IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION A

Abstract

This is the story of three courses developed to provide non-western worldviews to graduate students, faculty, and administrators at an Italian Technical University. The narration covers the making of the courses, their delivery and follow up. Participants encountered a series of scenarios within academia, but not only, meant to challenge their own frameworks. The goal was that participants realize how certain dominant western knowledge patterns conditioned their everyday thinking – jeopardizing critical reflection and, hence, subjecting their critical thinking to dominant ways of being and knowing. The bottom line: with one dominant framework always hanging over their heads even a simple exercise of “putting oneself in the shoes of others” was futile, not much more than a vicarious “thrill” as soon as they went back to the comfort of a dominant way of being and knowing. The course sought to counteract dominant patterns by enabling participants to repeatedly make connections among different worldviews. These connections would then become the neural basis for a way of being and knowing that favors the conjunction “and” over “or” to foster cultural juxtaposition as in water and oil as opposed to water or oil. Initially, participants felt the proposed approach was counterintuitive as it meant being at ease with cultural contradiction (the “and” mindset). Dominant knowledge patterns in education tend to embrace the “or” mindset so it is either day or night, zero or one, yes or no, right or wrong. Our story ends with the real but untrue fact of decolonizing the curriculum.