Journal of Contemporary Issues in Education (JCIE)
Not a member yet
245 research outputs found
Sort by
Embodying Milpa: Centering Place to Cultivate Polycultures of Reciprocity in Learning Environments
No full textMilpa is an ancestral agriculture technique that has been passed down by Indigenous communities in so-called North America for millennia through stories of place. As an Indigenous knowledge system that is based on the symbiotic cultivation of diverse species, learning from milpa gifts lessons to cultivate polycultures of reciprocity. Drawing from my lived experience as a Mestizx educator from Mexico, I propose embodying milpa in learning environments as a horizon of possibility to refuse and disrupt the ways in which education has been limited, standardized, controlled and confined to colonial monocultures (Shiva, 1993). I use the cultivation of milpa as a metaphor to represent the transformation of modernist education systems that prioritize individuality and rationality shifting towards collaborative learning environments that are complex, messy and entangled with the land. Late Indigenous Professor Michael Marker (2018) invites scholars to center place as the beginning point of inquiry when excavating the specific effects of colonization on Indigenous landscapes and communities. Following his advice, I use stories of milpa to experience placeness and provide a representation of the transformation of modernist education systems through the resurgence of Indigenous knowledge systems. I begin this paper with a piece of the Mexica creation story to center “the consciousness of landscape” (p. 453) and continue to explain how from a modern perspective, place has shifted to produce bordered monocultures that eradicate diversity. I conclude by narrating the story of three sisters to envision the embodiment of milpa inside learning environments to form polycultures of reciprocity where animate and inanimate beings are all connected inside a web of relations belonging to the land
Towards a Deeper Understanding of the Graduate Student and Faculty-Advisor Relationship
No full text
The relationship between graduate students and faculty members is a topic of great interest in higher education. While there is a wealth of theoretical and empirical research on the subject, discussions overlook the social dynamics that shape these relationships. This article seeks to fill this gap by presenting a conceptual framework that considers crucial components, including interpretations, reciprocal roles and responsibilities, relational factors, and effects, in analysing graduate student-faculty advisor relationships. By exploring these elements, the article offers a comprehensive framework that accounts for the nuances and limitations of these relationships and provides recommendations for best practices
Remembering Michael: Family Stories
No full textA contribution with memories of Michael Marker shared by his family
The Geopolitics of Knowledge Production in Applied English Language Studies: Transknowledging and a Two-Eyed Critical Southern Decoloniality
No full textThis paper mapped out and explored the geopolitics of knowledge production in applied English language studies (AELS). It did so by employing a double judgmental sampling and by investigating four composite factors in volume 42 of the journal Applied Linguistics (AL), which comprised six issues and forty-three articles, as published in 2021. These composite factors were nationalities and institutional affiliations of the editor, the associate editors, the editorial board, and the international advisory board; nationalities and institutional affiliations of publishing or contributing authors; the foci of the published articles; and the theoretical framings and epistemic orientations of the published articles. The paper maintains that these composite factors serve as important axes of epistemic production practices and as critical loci of knowledge circulation for AELS in this journal. AL has occupied the first quartile (Q1) in communication, and in linguistics and language since 1999 as ranked by both Scopus and Resurchify. As such, it is a top-tier journal in the field of AELS or of applied linguistics. Based on its analysis, one of the arguments the paper makes is that individually and collectively these composite factors function, simultaneously, as a gate-keeping mechanism for knowledge production and as a validation, legitimation, and arbitration mechanism for knowledge production in AL. The paper has also established that there is an invisibilization of the Global South authors in these six issues of AL. This factor, the paper contends, is attributable to the geopoliticizing of knowledge production in these AL’s issues. Lastly and importantly, the paper advocates transknowledging and a two-eyed critical Southern decoloniality for AELS, and draws a link between this two-pronged theoretical framing and transepistemic language education
Honouring Songs for Professor Michael Marker
No full textAlannah Young and Eduardo Jovel offer two songs in honour of the late Professor Michael Marker
Relations in the Alluvial Zone: Place and Indigenous Knowledges in Michael Marker’s Scholarship
