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International Review of Education - Journal of Lifelong Learning Author: joan.Osa Oviave Volume 62, Issue 1, pp 1–10 |
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Introduction
I am. Because we are. Ubuntu
This special issue emerged from the 59th annual conference of the Comparative and International Education Society (CIES) held in Washington D.C. on 8–13 March 2015. The theme of the conference was “Ubuntu! Imagining a Humanist Education Globally”. The decision to produce this issue and the process for the selection of topics originated from a convergence of interests among the CIES conference organisers, the editorial team of the International Review of Education (IRE) and one IRE Consulting Editor. Subsequently, we – the former CIES President-Elect (now President), the former Conference Chair and the IRE Consulting Editor – agreed to serve as Guest Editors of this special issue.
All three Guest Editors took part in the CIES “presidential panel” entitled “Re-centering Education as a Moral Enterprise”. We subsequently decided to invite the participants of the panel to contribute to this special issue. There was an insightful engagement among the panellists, as well as constructive contributions from the audience that attended the session. Participants articulated various perspectives and raised pertinent questions. One of these questions concerned the notion of “re-centring” which, critics argued, assumes education had been centred before, whereas in fact it had never been. However, while the arguments enriched the debates, some of the points made led to the realisation of a need to provide further clarification about the connotation of “re-centring”.
