Colloquium "Weaving Postmemory in Teacher Education: Critical Literacies and Decolonial Possibilities"
Weaving Postmemory in Teacher Education: Critical Literacies and Decolonial Possibilities
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Andrea Mattos
This paper considers the influence of historical events on language teacher professional development in Brazil based on the concept of postmemory, a term coined by Marianne Hirsch. The author uses the concept in the context of the Holocaust, but other traumatic events around the world may also be examined through such lenses: the two World Wars, the Chornobyl nuclear accident in Ukraine, the experiences of indigenous peoples in the Residential Schools in Canada, the Atomic Bombs in Japan, and many other examples. In Brazil, the Military Coup of 1964, which set off more than 20 years of military dictatorship, still impacts all areas of our daily life, including education and language teaching. Decolonial thinking and positioning may also help intervene in teacher education in Brazil, from a critical literacies perspective, providing space for teachers to view themselves as more empowered and less subaltern to Center epistemologies. We believe that resorting to memory and postcolonial perspectives to help confront and problematize our historical events may create space for a type of education that tries to avoid the errors of the past and aims at constructing better social futures.
Literacies, Transmodernity, Decoloniality et cetera: Implications for Teacher Education View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Vanderlei Zacchi
This presentation is based on a concepts currently being applied in a few areas, especially the humanities, such as: transmodernism, new materialism, post-humanism and decoloniality. The idea is to identify connections and / or conflicts between these concepts and literacy studies, as well as possible implications related to teacher education.
Personal Encounters, Decolonial Complexities: Insights from Editing Beaver, Bison, Horse (R. G. Morgan)
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Brian Morgan
The editing of my mother’s posthumous book, Beaver, Bison, Horse: The Traditional Knowledge and Ecology of the Northern Great Plains (University of Regina Press, 2020), was deeply emotional at times but also illuminating as to the challenges and complexities of doing transdisciplinary decolonial work. The manuscript needed revisions following new publishing guidelines regarding writing about and with indigenous peoples. In this presentation, I describe some of the key insights of my editing experience and relate them to the colloquium theme of literacies, teacher education and decoloniality.
Decolonial Approaches to Teacher Professional Development through Peacebuilding, Children’s Literature, and Critical Literacies View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lina Trigos-Carrillo, Jorge Alessandro Herrera Bustamante
In Colombia, public school teachers face several challenges, such as vertical power structures, heavy workloads, lack of recognition and agency in educational decision making, and irrelevant teacher professional development. However, teachers represent a strong transformational force because they have a direct impact on children’s life and learning opportunities. In this talk, we will present a critical participatory action research project conducted in the Colombian Caribbean with 16 preschool and elementary teachers in a public school. We propose a horizontal and participatory approach to teacher professional development to decolonize these spaces through five dimensions of peace education, children’s literature about local realities, and critical literacies pedagogies. For one year and a half, teachers have found a safe space to express their views, make decisions about their literacy curriculum, and be transformative agents in their school communities while expanding their perspective on children's literature as a means for transformation. Teachers’ participation in the project has encouraged them to establish a dialogue between their previous discourses about literacy learning and teaching and new perspectives. They have also developed new abilities to use children's literature as a medium to construct multidimensional peace and enact social transformation.
