Criticalness Within, Through, and Between Southern Epistemologies, Literacies, and Philosophies for Socio-Environmental Justice and Planetary Sustainability

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session’s diverse presentations problematize teaching and learning contexts through, and grounded upon, critical theories. Critical theories of education have the inherent goals of designing and auctioning the conceptual, the theoretical and the practical into emerging possibilities of praxis for social and environmental justice, as well as planetary sustainability. We explore the epistemological, literacies, and philosophical intersectionalities between the following topics: (anti-)environmental pedagogies and androcentrism/planetarism in Southern/Northern framings of ‘development’; (de)coloniality and the foundations of African philosophies of education; the contested terrains of academia supporting/countering Indigenous imaginaries, phenological inquiry possibilities of exploring (anti-)racism within academic life; and epistemological diversification of schools through teacher education programs. Problematizing “being critical,” especially from Northern groundings, will be a thread throughout the presentations.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Decolonial, Postcolonial, and Anti-Colonial Studies in Education

Chair

• Ali A. Abdi, University of British Columbia

Papers

• Eco-Pedagogy: Critical Environmental Pedagogies to Disrupt Falsely Touted Sustainable Development - Greg William Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University

• African Philosophies of Education: Colonialist Deconstructions and Critical Anticolonial Reconstructionist Possibilities - Ali A. Abdi, University of British Columbia

• The Indigenous Imaginary and Tertiary Institutions - Robert J. Tierney, University of British Columbia; Bob Morgan, University of Newcastle

• Critical Theory as Lived Meaning: Exploring Antiracist Practice in Postsecondary Education - Derek Tannis, Saskatchewan Polytechnic

• Diversifying Schools With Global and Indigenous Knowledge: Inclusion of Internationally Educated Teachers in Teacher Education - Chouaib El Bouhal, University of Alberta

Discussant

• Greg William Misiaszek, Beijing Normal University