Decentering the West: A Transnational Analysis of Settler-Colonial Education in Turkey, Japan, and Brazil

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Transnational Insights on Decolonial Education

Abstract

This paper challenges the assumption that settler-colonialism is a uniquely Western phenomenon by analyzing how education operates as a settler-colonial apparatus in Turkey, Japan, and Brazil. By developing and operationalizing the Transnational Settler-Colonial Education Framework (TSCEF), this literature review identifies three settler-colonial logics that mechanize educational systems: Permanence, Erasure, and Intentionality. Drawing on comparative scholarship across all three contexts, the study reveals how education is deliberately designed to legitimize settler dominance, obscure colonial violence, and render Indigenous existence to irrelevance. By decentering traditional cases, this research expands the geography of decolonial research and calls for greater academic accountability within the field. It argues that imagining decolonial futures requires confronting the global nexus of settler-colonial education.

Author

• Levon Ghanimian, Claremont Graduate University