Engaging with the Cultural Other: The ‘Colonial Signature’ and learning from intercultural engagements
Citation
Hoult, S. (2020) Engaging with the Cultural Other: The ‘Colonial Signature’ and learning from intercultural engagements. International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning, 12(2), pp. 106-120.
Abstract
In this article, the idea of the ‘colonial signature’ is advanced as a potentially
pivotal response to triggers that deepen or act as barriers to intercultural
learning. From a postcolonial positioning, empirical data is then examined to
consider the responses to intercultural-learning triggers of 14 UK-based student
teachers on a study visit to India specifically through an analysis of their reflective
writing and interviews.
Participants’ responses to varied triggers became significant colonial
signatures to their intercultural learning. The learning deepened where responses
were reflexive and articulated with reference to the global powerbase that
underpins study visits to the Global South. Where responses to triggers provoked
more shallow comparisons with home, the colonial signatures resulted in closeddown discussion, thus acting as a barrier to further learning. This has implications
not only for study visits, but also, more widely, for the approach to global learning.