Shifting Polarized Positions

Download or read book Shifting Polarized Positions written by Xin Li and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2009 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors of this book - teachers of foundation courses to pre-service and in-service teachers in Canada, Israel, and the United States - use culturally heterogeneous settings as points of departure for inquiry and cross-cultural encounters of difference, and illuminate how, among people of differing ethnic, religious, socio-economic, political, ideological, and gendered backgrounds, the telling of experiential stories can shift personally and culturally polarized positions. Key in the work documented here is the encouragement of narrative rather than argumentative modes of expression: the instructors found inquiry more likely to stay alive when they were able to access and incorporate both the mutual interest of and the personal tensions between their students. The book illustrates how personal dynamics can subtly move individual inquiry forward, and help alleviate animosity and polarization.