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Creating Spaces

Creating Spaces. For often unheard voices in HE: Teaching Black perspectives and working with Black and ethnically minoritised people in HE Carlton Howson & Craig Pinkney De Montfort University Youth and Community Division. Context/ background. Education legacy – impact on Black (BEMP)

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Creating Spaces

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  1. Creating Spaces For often unheard voices in HE: Teaching Black perspectives and working with Black and ethnically minoritised people in HE Carlton Howson & Craig Pinkney De Montfort University Youth and Community Division chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  2. Context/ background • Education legacy – impact on Black (BEMP) • HE experience • Location – population • Diversity – University • Policy – widening participation • Professional formation/values – anti-oppressive practice chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  3. MySpace chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  4. Research Methods Key Decisions • Qualitative research paradigm • External facilitation • Process/outcomes, ends/means • Students dialogue groups • Biography • Case studies chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  5. Underlying Principles • Freirian principles of dialogue • Purpose or process is transformative • Technologies of participatory development • Issues concerning critical research practices • Critical Race Theory • YCD – social justice chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  6. Arising Issues • Emergence of need to negotiate • Risk of ‘domestication’ • Recognition of shifting boundaries • Need to sustain notion safe space • Engage together in a process of discovery • Crosby in Deer Richardson, L. and Wolfe, M. Principles and Practice of informal education, Oxon: RoutledgeFalmer. (2005: 59) chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  7. Three themes that emerge from discussion • Learning Contracts • Mentoring systems • Radical Curriculum chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  8. Issues ‘race’, identity &exclusion • Discrimination • Inter racial racism • Sense of belonging - Isolation • Cultural obligations that mitigate against attendance at university or completion of work • Societal perceptions of Black male students (i.e. aggressive) • People look at you differently without realising chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  9. The “silent ones” • I am prepared to initiate some change in the university and its approach towards students, because I am in touch with the "silent-ones", who speak to me about how they truly feel but do not have enough confidence in the initiatives that are being created. I feel if we all work together, things will improve for all the students. chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  10. Making space for voices that are not heard • Part of our task as informal educators is …to ask why certain voices are not heard • Jeffs, T. & Smith, M. (1999:40), Informal Education- Conversation, Democracy & Learning. Derbyshire: Education Now Publishing Cooperative. chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  11. Education • As Oppressor • As Liberator • As Transformer • A system that can neutralise and conform difference

  12. Role • We need to encourage our students to be complex thinkers, going beyond the choice of binary opposites • Rather embracing the idea of multiple options, the complex challenges, developing skills • This is a significant role for student and tutor

  13. How can I rise? • Anger over race. • Race over anger. • Questions I ask, • But no one to answer. • Your judgments of me, • Limit my outcomes. • Your assumptions of me, • Broaden my experience. chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  14. If I told you my race • Am I validated into your racist institution? • Or am I a disgrace, • On this attempt to better our situation? • When you preach equality, • I still feel the presence of this oppression. • I know I anger you, • But I will continue to ask this question. chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  15. You claim you want to understand • My problem • But you have a problem when I open the gates • To my experience. • My friend I cannot offer you an understanding, • But I can offer you knowledge of my experience to effectively challenge. • My experiences can arm you with the awareness of the abandoning of my very existence. chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  16. I share with you now how I feel, • This is not for pity but to illustrate how the struggle is still very real. • Like you I be born and then crawl, • But when I try to rise in this political world I fall. • These laws are put forth heavily brushed in this word ‘equality’. • This is an insult to my existence because this allows these fools to ignore our pain and our humility. chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  17. This humility that they forced upon us, • This humility that is still very much amongst us. • Because we fight a battle on pre-established false grounds. • We fight a war with ‘invalid’ arms. • I say ‘invalid’ not in vain. • I say it because we are unaware of this institutionally racist game. • When we are in school being ‘educated’? • Now can you say you understand? • How we are alienated? chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  18. Because if you have not experienced like I... • ...if you have not struggled as I, • You saying you understand is a true full on lie. chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  19. Anger over race. • Race over anger. • Questions I ask. • But no one will answer. • Written by Babita Kumar 19.11.2007 chowson@dmu.ac.uk PSA Nuturing voices 14-15 September 2010

  20. References • Crosby in Deer Richardson, L. and Wolfe, M. Principles and Practice of informal education, Oxon: RoutledgeFalmer. (2005: 59) • Donnison, D. (1998) Policies for a Just Society, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan • Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the Oppressed,Harmondsworth: Penguin. • hooks, b (1992) Black Looks, race and representation, Turnaround • Jeffs, T. & Smith, M. (1999:40), Informal Education- Conversation, Democracy & Learning. Derbyshire: Education Now Publishing Cooperative. • Richardson, B. (2005) Tell it like it is: How our schools fail Black children,Trentham Books Stoke on Trent. • Thomas, J. (1993) ‘Doing Critical Ethnography’. Sage: California

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