Decolonizing Educational Knowledge: International Perspectives and Contestations

Group Submission Type: Book Launch

Description of Session

Decolonizing Educational Knowledge: International Perspectives and Contestations explores theories and practices of decolonizing education, drawing in international perspectives from scholars across the globe. Decolonization is an issue has grown in significance as educators, community members, and practitioners alike seek ways to create more equitable teaching and learning spaces, by challenging Eurocentric paradigms. The book includes scholars and chapters from across the globe, but especially the global south.

Decolonization is about decentring Eurocentric, colonial knowledge and practices, and recentring recentering knowledge and worldviews of those who have been placed on the margins by colonization. Decolonization is a process that belongs to everyone (Battise, 2013). Decolonization centres and restores the world views of Indigenous people in Canada and across the globe. It involves active resistance to colonial practices and policies, getting rid of colonial structures and liberation. Decolonization refers to the ‘writing back’ against colonialism and colonial mentalities, and oppositional to colonial ways of thinking and acting. Decolonization demands a starting point that recognizes the centrality of Indigenous peoples across the globe and an articulation of what decolonization means for people across the globe. Indigenous people across spaces that were once colonized will determine approach and acts of decolonization. It is also important to recognize the importance of land as talk about decolonization. In Canada and other spaces such as Latin America and the continent of Africa conversations on decolonizing are not complete without recognizing the importance of land, how colonized peoples were cut off front their land and traditions. This volume seeks to bring global perspectives, convergences as well as points of departure across contexts.

The book adds to the theorizing and practices of decolonizing education. It supports educators in developing understandings of decolonization across contexts. As people through social movements across the globe challenge the centrality of Eurocentric ways of knowing and seek to reclaim and recentre traditional ways of knowing that have been placed on the margins in all aspects of life and particularly in education, this book seeks to harness that knowledge. As an edited volume the books speaks to a wide range of authors including scholars in academia, practitioners, and community members. Authors share diverse perspectives on decolonizing educational knowledge and what it means, to decolonize in theory, but also in practice. Authors who engage in various forms of critical research and alternative approaches contributed to this volume writing their stories from their own ontological positions. .

By contestations we mean the different entry points into decolonizing education and work. Some scholars from the global south have argued that conversations on decolonization tend to reside in the global north to the exclusion of people in the global south. This book seeks to disrupt this. In that regard the book offers varying definitions and understandings of decolonization. In identifying and addressing systemic and embedded inequities, and offering if not solutions, this book suggests remedies to address oppression, marginalization, and the ongoing presence of colonialism and coloniality in policies and practices. In addition to adding to decolonizing education discourse and practices, this book is of great value to scholars and students at the undergraduate and graduate level, in education and related areas in the global south and the global north. As many countries in the global south seek to act on sustainable development goals, particularly around education, they are not interested in reproducing Eurocentricity and colonial paradigms. They are seeking to centre local indigenous knowledges in education and schooling and as they connect sustainable development goals to their local experiences. This book offers alternative epistemologies and practices to guide the work.

Sub Unit

• Book launches and Workshops / Book Launch

Chair

• Everton Ellis, OISE, University of Toronto

Book Launch Presenter

• Ann Lopez, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Discussant

• Lilian Lotechi Obazei, University of Toronto