Decolonising CIE in higher education practice: towards a theory of change through engagement with global civil societies

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Critical Perspectives on Teaching Comparative and International Education

Proposal

Comparative and International Education (CIE) have been evolved from travellers’ tales to systematic survey, from general ethnographic fieldwork to specific trend led inquiries such as feminism and critical geography. Comparative Education Review editors (2017) used to reflect on the emerging methodologies in its published articles and call for ‘robustness’ in CIE analysis. This paper seeks to specify the ‘robustness’ of CIE as how this field can empower people, especially learners, to be social and educational change makers for global justice. This is particularly important in the post-2015 period (with events such as the Brexit, Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war) when CIE is facing not only methodological but epistemic challenges. Can ‘knowledge’ of CIE reflect the social and educational needs today? How do we as researchers, curriculum designers and higher education lecturers incorporate topics such as globalisation, decolonisation, peace and conflict effectively and critically to students in CIE courses? This paper explores a decolonial approach in CIE, and focuses on how CIE teaching and learning in higher education institutions can engage with global civil societies to create an action-based experience for learners.
The first part of the paper looks at the political economic challenges towards the knowledge of CIE. Politically, we would question what the embedded ideologies in CIE materials might be and what can be learnt or transferred through comparing and researching education in international contexts. This is becoming more urgent when CIE is facing the rising conservative policies that are against the social and economic minorities, and the rising nationalism that narrowly understand the role of nation states and international relations. Economically, we question whether CIE as a field, a subject, or a group of academia can be financially well supported and sustained in a more powerful way. This is due to the on-going neoliberal globalisation of education, where the market logic plays a full role in education, adding functional and pragmatic targets to higher educational practice. CIE’s knowledge framework is therefore embedded in real life political economic circumstances and struggles to lead actions for social changes. This is not limited to the tightening international relations and the emerging various levels of fragility and conflict across many societies, which have continuingly created new issues in learning and researching CIE.
The paper continues to look at how these difficulties can be reflected, and new voices can be represented in CIE courses in higher education today. It looks at the author’s personal narratives on designing, teaching and leading CIE courses in the last ten years. The lived experience shows the necessity to let learners see education beyond EDUCATION, and let them communicate and cooperate with multi-stakeholders in education across different societies. One ways is to engage with global civil societies such as NGOs and global communities, to critically look at power relations in education, understand the globalisation from below, and join in collective actions. The paper compares two different types of action/practice-based approaches in CIE courses: the teacher training led international placements and the research led international fieldtrips. It is argued that: (1) to decolonise CIE, a research led fieldtrip is more beneficial for in-depth analysis which can later on have long term impact to CIE learning outcomes; (2) It is not necessary to be an educator in a trip, but more importantly, to be an observer or actor who can reflect on what they see (from formal schooling to non-formal and informal learning environments) and bring thoughts or actions back to their current or future realities. The paper encourages the use of a Critical Cultural Political Economic approach (Robertson and Dale, 2015) in CIE teaching and learning, which incorporate cross-disciplinary knowledge in CIE and advises learners and researchers to analyse ‘education’ as an ensemble of practice of education, education politics (policies), politics of education (political economic structures) and outcomes of education.
More specifically, the paper looks at two examples that are seen as good practice for a more powerful CIE teaching and learning in higher educational practice. In the first example the paper looks at how a partnership between a local university and a local trust in the UK has enhanced the knowledge exchange between English and Zambian educators/teacher education students. This partnership, supporting mutual visiting between English and Zambian teacher education institutions, has a strong aim in decolonising education and teacher education for ‘knowledge reciprocity’ (Santos, 2018). In the second example the paper looks at empowering both taught and research degree university students in multi-stakeholder symposiums on CIE themes, such as the one on Education for International Understanding and Global Justice, which has invited educational practitioners, researchers, students and university administrators, and aimed to reach some proposals for change marking. Presenting ideas in a public space urges the university students to speak loudly about their proposed ideas and look at the ideas critically when they are mixed with practitioners or policy advisors/makers in group discussion.
The paper therefore calls for a theory of change (ToC) for powerful CIE teaching and learning. It proposes a ToC alignment from (1) practice for illustration purposes, when learners are equipped with skills and knowledge to transfer textbook knowledge to global issues in education; to (2) engagement with civil societies, when learners are equipped with action based skills and life experience to work or study with people from different communities; and (3) to the knowledge transformation at both conceptual and instrumental levels, so that the learners are confident to propose change making and protest for social and global justice. The central idea of the ToC is to close the gaps among theories, real life problems, and the changes they may make. This also include the institutions’ adjustment of their value statement and their support for students in and beyond their university lives.

Author

• Tingting Yuan, University of Nottingham