Higher Education as Institution of Decolonization

2022 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kevin Lujan Lee ◽  
Ngoc T. Phan
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Community Partnerships ◽  
Methods Courses ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Indigenous Sovereignty ◽  
Colonial Histories ◽  
Classroom Level

Higher education should be an institution of decolonization––one centered on the repatriation of land and ocean to Indigenous peoples. Quantitative methods are used to perpetuate the historical and ongoing processes of Indigenous dispossession. However, quantitative methods courses often fail to reckon with these colonial histories and are taught in ways that are inaccessible for Indigenous students. Drawing from the first author's experiences as a professor of political science in Hawai‘i, this chapter proposes three classroom-level interventions that educators can pursue to make quantitative methods relatable and empowering for Indigenous students: (1) designing lectures to center the experiences of Indigenous students, (2) designing assignments that invite Indigenous students to interrogate the settler-colonial and neocolonial structures perpetuating Indigenous dispossession, and (3) maintaining university-community partnerships that provide Indigenous students with opportunities to use quantitative methods to support Indigenous sovereignty movements.

Indigenous Students in Higher Education in the United States

Education ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin Zape-tah-hol-ah Minthorn
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Student Affairs ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
The United States ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Indigenous Student ◽  
Student Affairs Professional ◽  
Shed Light

This article attempts to highlight literature that focuses on Indigenous students, including the various areas that work to support and honor Indigenous students, faculty, staff, and communities. Only since 2000 has there been more literature produced by Indigenous scholars that honors Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences. This article attempts to focus on Indigenous-authored and Indigenous-centered literature whose goal is to shed light on how we better support Indigenous students through representation, research, teaching, and learning to the praxis of being an Indigenous student affairs professional and faculty member.

scholarly journals A permanência e a conclusão no ensino superior: O que dizem os Índios da Universidade Estadual do Centro Oeste do Paraná (UNICENTRO) – Brasil

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Juliane Sachser Angnes ◽  
Maria de Fátima Quintal de Freitas ◽  
Marcel Luciano Klozovski ◽  
Zoraide Da Fonseca Costa ◽  
Carla Marlana Rocha
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Exclusion Process ◽  
Entrance Examination ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Supplemental Program ◽  
Psychosocial Effect ◽  
Access To Knowledge ◽  
The University ◽  
False Idea

This article aims to understand the perspective of indigenous students, about staying and completing their studies at Universidade Estadual do Centro-Oeste do Paraná [UNICENTRO] - Brazil, considering the experience of the Special Entrance Examination for Indigenous Peoples in this state. This is a qualitative research, accomplished from 2002 to 2010, in order to listen to the Indians voices (and silence), and their difficulties to complete higher education. The results showed that, this process regarded as an “inclusion of Indians at the university” –a secular and privileged space– is restricted to access. That is, the psychosocial effect generated by the false idea that a supplemental program of vacancies is distorting, as it creates a false notion that society is becoming more equal and just, when in fact what happens, is an increase in the degree of resignation and acceptance towards diversity and subtle forms of injustice and exploitation. The results refer to strategies for entering higher education of discriminated social and ethnic-racial segments are a way to minimize the exclusion process that Brazil has faced since the discovery. However, it is assumed that such affirmative actions must be complemented with educational actions that strengthen access to knowledge. The perspective of Affirmative Actions in higher education should not only increase the access of blacks, indigenous people and public school graduates, but also, their permanence and integration. In addition, the results remind about the Indian, to enter /to stay /to complete a university. That has as central characteristics to be monolingual, hierarchical, Eurocentric or North American-centric; it is not a simple process, because the contradictions exist among the intercultural intentions of a logic marked by exclusion, competition and selection, and the perspective of a public and democratic university, which has not yet become intercultural. However, the specific Entrance Examination allowed reflections on what changes are possible, with the insertion and promotion of new processes and protagonism of students and indigenous leaderships.

