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- Convenors:
-
Stavroula Pipyrou
(University of St Andrews)
Stefania Pontrandolfo (Università degli Studi di Verona)
Ana Maria Gomes (UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais))
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- Stream:
- Evidence
- Sessions:
- Monday 29 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
The panel will interrogate the key intentions of public education vis-à-vis indigenous/minority education strategies and explore the epistemological, practical, ethical and political limits of co-producing knowledge.
Long Abstract:
Over the last twenty years indigenous and minority students, holders of expert knowledge, and political activists have engaged with education institutions and agencies to co-author training programmes that aim to collaboratively develop knowledge practices. Such engagement led to exemplary ethnographic scenes which returned political, cosmopolitical and epistemological reports that involved different stakeholders and knowledge traditions. This panel focuses on collaborative knowledge practices located in universities, in other institutional educational agencies, in NGOs and in indigenous or minority settings. We explore the intricate arrangements, adjustments and relationships between indigenous/minority people, anthropologists, other academics, and stakeholders in the co-production of knowledge practices and education/training programmes. The aim is to interrogate the key intentions of public education vis-à-vis indigenous/minority education strategies and to explore the epistemological, practical, ethical and political limits of co-producing knowledge.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 29 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
The paper examines the aspirations and political restraints of an educational program implemented in Greece. It provided the introduction of mother tongue as language of support in public kindergartens situated in compact minority settlements, through the collaboration of majority/minority teachers.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the adventures of a pilot educational program that took place in Western Thrace (Greece) from 2017 to 2019 and the huge educational and largely political controversy incited by its (partial) implementation. The core idea behind the pilot was the introduction of children's mother tongue (both Turkish and Pomak) as language of support (PLS) in public kindergartens, situated in compact minority settlements of Western Thrace. The program provided that the (ethnic Greek) kindergarten teacher and a bilingual member of the minority with a higher education degree in pre-school education would be collaborating in class. Furthermore, the program adopted an action research approach and provided for the active involvement of the parents and the local community. Drawing on material such as interviews with different stakeholders, pedagogical reports, newspaper and internet articles, public announcements made by associations, trade unions, political parties and the Church, parliamentary questions etc., I will attempt to demonstrate how the established political parameters concerning the ‘Muslim minority’ decisively determined the educational-pedagogical prospects of the pilot. The above are discussed through a self-reflective lens, given my personal involvement in the political decision making and scientific supervision of the project.
Paper short abstract:
In this communication we present how collaboration between the community's internal and external perspectives resulted in an original analysis that considered the agency of the quilombola community of Pinhões in the construction of the education proposal that interests it.
Paper long abstract:
This communication discusses the results of the collaborative practice of knowledge in the survey New models of school education among indigenous and quilombolas in Brazil. Quilombola school education has been instituted as a public policy in Brazil in recent decades, based on the legal recognition of remaining quilombola communities. The research, which had a quilombola researcher on its team, recorded the ways in which the territory of the Pinhões community appears or tensions school practices. In this communication we present how collaboration between the community's internal and external perspectives resulted in an original analysis that considered the agency of the quilombola community of Pinhões in the construction of the education proposal that interests it. We highlight the different places that housed the school initiative until its establishment in Pinhões territory and the repercussions of the recognition of the right to education for quilombola communities in a perspective of historical opposition to the slave regime and, above all, as a current expression of resistance to the unfolding of slavery. We demonstrate the arrangements of school practices in dialogue with Pinhões territory in three dynamics: the appreciation of community traditions as teaching content; the consideration of the community's festive calendar in the organization of the school calendar; and the scenes of school activities in community territory.
Paper short abstract:
This paper presents part of the results achieved by the project "Capturing new education models among indigenous and quilombola minorities in Brazil" from the research experience with the Muã Mimãtxi indigenous school / community in times of pandemic.
Paper long abstract:
Muã Mimãtxi is an indigenous village (MG/Brazil), where the Pataxoop live, a group of about 40 people, in a territory of approximately 145 hectares. In Muã Mimãtxi, families say they have found a variety of plant-relatives and animal-relatives that they have not seen since leaving the village of Barra Velha (BA) in the 1980s. Today, Muã Mimãtxi is a school-community, that is, “a project for the future”, a community dreamed up and built by the couple of teachers Kanatyo and Liça alongside their family and collaborators.
Experience teaches that starting any project in an indigenous village requires presence and coexistence as basic requirements. It is in these initial meetings that the minimum pacts are established for the development of a successful project, based on mutual knowledge, in long work, in the recognition of a territory and collective meals, create relationships of trust and acceptance. This is how, the activities of the project "Capturing new education models among indigenous and quilombola minorities in Brazil" were planned, through successive visits to participating communities. With the start of the pandemic, all this initial planning had to be adapted to the new times.
We intend to present part of the results achieved in that project. Muã Mimãtxi teaches us pedagogies fully attuned to the challenges imposed by the current ecological collapse, consisting of a school-community experience “to postpone the end of the world”, to evoke the words of A. Krenak.We will to present the outlines of a "science of the earth" from Muã Mimãtxi.
Paper short abstract:
Considering EthnoArts work with minority groups in southeast Asia this paper examines the facilitation of decision-making, contextualisation and new creation in arts. We seek to understand emic, etic and the layers of understanding that these categories allow for in any cross-cultural interaction.
Paper long abstract:
The arts can be broadly defined as creative expression and communication outside of everyday speech. They are an important part of the cultural identity of minority people, who traditionally rely on oral means of communication, but their active use is increasingly eroded. EthnoArts work seeks to create space for minority people to reflect on their cultural art forms, such as instruments, singing styles, dances, and visual creations and make decisions as to their use in community-building efforts such as engaging with vernacular Scriptures, minority-language education, addressing social issues and worship. In this way, they are empowered to become proactive decision-makers with confidence in their unique identity rather than victims of outside forces.
In this paper we will consider EthnoArts work carried out in south-east Asia, with minority groups who have been systematically disempowered. We will consider the facilitation of decision-making, contextualisation and new creation through engagement with various types of arts, and their functions within culture from an emic perspective while also providing tools for groups to analyse their own art forms from an etic perspective. In doing so we seek to contribute to understandings of emic and etic and the layers of understanding that these categories allow for in any cross-cultural interaction.