Month: October 2022

Article about UNESCO Futures of Education

“UNESCO”

Sobe, Noah W. (2022). The future and the past are unevenly distributed: COVID’s educational disruptions and UNESCO’s global reports on education. Paedagogica Historica, DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2022.2112244

“the future is already here – it’s just not very evenly distributed”

Willian Gibson

“For half a century the UN’s principal agency on education, UNESCO, has sought to shape the world’s educational landscape through a once-every-generation global report (e.g. the Faure report of 1972 and the Delors report of 1996). The latest of these reports – the Sahle-Work Commission’s “Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education” – was developed and released amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. This article considers the ways the pandemic entered into the production of educational futures – and pasts – in this tradition of UNESCO global reports. It argues that the uneven distribution of pasts and futures is one of the key, already- existing systems of difference that set the stage for a disruptive event like the COVID-19 pandemic.” (Sobe, 2022, p. 1)

“The core of the proposed transformation agenda is the call for building “a new social contract for education” that consists of agreed-upon core principles, a redesign of education on multiple dimensions, and a rethinking of the actions and actors that implement and manage educational institutions, programmes and processes.” (Sobe, 2022, p. 8)

As more than one of the Sahle-Work Commission members has noted, the word “together” is the most important word in the report’s title. (Some, 2022, p. 10)

NOTE: The Center for Intercultural Dialogue held focus groups as part of the information gathering stage of the Futures of Education project, preparing what we learned as a report for UNESCO, in 2021.

 

UC San Diego: Language & Social Justice (USA)

“Job

Assistant Professor of Communication in Language and Social Justice, University of California San Diego, CA Deadline: 14 October 2022; if not filled, applications accepted until 31 December 2022.

The ideal candidate will have an active and creative research and teaching program that focuses on the relationship between language and struggles for social justice particularly as they occur around race, indigeneity, gender, disability, class and nationality. Also of interest in how language becomes an instrument for perpetuating systems of exclusion and inequality, and at the same time a vehicle for framing alternative visions that challenge such systems. Areas of specialization may include: language and globalization, including bilingualism and multilingualism; language and decolonization; language and migration; language and learning systems; language and media culture; multimodality; political, moral, and legal discourses related to language; and ecolinguistics (the relation between language and the environment). They are open to candidates trained in communication, relevant areas of linguistics (such as sociolinguistics) or other relevant fields.

Successful candidates will have strong methodological skills that augment the department’s interdisciplinary program and strengths in cultural and historical analysis, institutional analysis (including political economy), comparative analysis, ethnography and textual and discourse analysis, and community based participatory research. Candidates from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds and/or with a research focus on LatinX or other underrepresented language communities are encouraged to apply.

Antioch College: Includes Intercultural Communication (USA)

“Job

Assistant Professor of Communication (including Intercultural Communication), Division of Social Sciences, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, OH, USA. Deadline: 14 October 2022; position open until filled.

The Division of Social Sciences welcomes candidates in communication to contribute to a student-centered interdisciplinary undergraduate liberal arts curriculum. A Ph.D. in communication or closely related field and evidence of successful teaching at the undergraduate level is required. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to build a dynamic set of communication courses within Antioch College’s unique self-designed curriculum. Salary is competitive and commensurate with experience.

The successful candidate will have broad training in communication studies and be excited to teach a range of communication courses, including survey courses (Introduction to Communication Theory, Effective Public Speaking, Introduction to Interpersonal Communication, and Intercultural Communication) and courses in their areas of specialization. Scholars with critically oriented and interdisciplinary research agendas are highly desired. Topical areas of specialization include (but are not limited to): prejudice and discrimination, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, economic inequality, environmental communication, and rhetoric of political and social movements.