Dear all friends of the RCEN community,

Looking back on the RCEN conference 2026 in beautiful Surfers Paradise, Australia, I am reminded of what an inspiring gathering it was, filled with creative and engaging presentations and discussions. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to meet both longstanding friends and to make new connections. This year’s RCEN conference has contributed to our continued growth, with new members joining from Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Looking ahead, we are pleased to announce that the 2027 conference will be held in Osijek, Croatia—an event we very much look forward to.

Personal Journey

My personal journey in the relational field has always accompanied me throughout my years as a teacher and special educational needs teacher. From my very first years in the profession, I understood the importance of creating trusting relationships with my students—but at that time, it was more of an intuitive sense, and I did not yet have the language to articulate the relational dimension.

Later, when I began working as an advisor at the Swedish National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools, I met many students facing significant challenges across the country. They consistently emphasized one crucial aspect: the importance of feeling safe with their teacher. The students pointed out specific teachers who were able to create secure and trusting relationships, and these teachers became the focus of my doctoral study (Ljungblad, 2023b). I explored the relational dimension of the teaching profession and followed their work closely using video recordings. Through a micro-ethnographic study, I was able to describe how these teachers create trusting relationships over time. The findings highlight the teachers’ pedagogically tactful stance, showing how they manage even the most complex classroom situations without placing the burden of these challenges on the students.

In another ethnographic study, I explored the relational dimension of the school leadership profession, where I shadowed a highly successful principal over the course of a year. The findings describe a pedagogically tactful balancing act, which I present in articles published in The Routledge International Handbook of Relational Pedagogy (Ljungblad, 2026a, 2026b, 2026c).

Relational Pedagogy and Key Concepts

As a researcher within the field of inclusive education, my point of departure rests on pluralism and diversity, acknowledging that we are all different. I am inspired by Biesta (2009), who emphasizes the importance of subjectification—a dimension concerned with how young people can emerge as subjects and how their beginnings are taken up by teachers. This concerns the relational nature of relationships. The concept of relationality refers to how relationships are not merely something that exists between individuals, but rather something that is created and takes shape within the encounter itself. The interaction is dynamic and reciprocal, expressed through, for example, gaze, facial expressions, tone of voice, and responsiveness. For teachers, engaging in this work is both an educational responsibility and a pathway they must actively choose.

In developing a relational theoretical perspective, Pedagogical Relational Teachership (PeRT) (Ljungblad, 2021), I further elaborate on how relational pedagogy is ontologically grounded in the idea that relationships between people constitute a fundamental prerequisite for human life and for children’s growth in educational environments. At its core, relational pedagogy is based on an understanding of human beings as inherently relational and of teaching as a relational process (Bingham & Sidorkin, 2004). It is a perspective on teaching that places the relationships between teachers and students at the very center of the educational process. Educators who embrace relational pedagogical work need knowledge and proficiencies to enable all students to “come into presence,” which has practical implications.

Practical Implications

During the recent decades, there has been increasing interest in how teachers can develop relational proficiencies. One of the most prominent challenges that teachers face in today’s schools is how to create and maintain trustful interpersonal relationships with students. An essential part of subjectification can be traced back to how teachers relate to their students in complex dilemma situations. Such relationships acknowledge the child as someone, enabling the child to become somebody, because without a sense of self, the child is voiceless. In that moment, the child brings something radically new into the world, it is essential that teachers acknowledge the student’s uniqueness. By supporting these qualities, educators can cultivate relational proficiencies to take up the challenges of relational pedagogy. Therefore, I developed PeRT’s nuanced relational taxonomy (Ljungblad, 2023b). The Key Indicator Taxonomy of Relational Teachership is a pragmatic tool that can be applied in practice by in-service and pre-service teachers, and researchers to cultivate the relational proficiencies of teachers in the twenty-first century.

Reflections

In my attempt to outline a relational pedagogy that embraces difference, I recognize that significant challenges lie ahead. Through educational relationships, students are included in a wider web of relations. As Hinsdale and I (2023) underscore, one of the key challenges in our ongoing work within RCEN is the following: Given shifting global demographics, we seek to further delineate central concepts in relational pedagogy, while keeping a strong focus on what it means to develop pedagogical relationships across difference.

Future Directions

Relational pedagogy is the practice of placing meaningful relationships at the very center of teaching. Sidorkin (2023) highlights one of our core challenges - that the relational dimension is often regarded as the “dark matter” of education. It is here that we encounter resistance from many other theoretical fields. However, new empirical research on relational pedagogy will continue to enrich and deepen our relational understanding of education. One day, I hope to see relational pedagogy integrated into mandatory teacher education worldwide.

The beauty of the RCEN community lies in its diversity. At the same time, we are united by a shared commitment to the relational core of education - a lived stance with the potential to contribute to sustainable development and to foster collaboration toward health and well-being.

Finally, readers now have access to The Routledge International Handbook of Relational Pedagogy, which brings together a wide range of insightful contributions from different continents, offering new knowledge and perspectives that inspire us in multiple directions.

Thank you for your curiosity and dedication to our network!

Warmly, Ann-Louise

President, RCEN

References

Biesta, G. (2009). “Good education in an Age of Measurement. On the need to reconnect with the question of purpose in education.” Educational Assessment, Evaluation & Accountability, 21(1), 33–46.

Bingham, C., & Sidorkin, A. M. (Eds.). (2004). No education without relation. Peter Lang.

Hinsdale, M. J., & Ljungblad, A-L. (2023) “Relational Pedagogy.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Ed. George Noblit. Oxford University Press.

Ljungblad, A.-L., & Sidorkin, A. M. (2026a). Introduction to a global conversation. In A.-L. Ljungblad, M. Moe, L. O’Toole, I. Rinne, & A. M. Sidorkin, (Eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Relational Pedagogy: An invitation to a global conversation. Routledge.

Ljungblad, A.-L. (2026b). Distributed leadership: Five phases of trust and vulnerability. In A.-L. Ljungblad, M. Moe, L. O’Toole, I. Rinne, & A. M. Sidorkin, (Eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Relational Pedagogy: An invitation to a global conversation. Routledge.

Ljungblad, A.-L. (2026c). The relational dimension of the school leader profession: A tactful balancing act. In A.-L. Ljungblad, M. Moe, L. O’Toole, I. Rinne, & A. M. Sidorkin, (Eds), The Routledge International Handbook of Relational Pedagogy: An invitation to a global conversation. Routledge.

Ljungblad, A-L. (2023a). Key Indicator Taxonomy of Relational Teaching, Journal of Education for Teaching, 49(5), 785–797.

Ljungblad, A-L. (2023b). The Relational Dimension of the Teaching Profession. Peter Lang.

Ljungblad, A-L. (2021). Pedagogical Relational Teachership (PeRT) – a multi-relational perspective, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 25(7), 860–876.

Sidorkin, A. M. (2023). Pedagogy of relation: Education after reform. Routledge.