Teachers’ nascent praxes of care: potentially decolonizing approaches to school violence in Trinidad |
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Authors: | Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams |
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Institution: | 1. Africana Studies, Education, Globalization Studies and Public Policy, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA, USA;2. The Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict and Complexity (AC4), Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA |
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Abstract: | Zero tolerance, punitive, and more negative peace-oriented approaches dominate school violence interventions, despite research indicating that comprehensive approaches are more sustainable. In this article, I use data from a longitudinal case study at a Trinidadian secondary school to focus on the role of teachers and their impact on school violence; I show that institutional constraints are not fully deterministic, as teachers sometimes deploy their agency to efficacious ends. In combining Noddings’ postulations on care and Freire’s notions of praxis as a symbiosis of reflection and action, I explicate the nascent praxes of care of six teachers at this school, as they strive for more positive peace-oriented approaches to school violence. I characterize these praxes as nascent because they are not fully interrogative of the structural violence of the entire system. However, I do argue that these nascent praxes possess decolonizing and transgressive potentiality in the face of a logic of coloniality that reinforces hierarchy, exclusion, and marginalization in the Trinidadian educational system. I conclude by contending that these nascent praxes must be scaled-up to more mature, radical praxes, including the cultivation of a systemic praxis of care; in other words, a deeper and broader postcolonial peace education. |
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Keywords: | School violence praxis care Trinidad teachers decolonization postcolonialism critical peace education negative peace positive peace |
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