Highlighted Session: Decolonising Development in Education: Rethinking, Reframing and Reimagining Possibilities

Group Submission Type: Highlighted Paper Session

Proposal

The role of education in colonialism is central; at the same time, the power of education in historical and contemporary decolonial protest is undeniable. The panel is comprised of NORRAG Senior Fellows, whose conceptual point of departure is that dominant conceptions of development have been premised, even in what we have come to think of as ‘radical’ forms, on problematic ontological and epistemological understandings of who we are as human beings and what we should be aspiring to. The authors come to this panel, firstly, with a sense of deep concern about the state of our planet and its many challenges. Our conceptual point of departure is that dominant conceptions of development have been premised, even in what we have come to think of as ‘radical’ forms, on problematic ontological and epistemological understandings of who we are as human beings and what we should be aspiring to. In this panel, we discuss and debate the concepts of reparation, recuperation, redress, rectification and redistribution. We spar with each other how these terms promote justice and the possibility of futures beyond the conditions of our present dominance. How they might return us to dominance’s classificatory and discursive frameworks or not. Implicitly, as we debate with each other, we grapple with the significatory and even determinative freight of our language. Our purpose, in the clamour and intensity of the arguments surrounding the discussion of development, is to clarify what we could contribute to imagining and making alternative and sustainable futures.

Sub Unit

• Globalization & Education SIG

Chair

• Moira V Faul, NORRAG, Geneva Graduate Institute

Individual Presentations

• Decolonising Development in Education - Moira V Faul, NORRAG, Geneva Graduate Institute

• "Microfragmentos" of reparation and reinvention - Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Western University The University of Western Ontario

• Unlearning development - Iveta Silova, Arizona State University

Discussant

• Kathryn Moeller, University of Cambridge