Silvia Edling graduated as a primary school teacher (years 1-7) of Swedish and civics and later followed a teacher training programme in history and English. Since 2003 she has worked as a teacher educator, first of all at Uppsala University (graduate student/lecturer) and then as a lecturer in education at the University of Gävle. Edling defended her PhD thesis at Uppsala University in 2009, which was entitled Ruptured narratives. An analysis of the contradictions in young people’s responses to issues of personal responsibility and social violence in an educational context. The thesis highlighted young people’s sense of responsibility for others. From a curriculum perspective, the aim of the thesis was to acquire an in-depth understanding of the prerequisites for working with ethics, equal treatment and bullying in education.

In her role as an associate professor at Uppsala University, Edling was able to both broaden and deepen her research in areas such as history didactics/didaktik, policy/convention on children’s rights, democracy issues in teacher training, the teaching profession and leadership and maintain her original interest in democracy, ethics and social justice.

She writes that:

One of the challenges that we face now is not to fall into the simplistic black/white thinking that often characterises today’s debate (Lukacs, 2005), where there is a tendency to adopt extreme positions without taking the multifaceted knowledge of the field into account. This could be a one-sided focus on practice or theory, and knowledge or values/emancipation in education. What is instead needed is to create bridges between theory/science and practice, since everything we do in practice is based on ideas. This link needs to be made more visible in order to change and improve the practice. What is more, communities do not only need confident individuals, but also those with the necessary knowledge to address societal challenges. The space between either poles can be understood as a complex and existential difficult place where neat solutions are elusive. It can be tempting to ignore the opposition, allow others to think or lead or aggressively annihilate that which is perceived as difficult or complicated. The question to be asked is therefore: How can we stand in this space where the secure and insecure meet and help each other to deal with the challenges with the aid of the rich flora of scientifically-based knowledge that already exists? This is where my main contribution and commitment to the field lies.