrete socio-material practices tha…
But Everything is Against Us Here’
Noddings’s radical choice for a particular stance in life is both what makes Happiness and Education a thought-provoking book and what also leads me to have some reservations. First, I briefly outline some of these reservations and focus on what I think are two important difficulties Happiness and Education faces: firstly, the fact that Noddings’s choice for a particular conception of the good is likely to run into resistance and even incomprehen…
Parents need to become independent problem solvers’
This paper aims to contribute to recent critical work on the current parenting culture. It does so by a critical reading of the individual words/parts of the sentence ‘Parents need to become independent problem solvers’ – a characteristic phrase of ‘Triple P’, a parenting programme that has recently been implemented as a form of parenting support in a number of countries. The paper aims (1) to bring out and expose some of the worrying features of…
What All Parents Need to Know? Exploring the Hidden Normativity of the Language of Developmental Psychology in Parenting
In this article we focus on how the language of developmental psychology shapes our conceptualisations and understandings of childrearing and of the parent-child relationship. By analysing some examples of contemporary research, policy and popular literature on parenting and parenting support in the UK and Flanders, we explore some of the ways in which normative assumptions about parenthood and upbringing are imported into these areas through the…
The question of ‘parenting’
Parents as ‘educators’
In this article, we explore to what extent parents should be ‘educators’ of their children. In the course of this exploration, we offer some examples of these practices and ways of speaking and thinking, indicate some of the problems and limitations they import into our understanding of the parent–child relationship, and make some tentative suggestions towards an alternative way of thinking about this relationship
Multicultural education
This article is a discussion of a dominant (and mostly taken-for-granted) discourse of multicultural education (the phrase ‘intercultural education’ is sometimes used). My aim is, simply, to highlight two issues which, I think, are insufficiently dealt with in relation to multicultural education: the observation that differences can be irreconcilable and the idea of change. In the first part of this article, I try to sketch this discourse by givi…
The Narrative of a Happy Childhood
Educational situations, in the context of the family as well as in the context of the school, can be conceived in terms of power relations. Often the focus of interest is the outcome of the educator's involvement with the child. Though in general the instrumental way of thinking, in which a certain state of human well-being is an end to be reached, has been criticised, it seems to be presupposed by parents who express that what they want is that …
Humanizing Education and the Educationalization of Health
A bstract Theorists often take a condescending stance when speaking about the educationalization of social problems. Given their confidence with postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, the educationalization of social problems is easily perceived as a set of questionable interventions by governments into educational practices. In this essay, Bert Lambeir and Stefan Ramaekers question the extent to which one can conceive of social problems …
Child Rearing
It is not uncommon to hear parents say in discussions they have with their children ‘Look at it this way’. And called upon for their advice, counsellors too say something to adults with the significance of ‘Try to see it like this’. The change of someone's perspective in the context of child rearing is the focus of this paper. Our interest in this lies not so much in giving an answer to the practical problems that are at stake, but at disentangli…
The terror of explicitness
The new idea of a ‘parenting contract’, explicitly taking as its point of reference the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, is meant primarily to protect children's rights, and specifically the right to a proper upbringing. The nature of the parent–child relationship is thus drawn into the discourse of rights and duties. Although there is much to be said for parents explicitly attending to their children's upbringing, something …
No Harm Done
In much educational theory there is concern about claims that the concept of truth has no place anymore in educational thinking. These claims are generally identified as ‘postmodernist’ or ‘poststructuralist’. The fear is that when abandoning the quest for truth we enter the domain of mere belief, and in this way leave education without firm grounds. In this article I examine some examples of what is often crudely lumped together as ‘postmodernis…
What All Parents Need to Know? Exploring the Hidden Normativity of the Language of Developmental Psychology in Parenting
In this article we focus on how the language of developmental psychology shapes our conceptualisations and understandings of childrearing and of the parent-child relationship. By analysing some examples of contemporary research, policy and popular literature on parenting and parenting support in the UK and Flanders, we explore some of the ways in which normative assumptions about parenthood and upbringing are imported into these areas through the…
Postmodernism
Recently several educational theorists have argued for the incorporation of a scepticism of the postmodern kind into educational theory and into educational research more specifically. Their understanding of postmodernism in terms of scepticism harbours much potential, but to avoid confusion and misunderstanding it is of importance that the ‘scepticism’ associated with postmodernism is distinguished from traditional philosophical scepticism, be i…
No Harm Done
