Editorial: Pedagogy in the North: shifting concepts and common expressions

The articles contained in this special edition of Education in the North could be said to have emerged over a concentrated period. The genesis of this collected work was generously funded by the Scottish Government under their Arctic Connections Scheme (Scottish Government, 2019). Submitted by collaborators from the University of Lapland (Professor Tuija Turunen), the Arctic University in Tromsø (Professor Gry Paulgaard), the University of Aberdeen (Drs Helen Martin, Kirsten Darling-McQuistan, Liz Curtis), the University of the Highlands and Islands (Professor Morag Redford), and the University of Strathclyde (Dr Paul Adams), the funds received supported thirty Initial Teacher Education (ITE) tutors from across Scotland to explore the principles of Arctic Pedagogy for their work. Four Arctic Pedagogy experts (Professor Gry Paulgaard, Professor Tuija Turunen, Professor Hermína Gunnþórsdóttir, and Associate Professor Kalpana Vijayavarathan) provided excellent stimulus for participants to spend time considering the work they undertake to assist soon-to-be teachers to reflect on matters such as: how metrocentric views of children, young people, and pedagogy position all in the education process; the need to re-examine what is meant by living, working, and studying ‘from the centre’ (indeed, where is the centre?); and the ways and means by which what we say and do is always positioned by our status as ‘resident’, ‘immigrant’, etc. Such conversations are prescient in a contemporary world preoccupied by attacks on those already marginalised, challenges to the planet’s ecosystem, capitalist exercises in profiteering at the expense of most of the world’s population, and ever rightwards shifting political and social narratives that seek not to support people to live with and in communities of care, but rather which extort the objective isolation of those deemed ‘different’.