Finding joy on the way: shared journeys in education [Editorial]

Abstract

As we cross through the first quarter-century mark of our new millennium, we find ourselves, as educators, entrenched in a landscape of ever moving standards, fighting the battles of ever more sociopolitical stakeholders, while constantly being bombarded by the needs of the next new system, the next new talking points, the next new pedagogy. The field of practice is ever more dotted with academic landmines for teachers to navigate, while data driven instruction initiatives and accountability policies in the name of rigor afford many teachers less curricular movement than ever before. It is safe to say, both critically and anecdotally, the profession, at every level, is exhausted. This plays out in the numbers both entering and leaving the profession, which in many countries has reached disparities that are borderline catastrophic (Domović and Drvodelić, 2025; Lindqvist et al., 2022; Magni, 2025; Nguyen et al., 2024; Rahimi and Arnold, 2025), with UNESCO via the United Nations currently estimating “an urgent need for 44 million primary and secondary teachers worldwide by 2030” (UNESCO, 2025). The work, for so many of those who remain, has become work of fear, frustration, and futility; the love is dwindling, the joy is gone.

This statement is not hyperbolic. Beyond being felt deeply by this core of editors, a surge of academic investigation into joy in education post-COVID simultaneously recognizes the degradation of joy in contemporary classrooms and systems and the essential role that joy plays in both teaching and learning. Multiple collections of essays have been published since this special issue put out its call in late 2024 that specifically examine joy in our global pedagogies, an example of which can be found in Joy-Centered Pedagogy in Higher Education, edited by Eileen Kogl Camfield and published by Routledge in the middle of 2025. As part of the pre-title, multi-author foreword, Stommel addresses, in one stroke, many of the above highlighted concerns: “Teaching is deeply human work. This book is an antidote to all the forces in education that would have us forget that… we can refuse the narrative that we must suffer to do something good for our students” (see Camfield, p.ii). Camfield herself, in her formal foreword in the same work, suggests we “take another look at joy – joy not as fluffy ‘feel goodism,’ but as the tough fiber that binds community together and weaves a net that catches those who might otherwise fall” (p.xiv). This special issue is Education in the North’s (accidentally) well-timed contribution to that call.