Global social movements and dialogical pedagogy: politics, power and process

In this chapter, we draw on global social movements as a critical lens for exploring the democratic right to assembly and consensual decision making. Our discussion is framed within Chantal Mouffe’s agonistic model of politics, standing distinct from John Rawls’s political liberalism and Jürgen Habermas’s deliberate democracy. Using this as our theoretical frame, we explore the social movement as a preeminent example of the democratic right to public assembly. We suggest that bringing an understanding of social movements to educational practices can provide important insight for understanding both the radical exclusions that lie latent in systems of education and the possibility for moving towards educational practices committed to notions of inclusion and equity, albeit contested. By drawing attention to these movements and endeavouring to explore what these movements can offer the classroom—an important social and cultural institution—we are seeking to interject critical contributions around politics, power and process.