A study of Administrators Educators and Students who are engaged in conflict resolution programmes working towards social justice in education.
A teacher needs to create experiences with, and not for, students, integrating their experiences and voices into the educational experience itself (Freire 2006). Teachers’ and students’ identities are thus tied to one another in an interlocked relationship (Rozas 2007).
I grew up in Northern Ireland and went to a single sex state funded protestant school as did almost everyone I knew, with the result that I was in my teens before I met any catholic boys or girls. The area I grew up in is very mixed and has protestant and catholic communities living together even next door in the same street but not mixing. It seems clear to me that if I had gone to school with catholic boys and girls from age 4 to 16 we would have had a completely different and better educational experience and I possibly would not have been in conflict with my catholic neighbours because I would have known them as people, we would have shared experiences and learned together. If you attend school with people who are from a different background from a young age you grow up with them, you are in regular contact and don’t have to ‘meet’ them later in life. Waiting till later and then getting catholic and protestant kids together to play sport for example often just led to violence. When I was growing up education was seen ,as a way to, escape from the communities we lived in, the lucky kids could escape to other better, safer places. This ultimately led to a brain drain of emigration away from Northern Ireland.
If it has not been possible to educate young children from communities in conflict together in the same school other strategies like social justice education are needed.
Rather than not mentioning or avoiding my own intersectionality and that of my students Hahn Tapper is advocating that both student and facilitator explore rather than avoid their differences. All participants ‘take responsibility for the way they enact their social identities within the program itself, but also commit to working toward social justice after the program formally ends’.
How can we encourage our students to consider bringing their knowledge and awareness of social identity theory and intersectionality back to the communities they have come from to encourage social justice after their studies at UAL end?