Pedagogy of Compassion: Negotiating the Contours of Global Citizenship

ABSTRACT

Using the theoretical framework of pedagogy of compassion and single embedded case study methodology, this article explores how a teacher negotiates the contours of migration and social transformation to promote education for global citizenship. The research site was a former white school in South Africa. The research sample was a female Indian teacher and Grade 7 students. Data collection comprised a mix of semi-structured interviews, focus group interviews, observations, and field notes, and occurred over a period of three weeks in 2018. Data were analyzed by means of the content analysis method. Findings reveal that the teacher anticipated and fulfilled requirements not only to raise the critical consciousness of students but also to espouse an “epistemology of compassion” and implement a “pedagogy of compassion.”

KEYWORDS:

• Contested spaces
• global citizenship education
• hope
• pedagogy of compassion
• polarized thinking
• shared places

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The terms Black, White, Indian, and Colored derive from the apartheid racial classifications of the different peoples of South Africa. The use of these terms, although problematic, has continued through the post-apartheid era in the country. In this article, these terms are used grudgingly for clarification of the context.

2. Black immigrant students: Referencing the apartheid era solidarity of all nonwhites as “black,” Black immigrant students refers to nonwhite immigrants who come from African countries, to descendants of any of the people of Africa, and to Indian immigrants who hail from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

3. This theoretical framework was first published in Vandeyar and Swart (2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the South Africa Netherlands research Programme on Alternatives in Development [07/62].