Postcolonial Insights for Engaging Difference in Educational Approaches to Social Justice and Citizenship

Abstract

In this chapter, Stein and Andreotti argue that, as interest in the role of social justice and citizenship in education grows, it is important for scholars and practitioners to engage a greater diversity of perspectives on these topics, and reflexively to examine their own assumptions. Specifically, they consider how the questions raised by post-colonial studies about ethical engagements with difference and the enduring effects of a colonial hierarchy of humanity can help scholars and practitioners to situate existing analyses and conversations within social and historical patterns beyond the immediate context. The chapter concludes with a social cartography that contrasts three different approaches to social justice in education as a means to prompt new conversations and questions.