Decolonizing the Curriculum: Critical Spaces for Spiritualities and Identities

• In Event: 72.064 - Roundtable Session 29
  In Roundtable Session: 72.064-5 - Mobilizing Indigenous Epistemologies: Gender, Language, and Technology

Abstract

Objectification and commodification of knowledge denies critical engagement with students’ and teachers’ consciousness and identities, nullifying spiritualities, as part of coloniality. Neoliberalism adds to the colonial legacy through globalization and standardization, culminating in U.S. curriculum under Common Core and high-stakes testing. Coloniality of being (Mignolo) provides a theoretical frame to unravel the intricate effects on individuals. Through autoethnography, I analyzed my experiences in which resistance, conformity, production, and reproduction by youth and educators revealed a need to fight for a public education that creates spaces for engagement of spiritualities and knowledges. Instead of a pedagogy of entrapment (Macedo 1994) that masquerades as choice, decolonial pedagogy is needed that dialectically and dialogically engages youth and educators.

Author

• Elizabeth Janson, University of Massachusetts - Dartmouth