Knowing Enough to Act: The Educational Implications of a Critical Social Justice Approach to Difference

Session Submission Type: Invited Session

Abstract

Is ‘knowing’ a moral question? Ought ‘knowing’ to have moral consequences and entailment? When does one ‘know enough’? Does ‘knowing’ demand ‘acting’? What does this mean for the classroom, for pedagogy and for what we teach? Flowing from these questions two sub-questions are pursued in this session. The first focuses on dominant forms of ‘knowing’ with regard to questions of social difference. It asks whether dominant forms of ‘knowing’ are complicit in the mal-distribution of life opportunities and if they are to suggest alternative ways in which we in education might respond and especially in what we teach and how we teach. The second begins more provisionally and says that if our dominant forms of ‘knowing’ with respect to social difference are not problematic by themselves, what would we need to be doing to make them more responsive to our commitment to social justice? The discussion draws on experience of teaching, researching and our broader social engagements in the educational contexts of the United States, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil and South Africa.

Sub Unit

• Presidential Session

Chair

• Crain A. Soudien, University of Cape Town

Participants

• Sarada Balagopalan, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India

• Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, University of Oulu

• Crain A. Soudien, University of Cape Town