edna.edu.au

Teaching the Abrahamic Religions: Christianity in DialoguewithJudaism& Islam 15-17 April 2009

A very interesting conference.

Highlights was professor Andrew Wright from Kings College at teh University of London. His presentation on "Critical realism" is a challenge to the 'banking' and 'constructivist' pedagogical models. The key to teaching about the Abrahamic religions is not to teach as though we are all the same, but rather to learn from the points of difference. Relativity - not Relativism - is the key. 
"It is better to have a society of discontented philosophers than a society of contented sheep"
Our role as educators is to enable our students to grow in their religious literacy.
"Every student who walks into our classroom is already a theologian/ They already have language about God. Our job is to enable them to be better theologians"

Peter Vardy was also quite an inspiring speaker. His presentation argued that the history of the Abrahamic religions is a history of war, and that we havce an obligation to address this in our teaching. It is not our role to educate people in our own certainties.

The Dan website is at http://www.dialogueaustralasia.org/

Tags: islam pedagogy judaism christianity
Posted at 04:31PM Apr 18, 2009 by Nigel Mitchell  | 

(Anti)racism and Pedagogy conference 5 December 2008

This was a conference presented by the Hawke institute at UniSA together with the indigenous research institute at Flinders Uni. See the conference program here

Abstracts and speaker bios are here

Unfortunately the second speaker, Linda Smith from NZ was unwell and not able to be at the conference. The other speakers were excellent, although Professors Alhuwalia and Soudein were both a bit esoteric.

Main insights from this conference: Is 'race' a social construct or is it 'real'. If it is 'real', then anti-racism is the ethical way to go. If race is just a social structure then anti-racism is an absurd position, because it implies that race exists. Rather, the abolition of racial categories, including 'white', is the way to go.

This abolitionist POV is promoted by some scholars and a website (not recently updated).

Tags: anti-racism pedagogy
Posted at 10:51AM Dec 06, 2008 by Nigel Mitchell  |