Decolonizing the Pursuit of Truth: Duoethnographic Inquiry Into the Onto-Epistemologies of Western Higher Education

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Five
  In Roundtable Session: Navigating Higher Education and Storying Educational Leadership (Table 2)

Abstract

This research utilizes duoethnography to problematize the onto-epistemologies of higher education systems in North America. Central to this research is the racialized voices of a Ph.D. student in Canada and an early-career researcher in the United States. Through our multifaceted conversations regarding the validation of knowledge and the creation of invisible voices, we highlight how Western higher education often validates Eurocentric knowledge as “the truth” while devaluing others to uphold colonial modernity. Borrowing the la paperson’s concept of the fourth world of higher education (2017) and de Andreotti et al.’s Beyond-reform space of decolonization (2015), we imagine decolonial higher education systems focusing on harmony, connectedness, empathy, and responsibility, where knowing and being are inseparable from each other.

Authors

• Ha Bich Dong, University of Manitoba
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lesley Nina Sisaket, Minnesota Office of Higher Education
  Presenting Author