No full textThrough more than 20 years of scholarship, Michael Marker brings our attention, again and again, and more deeply, to the sentient, relational, spiritual, and political dimensions of place. This analytic review of his body of work illuminates Marker’s teachings on place, specifically, in education, history, and Indigenous knowledges. It is an effort to both crystalize and mobilize his conceptualization to inform future work by others. Place, Marker teaches us, functions as an agent in the transmission of knowledge, and in the course of events over time (sometimes referred to as history). Place is also centered in Marker’s research as an analytic tool. He incisively points out the consequences of neglecting the aforementioned dimensions of place from Indigenous perspectives and for Indigenous communities, as well as their relations in teaching, learning, and research contexts. In his later work, Marker introduces the metaphor of alluvial zones to characterize the co-presence of Indigenous and Western epistemologies and ontologies in the university setting. We work with Marker’s metaphor of the university as an alluvial zone to consider conceptualization and enactment of place as emblematic of Western and Indigenous knowledges coming together to both combine, and not combine, in ways that matter. In our resulting review of his work we found six themes on which we elaborate: recognizing local ancestors; placing knowledges; sustaining land relationships; engaging responsibilities; nurturing spirits; and confronting place refusals. We close with the intention to continue to circulate the gift of Michael Marker’s scholarship by offering educational scholars a set of questions to engage with the agency of place, as they embark on decolonizing research and teaching in their particular alluvial zones, within their own historical and ideological conditions
Māori Academic Challenges: Delivering Mātauranga Māori During COVID-19
No full textIn March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted academic educational programmes in universities across the world, including Aotearoa New Zealand. For Māori academics who implement mātauranga Māori as a pedagogy, it became theoretically and practically challenging teaching virtually and online. The Te Taha Tinana, of Te Whare Tapa Wha model, created by aDurie in 1984 (Health Navigator, 2022) regarding the four dimensions of well-being, focuses on the physical presence, physical embodiment, and physical behaviour. This could not be easily taught virtuality through a computer screen during COVID-19 lockdown. For Māori academics transitioning from teaching Mātauranga Māori in person to an online environment brought forth these challenges. The challenges re-emerged in August 2021 when New Zealand went into Level 4 lockdown overnight because of the new COVID-19 Delta Virus variant. In 2022, the Omicron variant caused many universities in Aotearoa New Zealand to continue their first semester teaching online.
Mātauranga Māori is a body of knowledge exercised by Māori people in New Zealand. Sadler (2007) argues Mātauranga Māori was first invented by Māori when Pākehā (English people) arrived in New Zealand. He suggests Mātauranga Māori is a paradigm where Māori define the parameters. Royal (2009; 2012) claims this knowledge was brought to New Zealand by Polynesian ancestors and is an evolutionary continuum of knowledge that relates to encountering the world as Māori with the focus on improving humankind. Le Grice, Braun, and Wetherell (2017) state Mātauranga Māori incorporates theories, practices, and protocols that are bound to relationships, people, and places in a world that supports Māori ambitions. This knowledge, for me an Indigenous Māori academic, incorporates the physical and spiritual worlds embracing the energies of the universe handed down by our forefathers. This position paper discusses the pedagogical challenges encountered during COVID-19 Lockdown for Indigenous academics to continue delivering programmes requiring indigenous expertise and human contact. It explores: 1) the Covid 19 Educational Barriers; 2) Online Academic Challenges; 3) Managing Cultural Shifts; 4) Sustaining Indigenous Pedagogy. It asserts that Mātauranga Māori contributes to the growth of Indigenous knowledge on a world stage and the challenges indigenous academics encounter brought by a global pandemic
Problematizing Access to Higher Education for Refugee and Globally Displaced Students: What’s the Problem Represented to Be in Canadian University Responses to Syrian, Afghan and Ukrainian Crises?
No full textThe UNHCR’s 15by30 campaign to increase refugee student enrolment in higher education to 15% by 2030 is a lofty goal. Canadian higher education institutions have a role to play in contributing to this policy goal, along with advocacy efforts from refugee student groups, community-based organizations, government, and international organizations. The aim of this study is to look critically at how the issue of access to higher education for refugee and globally displaced people is represented through Ontario’s universities’ responses to federal government initiatives to crises in Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. In this study, we use Bacchi’s (2009) “What’s the problem represented to be?” approach to policy analysis and, drawing on Dillabough’s (2022) critique of modernity in higher education, we argue that university responses related to refugee and globally displaced student access to higher education offer the possibility to reflect on the paradoxical tensions of the problem space in Canadian higher education. In our findings, we discuss how the problem of refugee and displacement crisis was represented differently in response to differences in geopolitical conditions and government policies, as we demonstrate how representations of material problems and categories of “citizenship” and “geographical location” in the universities’ responses contributed to creating boundaries of inclusion and exclusion for access. Finally, we show how the creation of educational programs for “globally displaced people” during the period related to the Ukrainian crisis perpetuates the logic of colonialism in the universities’ responses