scholarly journals Undergraduate Research-Methods Training in Political Science: A Comparative Perspective

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (01) ◽  
pp. 121-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Parker
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United States ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Education System ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
The United States ◽  
Higher Education System

AbstractUnlike other disciplines in the social sciences, there has been relatively little attention paid to the structure of the undergraduate political science curriculum. This article reports the results of a representative survey of 200 political science programs in the United States, examining requirements for quantitative methods, research methods, and research projects. The article then compares the results for the United States with a survey of all political science programs in Australia, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The results suggest (1) that the state of undergraduate methods instruction is much weaker in the United States than indicated in previous research, (2) this pattern is repeated in other countries that emphasize broad and flexible liberal arts degrees, and finally (3) this pattern of weak methods requirements is not found in more centralized, European higher education system that emphasize depth over breadth. These countries demonstrate a consistent commitment to undergraduate training in research methods that is followed up with requirements for students to practice hands-on research. The model of weak methods requirements in the discipline is not the norm internationally, but differs depending upon the type of higher education system.

Teaching Quantitative Methodology to the Math Averse

2009 ◽  
Vol 42 (03) ◽  
pp. 527-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin Buchler
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Science Students ◽  
Math Learning ◽  
Methods Courses ◽  
The Subject

ABSTRACTMany political science students struggle in quantitative methods courses because they have never been taught how to learn math. Learning math is different from learning in other fields, so the techniques students have used successfully in other classes are inappropriate in mathematically oriented classes. However, most students have never been told this, so they blame their difficulty with math on the impenetrability of the subject rather than tactical studying errors. This brief article discusses some of the reasons that common studying techniques do not work in quantitative methodology classes, and discusses some simple techniques to help students develop learning habits that are better suited to quantitative courses.

scholarly journals WE NEED TO GET BETTER AT THIS! PEDAGOGIES FOR TRUTH TELLING ABOUT COLONIAL VIOLENCE

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 95-118
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Fast ◽  
Marie-Ève Drouin-Gagné
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Interpersonal Violence ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Social Responses ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Colonial Violence ◽  
Colonial Histories

This article considers the importance of widespread teaching of colonial histories to future generations of students. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 2015 report, Calls to Action, asserts that the lack of historical knowledge among most Canadians has serious consequences for Indigenous peoples, and for Canada as a whole. Using the Responses to Interpersonal Violence framework, this paper explores the capacity of educators to teach colonial histories in a way that indicates supportive social responses and a recognition of the ongoing colonial violence lived by Indigenous peoples in Canada. It also makes recommendations on core principles of teaching colonial histories to Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in a responsible way that respects the intentions of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Dreams of a Black Commons on Turtle Island

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 454-473
Author(s):  
Rachel Zellars
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Wild Mushrooms ◽  
Black Migration ◽  
Black Freedom ◽  
Indigenous Sovereignty ◽  
Black Land ◽  
The Human Condition

This essay opens with a discussion of the Black commons and the possibility it offers for visioning coherence between Black land relationality and Indigenous sovereignty. Two sites of history – Black slavery and Black migration prior to the twentieth century – present illuminations and challenges to Black and Indigenous relations on Turtle Island, as they expose the “antagonisms history has left us” (Byrd, 2019a, p. 342), and the ways antiblackness is produced as a return to what is deemed impossible, unimaginable, or unforgivable about Black life.While the full histories are well beyond the scope of this paper, I highlight the violent impossibilities and afterlives produced and sustained by both – those that deserve care and attention within a “new relationality,” as Tiffany King has named, between Black and Indigenous peoples. At the end of the essay, I return briefly to Anna Tsing’s spiritual science of foraging wild mushrooms. Her allegory about the human condition offers a bridge, I conclude, between the emancipatory dreams of Black freedom and Indigenous sovereignty.  

