The Future of Education

Scholars on social reconstruction in periods of post-conflict state that these moments are the best or worst for educational transformation. The stance informing this communication is that the post-agreement stage that began in Colombia at the end of 2016 is an opportunity for the changes the national education system needs. Although in the literature some questions have been addressed about the role that language plays in peacebuilding, great gaps have been identified. One of these gaps is related to the need to study the educational role language plays for peacebuilding. This role is of particular interest here since it can (re)produce social exclusion, one of the causes of conflict, or it can promote social inclusion. Based on the concept of ‘ethical literacy’ under elaboration (Santos, 2016), this paper draws from a critical ethnography of education aimed at describing the visions of a group of students enrolled in two teacher education courses about pedagogic practices that could contribute to get a more inclusive education system. The group of students was composed of 11 undergraduate students and 25 graduate students of a Colombian university. Having these students' personal experiences at different educational levels as the main core of this research, these students were invited through interviews, written texts and group discussions to remember, select and narrate classroom situations in which they felt that some type of social exclusion occurred. They were specifically asked to identify and reflect upon aspects of the communication practices linked to the pedagogic practices involved. Finally, they were invited to describe the conditions under which these practices happened, as a milestone to envisage a more inclusive education in Colombia. As useful theoretical resources, the study took into account contributions on imagination as the most political mental faculty (Arendt, 1978), language and conflict (Lo Bianco, 2016), the theory of practice architecture (Edwards-Groves and Kemmis, 2015), as well as a Latin American critical pedagogy (Freire, 2000).

Keywords: Ethical literacy, peacebuilding, imagination, social inclusion, higher education.

References:
[1] Arendt, H. (1978). The life of the mind. The groundbreaking investigation on how we think. San Diego: Hartcourt Inc.
[2] Edwards-Groves, C. & Kemmis, S. (2015). Pedagogy, Education and Praxis: understanding new forms of intersubjectivity through action research and practice theory. Educational Action Research, 24(1), 77-96
[3] Freire, P. (2000) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Continuum.
[4] Lo Bianco, J. (2016). Conflict, language Rights, and Education: Building Peace by Solving Language Problems in Southeast Asia. Language Policy Research Network Brief. Melbourne: University of Melbourne.
[5] Santos, D. (2016). La lectura y escritura académicas y la vida política en el aula universitaria: Hacia una literacidad ética. Forma y Función, 29(2), 157-181