Whitehead, D. (2005). World-view perspectives. In S. May, M. Franken & R. Barnard (Eds.). LED 2003: 1st International Conference on Language, Education and Diversity, Refereed Conference Proceedings and Keynotes, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand, 26-29 November 2003 [CD-ROM]. Hamilton, New Zealand: Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, The University of Waikato.
Abstract
The foundation of a tolerant society is an ability to foster and
respond to the diversity of perspective among its people. Cognitive
psychologists have described how perspective influences information
processing, while our innate ability to adopt perspective has been established
by neuropsychology. Literature, through the use of point-of-view, together
with results from researchers adopting socio-cultural paradigms suggests
perspective is also a social construct. An ecologically-based framework is
described that provides cohesion to the temporal, spatial, universal and other
types of world-view perspective associated, predominantly, with indigenous
cultures. Culturally responsible types of creative and critical thinking are
evoked when world-view perspective is engaged while reading text and
reading the world. World-view perspective provides us with a means of
critiquing the construction of knowledge through the de-construction of
dominant discourses, re-valuing of indigenous world-views and reducing the
relational distance between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples.
Publisher
Wilf Malcolm Institute of Educational Research, The University of Waikato
