Learning, Arts Education and Children: Decolonial Perspectives

Decolonial perspectives demand a deconstruction and challenging of traditional, western power relations to reinterpret knowledge production in different contexts and to honour different ways of knowing and viewing the world. This webinar focuses on an examination and exploration of 'decolonial perspectives' in relation to learning and teaching, Arts education and children curated and chaired by Dr Carol Beck Carter. The webinar will feature the book launch of "Learning with Damaged Colonial Spaces: Posthumanist Pedagogies from a Joburg Preschool" by Dr Theresa Magdalen Giorza (Wits School of Education, South Africa). Theresa's research, drawn from her book, "offers a fresh perspective on the current decolonisation debate which is often restrictively reduced to identity politics" (2021, p vii). The webinar will be in two parts: 1. Carol will conduct an interview/conversation with Theresa; 2. Thereafter, Carol will chair a panel discussion/ dialogue with Theresa Giorza and Arts Educators in different parts of South Africa and Australia. Arts educators who will participate include Associate Professor Judith Dinham (Curtin University, Perth), Dr Rachael Jacobs (Western Sydney University), Dr Richard Sallis (University of Melbourne), Kai Crooks-Chissano (Drama for Life University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg), Alethea Beetson (Digi Youth Arts, Brisbane), Dr Christine Hatton (University of Newcastle), and Selloane Mokuku (Rhodes University).