For the 2020 Evens Education Prize we are looking for inspiration and new ideas to foster the motivation and abilities to think critically about social questions.

To counteract the fact that practice and research are often two worlds apart, the new Evens Education Prize, Critical Thinking as a Practice of Freedom, invites applications in two categories:

  • Embedded practices that support critical thinking about social questions
  • Scholarly but practice-oriented work that furthers our understanding of practices, pedagogies, curricula or projects that foster critical thinking, and the conditions in which education for critical thinking can thrive

The call is open to a broad variety of practices implemented in institutional and non-institutional spaces by teachers, scholars, students, educators, youth workers, artists, civil society organizations, citizen groups etc. This includes formal, non-formal and community-based education for youth as well as adults.

Selection criteria for jury deliberations

Ideally, the practice or research:

  • understands diversity in its broadest sense, emphasizing differences not only between but also within groups;
  • focuses on both the motivation and the development of intellectual dispositions and abilities to think critically and on the integration of imagination and emotional growth;
  • values the process of thinking and learning together;
  • reflects on the different and sometimes conflicting conceptions of critical thinking held by participants from diverse backgrounds;
  • takes the particularity of each context into account while at the same time working towards the sustainable development of critical thinking ability and motivation across contexts.

The Evens Foundation, aware of the ambitiousness of the criteria, invites candidates who meetsome but not (yet) all of the criteria above, especially if efforts are being made to meet more of these criteria in the future.

Formal criteria (must be fulfilled)

  • Only applicants based and operating in Europe* can participate.
  • Only ongoing or recent (initiated in the past two years) practices and research are eligible.
  • The laureates of the prize must be willing to take part in future projects of the Evens Foundation related to the focus of the prize, in particular regarding the dissemination of the winning practice or research.

If you would like to apply, please read the Call for Applications carefully, download and fill in the Application Form and send it to Marjolein Delvou by 15 March at the latest.

Learn more about the opportunity and apply via the links below.