Distributed pedagogy of difference: Reimagining immigrant training and education

Abstract

In order to integrate into the host labour market, immigrants are often expected and indeed trained to minimize sociocultural differences. This paper problematizes the deficit/dismissive approach towards difference. It stresses instead that, in the context of globalization and immigration, encounters of difference have afforded a potentially productive and permeable space of living, learning, teaching, working and change vis-à-vis the hegemony of western-centric culture and practices. It then advances a distributed pedagogy of difference. The pedagogical proposals made include: 1) turning differences into strength based curriculum; 2) engaging differences to advance knowledge and practices; and 3) experimenting with sociocultural and sociomaterial power and order. Central to these pedagogical proposals is to mark differences as a space of learning and teaching for all, and a point of expansion for sociocultural and sociomaterial practices. This distributed pedagogy incorporates and extends the scholarship of critical pedagogies, and benefits from the practice-based ontology of learning.