Attention and education

In the twentieth century, sociologists and economists began to speak of our economy as an attention economy (Citton, 2017: 5ff.). At the heart of this economy lies the scarce resource of our attention, and this is what sellers are competing for with ever more sophisticated means (Franck, 2019: 13). In fact, beyond attracting our attention in order to sell goods, sellers use attractive goods to capture – and sell – our attention. We pay for many things we consume through various media with the attention we spend on advertisements that frame and interrupt the show, programme, or whatever we were enjoying. Big tech companies have become experts at creating technology that arrests and holds people’s attention. The smartphone and the ‘social’ media it channels is currently the ultimate example, and (young) people’s addiction to it demonstrates its producers’ success in captivating their attention (Coughlan, 2019; Giansanti, 2025).

            The attention economy – or more broadly the attentional ecology today’s society offers (Citton, 2017) – comes with educational implications. According to our experience educators tend to see the educational problem it poses in terms of competition: students’ attention is a battleground, and teachers’ efforts to draw and direct students’ attention have to compete with those of big tech. The attention needed in and for education is distracted, even held captive, by smartphones and social media. But here the importance of attention is still seen as instrumental only. Attention is a scarce resource and a means to accomplish educational ends. The problem of smartphone and social media addiction should also help us to look beyond this, however, because what we see here is not just that attention we would rather see devoted to educational activities is spent on something else, but that students lack control over their attention. The problem with attention is at the same time a problem with autonomy and agency, concepts – and values – generally considered to lie at the heart of education. As Ergas (2016, 2017) argued, attention lies at the heart of autonomy and agency. It is therefore not just a means to accomplish educational ends, but also an end, a capacity (or suite of capacities) worth cultivating in education for its importance in life rather than for ‘learning’ only – a point also argued for in different ways by Jiddu Krishnamurti and Simone Weil, among others (Krishnamurti, 2024; Weil, 1986; see Lewin, 2014).

            The purpose of this research lab is to explore the educational importance of attention further. The focus will not lie on the question what teachers should direct students’ attention to (i.e. the object of attention), which would lead us to the familiar question as to the contents and justification of the curriculum, but on questions pertaining to attention as such: what kinds of attention should we try to cultivate in education, and for what purpose? How does attention relate to autonomy, agency, and ultimately human flourishing? How and why should attention have the transformative potential claimed for it? And how should educational practices relate to the attentional ecology offered by today’s mediatized societies, and what attentional ecology should educators and educational institutions themselves strive to offer?

Engaging with questions such as these requires that we reflect on the nature(s) of attention itself before we focus on its educational importance (though it may also prove helpful to approach the phenomenon – or phenomena – of attention through how they manifest in educational situations). Hence, the research lab will consist of the following three sessions.

Outline of the sessions

1.     What is attention?

Date: Tuesday, 22 September 2026

Time: 15:30 CET

Readings:

·      Watzl, S. (2011b). The nature of attention. Philosophy Compass 6(11): 842-853.

·      McGilchrist, I. (2019). Ways of attending: How our divided brain constructs the world. Routledge.

2.     Attention as the central ‘act’ in, or aim of, education

Date: TBD via doodle

Time: 

Readings:

·      Ingold, T. (2025). For attention. In: Old ways, new people: Anthropology and/as education (2nd ed.) (pp. 23-45). Routledge.

·      Weil, S. (1986). Prerequisite to dignity of labour. In: Simone Weil: An anthology (pp. 265-276) Ed. and intr. S. Miles. Virago Press Limited.

·      Lewin, D. (2014). Behold: Silence and attention in education. Journal of Philosophy of Education 48(3): 355-369.

3.     Attention as key to the good life

Date: TBD via doodle

Time:

Readings:

·      Ergas, O. (2016). Attention please: Positioning attention at the center of curriculum and pedagogy. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 31(2): 66-81.

·      Elvis, L. (2023). Attentiveness, qualities of listening and the listener in the community of philosophical inquiry. Childhood & Philosophy 19: 1-22.

References

Citton, Y. (2014). The ecology of attention. Polity.

Coughlan, S. (2019). Smartphone ‘addiction’: Young people ‘panicky’ when denied mobiles. https://www.bbc.com/news/education-50593971.

Ergas, O. (2016). Attention please: Positioning attention at the center of curriculum and pedagogy. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing 31(2): 66-81.

Ergas, O. (2017). Reconstructing ‘education’ through mindful attention: Positioning the mind at the center of curriculum and pedagogy. Palgrave Macmillan.

Franck, G. (2019) [1998]. Ökonomie der Aufmerksamkeit: Ein Entwurf. Carl Hanser Verlag.

Giansanti, D. (2025). Smartphone addiction in youth: A narrative review of systematic evidence and emerging strategies. Psychiatry International 2025, 6, 118: https://doi.org/10.3390/psychiatryint6040118.

James, W. (1899). Talks to teachers on psychology: And to students on some of life’s ideals. Henry Holt and Company.

Krishnamurti, J. (2024). On education. Krishnamurti Foundation India.

Lewin, D. (2014). Behold: Silence and attention in education. Journal of Philosophy of Education 48(3): 355-369.

Weil, S. (1986). Prerequisite to dignity of labour. In: Simone Weil: An anthology (pp. 265-276) Ed. and intr. S. Miles. Virago Press Limited.

Background

The guiding idea of this research lab (i.e. a short series of online seminars), which is part of the project Expanding Consciousness in Education – East, West, North and South. Towards a Global Philosophy of Education (GlobalPhilEd), is to establish a genuinely global practice of philosophy of education aiming at an actual collaborative engagement between the substantive positions developed in different traditions focusing on concrete philosophical problems. In doing so our aim is to practice global philosophy as a collaborative explorative enterprise that deals with concrete philosophical issues and concepts and to better understand the methodological (meta-)philosophical issues this involves. To make adequate philosophical sense of the phenomenon of attention and its relationships to education, as the topic of our second research lab, we thus hope to draw on the plurality of philosophical traditions in the world in order to better understand the different varieties of attention and their educational value. 

Requirements for registration

This research lab will be structured as three sessions (each 2,5 hours long) that will encourage active participation of participants during sessions, as well as in collaboratively thinking about the self and its different dimensions from the perspective of different traditions of the Philosophy of Education. This collaborative philosophical initiative provides a unique opportunity to engage with international colleagues on a central topic in the Global Philosophy of Education, that currently enjoys increasing attention. The results of our discussion may – if participants are interested – be published in different forms and via different outlets, such as joint (i.e. by two or more participants) written journal papers (or paper proposals), blog texts, or an edited volume.

As this is a collaborative effort, we request that you sign up only if you anticipate attending all three sessions and are able to engage with the project in between sessions. 

In order to register please briefly indicate the specific research interests related to Philosophy of Education (or related fields) and share some general ideas that you have concerning the topic of the self and education. You will receive the texts as well as the zoom links after registration.

For registration please contact: [email protected].