Doing Educational Development Ambivalently: Applying post‐colonial metaphors to educational development?

Abstract

Post‐colonial theories about liminality, hybridity, unhomeliness, and identity form a novel lens through which to re‐theorise educational development work. Applying these conceptual frameworks allows practitioners and the academics they work with the opportunity to problematise some of educational development’s colonial underpinnings and assumptions. They also enable an exploration of the states of betweenness that form educational developers’ identities and impact implicitly and explicitly upon the nature of their changing practices. This paper seeks to read educational development and research supervisor development in particular “against the grain”. It also seeks to illustrate these concepts through some vignettes of my academic development practice.

Les théories postcoloniales portant sur les notions de “liminality”, “hybridity”, “unhomeliness”, ainsi que sur la notion d’identité constituent un nouvel angle sous lequel nous pouvons réenvisager les travaux dans le domaine du développement pédagogique. L’application de tels cadres conceptuels offre aux praticiens, ainsi qu’aux universitaires auprès de qui ils/elles oeuvrent, l’occasion d’envisager les problèmes associés aux bases et pré‐supposés colonialistes du développement pédagogique. Ces cadres facilitent aussi l’exploration des états reliés à la notion de “between‐ness”, lesquels contribuent à la formation de l’identité des conseillers pédagogiques et ont un impact à la fois implicite et explicite sur la nature des pratiques en mutation. Cet article cherche à effectuer une lecture du développement pédagogique et du développement de la supervision de recherche en adoptant plus particulièrement une approche “against the grain”. L’article cherche aussi à illustrer ces cadres par des vignettes de ma pratique.

Acknowledgements

This paper was initially presented as part of a symposium on “Liminality, identity and hybridity” at the ICED conference in Ottawa in 2004. I would like to thank my symposium collaborators, Tai Peseta, Kathryn Sutherland, and Simon Barrie, for our creative discussions over several years that led to this paper. Thanks also to the CAD Collective (born out of our symposium), which has extended these conversations to other international colleagues. Finally, a special thanks to Barbara Grant for her inspiring comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. Activists and scholars working in international relations have disputed the use of the term third world and have suggested either developing or majority world as more appropriate options. I have used all three to emphasise the contested nature of these terms.