Discourse Power Resistance
DPR is an annual international conference that has been held each Spring since 2002. The conferences began with a focus on the social, economic, political and cultural forces that shape education policy and practice world-wide. Over the years this broad focus has been maintained; but what has established the international reputation of DPR has been the on-going critical analysis of issues of social justice, and the commitment to enable silenced and marginalized voices to be heard: discourse, power, resistance.
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DPR14: Research & Practice - Exchange & Change
At least in the humanities and social sciences, research needs to be reciprocal: asking questions, we are called in question, the researcher researched; and the outcome is mutual understanding one of another. The otherness of strangers, our essential strangeness one to another, brings us together to new insights which are never complete but always shared: to research is to be, in John Donne's word, involved. Research should be mutual exchange.
All well and good! But if anything is to come of this deepened understanding - this coming together - it needs to be political. Research - exchange - is not enough. DPR is political because teaching, learning and research are political: social justice requires that new understandings lead to action. DPR14 sets out to understand and to share the huge diversity of insights that only a truly international conference can bring together; to take courage, with a view to making things change. This is the praxis Karl Marx had in mind: Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.
How can a conference change anything? Let us say it again: we come together, we share our ideas and questions and concerns; we take courage, because we need courage to challenge and change bad practice, tired conformity. We have left on the website the abstracts that were accepted for 2013 and from the two previous years, so as to demonstrate the conferences' on-going commitment to sustained critical analysis leading to constructive change.
Presentations at the conference will take the form of papers, workshops, performances, exhibitions, and posters. The conference brings together a range of practitioners, researchers, policy-makers, learners and teachers, with ideas to share about research and practice, through single or joint presentations or as a contribution to any of the symposia that will be taking shape. Please keep an eye on the DPR web pages for further details.
If you have suggestions, or ideas for a contribution you would like to discuss, please contact the conference organizer,
Jerome Satterthwaite
jnsatterthwaite@gmail.com
First call for papers: 3 December 2013
Please note: this is NOT a deadline. We do not set a deadline for receiving abstracts but there are a limited number of spaces available, so we strongly encourage presenters to submit abstracts as soon as possible. This is particularly important where funding is dependent on the abstract having been accepted or where visas will be required. It is always sad when presentations have to be withdrawn at a late stage because presenters have not succeeded in bids for funding or their applications for visas have been refused or made too late.