Hope and responsibility: embracing different types of knowledge whilst generating my own living-educational-theory

Abstract

ABSTRACT For Foucault, discourses shape people’s knowledge and inform how they act in a society. Power over others is legitimated by dominant discourses, a means through which hegemony discloses itself: a given group is entitled to oppress another. As a parent-educator based in Italy, I see such discourses manifesting themselves in actions and speeches. As a researcher, I also perceive the power of the dominant discourse promoted by the Western academies, which excludes many diverse knowledge systems present in the world. Using personally-orientated action research, in my living-educational-theory enquiry I aim to make a more aware contribution in the socio-historical and socio-cultural context I live in. I therefore clarify which values inform my way of being, and I analyse how much I’ve been influenced by dominant discourses which go against the values I hold. It is my responsibility to respect and absorb different types of knowledge, recognising the other as significant. In this, I’m led by a sense of hope: while acting against dominant discourses, I, and others, are making use of our social imaginations. In my hometown a community of authentic learners is forming. In it, we seek to convert ‘power-over’ to ‘power-with’ as we generate educational knowledge together.