Repair-Ed Project presented at the UNESCO Futures of Education International Forum

UNESCO recently held its first international forum on the Futures of Education in order to facilitate international dialogue on the themes of its major report Reimagining Our Futures Together: a new social contract for education.

Hosted by the UNESCO Korean National Commission, the forum was held in Suwon, Republic of Korea. It brought together policy actors, practitioners and academics from UN member states to catalyse collaboration and collective action for educational transformation.

Professor Arathi Sriprakash represented the Reparative Futures of Education project (Repair-Ed) at the forum, speaking on the importance of reparative frameworks for futures-oriented education policy.

During the plenary session on ‘Mobilizing Knowledge and Research for Just and Sustainable Futures’, Arathi argued that building a ‘new social contract’ for education must be grounded in dialogic and participatory approaches which recognise young people, teachers, parents, and wider school-communities as vital ‘knowledge holders’ about educational justice. This is a core principle that shapes the Repair-Ed project’s methodology – from its construction of an interactive ‘People’s History of Schooling’ to its creative research with children (being led by Repair-Ed DPhil students Asia Giuliani, Ishani Parekh and Priyanka Soni).

During other panel sessions, Arathi spoke about ‘reparative pedagogies’, drawing on international work by the Education, Justice and Memory Network. She also spoke about confronting structural violence in global education policy, given the current crises in Palestine, Sudan and elsewhere: ‘we cannot deliver peace education with one hand and fund wars with the other’.

The Repair-Ed project is hosted at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education. In addition to those named above, it brings together the multi-disciplinary expertise of Dr Alice Willatt, Dr Annabel Wilson, Claire Neaves, and from February, Dr Vivian Latinwo-Olajide.

For more information, contact the team at: repair-ed@education.ox.ac.uk