Unsettling the Gap: Race, Politics and Indigenous Education examines
pressing issues of inequality in education. The notion of gap—and
the need to close it—is used widely in public and policy debates to
name the nature and scope of disadvantage. In the competitive world of
education, gaps have become associated with students who are seen to
be "falling behind," "failing" or "dropping out." A global deficit
discourse is, therefore, mobilised and normalised. But this discourse
has a history and is deeply political. Unsettling the Gap examines
this history and how it is politically activated through an analysis
of the "Australian Closing the Gap in Indigenous Disadvantage" policy.
In this policy discourse the notion of gap serves as a complex and
multiple signifier, attached to individuals, communities and to
national history. In unravelling these diverse modalities of gap, the
text illuminates the types of ruling binaries that tend to direct
dynamics of power and knowledge in a settler colonial context. This
reveals not only the features of the crisis of "Indigenous educational
disadvantage" that the policy seeks to address, but the undercurrents
of a different type of crisis, namely the authority of the settler
colonial state. By unsettling the normalised functions of gap
discourse the book urges critical reflections on the problem of
settler colonial authority and how it constrains the possibilities of
Indigenous educational justice.
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Race, Politics and Indigenous Education
Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781433159176
Publisert
2019
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Peter Lang
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter