Volume 14, Number 2, 2023

EN:

The decline of public education and the concomitant loss of the commons are increasingly recognized as significant and interwoven issues. Like other prevailing societal problems, such as the tenacity of institutionalized racism, classism, and patriarchy, these conditions are rooted in the ways growing numbers of people have come to think and act – socially, economically, politically, and intellectually. In a word, they are structural problems. As such, they require educators and others concerned with the health of society and well-being of the planet to address not only the observable symptoms but also the underlying factors that have spawned and perpetuated the systems in the first place. Critical scholars generally understand that problematic structural conditions are produced and maintained by prevailing systems of thought and action, that they evolve within particular social and historical contexts, and that they have often been instituted through oppressive mechanisms of persuasion and control. Less understood are the ways these intersecting systems, contexts, and mechanisms are perpetuated via largely “invisible” perceptual and temporal factors that obscure the processes at play. Understanding the relationships between these various factors is essential to effectively addressing the challenges we face. This paper synthesizes the literature in critical theory, ecological philosophy and living systems theories, Indigenous studies, and the sociology of knowledge to examine these intersecting factors and to consider implications for theory and practice in education.

EN:

One of the earliest attempts to Indigenize the Canadian curriculum began with Cultural Survival Schools (CSS). This grassroots approach to Indigenous education emerged in Canada in the mid 1970’s. These schools were established in recognition that education is key to the survival of First Nations people. The CSS approach to education involved reaffirming Indigenous identity by selecting aspects of the traditional Indigenous ways and blending them with nonIndigenous ways of knowing and being. Despite various efforts to meet the learning needs of Indigenous youth over the years, significant problems are still present. In the wake of the report released by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in 2015, the concept of cultural safety has become a major focus of the institutional justice and oppression conversation when considering K-12 education for Indigenous learners in Canada. As placing “culture” at the forefront of the education experience was the primary goal of CSS, and thus focusing on “cultural safety”, perhaps it is time to look back at past practices and re-implement these educational approaches. This study offered an opportunity to ask alumni who had attended a CSS to reflect on, and speak more formally of, their experiences in mainstream schools and a CSS, 30 to 40 years after they graduated. The findings of this study support the results from research conducted around the world. However, what is notable about this study is that the participants were able to share how the positive experiences of attending a CSS persisted over time.

EN:

This paper offers a critical discourse analysis of documents relating to the introduction of predictive learning analytics at a small, UK university. Semiotic and interdiscursive analysis was carried out on texts from three different sources: the institution, the commercial analytics software provider, and one academic subject area. Authority discourses in institutional texts indicate an ambivalent attitude to students exemplified by oscillating discourses of ‘Here to help’ and ‘Over to You’. At the micro level, the ‘Concerned Tutor’ discourse indicates a diminished authority position for academics, who are nevertheless charged with managing student engagement on the ground. The paper posits a shift in discursive positioning of the student from ‘consumer’to ‘asset’ and suggests that learning analytics policies are performative in nature. They provide auditable evidence of institutional efforts to improve student engagement, while failing to address contextual factors that lead to non-engagement and attrition.

EN:

By using autobiographical narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000) and poetry (Leggo, 1998), we share the story of a Muslim Canadian female graduate student, as experienced by the student and her graduate supervisor. We unpack an email expressing concern, written by an Indigenous male student about the work of the Muslim female student to her supervisor, during their Master’s coursework. We work through layers of mis/understandings and a shared desire to stand together in a relationship connecting our unique beings. Our intent is to emphasize the importance of magnifying our human existence and universal dignity beyond binaries by making more space for one another, by listening harder and longer, by learning with open and vulnerable hearts, and by considering what work each of us can do, individually and collectively, to decrease the foreignness, first among ourselves and then among racialized, Indigenous, and white settler Canadians.

EN:

White students who enter university having few experiences engaging with race and white supremacy are likely limited in their ability to perceive and understand structural white ignorance and racial bias towards Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). As a result, these students and their professors tend to gloss over the insidious ways that hegemonic whiteness is upheld within the university setting. Such failure to critically examine structural whiteness misses opportunities to confront an epistemology of white ignorance, the Racial Contract, and their connection to sustained racial domination. Throughout this article, we argue that students can work towards identifying and disrupting white ignorance by writing a racial autobiography that critically reflects upon students’ own experiences of race and racism. We use this assignment to illustrate what it might mean for students to ‘become’ co-conspirators within and beyond the university setting.