When Transgression Becomes Developmental – Ethical-Political Empowerment Through Expansive Learning and Transformative Agency

Abstract

Learning in times of climate change and ongoing inequality, requires ethical-political engagements that are transgressive of unsustainable norms, including those left in coloniality's wake (Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2017; 2023).However, a question arises as to when such transgressions become developmental (cf.Williams et al., 2018).This symposium addresses this question through analysis of five formative interventions (cf.Engeström et al., 2014).The studies advance a decolonial dialectic of transformation, enacted as a process of expansive, transgressive learning and emancipatory agency from below, grounded and expanding from living heritage and place; reflexively returning to it.Here co-engagement in expansive learning actions strengthen African relationality (Ubuntu relations), and collective (emancipatory) transformative agency (cf.Engeström and Sannino, 2010; 2021;Lotz-Sisitka et al., 2023).Studies emphasise ethical-political expansion of the object of activity in expansive learning struggles to address environmental degradation, gender and racial discrimination, and exclusions of living heritage, youth, and indigenous cultures. Symposium introductionThe symposium introduction will share the main focus of the symposium, namely our interest in a decolonial dialectics of transformation as developed in our work through expansive learning struggles and ethically and politically engaged formative interventions.Our studies all show transgression of unsustainable ethical-political norms and practices that are associated with and lead to environmental degradation, social injustices and exclusions, including those left in coloniality's wake.We will show how our work in southern Africa deepens understandings of the dialectic of transformation, mainly through highlighting how the ethical political (and associated empowerments) can be explicitly viewed as a focus of co-engagement and analysis in expansive learning research formative interventions in the global South.Our studies work critically and in contextually grounded ways with different generations of Cultural Historical Activity Theory (Engeström, 2015;2016;Engeström and Sannino, 2021) -including second generation CHAT (Paper 2), third generation CHAT (Paper 3), and fourth generation CHAT (Paper 1), and an applied pedagogically framed version of CHAT for schools and teachers education (Paper 4).Across these we highlight what seems to be a core focus of expansive learning and transformative agency formation in our context, notably the ethical political conundrums and motives for change that catalyse dialectically generative outcomes that expand the ethical political dynamics of the object of activity (materially and psychologically) in our CHAT studies, where efforts to strengthen (at times disrupted) Ubuntu relations surface within the relationalities necessary for advancing multi-voicedness and ethical-political expansion of the object.

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