(2021). Culturally Conscious Assessment as Pedagogy in Study Abroad: A Case Study of the Higher Education in the Ghanaian Context Program. Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, v33 n1 p168-186. The Higher Education in the Ghanaian Context (HEGC!) study abroad program was created to engage participants in a critical examination of concepts related to power, privilege, and oppression within higher education settings in Ghana and the United States. The course has three components: pre-immersion, immersion, and emersion that are guided by a central question: What can this experience teach me about contributing to a global society through the application of culturally conscious practices in my field? To answer this question, HEGC! faculty incorporate culturally conscious pedagogy and assessment presented in this paper. The authors use a case study of the pedagogical and assessment approach for HEGC! as a form of assessment as pedagogy. This paper will provide an overview of the HEGC! study abroad program and the culturally conscious pedagogy and assessment strategies used. This paper concludes with implications for study abroad and assessment practices as well as intersubjective… [PDF]
(2021). From Professional Development to Native Nation Building: Opening up Space for Leadership, Relationality, and Self-Determination through the Din√© Institute for Navajo Nation Educators. Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, v57 n3 p322-334. Many of us have multiple stories that would be appropriate to tell given the theme of this Special Issue. I am compelled to tell a story about my work with teachers, teacher leaders, and other allies on the Navajo Nation. The Din√© Institute for Navajo Nation Educators (DIN√â) was started by teacher leaders who envisioned a collaborative professional development institute specifically for K12 teachers on the Navajo Nation. In their rural, Indigenous-serving schools, teachers are often asked to deliver scripted curriculum that is decontextualized, dehistoricized, and therefore, dehumanizing for their students, themselves, and their communities. Their vision for the DIN√â was developed and honed over many years in response to this context. In this essay, I will briefly describe the DIN√â, how and why it began, and its current status. I will focus on three critical spaces that have opened up in and through the DIN√â: teacher leadership, connection/relationality, and… [Direct]
(2021). The Mission Project: Teaching History and Avoiding the Past in California Elementary Schools. Harvard Educational Review, v91 n1 p109-132 Spr. In this article, Harper B. Keenan investigates the treatment of violence in elementary history education through a case study of a fourth-grade unit on the colonial history of California featuring "the mission project," a long-standing tradition in California's elementary schools that has students construct a miniature model of a Spanish colonial mission. Grounded in broader social and historical contexts, the study explores how the use of model making invites children to engage with colonial history and what the assignment reveals about how adults teach children about the violent past. Keenan argues that the mission project perpetuates a societal pattern of "ritual avoidance."… [Direct]
(2016). The Changing Roles of Early Childhood Care and Education in Aotearoa New Zealand: A Shifting Policy Landscape. Global Studies of Childhood, v6 n1 p136-146 Mar. This article examines the strengthening policy impetus in Aotearoa New Zealand towards bringing children, families and teachers into conformity with a view of children as commodities and the role of early childhood care and education as preparation for school, the workforce and market-oriented social futures. Through critically examining government website activity and key policy documents, we argue that the new norms and accountabilities introduced in recent policies, foster an instrumentalist approach to children and families, impacting on early childhood care and education in narrowing and damaging ways. We call for local and international re-examining of the place, purpose and principles of early childhood care and education…. [Direct]
(2018). Reconciliation in the Classroom. BU Journal of Graduate Studies in Education, v10 n2 p32-38. Canada is beginning to work toward reconciliation with Indigenous people. Serious mistakes have been made in the educational system which have led Canada to the current situation in which relationships with Indigenous people are in need of repair. This paper outlines the ways in which classroom teachers are integral to the reconciliation process through relationships, physical spaces, and lesson content. Through personal relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, culturally inclusive physical spaces, and curricular content that includes Indigenous perspectives, classroom teachers will contribute to reconciliation with Indigenous people in Canada…. [PDF]
