Conference Program

Gofran Murtada Kamal Khalfalla

The Aga Khan university, Institute for Educational Development, East Africa

gofranmkk@gmail.com

Abstract:

The research project explores child participation as a transformative approach within the educational context of Khartoum State, Sudan. In a setting marked by both traditional pedagogical practices and cultural participatory roots, the study explores the communal participatory conceptualizations that are shaped by Khartoum’s distinct realities shaped by decades of conflicts and social disparities. The analysis aims to enrich understanding of participatory frameworks -particularly the Child-to-Child approach- through the specific realities experienced in Khartoum state. The study focuses on educators as key agents in this process, recognizing their position as potential catalysts for development (Heikka et al., 2022; Joshi, 2022). Drawing on Paulo Freire’s emancipatory pedagogy, the research acknowledges that educators may simultaneously be victims of oppressive educational structures and perpetuators of practices that limit child agency (Hederman, 1982). This duality makes understanding their conceptions crucial for meaningful educational development.

The main research question guiding this inquiry is: How do educators in Sudan conceptualize child participation, agency, and active citizenship, and how do these understandings shape their educational practices? This question is explored through a theoretical framework combining constructivism (both cognitive and social) and Freirean emancipatory pedagogy, allowing for examination of how meanings are constructed individually and collectively within specific sociocultural contexts. The Child-to-Child approach serves as a proposed response - a pedagogical methodology and development intervention built on participatory principles that positions children as active agents in their own learning and community development (Hawes, 1988; Vaghela, 2021). The research explores how this approach interacts with indigenous participatory traditions.

As external actors -such as International Non-Governmental Organizations- increasingly influence educational provision, often guided by agendas detached from local knowledge (ElAsad, 2025; Higgins & Novelli, 2020), it becomes crucial to understand how Sudanese educators define participation. Doing so is an act of epistemic justice: it reclaims indigenous knowledge, values local expertise, and promotes educational development rooted in Sudan's pedagogical conceptions. International participatory education frameworks establish certain definitions of participation, agency, and active citizenship, usually crafted for stable environments. However, decades of unrest and persistent inequality in Sudan have likely led to distinct interpretations and subtleties in these concepts. Communal practices grounded in indigenous participatory culture have helped sustain communities amid prolonged crises. Therefore, educational projects with participatory aims must draw on existing cultural practices to be effective.

The study's significance lies in its potential to inform culturally responsive educational interventions in Sudan. By centering educators' voices and examining their lived experiences and conceptualizations, the research aims to bridge theory and practice, connecting documented participatory roots in Sudanese culture with the position of children as active citizens in educational settings. Findings will contribute to more nuanced understandings of how international educational frameworks can be meaningfully adapted and implemented in fragile and conflict-affected contexts, moving beyond uniform approaches toward context-sensitive pedagogical transformation. This research holds significance for Education in Emergencies scholarship, participatory pedagogies, and educational development practice in conflict-affected regions.

Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) represents a methodological approach that is widely established within the fields of Medicine and the Health Sciences (Coughlin et al., 2017), where it has emerged in response to the historical exclusion of minorities and vulnerable groups from public health policies and interventions. This methodological framework is characterised by the collaboration between researchers and communities aimed at building trust, sharing power, fostering co-learning, strengthening community assets and resources, promoting capacity building, and examining and addressing needs identified by the community itself (Israel et al., 2012). Grounded in the active participation of communities in research processes, CBPR seeks to rebalance power relations between researchers and research participants, promoting a more inclusive production of knowledge. Although its use has progressively expanded into other areas of the Social Sciences, the field of education remains one of the most marginal. A broader application in this field could provide an opportunity to deconstruct approaches, methodologies, and methods in order to reconstruct new balances and new research relationships between researchers and the ‘researched’, who in many cases remain constrained by the predominant use of scientific approaches that are insufficiently oriented toward a decolonial perspective on research and on the recognition of communities, citizens, and minority knowledge (Walsh, 2007). Within CBPR, the role of the researcher also shifts, becoming an opportunity to critically engage with one’s own positionality and with the interpretation of power relations (Forster & Forster, 2023), as well as to experiment with decolonial data collection tools and analysis methods.

This paper aims to present the experience of implementing CBPR within an ongoing research project funded by Horizon Europe, focused on the development of a Cultural Literacy Competences Portfolio through the practice of Performing Arts (music, drama, and dance). Four target communities are involved in Serbia, Italy, Germany, and Norway. Children, adolescents, and adults are engaged in a methodological process inspired by CBPR. The research has demonstrated the potential of this method as an opportunity to work through a decolonial perspective, understood as an emancipatory possibility within the research process itself, as it recognises community members as holding equal dignity in the production of knowledge (Gorman & Garnett, 2009), which is co-generated and co-produced. It has also revealed the practical demands that such an approach entails. Among these, the community engagement phase is crucial for its role in the process, yet it also represents a challenge in balancing the project’s limited timeframe. This paper presents reflections on the challenges and opportunities that CBPR offers as a decolonial perspective for research in European projects.

In the contemporary global era, grounded in social and epistemic justice, critical teacher education is pivotal towards transforming intersectional discrimination, neoliberalism, and the legacies of colonialism. The continued dominance of the Eurocentric knowledge paradigm of the Global North in the South continues to create tension in education. Educators, in particular, have an essential role to play in cultivating students’ awareness and criticality around how social and cognitive injustice can be disrupted, specifically by developing students’ need to critically scrutinise how knowledge is produced, whose lives, voices, and knowledges are valued, and how current biases can be addressed. This research explores how discourses of (de)coloniality shape Teacher Education in South Africa.

