Truth-Telling Pedagogies
Building Praxis across Contexts
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- Description
- Contents
- Reviews
- About
In an era marked by national truth-telling initiatives, from the Uluru Statement from the Heart in Australia to Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, education systems remain slow to respond. As educators face mounting pressure to “teach the truth,” they are often left without the frameworks, resources, or institutional support to do so.
Against the backdrop of post-truth politics and curriculum resistance, Truth-Telling Pedagogies makes a compelling case for critical, ethical engagement with history. This collection of international voices shifts the focus from policy reform to the pedagogy of truth-telling. It highlights Indigenous-led educational approaches that centre sovereignty, relationality, and local knowledges, moving beyond tokenistic inclusion toward deeper critiques of colonial structures.
Truth-Telling Pedagogies stands as one of the first volumes to place the pedagogy of truth-telling at its core, moving beyond conventional emphases on policy or curriculum reform. Designed with practitioners in mind, it highlights grounded theory and community-based approaches.
Introduction; Jessica Gannaway, Melitta Hogarth, Emily Dobrich, and Justin Wilkey
- Section 1. Knowing
- Chapter 1. Iconoclasm in Māori Truth-Telling and Logic: Revelling in The Endarkenment; Carl Mika
- Chapter 2. What “Truths” Can Dissertations Tell? Researcher Learnings from Relational Retellings; Yang-Hsun Hou and Betina Hsieh
- Chapter 3. Survivance as Truth-Telling Pedagogy: Reconciliation Education and Indigenous Continuance in Canada; Louis Busch
- Section 2. Being
- Chapter 4. Implicated Educators? The Role of Truth-Telling and Reparative Practices in Confronting UCL’s Eugenics Legacy; Shodona Kettle and Helen Knowler
- Chapter 5. Malaiyaga Histories: Exhibition as Pedagogy for Teaching Contested Histories; Johann Peiris and Lara Wijesuriya
- Chapter 6. The ‘Dance’ from Truth Receiving to Truth-Telling: Feeling, Healing, Holding and Moving through Sticky Positionality; Kathryn Coff, Emily Dobrich, and Jessica Gannaway
- Chapter 7. Echoes of Apartheid: Truth-Telling as a Pedagogical Disruption; Pearl Subban
- Section 3. Doing
- Chapter 8. Sámi Educational Currents in Sweden: Conversations on Politics, Pedagogy and Sámi Experiences; Matthew R. Keynes, Charlotta Svonni, Anna-Lill Drugge, and Björn Norlin
- Chapter 9. Looking beyond Pedagogical Limits: Indigenous Student Voice at the Edges of Truth-Telling in Australian Classrooms; Justin Wilkey and Jessica Gannaway
- Chapter 10. Truth-Telling in the Early Years: Connecting Children, Educators, Families, and Community; Helen Cozmescu and Sara Tajima
- Chapter 11. The Potential of School-Based Restorative Justice to Lay Developmental Foundations for Nuanced Thinking about Truth; Gabriel Velez
- Chapter 12. Conclusion: Creating Truth-Telling Pedagogies and Building Collective Praxis; Jessica Gannaway, Justin Wilkey, Emily Dobrich, and Melitta Hogarth
There is no more timely a book than Truth-Telling Pedagogies. We are currently witnessing how the widespread political abandonment of truth is being used in the service of ongoing occupation, genocide, and dispossession. Educators can make a profound contribution to repairing these injustices through truth-telling praxis. This collection offers us insights into the orientations and tensions of this crucial work; it is a clarion call for creating together – with all its difficulties – a more truthful and just world.
Jessica Gannaway is a non-Indigenous Lecturer and Researcher in the Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
Melitta Hogarth is a Kamilaroi woman and Professor of Indigenous Education in the Faculty of Education, The University of Melbourne, Australia.
Justin Wilkey is a proud Ngarrindjeri man who grew up on Kaurna Country in Adelaide. He completed his PhD in the Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where he is a Lecturer and Researcher in Indigenous education.
Emily Dobrich is a Canadian non-Indigenous settler scholar with a PhD in Adult Education and Community Development from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto.