What Cultures Are Being Reproduced for Higher Education Success? Comparative Education for Critical Socio-Environmental Citizenship

• In Event: Critical Issues in Comparative Education

Abstract

This paper problematizes the influences from widened higher education (HE) participation goals upon cultural reproduction in terms of assessing cultural capital for HE access, framing what is “development,” and (de)prioritizing social-environmental justice. It is argued that comparative and international education (CIE) research too frequently overprioritizes how to transform marginalized cultures perceived as “deficient” in cultural capital for HE “success” rather than focusing on deeper unjust and unsustainable issues of the processes for HE “success” itself - including pre-tertiary level curricula/pedagogies. The need for CIE to decenter dominant, Northern cultural reproduction for HE “success” is argued through critical, ecopedagogical work to disrupt “success” grounded solely on Northern epistemologies, global neoliberal development, student-blaming for “their” “failures,” and ignoring critical local-to-global-to-planetary literacy capacities.

Author

• Greg William Misiaszek, Tohoku University