1. The Neoliberal Logic of Service-Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Snider Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Service Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Community Partnerships ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
Community Based ◽  
University Partnerships ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Relationship

<?page nr="1"?>Abstract This article investigates the ways in which service-learning manifests within our neoliberal clime, suggesting that service-learning amounts to a foil for neoliberalism, allowing neoliberal political and economic changes while masking their damaging effects. Neoliberalism shifts the relationship between the public and the private, structures higher education, and promotes a façade of community-based university partnerships while facilitating a pervasive regime of control. This article demonstrates that service-learning amounts to an enigma of neoliberalism, making possible the privatization of the public and the individualizing of social problems while masking evidence of market-based societal control. Neoliberal service-learning distances service from teaching and learning, allows market forces to shape university-community partnerships, and privatizes the public through dispossession by accumulation.

Native Approaches to Decolonising Education in Institutions of Higher Learning

2000 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Polly Walke
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Higher Learning ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Institutions Of Higher Learning ◽  
The World

A growing number of Native scholars are involved in decolonising higher education through a range of processes designed to create space for Indigenous realities and Indigenous ways of managing knowledge. Basing their educational approaches on Indigenous ontologies and epistemologies, they are developing Indigenist approaches within higher education. Ward Churchill (1996:509), Cherokee scholar, explains that an Indigenist scholar is one who:Takes the rights of indigenous peoples as the highest priority …who draws on the traditions – the bodies of knowledge and corresponding codes of value – evolved over many thousands of years by native peoples the world over.

Indigenous higher education sector: the evolution of recognised Indigenous Leaders within Australian Universities

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey Kim Coates ◽  
Michelle Trudgett ◽  
Susan Page
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Indigenous Education ◽  
Indigenous Australians ◽  
Access To Higher Education ◽  
Public Schooling ◽  
Indigenous Students ◽  
Early Experiences ◽  
Commonwealth Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Over Time

Abstract There is clear evidence that Indigenous education has changed considerably over time. Indigenous Australians' early experiences of ‘colonialised education’ included missionary schools, segregated and mixed public schooling, total exclusion and ‘modified curriculum’ specifically for Indigenous students which focused on teaching manual labour skills (as opposed to literacy and numeracy skills). The historical inequalities left a legacy of educational disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Following activist movements in the 1960s, the Commonwealth Government initiated a number of reviews and forged new policy directions with the aim of achieving parity of participation and outcomes in higher education between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Further reviews in the 1980s through to the new millennium produced recommendations specifically calling for Indigenous Australians to be given equality of access to higher education; for Indigenous Australians to be employed in higher education settings; and to be included in decisions regarding higher education. This paper aims to examine the evolution of Indigenous leaders in higher education from the period when we entered the space through to now. In doing so, it will examine the key documents to explore how the landscape has changed over time, eventually leading to a number of formal reviews, culminating in the Universities Australia 2017–2020 Indigenous Strategy (Universities Australia, 2017).

A Compass During the Storm: Offering Students Critical Rigor for Polarizing Times

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Wender ◽  
Valerie J. D’Erman
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
Critical Thinking Skills ◽  
Learning Objective ◽  
First Year

ABSTRACT Teaching and learning in higher education is occurring, unavoidably, within the broader civic context of today’s extraordinarily polarizing political times. We seek to help students situate themselves with respect to and, above all, thoughtfully assess others’ as well as their own perspectives on issues of profound contention, without contributing to exacerbated polarization ourselves. Specifically, we offer students in our first-year exploratory political science course a vital tool—critical rigor—for navigating but not being inundated by the storm. This article discusses our experiences in teaching the course titled, “The Worlds of Politics,” as we attempt to help students deeply engage in cognitive processes of critical thinking and analysis, without undue infringement from their own—and least of all our own—personal political biases. Our focal learning objective is the cultivation of critical-thinking skills that promote students’ drawing of distinctions between advocacy and analysis, as well as their discerning civic engagement.

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