Hans Smits – författare

Thinking about and Enacting Curriculum in “Frames of War”, edited by Rahat Naqvi and Hans Smits, responds to the challenges Judith Butler posed about the precariousness of life and questions about how we apprehend, and take up ethically, our responsibilities for those who are considered “Other.” The notion of enframing asks us to consider what conditions our understanding of others, and how we open up what curriculum concepts and theories mean in the contexts of complex conditions for educational practices, such as recent wars, which have brought to forefront critical questions of human recognition and the precariousness of the conditions in which human flourishing is possible. An overarching objective of this book is the meaning of a call to ethics, and how discussion of framing and frames is a provocation to think about our responsibilities as curriculum scholars and practitioners. The authors take up the limits of knowledge, and present the challenge to curriculum theory to think in terms of not just understanding the frames through which we apprehend the Other, but also how we might re-frame our thinking as a radical call to responsibility. Each chapter in Smits and Naqvi’s Thinking about and Enacting Curriculum in “Frames of War” illustrates these concepts in diverse ways, but with common interest and concern, considering how curriculum is and ought to be fundamentally engaged with re-thinking our frames of apprehension.

This book has won the Publication Award: Multiauthored or Edited Books from the Canadian Association of Foundations of Education (CAFE)This captivating book opens a multi-vocal and layered conversation on critical contemporary issues in teacher education. As a provocative example of self-study research, each part of the book shows the richness and productivity of collaborative, practice-based research, oriented to critical issues in teacher education. In bringing forward key issues in teacher education, Provoking Conversations on Inquiry in Teacher Education also demonstrates an exercise of practical judgment, that is, to show how certain kinds of research and writing can address the real life issues encountered in practice. The bold effort to make their work public and invite responses represents a deliberate attempt by the authors to reveal the importance of critical conversations. Invited responses by critical friends from other institutions demonstrate that conversations about practices in teacher education must remain open-ended and responsive to a plurality of thought and experience.

The language of frames suggests the need to rethink self and other in fostering ethical relationships as a foundation for peaceful existence. Educational writers and practitioners from many parts of the world, including New York, Denver, Minneapolis, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Israel, and Canada offer their perspectives on peace as an aim of curriculum.Possibilities for learning about peace conceived in terms of Jonathan Lear’s (2006) notion of «radical hope» are illustrated in the contexts of diverse settings and challenges: the aftermath of apartheid in South Africa, re-imagining post-colonial history curricula in Zimbabwe, exploring the meanings of truth and reconciliation and restorative justice in Canada, examining the quality of pedagogic relationships in elementary school classrooms, attending to experiences of gay and lesbian students in schools, experiences of marginalized students, children’s experiences of civic engagement, Islamophobia in high schools and teacher education classes, fraught relationships between Palestinian and Jewish students in a teachers’ college in Israel, and the inclusion of First Nations culture and knowledge in Canadian teacher education classes. As whole and in each of its parts, Framing Peace encourages us to think about peace as an urgent and fundamental responsibility of curriculum at all levels of education.