Conference Program

Educational democracy is central to understanding how justice and participation are practiced within classrooms, particularly in restricted urban environments. The old schools (H2) in Hebron represent a complex model that imposes structural constraints and daily challenges on classroom interactions, making the school more than just a space for the transfer of knowledge, but rather an arena for reproducing democratic meaning in school life.

The study starts from the idea that education and democracy are organically linked. John Dewey (1916/2008) argues that school is a microcosm of democratic life, where experience is built through social interaction and participation. It is also based on Gert Biesta's (2010) distinction between learning as the acquisition of knowledge and education as the process of empowering oneself as a democratic actor capable of emerging and being held accountable. This view is consistent with contemporary literature, which emphasizes that democratic education is achieved through daily practice in the classroom, not just through theoretical discourse (Brunker, 2025).

In light of this, the study seeks to answer the fundamental question: What is the essence of the lived experience of educational democracy among teachers and students in the old schools of Hebron, and how do they reconstruct the meaning of justice and participation within a school space surrounded by urban constraints?

The study is based on a qualitative approach and will target a purposive sample of teachers and students in upper elementary and secondary school who experience daily classroom interactions. The research will combine several data collection tools, including in-depth individual interviews and focus groups that highlight the collective voice of students and teachers, as well as the collection and analysis of reflective writings in which participants reflect on the details of their daily experiences. This data will be analyzed to extract core themes that reveal how meaning is constructed, democracy is produced, and social and spatial constraints are interacted with.

The results are expected to reveal a dialectical tension between external constraints and efforts to build more equitable classroom spaces, where teachers develop pedagogical strategies that promote recognition and participation, and students redefine their school attendance as a daily exercise in democratic agency.

The importance of this study lies in reframing the understanding of education in constrained urban environments, as it shifts teachers and students from the position of recipients to that of democratic actors and active participants in the construction of the educational experience. The study offers recommendations to curriculum developers and educational decision-makers on the need to integrate the lived experiences of teachers and students into curriculum design. It also contributes to the international debate on the relationship between learning and democracy in constrained environments, focusing on lived experience as a site for the production of educational meaning and democratic change.