Canadian Critical Pedagogy Association Call for Proposals
Annual Conference, May 31 – June 4, 2020, Western University, London Ontario
THEME: Challenging Settler Colonialism, Anti-Black Racism, and Neoliberal Ecocide: What kinds of pedagogical praxis can build ecological, cognitive, affective, relational and economic justice?
KEYNOTE:
Dr. George J. S. Dei,
OISE/UT, University of Toronto
May 31, 2020
Since Paulo Freire published The Pedagogy of the Oppresseda half century ago, educational movements for systemic change have continuously redefined the terrain of pedagogy: who is the normalized subject of humanity (Wynter), learning, and pedagogy? What is meant by ‘criticality’ and what ways of knowing and being does criticality encompass or preclude? How does learning happen relationally within human and more-than-human webs of life? What role and responsibility does pedagogical practice have in challenging settler colonialism, anti-Black racism, heteropatriarchal racial capitalism, neoliberal austerity and accumulation through dispossession, ecocidal extractivism, and the global coloniality of power? What role can dialogic praxis play in buildingecological, cognitive, affective, relational and economic justice?
In 2015, CCPA partnered with supporting organizations to host Felix Cardenas, the Vice Minister of Decolonization of Bolivia as the CSSE keynote. The same year, we partnered with CASIE, ACDE, and CSSE to assess the first 5 years of the ACDE Accord on Indigenous Education. In 2017, a collective of Indigenous and settler educators organized the CCPA pre-conference “Pedagogies of Decolonization and Reconciliation in the Post-Secondary Classroom”. Building on and renewing the momentum of recent years, this year’s conference and call seek to critically contest reproductive settler pedagogies (including some conceptions of critical pedagogy).
There is much in the heterogenous and contentious umbrella of critical pedagogy to be critiqued, redefined, reclaimed, and re-forged, given the field’s history (its emergence within settler colonial contexts in Latin America, its foundations in European continental critical theory and emancipatory modernity, its translation into institutional contexts in the global North). There are also core elements that resonate with different political and educational projects: these elements include a recognition of the always political nature of praxisand the ways learning happens; a focus on the politics and geopolitics of knowledge; and an explicit analysis and commitment to challenging structural power in institutions, in broader social, economic, human and more-than-human relationships. There are discussions that need to happen about what ‘critical pedagogy’ means today, to which communities and living relationships.
The CCPA calls for proposals grounded in knowledge and wisdom traditions that challenge that modern/colonial frame of ‘critical’ and that explore ways of relationally analyzing and working for structural change through pedagogical praxis.
We encourage participative sessions in various formats including themed, symposium/panel, small round table, multiple paper, single paper, and poster (featuring the use of graphic or other multimedia material). Presentation proposals can be submitted by 1 October 2019 by going to the CSSE website and submitting to CCPA: https://csse-scee.ca/conference-2020/.
DEADLINE: October 1, 2019
Don’t forget to register as a member of CCPA! See you at CCPA 2020!