The Contact Zone as a Frame for Critical Pedagogy?

• In Event: Critical (Post)colonial Pedagogies of the Contact Zone

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to make a case for researching hopeful sites of cross-cultural negotiation as resources for rethinking pedagogies for justice, or critical pedagogy, that make a difference for Indigenous communities.

This paper works with ‘critical pedagogy’ as a conceptual framework that is understood as a significant educational movement that is neither monolithic nor coherent, and one that is open to ongoing reflexivity. ‘Critical pedagogy’ as an educational movement can also be understood in terms of an ongoing conceptual reinvigoration from various theoretical sources and sites of empirical research. This paper especially foregrounds the ‘contact zone’ as a conceptual framework for understanding contemporary Indigenous struggles against old and new forms of colonisation and also as a new framework for thinking about pedagogies for justice.
Specifically, this paper draws on research into reconciliation and pedagogy (Hattam & Matthews 2010) as an example of a site of hope and resilience, that are defined in these terms: the refusal by marginalised peoples to accept the conditions of their subordination (Bloch 1976; Freire 1996); for healing after loss or trauma (Simon, Rosenberg et al. 2000); and for forming possibilities for a different, better future (Halpin 2007). Such sites focus both on a hope (Zournazi 2002) that is wounded, tentative, and fragile, where any outcome can seem far removed and perhaps unrealistic, plus on what has been called ‘robust hope’, one which goes beyond ‘wishful yearning’ (Halpin 2003, p.2) and focuses on ‘the possibility of realization within present social conditions’ (Singh and Han 2007, pp. 257-8). From such a perspective, hope is ‘framed in a language of practical possibilities’ (McInerney 2007, p. 258).
The paper will also outline briefly research into the contact zone around Ngarrindjeri Nation, (S.E. Australia). The contact zone for Ngarrindjeri nation—in understood as a set of interconnected sites: (A) sites in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples are negotiating about significant issues and especially caring for country, community leadership and governance, and economic development; (B) sites of contestation over the management, ownership and representation of cultural knowledge such as museums; (C) the public culture; and, (D) sites of engagement in transnational Indigenous social movements across the Pacific Rim. The paper borrows from Smith’s (1999) ‘decolonising methodologies’ and hence: (i) aims to unsettle deficit and victim constructions of Indigenous peoples; (ii) is interested in the processes of translation, articulation and negotiation that are going on in the contact zone, by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants; (iii) practices reflexivity that is sensitive to the complex matrix of existing representations of being Indigenous and non-Indigenous in Australia.
The paper proposes using Lusted’s (1986) theory of pedagogy as a frame for analysis. Using Lusted, ‘Western’ pedagogy is understood in terms of the relationships between the teacher, student and knowledge. Out of this encounter identity is also constituted (Cummins 2003). Considering pedagogies in the contact zone, using Lusted, demands rethinking the relationship between teacher and student, whose knowledge, and the ways we understand identity work.

Authors

• Robert James Hattam, University of South Australia

• Julie M. Matthews, University of the Sunshine Coast