In recent times education’s promise to forge new “landscapes” of knowledge, of history and of social formation in a globalizing world has come under scrutiny. The fourth annual Graduate Conference in Education organized by York’s Faculty of Education will examine these promises. The conference, which takes place this Saturday at York’s Keele campus, will examine the future of educational research and practice against a rapidly changing and moving global backdrop.
The conference will look at the new and different educational interventions, strategies and projects that are necessary to imagine different formations of civil and social life. These strategies should take into account shifts in demographic movement and intra-national boundaries resulting from ethnic conflict and civil and transnational war. Through the sharing of interdisciplinary and innovative methodological and pedagogical responses to these shifts, conference participants will attempt to think through the troubling ground of the nation-state, of democracy and of citizenship in the context of Canadian public education.
This year also marks the 10th anniversary of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. How has educational theory, practice and policy responded or not responded to this important document? And what, if any, impact have the commission’s recommendations had in addressing the fraught concept of citizenship in Canada? In what ways might the history of aboriginal people in Canada be considered the foundation for any (re)conceptualization of Canadian citizenship? Among other related topics, this conference will address the past and present states of public education in determining the participation of aboriginal people in Canadian public life today.
Glenn Hudak, of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, will give the keynote speech. His presentataion titled, “The Host of the Oppressor: On Social Hope, Labeling, and the Call for Leadership”, will take place on Saturday, from 3-5pm, in Vari Hall C. Hudak is professor and program coordinator for the doctoral program in Cultural Foundations at UNC Greensboro. His areas of interest lie in the philosophic investigations of the inner life in education and leadership, popular culture and education, and pyschoanalytic thought and education. He has co-authored (with Paul Kihn) Labeling: Politics and Pedagogy (2001) and (with Cameron McCarthy) Sound Identities: Popular Music and the Cultural Politics of Education (1999).
Visit the conference Web site at www.edu.yorku.ca/GradConf for program details and registration information.