ISJ November 2016: Engaging with difference – finding ways forward

Nicholas Alchin

Abstract:

As I have been listening to students, teachers, researchers and others, in strand presentations, discussions, exhibitions, interest groups, the plenaries on language, global citizenship, school leadership, teaching and learning, curriculum, and culture and the Gallery Walk, it struck me that a synthesis of any sort was impossible. So my aim is less to summarise, and more to offer some reflections of my own, provoked by the ideas I have heard. Indeed, thinking back to the student comments on manufactured CAS reflections, let me assure you these are authentic. Samuel Johnson said ‘Nothing focuses the mind like a hanging’ and let me assure you that putting together some closing remarks on presentations you have heard only the day before, on topics you know little about, has much the same effect.