Session Information
WERA SES 02 D, Global Ethics in Higher Education
Symposium
Contribution
Jonathan Lear, in his work, Radical Hope: Ethics in the face of cultural devastation (2006) discusses an interview with a former Crow chief, PLENTY COUPS, who described the end of the Crow civilization as the colonial process of European occupation of native lands became a permanent reality. It was a time of loss of land as well as culture, social organization, and all of their former existence. Lear describes how the Crow moved from this death to life again. We can learn much from this experience about what to do in our current time of civilizational vulnerability that might be understood, according to Andreotti (2013), as one where we are hospicing modernity. The destructive side the of global western capitalist system has depended on imperialism, (neo)colonialism, and patriarchy to maintain itself , has become evident in critical global issues such as climate change, increased social unrest due to economic, social, and political inequality, and increased militarization of regional, inter-cultural, and local conflicts. There are dire warnings of vulnerability for all people and all living systems on the planet. This paper develops a framework for understanding higher education within this context. In this, the primary contribution is to examine how higher education might change if the current organizing neoliberal paradigm is dislodged and our focus turns to how a decolonizing higher education praxis can be seen to be emerging in many parts of the world. This praxis is inherently based on a global ethic that calls in understandings of ethics, pluriversality and cognitive justice, and international relations ( Dussel, 2008; Mignolo, 2011; Odora Hoppers, 2009; Santos, 2007); of anticolonial struggles in education (Abdi, 2011; Andreotti & de Sousa, 2012; Odora Hoppers, 2009; Shahjahan, 2013) ; and global social justice (Santos, 2007; Shultz, 2013). The framework is then engaged in a case study that is a multi-scalar policy analysis of Canadian higher education, using three policies that legitimize particular higher education practices: The 2013 OECD Higher Education Programme’s policy statement: The State of Higher Education 2013; the Association of Canadian Deans of Education’s Accord on the Internationalization of Education (AIE) (2014); and the Canadian government policy on higher education: Canada’s International Education Strategy: Harnessing our knowledge advantage to drive innovation and prosperity(2014). The paper concludes with recommendations of how a global ethic might inform a decolonizing higher education praxis.
References
Abdi, Ali A. (2011). African thought systems and philosophies of education: counter-colonial perspectives. In A. Abdi (Ed.), Decolonizing philosophies of education. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Andreotti (2013). Hospicing Western Modernity in Global Citizenship Education'. Keynote Address at Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research, Nov. 1, 2013 Andreotti, V. & de Souza, L.M. (Eds.) (2011).Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Citizenship Education. London/ New York: Routledge Dussel, E, (2012). Ethics of Liberation. Durham, NC: Duke University Max – Neef, M. (2005).Foundations of transdisciplinarity.Ecological Economics, 53. 5-16. Mignolo, W. (2011). The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Odora Hoppers, C. (2009). From bandit colonialism to the modern triage society: Towards a moral and cognitive reconstruction of knowledge and citizenship. International Journal of African Renaissance Studies. Vol 4 (2) pp 168 – 180. Santos, B. (Ed) (2007). Cognitive Justice in a Global World: Prudent Knowledges for a Decent Life. New York: Lexington Books Shahjahan, R. (2013): Coloniality and a global testing regime in higher education: unpacking the OECD’s AHELO initiative, Journal of Education Policy, DOI:10.1080/02680939.2012.758831 Shultz, L. (2013). Teachers’ engagement with GCE. Revue d’Education/Education Review. Vol 3 (2) Fall 2013.
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