Group items tagged

Sport for Development and Peace (sdp) has been adopted as a 'development tool' by Western development practitioners and a growing number of development organisations. Sport is frequently referred to as a 'global language' and used to promote international awareness and cross-cultural understanding-two key themes in global citizenship literature. In this paper I examine the language adopted by organisations promoting sdp-specifically, what sdp organisations say they do as well as the nature and implications of their discourses. Drawing on a large and growing body of literature on global citizenship and post-structuralism, and on post-colonial critiques, I argue that sdp narratives have the potential to reinforce the 'Othering' of community members in developing countries and may contribute to paternalistic conceptions of development assistance. In so doing, they weaken the potential for more inclusive and egalitarian forms of global citizenship. The article examines the discourse of sdp organisational material found online and analyses it in the context of broader sport and colonialism literature. The work of SDP organisations is further examined in relation to global citizenship discourse with a focus on the production- and projection-of global subjects, or objects of globalisation, and what this means for development 'beneficiaries'

"In 2003, the Ontario Ministry of Education in Canada began promoting popular media as a pedagogical tool, especially for 'reluctant' readers. This 'pedagogy of the popular' is instituted within a critical media literacy framework that draws on the values and codes of multiculturalism to counter the consumerist messages students encounter in nontraditional texts. The model of civic citizenship promoted by the critical media literacy curriculum, however, fails in its ambitions to provide a counterweight to the neo-liberal model of consumer citizenship. Insofar as its critique is grounded in a multicultural politics of representation, Ontario's media literacy curriculum fails to deeply interrogate the social roots of conflict and discrimination. As a result, it only weakly challenges, and is unlikely to displace, the post-Keynesian-era model of citizenship education in which the values of universality and inclusiveness are subsumed to an ethos that naturalizes the practices and moral codes of the marketplace."

The purpose of this article is to examine the authors' experiences while trying to enter and engage local communities in bottom-up literacies through participatory action research (PAR) toward the community's own collective self-development. In trying to enter five different communities, I have found several challenges and roadblocks such as mistrust of 'university people': legacy of the conventional outside-in and top-down research procedures for working in communities; power struggles with community 'gatekeepers', including 'building keepers'; and bureaucratized project-driven community work. I consider that under the current neoliberal educational policies that are plaguing the world, for example, No Child Left Behind in the USA, self-development projects promoted through PAR can be viable ways to defy these policies and their fatalist thinking. School children's parents and their communities are nowadays in a better position than teachers to fight for reclaiming local control of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment.

Understanding state-citizen relations involves a multitude of spaces and actors, formal and informal political practices and the intricacies of subjectivity and citizen-formation. One emerging tactic by which both 'state' agencies and other non-state actors manage, administer, discipline, shape, care for and enable liberal citizens is that of governing through pedagogy. Schools, universities, the voluntary sector, civil society organisations, churches, commercial education and training providers, the media, government departments and state agencies offer fruitful empirical spaces through which the pedagogies of governing are worked and reworked. This special issue therefore brings together researchers from education, human geography, sociology, social policy and political theory in order to consider the idea of the 'pedagogical state' as a means of understanding the pedagogic strategies employed to govern citizens, both within and outside the formal education sphere.

Understanding state-citizen relations involves a multitude of spaces and actors, formal and informal political practices and the intricacies of subjectivity and citizen-formation. One emerging tactic by which both 'state' agencies and other non-state actors manage, administer, discipline, shape, care for and enable liberal citizens is that of governing through pedagogy. Schools, universities, the voluntary sector, civil society organisations, churches, commercial education and training providers, the media, government departments and state agencies offer fruitful empirical spaces through which the pedagogies of governing are worked and reworked. This special issue therefore brings together researchers from education, human geography, sociology, social policy and political theory in order to consider the idea of the 'pedagogical state' as a means of understanding the pedagogic strategies employed to govern citizens, both within and outside the formal education sphere.

"This article aims to report a single case study of how an Islamic boarding school (pesantren) in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, prepared students for a multicultural Indonesia. Despite negative portrayal by the Western media about increasing Islamic radicalism in some pesantren, many pesantren are in fact transforming into modern Islamic institutions, incorporating the teaching of democratic values and practices, endorsing civil society and community development, and inculcating cultural/religious diversity and tolerance in students. Using schoolyard and classroom ethnographies, along with in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGD) with teachers and students, the study found that classroom and non-classroom practices of the pesantren promote the development of multicultural education. Several subjects within both curriculum developed by the government and curriculum developed by pesantrens discuss a considerable number of issues that relate to cultural and religious diversity, tolerance, citizenship and democracy. The non-classroom practices of pesantren offer invaluable and intensive experiences for students to socialise with peers from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. However, challenges remain for the kyai (the pesantren's great leader) and other leaders, such as teachers' lack of competency, unclear multicultural objectives in both the pesantren's curricula and the pesantren's traditions, and unequal relations among students and among teachers. These challenges must be overcome to further develop education for cultural diversity."

In the mid-1990s an extensive reform of the Swedish educational system was initiated in order to create a 'school for everyone' intended to function like a 'social equaliser'. The new unified gymnasium initiated longer educational programmes with an exten

This essay examines how activists in rural southern India have sought to reshape the field of political communication by encouraging lower-caste women to submit written, signed petitions to district-level government offices, and so represent themselves to

'Make Poverty History' was an extraordinary campaign: historically unprecedented, indeed impossible without the new structures of the emerging 'cosmopolitanizing state', global in reach and yet national in focus. Studying the aims, means and achie

Pilot education course has undergrads learning in Ghana from U of A alumnus-who happens to be the village chief.