Pre-service teachers’ responses were analysed using Grounded Theory methodology, interpreted through the lens of critical and decolonial theories. Drawing on interviews with student teachers from a South African university, we investigate how these discourses are perceived, internalised, challenged, or reinterpreted by future educators situated within varying historical legacies and institutional frameworks. Our aim is not only to compare how (de)colonial narratives shape student teachers’ understandings of their profession.

This study first critically examines the structures, relations, and conditions of knowledge production, its dissemination and educational practices in the South African education context. We draw specifically on those postcolonial theories that advance knowledge through pragmatic application of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and decolonising pedagogical approaches to develop critical global citizens. We aim not only to add diverse perspectives, but also to re-examine existing curricula and priorities, if and, how these cultivate socially conscious and responsible students.

Second, we present results from interviews conducted with student teachers, the aim of which was to discover what decolonisation means to them and its impact on their pedagogical professionalism. The study aims to identify overlaps and differences in their conceptions and to provide insights into opportunities for further research, teaching and international exchange. One focus is the discussion of the development of a professional identity that encompasses critical analysis of social interaction in an educational context.

Critically interrogating the academic ecosystem while being part of it is neither a simple nor a self-evident undertaking. As Harney and Moten (2013) suggest, reflecting critically on the world of the universitas from the position one occupies within it may risk producing an excess of mannerism and a form of professionalization that operates primarily at the individual level, benefiting the single academic rather than communities. In this sense, the communities in question are those that are marginalized, Indigenous, subaltern, and all those forms of alterity that inhabit and experience the system.

The relationship between academia and the worlds of the undercommons/subaltern/oppressed/colonized (Bhabha, 1994; Freire, 1968; Harney and Moten, 2013; Spivak, 1988) can be interpreted through a dual mechanism: on the one hand, the appropriation and assimilation of the knowledge of those considered subaltern, to the advantage of dominant knowledge and the refinement of cultural colonialism; on the other hand, the devaluation of non-Western epistemologies. This process has allowed the university to legitimize itself as a hegemonic center of knowledge production, albeit at the cost of the systematic erasure of the original cultural matrices from which such knowledge emerges.

This contribution proposes to reflect on the dynamics of epistemic injustice that, still today, shape the ways of understanding and acting in the world (De Sousa Santos, 2014), attempting to circumvent the logics of extraction and/or devaluation of other forms of knowledge and recognizing their vital necessity in educational contexts. With the awareness that education and training may function as mechanisms for reproducing marginalizing social dynamics (Freire, 1968; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1970; Illich, 1971), the paper seeks to advance a decolonial reflection on the logics through which institutional spaces too often become interpreters of monocultural visions, to the detriment of the contributions of the knowledge of alternative subjectivities (Spivak, 1988; Smith, 1999; Borghi, 2020; hooks, 1994; Lorde, 1984; Zakaria, 2022).

In this regard, the paper intends both to recover the perspectives and practices of popular education—particularly those connected to Latin American contexts (Gadotti, Torres, 1993; Puiggrós, 2016) —as spaces capable of valuing forms of knowledge, experiences, bodies, and subjectivities often rendered invisible by dominant narratives and institutions, and to engage with certain experiences of social movements for civil rights that embody an otherwise (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), often perceived as uncanny (Spivak, 1999) and frequently considered subaltern and minoritarian.

This presentation explores the pedagogical thought of bell hooks and its relevance for feminist and critical approaches to teaching in contemporary higher education. Drawing on a teaching experience developed within a university course on feminist epistemologies and philosophies, the contribution reflects on the transformative potential of the classroom when it is conceived as a relational and participatory space of learning.

The presentation will discuss how the encounter with hooks’ work - particularly Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom - has informed and illuminated a teaching practice aimed at creating a classroom environment based on dialogue, participation, and critical reflection. Within this framework, the classroom is understood not simply as a place for the transmission of knowledge, but as a community of learning in which students’ voices and experiences are recognized as meaningful elements in the educational process.

A central focus of the presentation concerns hooks’ concept of engaged pedagogy, which challenges hierarchical and transmissive models of education. In contrast to traditional approaches based on the passive reception of information, engaged pedagogy emphasizes participation, shared responsibility, and the co-construction of knowledge. Teaching thus becomes a relational practice grounded in mutual recognition and in the development of critical awareness.

The discussion will also situate hooks pedagogical vision within the broader tradition of critical pedagogy, highlighting in particular the influence of Paulo Freire. Freire’s critique of the “banking model” of education and his understanding of education as a practice of freedom strongly shaped hooks’ approach to teaching. At the same time, hooks extends this framework through a feminist and intersectional perspective that addresses the interconnected structures of sexism, racism, and class inequality within educational institutions.

Special attention will be devoted to the experiential and political dimensions of learning that emerge in hooks’ work. Her reflections are deeply connected to her own experience as a Black woman navigating the tensions between segregated schooling and predominantly white academic environments. These experiences contribute to the development of a pedagogical perspective centered on recognition, difference, and the possibility of transforming the classroom into a space where diverse subjectivities can emerge and be heard.

Finally, the presentation will consider the holistic dimension of hooks’ pedagogy, also influenced by the teachings of the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, which emphasizes the integration of mind, body, and spirit in the learning process. From this perspective, teaching involves the whole person and requires the creation of an educational environment based on trust, openness, and shared engagement.

By reflecting on these theoretical and pedagogical perspectives, the presentation aims to contribute to current debates on feminist pedagogy and transformative learning, suggesting that hooks’ engaged pedagogy offers a powerful framework for reimagining the university classroom as a space of critical dialogue, collective learning, and intellectual freedom.