In much educational theory there is concern about claims that the concept of truth has no place anymore in educational thinking. These claims are generally identified as ‘postmodernist’ or ‘poststructuralist’. The fear is that when abandoning the quest for truth we enter the domain of mere belief, and in this way leave education without firm grounds. In this article I examine some examples of what is often crudely lumped together as ‘postmodernis…
The Narrative of a Happy Childhood
Educational situations, in the context of the family as well as in the context of the school, can be conceived in terms of power relations. Often the focus of interest is the outcome of the educator's involvement with the child. Though in general the instrumental way of thinking, in which a certain state of human well-being is an end to be reached, has been criticised, it seems to be presupposed by parents who express that what they want is that …
Conversations between procedural and situated ethics
2019). Conversations between procedural and situated ethics: Learning from video research with children in a cancer care ward. The Design Journal: Vol. 22, Running with Scissors: 13th International Conference of the European Academy of Design, Dundee, 10-12th April, 2019, edited by Louise Valentine, Joanna Bletcher and Leon Cruickshank, pp. 641-654
Understanding children's spatiality in cancer care environments
The Family as a “Gathering
Despite the obvious importance of “family” in people’s everyday lives, there is little consensus on what family is. Nevertheless, every answer to the question has important (social, political, legal) consequences. In our research we do not set out from a substantial description of what “family” is. We shift from top-down perspectives on what the family is (or should be) according to some description of it, to concrete socio-material practices tha…
Teaching to Lie and Obey
To understand Nietzsche’s view of education requires us to grasp the importance Nietzsche attaches to being embedded in a particular historical and cultural frame. Education is, at least in the early stages, a matter of teaching the child to see and to value particular things or, in Nietzsche’s way of putting this, teaching the child to lie. Here I develop an interpretation contrary to those who emphasise Nietzsche’s radical individualism and thu…
Postmodernism
Recently several educational theorists have argued for the incorporation of a scepticism of the postmodern kind into educational theory and into educational research more specifically. Their understanding of postmodernism in terms of scepticism harbours much potential, but to avoid confusion and misunderstanding it is of importance that the ‘scepticism’ associated with postmodernism is distinguished from traditional philosophical scepticism, be i…
Problematising Critique in Education and Child-Rearing
In ‘Problematising Critique in Pedagogy’ Jörg Ruhloff develops a concept of critique that is motivated by a deep concern for the state of humanity. This is a thought-provoking development of critique, but I find myself disagreeing over, or rather simply unconvinced by, his understanding of the human condition, and, connected to this, of criticism. Referring to Nietzsche, I start by illustrating one way in which a concept of critique such as Ruhlo…
No Harm Done
In much educational theory there is concern about claims that the concept of truth has no place anymore in educational thinking. These claims are generally identified as ‘postmodernist’ or ‘poststructuralist’. The fear is that when abandoning the quest for truth we enter the domain of mere belief, and in this way leave education without firm grounds. In this article I examine some examples of what is often crudely lumped together as ‘postmodernis…
The terror of explicitness
The new idea of a ‘parenting contract’, explicitly taking as its point of reference the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, is meant primarily to protect children's rights, and specifically the right to a proper upbringing. The nature of the parent–child relationship is thus drawn into the discourse of rights and duties. Although there is much to be said for parents explicitly attending to their children's upbringing, something …
Humanizing Education and the Educationalization of Health
A bstract Theorists often take a condescending stance when speaking about the educationalization of social problems. Given their confidence with postmodern and poststructuralist perspectives, the educationalization of social problems is easily perceived as a set of questionable interventions by governments into educational practices. In this essay, Bert Lambeir and Stefan Ramaekers question the extent to which one can conceive of social problems …
Child Rearing
It is not uncommon to hear parents say in discussions they have with their children ‘Look at it this way’. And called upon for their advice, counsellors too say something to adults with the significance of ‘Try to see it like this’. The change of someone's perspective in the context of child rearing is the focus of this paper. Our interest in this lies not so much in giving an answer to the practical problems that are at stake, but at disentangli…
The Narrative of a Happy Childhood
Educational situations, in the context of the family as well as in the context of the school, can be conceived in terms of power relations. Often the focus of interest is the outcome of the educator's involvement with the child. Though in general the instrumental way of thinking, in which a certain state of human well-being is an end to be reached, has been criticised, it seems to be presupposed by parents who express that what they want is that …
Multicultural education
This article is a discussion of a dominant (and mostly taken-for-granted) discourse of multicultural education (the phrase ‘intercultural education’ is sometimes used). My aim is, simply, to highlight two issues which, I think, are insufficiently dealt with in relation to multicultural education: the observation that differences can be irreconcilable and the idea of change. In the first part of this article, I try to sketch this discourse by givi…