(2019). Critical Ethnic Studies in Education: Revisiting Colonialism, Genocide, and US Imperialism–An Introduction. Equity & Excellence in Education, v52 n2-3 p216-218. A critical ethnic studies in education is a way to extend or push notions of equity and justice in education. It is necessary given the deleterious impact of neoliberal policies and practices that support an a historical, apolitical, and non-materialist understanding of history. The four articles in this symposium offer a critical comparative studies in education and provide a basis of analysis around themes like genocide, colonialism, and imperialism…. [Direct]
(2017). Coming Home to Place: Aboriginal Lore and Place-Responsive Pedagogy for Transformative Learning in Australian Outdoor Education. Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education, v20 n1 p14-24 Apr. In a significant way, the growing body of place-responsive research and practice within outdoor education in Australia can be perceived as an eco-inspired response to both the devastating impact of colonization on our ecological communities and the concomitant sense of "placelessness" or lack of a sense of belonging and purpose experienced by many Australians. In this regard, there has always been an ally in Aboriginal Lore, which worked to maintain ecological and social balance and wellness in Australia for thousands of years prior to the arrival of Europeans. Yet, it has been argued that many outdoor education programmes continue to perpetuate the colonial and anthropocentric discourses clearly responsible for much of this ecological and social damage. Not surprisingly, several place-responsive proponents have flagged the value of local partnerships between outdoor educators and Aboriginal people. This paper offers a brief critique of these dominant discourses and their… [Direct]
(2020). Teacher Wellbeing in Remote Australian Communities. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, v45 n5 Article 2 p18-37 May. This paper reports on a project aimed at investigating teacher wellbeing in remote communities in Australia. It utilised a multiple case study methodology to investigate the lived experiences of remote Australian teachers, particularly how remote teachers simultaneously manage the wellbeing and academic needs of their students. Findings show how the challenges of working in remote places impact teacher wellbeing and provides six practical recommendations about how to better support remote teachers. There is a present need to develop a framework of remote teachers thriving, so systems and communities are not over-reliant upon teachers' individual resilience in hard-to-staff places…. [PDF]
(2018). Carving out Inclusive Sanctuaries for Participation in Higher Education. Policy Futures in Education, v16 n7 p866-876 Oct. The work that we do and how we do that work is formed through our view of the world, shaped within our own ways of knowing and prioritized by the needs of people and the lessons of place. This article illustrates what one educational policy, filtered through one way of knowing, and prioritized by the needs of people and place looks like in higher education. Kuahuokala, a metaphor for third space manifestation, is used to carve out inclusive sanctuaries in the university. It is a praxis of Hawaiian epistemology through four intentional guides: "ho?ai, ?aina momona, kuahuokala", and "a?o aku a?o mai". These intentions reveal a (k)new old wisdom that simplifies complexity into purpose and common sense. The defining of the metaphor as well as these intentions frame this paper to transform the dialogue at the university, raise consciousness through action, and set policy in motion…. [Direct]
(2019). Identity-Making through Cree Mathematizing. Canadian Journal of Education, v42 n3 p692-714 Aut. We describe mathematics classroom teaching practice in an urban Canadian prairie Cree-bilingual school using the term "Cree mathematizing," which, to us, means (re)considering Euro-Western school mathematics from the perspectives of the Cree people engaging with the content. "Cree mathematizing" takes the form of classroom lessons in which mathematical terms are translated between English and Cree, shared through stories situated in time, place, and relationships, and contextualized by the experiences of the students and teachers. In terms of the narrative conception of identity-making, "Cree mathematizing" is a process of engaging in school mathematics that necessitates Cree educators and students to understand themselves as producing mathematics through their unique experiences and stories, making "Cree mathematizing" a partial representation of identity. We argue that "Cree mathematizing" is a subversive practice that challenges… [PDF]