Multicultural citizenship education courses worldwide show promise in their ability to influence attitudes and beliefs supportive of social justice. However, many of these courses assume behavior change results from these attitudes changes. Quantitative a

"Throughout the history of film, plots have required that a character be rendered unconscious for a finite period with no explanation of the process and with no other consequence, to which end, the medium invented the "magic-single-punch." All one character has to do is say: "I hate to do this but . . ." then throw a swift punch to jaw, and the recipient agrees to pass out for however long the plot requires. More significant than this compliant character is the equally compliant viewer, who accepts this miracle of anesthesia, that works to perfect effect even on a character who, in other scenes, might have a chair broken over his head or receive several karate chops to the trachea with barely a blink or stagger. Although I believe that car chases were the reason God invented "fast-forward," even more bewildering than the apparent popularity of this screen event is the fact that audiences have failed, over the last two decades, to wonder why not one of the cars involved has a working airbag. Such thoughts, of course, disrupt the pleasure that has been paid for with money, time, and attention, in the same way, for example, that disputing the comparably absurd tenets of Reaganomics disrupts the myth of satisfaction purchased with (low) taxes, lip-service patriotism, and self-serving citizenship.1 In 1984-in the middle of Reagan's reign over morning in America-federal law required that all cars have passive restraints by 1989. Since Reagan's second term, in other words, in defiance of legality and common sense, the premises of Reaganomics and of movie car chases have remained unchallenged. Fueled on the one hand by pleasure industries, and on the other, by think tanks and talk radio, the speeding of the economy and of the movie-chase car, along parallel courses toward disastrous crashes could be glossed by saying that, as usual, American mass media had disabled the wrong airbags. Although we do not n

"Based on almost 50 years of combined experience as prison activists and prison teachers, the authors offer three case studies of prison activism and pedagogy in action. The first case study, by Hartnett, details the "artistry of agency" as enacted in poetry workshops in prison and in public poetry events, thus illustrating artistic communication. The second, by Wood, examines how friendship becomes political in the epistolary communication between free and imprisoned correspondents, thus addressing interpersonal communication. The third, by McCann, addresses web-based communication as a tool for advocacy for condemned prisoner/activists on Texas's death row, and hence political communication. Taken as a whole, the three case studies celebrate different communication strategies as avenues of enlightenment and empowerment while offering powerful arguments for abolishing the prison-industrial complex."

"This paper examines claims made about the role of 'expert knowledge' in analysing the language of individuals seeking asylum in the UK. I treat policy as a type of power and seek to understand how this policy uses the language of science to further the British government's stated interest to provide 'secure borders' and a 'safe haven' for refugees. I look at how the Home Office defines, shapes and implements the policy, and at how the policy has influenced judicial decisions. In short I unmask UKBA's claim that it relies upon expert, scientific knowledge to assess asylum claims."

Critical multiculturalism and social justice have emerged in educational contexts as primarily pedagogical concerns, confined to the processes of teaching and learning. This article raises the question about the application of these principles to the research process. Through a critical self-reflection on researcher roles and practices, this article highlights four emergent characteristics of the multicultural/social justice researcher: the commitment to a common good; the re-definition of the researcher-researched relationship; the interrogation of the traditional roles, norms and power dynamics of academic research and researchers; and the merging of the tripartite distinctions of teaching, research and service in the role of the professor. These serve as a starting point for dialogue on the re-conceptualization of the role of the multicultural/social justice researcher.

After critically reviewing the apparent 'turn' from welfare states to pedagogic states, I focus on forms of pedagogy evident in notions of citizen empowerment. Issues raised through documentary analysis of key UK policy texts are examined through frameworks offered by Aradhana Sharma's work on women's empowerment in India in order to widen the analytical lens, opening up issues and questions that might be helpful in analysing new configurations of governance in the UK. These include the problem of multiplicity in the identification of strategies and technologies; the idea of pedagogy as a gendered domain, both in terms of the subjects targeted and in those involved in pedagogical work; and the problem of conceptualising 'the state' in formulations such as the 'pedagogical state'. Although questioning the idea of a 'pedgagogic turn', I conclude by addressing the forms of politics and political subjects called forth by pedagogic projects. The paper was written before the 2010 election but the analysis has much to offer to the politics of Cameron's Big Society.

The language examination is designed to ensure integration into Japanese society and meet professional standards, but few foreigners manage to pass it. Now, those who work with the elderly in one of the world's fastest ageing societies say it is time to t

The contention of this article is that the biologically derived versions of the nation of 'blood and soil' only tell a narrow and singular version of the story of nation states. The substantive historical and contemporary realities necessitate the telling

This article discusses the implications of some current philosophical thinking about groups, culture and the politics of identity (exploring the views of Anthony Appiah, Amartya Sen and Nel Noddings, among others) for education generally, and for issues o

Universities that promote a liberal education through creative, cross-cultural curriculum nurture the goals of democracy and assist students in becoming 'citizens of the world.' Democratic education for social justice and global consciousness are necessar