The question of ‘parenting’
Parents as ‘educators’
In this article, we explore to what extent parents should be ‘educators’ of their children. In the course of this exploration, we offer some examples of these practices and ways of speaking and thinking, indicate some of the problems and limitations they import into our understanding of the parent–child relationship, and make some tentative suggestions towards an alternative way of thinking about this relationship
What All Parents Need to Know? Exploring the Hidden Normativity of the Language of Developmental Psychology in Parenting
In this article we focus on how the language of developmental psychology shapes our conceptualisations and understandings of childrearing and of the parent-child relationship. By analysing some examples of contemporary research, policy and popular literature on parenting and parenting support in the UK and Flanders, we explore some of the ways in which normative assumptions about parenthood and upbringing are imported into these areas through the…
But Everything is Against Us Here’
Noddings’s radical choice for a particular stance in life is both what makes Happiness and Education a thought-provoking book and what also leads me to have some reservations. First, I briefly outline some of these reservations and focus on what I think are two important difficulties Happiness and Education faces: firstly, the fact that Noddings’s choice for a particular conception of the good is likely to run into resistance and even incomprehen…
Parents need to become independent problem solvers’
This paper aims to contribute to recent critical work on the current parenting culture. It does so by a critical reading of the individual words/parts of the sentence ‘Parents need to become independent problem solvers’ – a characteristic phrase of ‘Triple P’, a parenting programme that has recently been implemented as a form of parenting support in a number of countries. The paper aims (1) to bring out and expose some of the worrying features of…
Infants, childhood and language in Agamben and Cavell
In this paper we explore a new way to deal with social inequality and injustice in an educational way. We do so by offering a particular reading of a scene taken from Minnelli's film The Band Wagon which is often regarded as overly western-centred and racist. We argue, however, that the way in which words and movements in this scene function are expressive of an event that can be read as a new beginning and that it is for this reason in and of it…
The Family as a “Gathering
Despite the obvious importance of “family” in people’s everyday lives, there is little consensus on what family is. Nevertheless, every answer to the question has important (social, political, legal) consequences. In our research we do not set out from a substantial description of what “family” is. We shift from top-down perspectives on what the family is (or should be) according to some description of it, to concrete socio-material practices tha…
Old and new generations in the 21st century
(Introduction to INPE Special Issue)
Love for the World in Education
In my response, I will not go into the manifesto as such, or as a whole. I will limit myself to responding to the authors’ claim that “[w]hen we truly love the world, our world, we must be willing to pass it on to the new generation,” which is a refer-ence to (a short transcription of ) Hannah Arendt’s (by now, I guess) famous passage where she brings together education and love for the world: “Education is the point at which we decide whether we…
Love for the World in Education
Parenting apps and the depoliticisation of the parent
In educational research, digital technology has received considerable attention, and in early childhood studies this has largely focused, understandably, on children. Our concern here is with the figure of the parent and on a specific digital technology – apps designed for parents. While apps can be seen as a digital extension of existing information and advice that has proliferated in the turn to parenting, and exhibits many of the characteristi…
Understanding children's spatiality in cancer care environments
Conversations between procedural and situated ethics
2019). Conversations between procedural and situated ethics: Learning from video research with children in a cancer care ward. The Design Journal: Vol. 22, Running with Scissors: 13th International Conference of the European Academy of Design, Dundee, 10-12th April, 2019, edited by Louise Valentine, Joanna Bletcher and Leon Cruickshank, pp. 641-654
Digitisation, securitisation, and upbringing
In recent years a tightening of safeguarding legislation and protocols that overlap with anti-terror legislation have given particular shape to discourses and practices of risk management and early intervention, particularly in early childhood education and parenting. Such developments have taken place in a context in which digital technology has become ubiquitous, enabling the role of surveillance in modes of governing to take on new forms. Here…
Response to Alexis Gibbs’ Review of Philosophical Presentations of Raising Children
The Red Fish in a Shoal of Greenish‐Blue Fish? A Critique of the Biomedical Model of Autism Spectrum Disorder
The biomedical model states that autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, called autism spectrum disorder (ASD). In this article, Joyce Leysen, Delphine Jacobs, and Stefan Ramaekers argue that this is a narrow way of looking at autism and, further, that the biomedical view has implications for our understanding of parenthood and circumscribes the pedagogical agency of parents of children diagnosed with ASD. The authors adopt a critical stance tow…
Psychology (23 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Social Psychology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Pedagogy (9 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works)