Reconciliation and Pedagogy : Practical, Theoretical and Philosophical Considerations

Reconciliation is one of the most significant contemporary challenges in the world today. In this innovative new volume, educational academics and practitioners across a range of cultural and political contexts examine the links between reconciliation and critical pedagogy, putting forward the notion that reconciliation projects should be regarded as public pedagogical interventions, with much to offer to wider theories of learning.

While ideas about reconciliation are proliferating, few scholarly accounts have focused on its pedagogies. This book seeks to develop a generative theory that properly maps reconciliation processes and works out the pedagogical dimensions of new modes of narrating and listening, and effecting social change. The contributors build conceptual bridges between the scholarship of reconciliation studies and existing education and pedagogical literature, bringing together the concepts of reconciliation and pedagogy into a dialogical encounter and evaluating how each might be of mutual benefit to the other, theoretically and practically.

This study covers a broad range of territory including ethnographic accounts of reconciliation efforts, practical implications of reconciliation matters for curricula and pedagogy in schools and universities and theoretical and philosophical considerations of reconciliation/pedagogy. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of peace and reconciliation studies, educational studies and international relations.

Pal Ahluwalia is Pro Vice Chancellor and Vice President of Education Arts and Social Sciences at the University of South Australia. He is the author many books and articles and was appointed a UNESCO Chair in Transnational Diasporas and Reconciliation Studies in 2008. He is a Fellow or the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. His most recent book is Out of Africa: Post-structuralism’s Colonial Roots published with Routledge. He is the co-editor of three Routledge journals: Social Identities, African Identities and Sikh Formations.

Stephen Atkinson was an Academic Researcher working in the School of Education at the University of South Australia. His research interests include Popular music venues and audiences, Memory and cultural history, Australian and Asian media, Audio-visual culture, and Psycho-geography.

Peter Bishop is Associate Professor in the School of Communication, International Studies & Languages at the University of South Australia. He has researched extensively on the topics of hope, imagination, reconciliation and place. He has also published widely on the complex cultural and psychological aspects of the exchange between western cultures and non-western religions such as Buddhism. Author of five books his recent publications include: "The Shadow of Hope: Reconciliation & Imaginal Pedagogies", in Pedagogies of the Imagination: Mythopoetic Curriculum in Educational Practice, eds. Timothy Leonard & Peter Willis, Springer; "To Witness and Remember: Mapping Reconciliation Travel", in Travel Writing, Form and Empire, eds. Julia Kuehn and Paul Smethurst, Routledge.

Pam Christie is Professor of Education at the University of Canberra, Australia, and holds the UNESCO Chair in Teacher Education for Diversity and Development at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, where she was formerly Dean of Education. She has worked on post-apartheid education policy, as well as on school development and change, leadership, curriculum and pedagogy, and reconciliation.

Robert Hattam is an Associate professor in the School of Education at the University of South Australia. His research focuses on teachers’ work, critical and reconciliation pedagogies, refugees, and socially just school reform. His book projects include; Schooling for a Fair Go, Teachers' Work in a Globalising Economy, and Dropping Out, Drifting Off, Being Excluded: Becoming Somebody Without School and Awakening-Struggle: Towards a Buddhist Critical Theory.

Julie Matthews is Director of Research in the Faculty of Social Sciences and Associate Director of the Sustainability Research Centre. Her background is in education, cultural studies and sociology and her work brings socio-cultural perspectives to bear on a broad range of contemporary issues and problems. Research interests include reconciliation, critical pedagogy, sustainability and education, animal studies, international education, and visual research.