Miranda Christou

The Language of Patriotism: Sacred History and Dangerous Memories.

This paper examines arguments about the teaching of history in Cyprus, especially as they relate to the cultivation of patriotism. I point out how the narratives of ‘sacred history’ and ‘dangerous memories’ are discursive elements of a pedagogy that aims at maintaining patriotism by preventing subjective and divisive personal memories from eroding a cohesive national narrative. Along with other linguistic strategies (‘passions of the past’), these discourses allow an idealization of history and a rejection of subjective, personal memory. I argue that this contributes to viewing history as a distant entity and not as a field of action, something that ultimately works against the purported goal of sustaining patriotism.

Critical Communicative Methodology: including vulnerable voices in research through dialogue

This article describes how Critical Communicative Methodology (CCM) has been used successfully to analyse educational inequalities in ways that generate real transformation towards social justice. We begin by arguing that educational research today should employ new methodological approaches that can ensure the inclusion of different voices in social science research and the production of knowledge that transforms social exclusion. We then analyse the main epistemological positions of CCM, based on Habermas’ communicative action theory, and explain how it was implemented in the European Union-funded INCLUD-ED project. Finally, we illustrate how INCLUD-ED has had a social and political impact and we argue that research with vulnerable groups, based on the principles of CCM, can generate social and educational transformation.

Border Encounters: How Children Navigate Space and Otherness in an Ethnically Divided Society.

The article draws on ethnographic material from an ongoing study which explores 10- to 12-year-old Greek Cypriot children’s experiences of crossing to the north, the occupied part of Cyprus. By focusing on the act of crossing and the actual physical experience of visiting the occupied territories, the study seeks to highlight the mechanisms implicated in the construction of ethnic difference as children move through spaces and places and encounter ‘others’. The article argues that to understand how children navigate ethnic divisions in the context of these visits, we need to attend to the role of place-making in the construction of identity.

The role of ‘Other Women’ in current educational transformations

The INCLUD‐ED project’s case studies of successful schools in Europe reveal that there are advantages involved in opening schools to all kinds of women as far as educational and social inclusion is concerned. ‘Other Women’ – those whose voices have traditionally been silenced in academic settings – help in crucial ways to improve education when they have the chance to participate in multiple spaces and activities in the school. By participating in decision‐making bodies, in classrooms and in family education, amongst other activities, the ‘Other Women’ enhance students’ learning, improve living together and break down cultural and gender stereotypes. All these findings point to the need to open schools to all women to advance processes of educational transformation.

Más allá del lenguaje sexista: Actos comunicativos en las relaciones afectivo-sexuales de los y las adolescentes

Resumen: uno de los problemas identificados para la cohesion social en Europa es el aumento de la violencia de genero entre jovenes. En este articulo analizamos los actos comunicativos en las relaciones afectivas y sexuales entre adolescentes, a partir de sus relatos sobre situaciones de interaccion vividas o presenciadas. La informacion ha sido recogida a traves de relatos de vida cotidiana y grupos de discusion comunicativos. El analisis de los actos comunicativos identifica el lenguaje verbal utilizado, pero tambien los gestos o el tono, la posicion que ocupa el hablante o el atractivo que se le otorga en el grupo de iguales, la presion social, la atribucion de deseo, etc., por los que unas mismas palabras, incluso unas mismas intenciones, pueden llegar a tener efectos diferentes. El estudio de las caracteristicas de los actos comunicativos nos aporta criterios para identificar de forma mas clara si en una relacion existe acoso o libertad. Palabras Clave: Actos comunicativos, adolescentes, violencia de genero, relaciones afectivo-sexuales, atraccion.

Globalisation, the challenge of educational synchronisation and teacher education

In this article, we set out from the challenge that globalising synchronisation – usually exemplified by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Bank initiatives – presents for education to argue that the time–space compression effected by globalisation must educationally be dealt with with caution, critical vigilance and a broadening of educational theoretical outlooks. We focus on the demands this raises upon the teacher as a researcher and a critical thinker and claim that meeting such demands presupposes some curricular enrichment of teacher education. We suggest two theoretical frameworks that can effect such enrichment and be made relevant to a critique of the globalising educational synchronisation, namely, the charge of developmentalism and the capabilities approach (Sen, Nussbaum) to equality. We conclude with some indications of the need for a reformulated notion of cosmopolitanism that should be contrasted with those globalising practices that often appear in cosmopolitan guise.

Transforming Violent Selves Through Reflection in Critical Communicative Research

Currently, teenagers are being socialized into a world of violent realities, not only through social interaction but also through interaction via the media, especially via the Internet. Research conducted using the critical communicative methodology has shown that this methodology helps young people to reflect critically about their violent identities in relation to their sexual and affective relationships. It presents opportunities for research participants to question and transform themselves during the research process. In this article, we focus on this transformative dimension of the methodology and illustrate it with qualitative empirical material from two research studies conducted with Spanish youth. One focuses on communicative acts and other on preventing the socialization of gender violence.

Education in Real Time The Globalization of Synchronized Learning

In a globalizing world of intense intercultural and transnational interactions, learning and knowledge are becoming increasingly more standardized and homogeneous based on the assumption that the world is functioning in real time. This drive for standardization (expressed in practices such as harmonization of higher education, national curriculum standards and international testing) is facilitated in part by technological innovation and it takes place in a world of shrinking time—space where time is seen as uniform, linear and de-contextualized. The author argues that the concept of time is central in the construction of knowledge, the experience of difference and the labour of pedagogy. The dominant assumption of living in a synchronized, globalized world where everyone is connected in real time has implications for the ways in which educational practices generate new ‘scientific’ ways of constructing otherness and justifying inequality, albeit under the banners of quality, accountability and choice.

The hyphen in between: children’s intersectional understandings of national identities

This paper examines how children are able to think intersectionally in a context of imagined nationalist discourses and geographies that shape children’s understandings of hyphenated and ethnic identifications. We draw on data from three different field studies we have carried out during the last two decades in a divided Cyprus which examine how Greek-Cypriot children categorize and understand the labels ‘Greek’, ‘Turkish’ and ‘Cypriot’ and their hyphenated versions (i.e. ‘Greek-Cypriot’ and ‘Turkish-Cypriot’). Through its focus on children’s intersectional identities, our paper illustrates how children’s ability to border cross on the island allow for more nuanced understandings of both ‘self’ and ‘other’. The paper situates children’s emerging intersectional identities within the geographic realities of political and territorial division on the island. We argue that the dimension of ‘generation’ is an important intersectional addition to the concepts of gender and race. The paper shows that children’s spatial engagements during their visits to the ‘other side’ gave rise to a new, more intersectional understanding of themselves and others.

What is a Border? Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot Children’s Understanding of a Contested Territorial Division

In his book Barbed Wire: A Political History Razac (2000) argues that this simple, twisted iron object has been a pivotal invention for situations of war, the marking of territorial borders, and even the demarcation of spaces such as Nazi concentration camps. In Cyprus, this is a piece of metal that runs horizontally from East to West for about 180 kilometers and encloses the demilitarized buffer zone — also known as the Green Line — that has separated the northern and southern areas of the island since 1974. As the quintessential symbol of war, barbed wire looms large in the minds of Greek Cypriots as an icon of the island’s division. For Turkish Cypriots, however, it mostly represents a safety line, enforced by Turkish troops in 1974 in order to separate the two communities.