Educating Emerging Researchers: Voicing a Multiplicity of Knowledge Systems in the Academy

• In Event: Advancing Ancestral Knowledge Systems as a Conceptual Framework to Decolonize Research Methodologies in Arizona

Abstract

Objective
This paper explores how Laura Rendon’s (2009) principles for sustaining individual growth and development emerged in a doctoral studies course as students were supported through an integrative transformation. The outcome was the creation of a learning community safe space (Diaz-Soto, 2009) that introduced “conflictual situations and chaotic disturbances as the guides to growth and true change” (Rendon, 2009, pg. 147). Similar to the seven agreements entrenched in the academy in Rendon’s Sentipensante Pedagogy (2009), students reflected upon the challenges to academic life often evident with new scholars (Gutiérrez y Muhs, 2012). In the process they reawakened collective memories (French, 2012) and an alternative epistemology and theoretical framework for knowledge building AKS. AKS provides the means for students to explore ancient knowledges and wisdoms (Martinez, 1998) that serve to unwind the internalized colonization created through traditional western epistemologies that invalidate “other” AKS. The learning community has transcended into a collective of new scholars that embrace AKS in their personal and academic journeys to wholeness, social justice, and liberation for a new democracy.

Theoretical Framework and Modes of Inquiry
Drawing upon Laura Rendon’s Sentipensante Pedagogy (2009), we are challenged to respond to a calling that, “is about revising the institutional belief system that works against wholeness and authenticity and to create empowering, holistic, multicultural, and participatory communities of learning” (pg. 146). The academy has long been confronted for its inability to draw upon and integrate alternative ways of knowing and epistemologies (Gutiérrez y Muhs, 2012; Tuhiwai-Smith, 1999). How can educators help transform and develop new scholars to embrace an alternative truth to the traditional academy (Rendon, 2009)? Using ethnography and case-study methods through decolonial theoretical perspectives, the author explores the experience of four individuals who actively participated in a doctoral course in education entitled Decolonizing Research Methods, A Foundations Course at a large university in Arizona.

Data Sources
Review of student journals, classroom artifacts, and qualitative interviews of doctoral students and professor, provide for the documentation and analysis of student classroom experiences over a 16-week period.

Results
This research explores the narratives of doctoral students reflecting upon the traditional academy through a decolonial lens. The author found critical reflexivity of how one faculty of color has negotiated her roles in the academy, and how the students examine their intellectual, philosophical and spiritual engagement as emerging scholars. The paper discusses the resulting need for, and the creation of an alternative pedagogical space to counter the lack of safe spaces for authentic being and knowledge production. This research provides a counter-narrative to predominantly western paradigms that invalidate non-western indigenous knowledge and views of truth (Tuhiwai-Smith, 1999).

Scholarly Significance
This paper expands upon the scholarly research on doctoral student preparation and retention, incorporating pedagogy that embraces indigenous knowledges. It explores ancestral knowledge systems as an alternative organizing framework to the traditional western paradigm of operating in the academy.

Author

• Lydia Montelongo, Arizona State University