Yesterday I had the opportunity to open an education conference with a keynote that was slightly different from my usual talks. Instead of starting with a body of research, I began with a question that has been occupying me for quite some time: how do we actually think about education?

We have different frameworks. We have different traditions. We have different perspectives. The danger, of course, is that you end up adding yet another framework to the pile. A fair concern. Yet I think this is slightly different.

Many years ago, I decided that I did not want to commit myself to one all-encompassing vision of education. As a result, I ended up somewhere else. Rather than developing a new educational philosophy, I began to consider the lenses we use when discussing educational challenges.

While preparing the keynote, I noticed that many debates in education ultimately return to the same underlying questions. Sometimes the discussion revolves around knowledge. At other times, it focuses on personal development. In some countries, the emphasis is on citizenship, in others on equity. More often than not, several of these concerns are mixed together.

This led me to a deceptively simple 3×3 framework. Not as a new vision of education, but as a possible touchstone for educational visions. A way of checking whether we might be overlooking something important when discussing educational issues.

The first question is why education exists in the first place.

For me, it starts with transmission. Education ensures that each generation does not have to start from scratch. Knowledge, culture, skills and insights are passed on. We stand on the shoulders of giants, as Bernard of Chartres famously suggested in the twelfth century.

But education is also about development. Young people do not automatically develop to their full potential. Education supports their cognitive, social, emotional and moral growth.

And finally, there is participation. Human beings do not live alone. Education prepares young people to participate in communities, culture, democracy and work.

This leads to a second question.

What does education actually do?

Education must, quite simply, teach. It introduces learners to knowledge, skills and insights they do not yet possess.

Education must also educate. Adults consciously take responsibility for supporting the development of the next generation.

But education also guides. Here the initiative increasingly comes from the learner, while the professional supports the learner’s path towards independent participation in society.

A third question? Of course. It is a 3×3 framework after all.

How should education do this?

For me, three conditions matter.

Education should be just. This does not mean giving everyone the same thing. It means giving everyone a fair opportunity for transmission, development and participation.

Education should be responsible. We are entrusted with children and young people for part of their lives. That means educational decisions should be defensible on pedagogical, ethical and scientific grounds. This is where I consciously try to reconcile pedagogy and evidence-informed practice.

And education should be situated. Education never takes place in a vacuum. Age, culture, community, prior knowledge and circumstances always matter.

I already received several interesting questions after the keynote. One of them concerned the place of the transactional element in my framework. Teachers influence students, but students also influence teachers. I largely agree with that observation. My distinction between teaching, educating and guiding is therefore not about whether interaction takes place, but about where the primary intention originates. In teaching, that intention primarily comes from the expert who wants to pass something on. In educating, the adult consciously takes responsibility for the development of the young person. In guiding, the initiative lies more with the learner, while the professional provides support. All three are relational and transactional processes, but they differ in the direction from which the initiative initially comes.

What does this look like in practice?

Once I had sketched the framework, I immediately asked myself a critical question. What about emancipation? Well-being? Freedom? Citizenship?

My tentative answer is that these are important values, outcomes or emphases, but not fundamentally different purposes of education. They derive much of their meaning from the interplay between transmission, development and participation.

The interesting thing about a touchstone is that it can then be applied to very different issues. Take AI. We can ask what young people need to know about AI, how AI affects their development, and how they learn to participate in a society in which AI is increasingly present. Or consider the manosphere. We can examine the knowledge claims being made, questions of identity and development, and the communities to which young people are drawn. The same exercise could be applied to knowledge-rich curricula, the reading crisis, homework, smartphones or educational equity.

I do not claim that this framework provides all the answers. I suspect it helps us to ask better questions. Perhaps more importantly, it helps prevent us from overlooking one dimension of a complex educational issue.

Many debates in education do not become difficult because we lack answers. They become difficult because we often try to answer multiple questions at once. Or, to paraphrase a famous quote often attributed to Kurt Lewin, and one that I first encountered through Marc Spoelders:

Nothing is so practical as a good theory.