(Re)Imagining Indigenous Educational Futures Through Building Community Objectives
Sat, April 13, 7:45 to 9:15am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Floor: Level 200, Exhibit Hall BAbstract
We seek to collectively (re)define community engagement by identifying shared values and intention(s) that counter historical and contemporary inequities in educational research and institutional relationships and disrupt power dynamics in our relationality with communities. Through documentation of our collaborative work, we theorize that refusal of existing boundaries and disruption of current norms layered with relationality may reveal and support previously unimagined/unimaginable, but more powerful and equitable, possibilities for educational futures.
Perspective
This paper invokes theoretical framings and insights from American Indian, Indigenous, and critical ways of knowing and scholarship as a path to (re)imagine educational futures through engagement with communities. We explore and expand on an established body of theory on decolonization more broadly and in critique of research norms specifically (Tuhiwai Smith 1999; Wilson 2008) to envision ways to refuse and disrupt the status quo of STEM education research (Grande 2018; Simpson 2007; Tuck & Yang 2014). In our view, relationality includes mutual respect, reciprocity, responsibility and extensions of relationships that run counter to colonial and educational institutional norms which privilege objectivity and professional distance (Howard, 2018; McGregor, et al, 2018).
Methods
This exploration relies on a) consideration and expansion of existing theory, and b) documentation of STEM Ed PaCER collective inquiry and visioning devoted to co-creating our shared values and priorities in seeking to:
1. Engage with communities and reorient power within research relationships to center community needs.
2. Disrupt and refuse existing academic norms around STEM educational research including a focus on building community as opposed to individual expertise.
3. (Re)imagine pedagogical approaches, evaluation, and underlying structure(s) of STEM education.
4. Foreground ways of knowing that have not been historically respected or considered valid in Western/Eurocentric STEM fields.
5. Identify research and relationship building pathways that support moves toward decolonization—as “a repatriation of Indigenous land and life” (Tuck & Yang, 2012).
We draw from these considerations and documentations to develop our own theory of Indigenous educational futures founded upon community building.
Findings
We present our theory of Indigenous educational futures through community building in two parts: First, a narrative of the development of STEM Ed PaCER shared values in relationship to existing theory, explanation of the methods and methodology used to develop said values, and how we plan to approach future work. Second, an outline of our aspirations to continually engage community within and outside of our cohort, and how we intend to approach, disrupt and interact with academe in ways that challenge our vision for educational futures.
Significance
This is significant to future research with Indigenous and other historically underrepresented communities in STEM fields and education research. However, it also challenges academic norms centered on authoritative research expertise based on individual scholarship, and limited perspectives that privilege Western anthropocentric understandings of the world. By refusing and disrupting existing boundaries and shifting perspectives around what knowledge is valid and valued, we unlock potential for new modes of research for understanding our place as humans in an interconnected world.