FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE: DECOLONISING EDUCATION FOR SUSTAINABLE FUTURES
This is a series of three online seminars – please register for each one separately via the links below and read through the confirmation email for details of how to attend
This event is part of the School of Education’s Bristol Conversations in Education research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.
You are invited to a series of events on the topic of decolonising education for sustainable futures. The aim of this series is to consider how ideas about the future of education can benefit from current efforts to decolonise education.
Co-hosted by the UNESCO Chair on Inclusive and Quality Education for All, with the Centre for International Research in Education, EdJAM – Education, Justice and Memory Network and Educational Futures Network, School of Education, University of Bristol.
The idea of sustainable futures lies at the heart of UNESCO’s Futures of Education initiative which aims to reimagine how knowledge and learning can shape the future of humanity and the planet by equipping learners with diverse ways of being and knowing. Yet much of the knowledge, values and skills that we are expected to learn in formal education systems have been Eurocentric in nature. That is to say that they draw primarily on Western frameworks and histories, excluding other ways of conceiving the natural and social world. Protests including those led by the Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, Indigenous and other anti-colonial, anti-racist social movements have called for education to be decolonised and for diverse knowledge systems to be the basis for realising equitable and sustainable futures. These demands have become accentuated in the current crisis. This series is about the importance of recognising epistemic justice as a condition for realising social and environmental justice in and through education and training.
The following overarching questions will guide discussions:
- In what ways are agendas for decolonising education and sustainable futures connected? What are the tensions? What does decolonising education for sustainable futures involve? How should it be conceived and enacted?
- What are the roles and responsibilities of educational organisations/institutions, individuals and civil society stakeholders in decolonising education?
- What forms of repair and reconstruction are required for sustainable futures of education? What are the possibilities for ‘reparative’ justice in and through education, given education’s enduring complicity with coloniality and environmental injustice?
A series of three 1.5 hour online seminars will be convened to address these overarching questions. Using an open, roundtable approach, the seminars aim to bring together policy, practitioner and academic communities and will include a panel of speakers with plenty of time for audience participation in the spirit of dialogue.
From theory to practice: decolonising education for sustainable futures
17 February, 12-13:30 (GMT)
Convenors: Yvette Hutchinson (British Council/ United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training) and Professor Leon Tikly (UNESCO Chair in inclusive, good quality education)
This panel will address how activists and organisations have been reimagining education. Representing different perspectives and nascent and more established practice speakers will demonstrate how they are learning from anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles.
Video clip: Lawrence Hoo, Universal City
Panelists:
- Yvette Hutchinson (British Council);
- Dr Tania Saeed (Lahore University of Management Sciences and author of Reimagining education: student movements and the possibility of a critical pedagogy and feminist praxis)
- Professor Alvin Birdi (Director of the Bristol Institute for Learning and Teaching and convenor of University of Bristol Decolonising Community of Practice)
- Representative of One Bristol Curriculum initiative (TBC)