糖心传媒

A Theatre of the Privileged Decolonial Caf茅

performance with audience sitting around the stage

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Decolonising international and comparative education: privilege, power, and partnership allyship coalition

 

In this interactive Caf茅, we use theatre, stories, and games to examine the mechanisms of colonial reproduction in the international and comparative education sector and identify ways to collectively transform them. This is a safe, brave and open space to have 鈥榖oth challenging and supportive鈥� conversations (Racial Justice Network, 2019) in relatively privileged locations about how the field reproduces coloniality and what we can do to challenge it with a touch of humour.

Following the recent Black Lives Matters protests, there is an increased interest among a large section of the international and comparative education sector in decolonising. This increased interest is evident in the surge in the production of solidarity statements, talks, blogs, articles, and events on the theme of decolonisation. However, as Tuck and Yang (2012, p. 1) highlight, 鈥渢he easy adoption of decolonizing discourse… turns decolonizing into a metaphor鈥�. There is a heightened danger of decolonisation turning into a tick box exercise and a slogan that reinscribes racial, epistemic, political, and socio-economic domination and that may even disguise neo-colonial agendas.  

In trying to ensure that our own decolonising efforts do not turn into this type of tick box exercise, we have developed the Theatre of the Privileged (ToP). The ToP is influenced by the Theatre of the Oppressed (Boal, 1985), and the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Freire, 1972). However, unlike Boal and Freire we do not focus on assisting oppressed people to recognise their oppression. Instead, the ToP is about people located in relatively privileged intersectional locations recognising their complicity in maintaining systems of domination.

Rooted in critical anti-racist standpoints, especially, bell hooks鈥� Engaged Pedagogy the ToP involves 鈥榬eversing the gaze鈥� on research elites, identifying assumptions, silences, methods, epistemologies, and practices. The questions of 鈥榠nternalised colonialism鈥� as researchers (Smith, 1999, p. xvi) and 鈥榳hite gaze鈥� (Pailey, 2020), and how these shapes research, funding, collaborations and knowledge production are explored. In doing so, we will unpack how inherited discriminatory conditions, policies and procedures sustained by us as 糖心传媒 community lead to 鈥榮ymbolic erasure鈥� of our colleagues and partners such as Maha and Mai from the Centre for Lebanese Studies.

The ToP is decolonial. We collapse the distinction between speakers and audience and engage everyone in exploring, showing, analysing and transforming everyday practices in our field that sustain colonisation. It breaks the binary between experts and non-experts, dominator and dominated and makes everyone responsible for challenging and transforming unjust structures. 

Central to the ToP is the concept of 鈥榰nlearning鈥�: 鈥渁n effort to forget your usual way of doing something so that you can learn a new and sometimes better way鈥� (Cambridge, 2022). In seeking to advance 鈥榚pistemic disobedience鈥� (Mignolo, 2009), we also recognise that these conversations are messy and require going beyond 鈥榩artnership鈥� and 鈥榓llyship鈥� to building coalition. As part of our commitment to anti-racist praxis, coalition is vital to reimagining transformative practices in the field of international and comparative education. 

The problem-posing cafe hopes to enable us to explore and co-construct practical tips and strategies to decolonise our ways of collaborating grounded in the ethical principles of 鈥榬elationships, connections, reciprocity and accountability鈥� (Smith, 2021, p. xiv).

Please come and collaborate in reimagining transformative justice with us!

References 

Boal, A., 1985. Theatre of the Oppressed. Theatre Communications Group, New York. 

Cambridge, 2022. UNLEARN | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary [WWW Document]. URL (accessed 2.22.22). 

Freire, P., 1972. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Sheed and Ward, London. 

hooks,  bell, 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, New York. 

Mignolo, W.D., 2009. Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom. Theory Cult. Soc. 26, 8. 

Pailey, R.N., 2020. De鈥恈entring the 鈥榳hite gaze鈥檕f development. Dev. Change 51, 729鈥�745. 

Racial Justice Network, 2019. Unlearning Racism Course: anti-racist learning and practice from a position of racial privilege. 

Tuck, E., Yang, K.W., 2012. Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization Indig. Educ. Soc. 1. 

Tuhiwahi Smith, L., 1999. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. Zed Books Ltd., London. 

 

Laila Kadiwal

Mai Abu Moghli

Mai Abu Moghli holds a PhD in human rights education from UCL Institute of Education and an MA in human rights from the University of Essex. Mai’s work focuses on critical approaches to human rights education, teacher professional development (TPD) in crisis and emergencies, refugee education and decolonising research and higher education. Mai is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Lebanese Studies and has a teaching experience in a number of academic institutions both in the UK and Palestine. She has published on topics related to the status of Palestinian refugees, Palestinian Teachers鈥� Activism, and Teacher Professional Development in Contexts of Mass Displacement.

Lynsey Robinson

Lynsey Robinson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Education, Practice and Society at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society where she is researching the effects of private sector engagement on inequalities in the Nigerian education system. She holds an MSc in Research for International Development from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and an MA in Education, Gender and International Development from UCL. Previously she worked on the Equalities in Public Private Partnerships (EQUIPPPS) network.

Maha shuayb

Professor Maha Shuayb is the British Academy Bilateral Chair of Education in Conflict at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge and the Centre for Lebanese Studies. Prof Shuayb is also the Director of the Centre for Lebanese Studies since 2012. Before that, she was a Senior Fellow at St Antony鈥檚 College, University of Oxford. Maha has a Ph.D. in education from the University of Cambridge. She is a founding member and the former president of the Lebanese Association for History. She is also a co-founding member of the Disability Hub, a collective initiative that aims to promote research and advocacy around disability in the Arab World.

Maha鈥檚 research focuses on the sociology and politics of education, particularly equity and equality in education, and the implications of inequalities on marginalized groups such as refugee children and persons with disabilities. Her research interests also focus on curriculum and educational reform in Lebanon. Maha has numerous publications on education.

Andrew Armstrong

Andrew supports Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) communications and a variety of network activities and projects, including the Teachers in Crisis Contexts (TiCC) Collaborative and the update of the INEE Minimum Standards for Education. He recently received his Master鈥檚 degree in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. As an Education Fellow, his research focused on teacher identity and wellbeing in settings of fragility, education as a means for restorative justice and transformation, and how power, identity, and politics operate within the space of the classroom.

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