Is there a place for forgiveness and discomforting pedagogies in the foreign language classroom in higher education?

ABSTRACT

This article describes an online project in the foreign-language classroom in which Argentinian and British university students communicated across the globe to address a topic of human rights violations. The aim of the article is to answer the question of whether there is a place in language education for forgiveness and discomforting pedagogies. This focus is new in the field. It begins with an overview of intercultural citizenship education in language pedagogy, followed by an outline of the pedagogical intervention and case study. It continues with a description of theoretical developments in forgiveness and discomforting pedagogies as the framework of the study and provides an analysis of the data from the project with these lenses. Findings indicate that students displayed varying affective, physical and intellectual forms of emotional investment as they mediated interculturally with their interlocutors and the ghosts of those who suffered from human rights abuse in the past. To do this, they engaged in what we call critical remembering, i.e. remembering wrongdoings through a decolonising human rights educational approach. It is concluded that it is possible for language teaching in the higher education sector to meet the educational aim of developing learners’ democratic competences by combining intercultural citizenship with forgiveness and discomforting pedagogies.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• forgiveness and discomforting pedagogies
• intercultural citizenship
• foreign-language learning

Acknowledgements

The authors are greatly indebted to Emeritus Professor Michael Byram for his constant academic guidance and generosity, to Gabriela Iacoboni for her work, enthusiasm and dedication in the Argentinian classroom, to John Manders for providing excellent editing support and advice, and to the journal editors and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The commemoration in the media: https://www.infobae.com/politica/2018/03/24/la-movilizacion-por-el-dia-de-la-memoria-la-verdad-y-la-justicia-desde-el-drone-de-infobae/ https://www.clarin.com/politica/24-marzo-dia-nacional-memoria-verdad-justicia-actos-haran-plaza-mayo-obra_0_rJXyFdRtG.html http://www.telam.com.ar/tags/13056-24-de-marzo/noticias On the site of the Ministry of Education of the Nation: www.bnm.me.gov.ar/giga1/documentos/EL000191.pdf On sites that offer educational resources for teachers: https://www.educ.ar/recursos/15165/dia-de-la-verdad-la-memoria-y-la-justicia In labour unions (in this case, ‘trabajadores del estado’, i.e. workers of the state): http://ute.org.ar/24-de-marzo-dia-nacional-de-la-memoria-por-la-verdad-y-la-justicia/ In national universities: http://www.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/institucional/areas/mrycfahce

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Universidad Nacional de La Plata and CONICET (11/H783 and PIP CONICET 0281).