Abstracts Education

Dead certainties and local knowledge : postculturalism, conflict and narrative practices in radical/experiential education

by Hilary Byrne-Armstrong

This thesis documents the development of a narrative epistemology and an associated pedagogic practice around the conflicts that occur in experiential learning settings. The thesis traces a progressive shift away from individualistic accounts of conflicts and dilemmas in learning being primarily embedded in psychological spaces, to a recognition of the importance of the social space - the cultural discourses that shape our everyday activity and interactions. This recognises that conflict is not simply a consequence of difference arising from personality, or other psychological factors, but a consequence of prevailing cultural narratives that instruct/construct us into the identities that we are. This pedagogic practice involves a change from internalising conversations to externalising conversations, thus keeping the discursive space open to the different stories, which are usually silenced by prevailing taken-for-granted explanations. For me, it is this refusal of what we are (i.e. our culturally bestowed identities), and a critique of the forces that shape us, that opens spaces within the social fabric to enable different stories to be heard and appreciated and creates opportunites for new, radical learning to occur.