Saturday, February 7, 1998

Session I (571-5)

Session II

3:15 - 3:45

Jaskiran Dhillon (571-5)

Forcasting empowerment and social change

Amanda Benjamin (553-6)

Narrative as discourse

Forcasting empowerment and social change
Jaskiran Dhillon (571-5)

Forecasting Empowerment and Social Change: An Analysis of Anti-Racism Policy and Practice in Education

E-Mail: dhillon@yorku.ca

Having recognized schooling as a form of cultural politics, whereby human experiences are produced, legitimated, and contested within the dynamics of classroom life, current pedagogical efforts, according to many critics, must be reevaluated and transformed in light of the educational system's failure to speak to the heterogeneous and variable nature of human existence.An interesting entry point into contemporary deliberations around educational reform, and derivative political/social change, is anti-racism education.

Anti-racism education is one of the most pervasive, "in vogue," discourses associated with transformative education.Stemming from educational theories of critical pedagogy, anti-racism education strives to rise to the occasion of diversity and difference by calling for a fundamental restructuring of power relations within schools and wider society. As Dei argues, "current calls for 'alternative pedagogies,' 'inclusive curriculum,' and 'representative environments' must be understood as challenges to the hegemonic Euro-centered norms, values and ideas that characterize Canadian schools" (Dei, 1996: 22). According to educators and policy makers committed to an anti-racism agenda for/in schools, schooling must become a site of resistance and empowerment for the oppressed and marginalized, a place where social identity, perceptions of the self, and potential life chances may be negotiated, resisted, and validated.

My presentation will primarily focus on an examination of the theoretical and strategic challenges/contradictions facing anti-racism education.Possible topics of address include the impact of multiculturalism, teacher culture, school organization and administration, student resistance, lack of teacher education, and the anti-oppression movement on the implementation of anti-racism education in elementary and secondary schools.I expect my presentation to consist of a traditional discussion of my research paper followed by a short question/answer session.

The topic of anti-racism education is directly related to the Symposium theme in the sense that it is a response to a new millennium characterized by a rising immigrant student population/culture, accompanied by varying student needs and experiences, and an abundance of racism embedded within institutions of education. My research posits itself as a point of departure in attempting to understand how anti-racism education can move beyondcriticism and challenge to become an applied reality in our educational system.The relevance of this type of work becomes obvious when we consider the importance of community, parental, student, and teacher involvement in producing a more socially aware, equal, and just society for all.Thus, anti-racism educationreflects the need to move the very purpose and definition of education 'beyond the classroom' into the everyday lives of those who comprise and sustain society in the first place.

References

Dei, George.Anti-Racism Education: Theory and Practice.Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 1996.

 

Narrative as discourse
Amanda Benjamin (553-6)

Narrative as discourse: using African narrativesas a literacy tool in western classrooms

Literacy has been thought to be the end result of our education system.The latest critical literature suggests that there is not a 'literacy crisis', but a need for change in process.Now educators are looking at why some children have difficulty with basic literacy skills, and are searching for more effective teaching methods.For young children, learning comes form stories.Stories, or narrative, help teach children basic literacy skills, and these skills can be used as a framework for later learning.In this paper, we suggest that narrative can be translated into a literacy tool because it enables students to learn in their own contexts by bringing informal ways of learning (i.e. home literacy's way) into structured school settings.The importanceof narrative is that it is a sense making tool that children can use in a classroom.South African home literacy is an example for how traditional oral stories teach through narrative.This traditional approach needs to be examined as an alternative method for teaching and leaning in Canadian classrooms.Narrative is an innate part if traditional oral stories, and literacy skill are an important component of learning.

This paper discusses two important questions: What is narrative? How is narrativeused in South Africa? Moreover, we discuss how narrative can be translated into a teaching tool in Canadian classrooms, by using the example of how narrative is used in the teaching of mathematics.Lastly, based on the assumption that children construct knowledge through meaningful experience we stress the importance of making learning contextual.We challenge teachers to rethink their assumptions about how children come to learn language and other subject matter (literacies) and suggest that they look at traditional African home literacy as basis for a new discourse in the Canadian educational system.

This paper illustrates, directly and indirectly, the importance of reciprocity in communication strategies in the field of literacy for an effective participatory development process and for consolidating the gains achieved and the lessons learning from International Development over the past decade.