Kuahuokalā: Place and Transformative Educational Conversations

• In Event: 81.014 - Native and Indigenous Conceptions of Time, Space, and Place

Abstract

How can a place transform a conversation? In this paper the authors discuss how meeting to develop a professional learning community in a hale, a traditional native Hawaiian building changed the course and direction of the learning community. Too often, departments and divisions of higher education are driven by external standards imposed by state and national accrediting and licensing agencies. The conceptions of education and the way it is implemented then is more focused on meeting the standard rather than coming to a deeper communal understanding of what can be accomplished and how it can be accomplished. With a political desire for voice we built a community that found meaning in the process of building something greater than ourselves.

Authors

• Cathy Kanoelani Ikeda, University of Hawaii - West Oahu

• Stephanie H Kamai, University of Hawaii - West Oahu

• Michael Thomas Hayes, University of Hawaii - West Oahu