Decolonialism and Comparative Education in Latin America: a time for revision

• In Event: The echoes of protest and decolonization in LAC's education system

Proposal

The paper proposes to review the forms of production of comparative education in the Latin American region and relates them to some of the contributions of the decolonial perspective. Based on previous studies (Acosta, 2011; Acosta & Ruiz, 2015; Acosta, 2017), the paper proposes the idea of Latin America as a space of circulation in which knowledge production and uses of comparative education combine. To this end, the paper offers a synthesis of the development of postcolonialism and the decolonial perspective, highlighting the main works in comparative education that approach this conceptual reference (among others, Silova, Rappleye, y You, 2020; Takayama, Sriprakash y Connell, 2017; Unterhalter y Kadiwal, 2022; Vickers, 2020). It then describes the forms and conditions adopted by comparative education in the region, which leads to questions about the possibility and potential of an approach to the abovementioned perspective.
However, this paper does not aim to show the scope and limits of postcolonialism, the decolonial perspective and comparative education in the region. Instead, we want to deepen a more classical reflection on conceptualising comparative education. It is a reflection situated in a specific region in which the focus of the content connects directly to its spatial displacement: Latin America, the recipient of some inheritances and producer of its forms of circulation of education knowledge.
Consequently, the paper aims to position the circulation of comparative education in the region as an anchor for its form of knowledge production. To do so, it considers the theoretical developments that add the decolonial perspective to the range of alternatives for rethinking the epistemology of this area of study insofar as they directly question the weight of the Eurocentric heritage and appeal to the construction of categories emanating from local forms of knowledge production.
Indeed, the literature review shows the concern among some comparative education specialists to extend the conceptual horizon towards postcolonialism and, above all, the decolonial perspective. On the one hand, this concern is based on the need to re-examine the colonial matrix that underlies the structuring of comparative education, an aspect that is not new in this area of study: a map and a clear colonial discourse anchored in the theory of civilisation have underpinned comparative research in education since the beginning of the 20th century (Cardoso and Steiner Khamsi, 2017; Ydesen and Andreasen, 2020). The most novel element is that decolonialism places the core of comparative education at the centre of the revision: schooling and its circulation, two objects of Eurocolonial origin.
On the other hand, it refers to a particular reformulation of the position of comparativists as producers of knowledge in both the physical and ideological sense. We could argue that it is about the study of power relations, although from a position that implies not taking for granted the categories of analysis of these relations to give rise to invisible epistemes. Plurality in the construction of categories that allow us to go beyond the known ways of thinking and acting would be one of the contributions of this search for new horizons. What are the possibilities for such an undertaking in Latin American Comparative Education?
Through analysing primary and secondary sources on the development of comparative education in Latin America, our study shows that the characterisation of the forms adopted by the production of knowledge in Latin American comparative education allows us to raise some questions about the potential of the decolonial perspective concerning this area of study. This perspective offers a powerful attraction because of its interest in revising the colonial matrix. Beyond this, at least two questions emerge. The first relates to revising the core of comparative education, schooling and its Eurocolonial circulation. Comparative education in Latin America is constituted in symbiosis with the study of educational systems, systems which, in turn, are the product of historical combinations strongly linked to the ideology of the Enlightenment and the constitution of nation-states (Acosta, 2022). Narrating the circulations behind these combinations is arduous (Cowen, 2021), but it would allow for a better appreciation of the characteristics that schooling takes on, including power relations.
The second question is related to the potential of the decolonial perspective for the plural construction of categories that allow us to go beyond the known ways of thinking and acting. Yet, the possibility of plurality depends on the agency's capacity associated with production conditions. In this sense, comparative education in Latin America shows a different institutionalisation from that of the Middle Atlantic, between academic production and that of national and international organisations. This situation also generates other conditions for the consolidation of production. Researchers in the Global South cannot publish and disseminate their work as widely as those researching it from institutions or agencies based in the North. Add to this the language issue, and the possibilities for building and disseminating their voice become diminished.

Author

• Felicitas M Acosta, Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento & NORRAG