Please join us for a talk by Rowena Azada-Palacios, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines and University College London, UK.

Hybridity and the Teaching of National Identity in Schools

Debates among philosophers of education about teaching national identity have typically taken for granted Western and Eurocentric conceptions of nationhood and national identity, and have largely been folded into the question of whether patriotic nationalism is a desirable goal of schooling. These conceptions of nationhood and national identity, however, may be incongruous with the experiences of pupils from or in post-colonial contexts. In this presentation, I argue for an approach to teaching national identity that takes Homi Bhabha's conception of hybridity as its starting point. Understanding cultural identities as malleable rather than fixed, I propose that pupils be seen as co-creators of national identity. After offering examples of what such an approach might look like in a post-colonial school or among students with post-colonial identities, I conclude with some reflections on the implications of such for teacher education and higher education more broadly.

Biography

Rowena Azada-Palacios is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. Her doctoral thesis, which she is completing at the University College London, Institute of Education, seeks to reimagine the teaching of national identity in postcolonial contexts. She has taught in higher education contexts for more than 20 years, and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Programme

14:00 Welcome by Chair, Dr Andrea English

14:05 Talk by Rowena Azada-Palacios

14:45 Discussion

15:15 Close

About this series

This series is sponsored by The Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain; University of Edinburgh's Moray House School of Education and Sport, Race Equality Subgroup; and The Centre for Education on Racial Equality in Scotland.

The series will run from January – June 2021.

Other Talks in the Series:

21 January 2021 - Dr Foluke Adebisi , University of Bristol, UK.

4 March 2021 - Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos, University of Coimbra, Portugal (Distinguished lecture)

22 April 2021 - Dr Dominic Griffiths, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

13 May 2021 - Dr Jason Arday, Durham University, UK

3 June 2021 - Professor Farid Panjwani, Aga Khan University, Pakistan

10 June 2021 - Professor Penny Enslin, University of Glasgow, UK

Any questions about this event, please contact the series organiser:

Dr Andrea English , Andrea.English@ed.ac.uk