IN-PERSON MADRID FOCUS ON PEDAGOGY. SECTION A

Abstract

Our current moment is shaped by multiple crises, including genocidal wars, rising global inequalities, and ecological disaster which remains unsolved due to the myth of ‘survival for some’ (Bhattacharyya, 2018) and us-versus-them discourses. For many of us teaching on the social sciences and humanities, this moment has implications for our classrooms and our responsibility to our students as they learn about the world they will inherit. In this paper, I rethink of education as collect-knowledge making and dialogic learning. The essay as academic argument does little to promote listening and compassionate thinking about how others experience the world. Drawing on the work of Audre Lorde (1984/2013) and Sylvia Wynter (2003), I present how, instead, dialogues across difference are central for addressing issues of injustice and building alternative futures. Putting these thinkers in dialogue with concepts of critical pedagogy and education as community (hooks 1994, 1999; Freire 1974; Allman 2010), I explore how the power of difference lies dialogue, discomfort, and listening. Only from that can there then be a possibility for collective knowledge-making. Then, I analyse a case study of using podcasts as a means of embedding dialogue across difference within a module taught on a master’s level interdisciplinary programme. This module, called ‘Racial Capitalism’, addresses sensitive topics that currently are contests in the political space with the rise of the far-right, and this means dialogue can be particularly tumultuous. I present how I set up these projects to be dialogue-focused, from designing to implementing and marking. I reflect on the experience, drawing on student feedback, to consider the possibility for making dialogue a centre value in higher education as a means of collective knowledge-making. My hope (Amsler, 2013) is that this approach offers space for alternative thinking that might begin to offer answers to our present moment.