Empathetic-Reflective-Dialogical Restorying for Decolonisation: An Emancipatory Teaching-Learning Strategy for Religion Education

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12

Empathy; Religious Education; Learning Strategies; Higher Education; Teaching Methods; Interdisciplinary Approach; Student Empowerment; Communities of Practice; College Students; Misconceptions; Story Telling; Personal Narratives; Dialogs (Language); Student Attitudes; World Views; Gender Differences; Safety; Social Change; Foreign Countries

10.1080/01416200.2020.1831439

0141-6200

This article argues for the inclusion of Empathetic-Reflective-Dialogical Restorying as a teaching-learning strategy for Religion Education. This strategy, employed in three small-scale research projects in a South African Higher Education Institution, addresses decolonisation of the Religion Education curriculum in the following ways: changing how teaching-learning takes place; transdisciplinary engagement; empowering students as agents of their own learning; depatriarchisation; and dispelling the myth of African inferiority. Both self-dialogue and self-narrative were used to create open space stories when approaching content that is relevant to the lived experience of gender (in)equality and patriarchy. Engaging in a safe space in Communities in Conversation, Communities in Dialogue, and Communities for Transformation, students troubled entrenched beliefs and worldviews and co-constructed (restoried) understandings. They expressed the view that this emancipatory teaching-learning strategy has the potential to facilitate classroom praxis that is both reflective and reflexive. This can be transformative for the greater society.

As Provided

2020

EJ1277755