Repair in Education Spaces

ABSTRACT

The paper discusses repair as valuable for thinking about and acting towards sustainable human development. Repair asks us to take account of intersections of past, present, and reimagined futures; the end is becoming and being full human beings with dignity, attentive to the lives of others and to what Achille Mbembe calls the “living world”. We seek to repair that which is valuable to us, while also setting aside what cannot be fixed (for example colonialism and apartheid). The concept of repair is proposed as a lens to think about some disrepair challenges facing development: the enduring effects of history on justice, skewed global knowledge relations, and racism. The ideas are then applied to the space of education. A repair praxis framework is proposed based on four overlapping dimensions: conviviality as incompleteness; advancing epistemic freedoms; fostering transformational learning; and, spaces of dialogue and participation. The paper concludes with an example of renaming the world to repair the world and finally reminds us that we should pay attention to who we are with others, to what we repair, and to the kind of ancestors we choose to be for future generations.

KEYWORDS:

• Dis/repair
• education
• reparative pedagogical dimensions
• capabilities
• histories‌
• taking back

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented as the Presidential Address at the HDCA Conference in Sofia 11 September 2023. My thanks to all the participants in the Youth Voices on Social Justice project and to Sandra Boni, Diana Velasco, Stephen Esquith, and the anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4Bb7p9gggc).

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_provinces_of_Mozambique_by_Human_Development_Index

3 https://www.usaid.gov/mozambique/education

4 See Walker (2024) for more detail on this project, the process, and the capabilities that students valued.

5 See https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2022-12-14-complete-list-of-south-africas-bird-names-in-isizulu-finally-takes-flight/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Research Foundation (South Africa): [Grant Number 86540].

Notes on contributors

Melanie Walker

Melanie Walker is South African Research Chair in Higher Education and Human Development at the University of the Free State based in the Centre for Development Support. She is a fellow of ASSAF, an A-rated NRF scientist, and current president (2022–2024) of the HDCA.