Forging a Bicultural Praxis Within Institutions of Higher Education

• In Event: Solidarity of Difference: A Caring Discussion About Culture, Power, and New Traditions in Higher Education

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes: The purpose of this piece is to raise critical awareness and dialogue about how the learning context in many institutions of higher education continues to employ a traditional approach (in the Western sense) in the education of culturally and linguistically diverse researchers. Relatedly, I interrogate how programs in higher education benefit from recalibrating spaces of learning to become more inclusive through critical bicultural pedagogy. To this end, this piece seeks the following objectives:
● To advance how structures of higher learning serve to exclude culturally diverse perspectives in knowledge production.
● To problematize traditional learning spaces in higher education that exclude culturally diverse epistemologies as credible lenses for knowledge creation.
Perspective/Theoretical Framework: This piece utilizes Darder’s notion of cultural pedagogy. According to Darder (2012), this pedagogical approach has the possibility to create a “discourse of hope in the light of tensions, conflicts, and contradictions that students must face in the process of their bicultural development” (p. 101). More importantly, this pedagogy allows a bicultural learner to “explore their world as they seek to also understand how the dominant culture affects their lives and their view of themselves as human beings” (p. 101). By employing a decolonizing approach as a point of departure, educators can contribute to greater cultural inclusivity in the process of knowledge creation.
Method/s: I employ a critical interpretation (qualitative) of how spaces of higher education exclude non-Western cultural lenses of meaning making in the process of knowledge construction. I use autoethnography, as it enables researchers to tell their stories of a life changing experience, all while incorporating personal reflections, thoughts, and stories. Further, it encompasses “research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political (Ellis, 2004, p. xix).
Data Sources/Evidence/Objects or Materials: Data sources include an interpretive analysis of field study narratives and visual art that was birthed as a result of engaging in a learning space that validated bicultural learners and non-Western epistemologies.
Results/Conclusions or Warrants for Arguments: Traditional learning spaces can benefit by the inclusion of non-Western epistemologies in their efforts to serve a culturally diverse student body. Grounded in hózhó, the creation of alternative learning spaces bring greater awareness of “other” forms of knowledge creation that have the potential to educate diverse democracies through public scholarship.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study (refer to data source, evidence or materials to substantiate on significance of study): This piece informs pedagogical best practices by highlighting a need and value in employing a critical bicultural pedagogy within the context of graduate school education. The findings of this work will benefit educators and administrators working with a culturally diverse student body by highlighting the value in creating learning alternative learning spaces and approaches that are culturally responsive and communal. Last, this piece enriches John Dewey’s conception of democracy, arguing that it needs to include cultural democracy in the learning exchange if social progress is to be arrived at.

Author

• Jerry Diaz, University of California - Santa Cruz