VIRTUAL HYBRID PANEL: Challenging dominant narratives on education in South Asia: Imagining collective futures

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session (English)

Proposal

The panel brings together studies that investigate how education is understood, delivered and perceived in South Asia in the current times. It highlights the structural inequalities throughout various kinds of formal and informal education systems across different countries in the region and what this means for the future of humans and the planet. Furthermore, we bring into question the imbalance in power relations and political dynamics that perpetuate dominant narratives within non-profit, formal and non- formal education as well as invisible indigenous knowledge. Scholars in the panel call for a reconfiguration of the relationship between human and earth while paying close attention to the intersection of education and inequity amongst marginalized populations that continue to be affected by coloniality, subjugation, and exploitation.

UNICEF (2019) recognizes South Asia as a region vulnerable to natural hazards, political instability and civil strife, and reports that in South Asia alone, about 20.6 million children are out of school or at the lower secondary level. Apart from these, millions of children complete their primary education without mastering the foundational skills of basic numeracy and literacy. Dominant literature and research studies on South Asian education and literacy focus on legislations involving the right to education. Specifically, the situation is quite bleak when it comes to the taint attached with the field of social sciences in Pakistan, and the social stigma attached to disability, and lower castes in the Indian society. However, the sad reality remains that a majority of the current projects on intervention are only planned with an intent to provide equity and access to the citizens of the target country. Unfortunately, this mainly serves to inflate short term numeric goals and create an illusion of ‘positive impact’ without addressing deeper systemic issues that affect populations of refugee and terrorism affected students, English language learners, Indigenous and/or displaced people, Dalit students, children with disability and faculty in the field of social sciences.

The panel holds importance in the current times where the neoliberal agenda of the state still dominates the practices, policies and perspectives on education, and uses all sorts of barriers to create and reproduce systems of oppression. Such an agenda of the state and its agents requires an urgent consideration in order to rid ourselves of this vicious cycle while making our way to a complex yet collective future. The panel does so by bringing together research carried out with a variety of participants such as the English language graduate learners of Karachi, indigenous and displaced population of Central India, Dalit high school students in South India, children with special needs in India, refugee and terrorism affected students in Pakistan, and doctoral faculty in public universities in Pakistan. The research designs used in each of the studies ensure rigour and authenticity as these reflect data gathered through a variety of methods such as systematic literature review of policies, government reports and documents, semi-structured interviews, and textual analysis of laws related to education. Also, the panel presents analyses using a variety of theoretical frameworks such as Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of field, social capital, and reproduction, global governance, Marxist feminism, critical theory and social justice lens. These are the guiding frameworks used to interpret the laws, policies and literature that govern educational leadership, practices, and policies for the target population.

The panel argues that due to increasing globalization and interconnectivity between people, societies and countries, a post-human future must be inclusive and interdisciplinary for all. Our panel demonstrates the current complexity of the state of education and proposes next steps across public schools, higher education, non-formal education, and indigenous education. The panel does so by asking broad questions like: What kind of future are we creating for the human species through education? And, how do current structural inequalities shape this future? What is the role of the policies of the UN, of the state? On a broader level, what lies beneath the conceptualization of post-human futures in times that will necessarily be dominated by technical advancements?

Considering that CIES serves as a strong global platform for exchanging intercultural, comparative, and international perspectives on educational problems, practices, and policies, the aim of the session presenters is to problematize the suppressed voices of vulnerable communities in South Asia. By mobilizing contextual knowledge and literature, the session emphasizes the intersection of the politics of education, the state, and several oppressed populations, the present and future of whom, is co-dependent on the future of the Earth. This intersectionality is examined from the lens of the lived experiences, local knowledge, and scholarly work of South Asian researchers.

The panel proposes a range of recommendations based on their studies as researchers positioned within the communities in South Asia. The envisioning of the future beyond the capitalist, neoliberal and inequitable present towards a frame of social justice will entail the revival of commons and community. We also call for a decolonized approach to education that values diversity in pedagogy and does not standardize ways of learning, knowing, and being, rather includes innovative practices such as art-based pedagogies. We also reflect on learning and literacy in organic settings emphasizing the resurgence of indigenous ways of knowing, cultural praxis, and local languages. The session also explores the use of technology, specifically, the use of AI for learning amongst children with disabilities.

We, as a panel, believe the paradox of ‘scarcity and accumulation’ which dominates individuals in a capitalist world, and collectively hounds the human race. The logic of grabbing wealth, resources, and knowledge by a few is not, unfortunately, yet a thing of the past. It is still a dominant process that manifests itself in education, climate change and rapid natural resource depletion. We emphasize the interconnectedness of these processes as well as highlight the ways to understand and impact the present and future of humanity on/and the planet.

Sub Unit

• Virtual Conference

Cosponsor

• South Asia SIG

Chair

• Caroline Manion, University of Toronto

Individual Presentations

• Adult (Il) literacy, commons and the state: The future of humans and the forests of Central India - Asmita Bhutani, University of Toronto

• Education through dialogue and the arts: A pedagogy of resilience as resistance for India’s Dalits (‘lowest caste’) - Prerana Bhatnagar, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - University of Toronto

• Equitable access to education in India for children with special needs, in the (post) human future - Payal Khazanchi, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - University of Toronto

• The state of refugee children education in Pakistan: Insights, barriers, and aspirations - Neelofer Ahmed, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - University of Toronto

• Learning English and doing a graduate degree in Karachi, Pakistan: An interface between students’ double success, decolonization and critical pragmatism - Sarfaroz Niyozov, OISE University of Toronto; Alison Smith, University of Toronto

• Structural inequality in education – As experienced by the Ph.D. faculty in Social Sciences in Pakistan - Shahrman Khattak, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education - University of Toronto

Discussant

• Kathy Bickmore, OISE, University of Toronto