Overcoming the assumption of Global North dominance, valuing contributions of the Global South

• In Event: Overcoming Master Narratives: Unforgetting, Reimagining, and Reconstructing Through Quantitative Ethnography

Abstract

Objectives
This study uses Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA), a technique of Quantitative Ethnography (QE), to examine participation dynamics among students engaged in global, STEM-focused digital makerspace collaborations. Specifically, it explores how students from the Global North (U.S.) and Global South (Kenya) engage in group discourse in virtual, informal learning environments. Using ENA, researchers are able to understand the ways all students contribute meaningfully to group knowledge construction in a computer-supported collaborative learning setting.
Theoretical Frameworks
This study draws on decolonial theory and epistemic justice to examine how global participation hierarchies shape discourse in collaborative STEM learning. Decolonial theory challenges dominant knowledge systems that privilege Global North epistemologies while marginalizing contributions from the Global South (Mignolo, 2009; Connell, 2007). Within this frame, Kenyan students’ content-oriented contributions are not seen as peripheral but as essential to the group’s collective knowledge-building.
Epistemic justice (Fricker, 2007) further highlights how credibility can be unevenly distributed based on identity, leading to testimonial injustice when contributions are undervalued. Analyzing how students from different global contexts contribute to group discourse allows for a reassessment of whose knowledge is recognized and how learning spaces can be made more inclusive. These frameworks together position participation not just as a behavioral measure, but as a site of epistemic negotiation and potential resistance to global knowledge hierarchies.
Methods & Data Sources
Two international online meet-up sessions involving students from Kenya and the U.S. were analyzed. Student discourse was segmented into utterances and coded for seven constructs: Content Focus, Media Production, Curiosity, Feedback, Information Sharing, Participatory Teaching, and Social Disposition. ENA, which applies computational techniques on qualitative data, was used to visualize and compare discourse networks of students.
The data consisted of transcribed video-conference interactions from two global STEM meet-ups. Only student contributions were analyzed (N=13). Each student’s utterances were coded and categorized by the country. ENA generated network models illustrating construct co-occurrence and country-level discourse differences (Kenya and U.S.). Statistical comparison via Mann-Whitney U tests confirmed significant distinctions in discourse patterns between the two groups.
Results
ENA network models revealed distinct discourse patterns between students from Kenya and U.S. across two global STEM meet-ups as seen in Figure 1. U.S. Students demonstrated strong connections among socioemotional constructs—such as Feedback, Social Disposition, Media Production, and Information Sharing—highlighting their role in sustaining the group’s sociability. In contrast, Kenyan students more frequently contributed to Content Focus, Participatory Teaching, and Curiosity, emphasizing their role in advancing the conceptual depth of the discussion. The findings suggest that while U.S. students helped foster social cohesion, Kenyan students offered epistemically meaningful contributions—particularly in content development—thereby overcoming assumptions of U.S. (Global North) dominance.
Scholarly Significance
By foregrounding contributions from students in the Global South through the lenses of decolonial theory and epistemic justice, this study reveals how content-rich discourse plays a critical role in shaping group understanding. This work contributes to a more equitable reconceptualization of participation in global learning networks, offering both theoretical insight and practical implications for designing inclusive, cross-cultural collaborative spaces.

Author

• Danielle Pascual Espino, Pepperdine University