(2019). Discursive (Re)Productions of (Im)Possible Students in the Canadian Prairies. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, v40 n6 p902-916. This article applies post-structural theories of discourse, power, and performativity to trouble dominant ways of knowing Aboriginal education in the Canadian Prairies that racialize student subjects. A discourse analysis of interview transcripts traces how discourses of innocent teachers and (im)possible Aboriginal learners deploy the historicity of colonial forces to (re)create the conditions of possibility for exclusionary educational practices. The author employs the concept of 'impossible student' to analyse teachers' negotiation of discourses that position Aboriginal students as everything the 'good' student is not, and thus outside the bounds of studenthood — before they even arrive at school. The concept of discursive performatives is used to offer insights into how persistent inequalities in Aboriginal education might be shifted within everyday practices, and to argue the need for rethinking what it means to be a teacher and a learner in a settler society…. [Direct]
(2019). Transforming Education through School-Community Partnerships: Lessons from Four Rural Early Childhood Development Schools in Zimbabwe. Africa Education Review, v16 n2 p16-35. This article presents and discusses the findings of a multi-case study that was conducted in four remote rural early childhood development (ECD) schools located in the Chiredzi district, in Masvingo province, Zimbabwe. The article explored how school heads enhanced resources mobilisation in remote rural ECD schools through school-community partnerships in order to improve teaching and learning conditions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with the school heads, deputy heads and teachers in charge. Document reviews and observations were also used to augment data from interviews. Invitational leadership was used as an analytic tool for the study. The findings suggest that the school heads succeeded to some degree in bringing parents and various stakeholders to the ECD schools to deal with the challenges facing them. Various strategies were used including tapping into local knowledge to ensure that parents who could afford to pay fees managed to do so…. [Direct]
(2019). Fugitive Practices: Learning in a Settler Colony. Educational Studies: Journal of the American Educational Studies Association, v55 n3 p253-261. In this article, I connect the ways that learning is fundamental to life, for human and nonhuman beings. I write this article at a time of crystalline xenophobic backlash, the rise of several totalitarian regimes across the planet, as well as the formation and action from many social movements. I argue that in this moment, it is even more important for education and education studies to distinguish between the achievement-measured desires of a settler state from what learning itself is and how it is intertwined with live and sovereignty. To highlight learning as fugitive practice, I connect the ways that learning has been maintained and protected even when it has been forbidden, foreclosed and seemingly withered through colonialism…. [Direct]
(2017). Interview to Boaventura de Sousa Santos. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice, v16 n1 p17-27 Feb. In this interview, Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos addresses, on the one hand, the process of transnationalisation of universities and the neoliberalisation of the classical model of the European university. On the other hand, he stresses that the recognition of difference and internal pluralism of science, which have pervaded the universities during the last decades, is now losing steam. However, he believes that the emergence of the Epistemologies of the South he proposes may contribute to the re-foundation of a new university more suited to the ethos of the 21st century, since the reconstruction or reinvention of confrontational politics requires an epistemological transformation. Therefore, he proposes a new, polyphonic university (or better, pluriversity) as this epistemological transformation unfolds. This means that the political alliances of the future will have an epistemological dimension characterized by an articulation or combination of different and differently… [Direct]
(2019). Literacy, Achievement and Success in a Maori Tourism Certificate Programme: Reading the World in Order to Read the Word. International Journal of Lifelong Education, v38 n4 p449-464. This article critiques international assessment of adult literacy using research findings from students completing a Maori tourism certificate who achieved significant gains in assessment. It is argued that the focus of literacy assessments potentially forces educators to narrow their teaching and learning approaches, manoeuvring them into teaching toward singular or "convergent literacy." This leads to utilising teaching and learning strategies drawn from the cultural and social capital of the dominant culture, which is problematic for students without abundance of such capital. Blending Kaupapa Maori research theory with appreciative inquiry, research revealed that students made significant gains in assessment scores because their educators acknowledged and utilised ways in which they made sense and meaning of their world. Educators drew upon the social and cultural capital of students and engaged them as partners in culturally based teaching and learning processes…. [Direct]