Negotiating Academic Learning and Research: The Spiritual Praxis of Graduate Students of Color

Drawing on data collected in a qualitative study of racially minoritized faculty members, this article examines the challenges these faculty members faced in bringing different aspects of their spirituality into their scholarly work as graduate students. This article explores the questions: How do racially minoritized graduate students negotiate their spiritual identities and integrate their spiritual epistemologies and cultural knowledge into academic practices, and what challenges do they face in doing both? This article presents three salient themes: sacred subjectivity in student-focused research, spiritual praxis in the classroom, and new visions for inclusive spiritual expression in the academy. By focusing our analysis on study participants' strategies for resisting pressures to closet their beliefs, this article affirms the importance of legitimizing the spiritual epistemological perspectives of racially minoritized graduate students in creating a more equitable and diverse higher education culture.     

From ‘no’ to ‘yes’: postcolonial perspectives on resistance to neoliberal higher education

Various scholars have suggested ways to resist neoliberal conditions in higher education (HE). In analysing current neoliberal policies and practices in HE, I suggest that postcolonial theories of resistance can enhance our ability as faculty and administrators to understand and ‘resist’ these policies and practices. In this article, I review four modes of postcolonial resistance as described by David Jeffress (2008), mobilizing a critique of resistance as writing and cultural practice and challenging the reactionary nature of subversion and opposition. I argue that we need to place emphasis on transformational resistance, or the creation of new ways of being, knowing and doing in HE in order to transform the academy.     

The legitimation of OECD's global educational governance: examining PISA and AHELO test production

Although international student assessments and the role of international organisations (IOs) in governing education via an evidence-based educational policy discourse are of growing interest to educational researchers, few have explored the complex ways in which an IO, such as the OECD, gains considerable influence in governing education during the early stages of test production. Drawing on a comparative analysis of the production of two international tests – the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) – we show how the OECD legitimises its power, and expertise, and defines ‘what counts’ in education. The OECD deploys three mechanisms of educational governance: (1) building on past OECD successes; (2) assembling knowledge capacity; and (3) deploying bureaucratic resources. We argue that the early stages of test production by IOs are significant sites in which the global governance of education is legitimated and enacted.     

From Pipelines to Tasting Lemonade: Reconceptualizing College Access

Pipeline metaphors are ubiquitous in theorizing and interpreting college access processes. In this conceptual article, we explore how a lemonade metaphor can open new possibilities to reimagining higher education access and going processes. We argue that using food metaphors, particularly the processes of mixing, tasting, and digesting lemonade, may help constitute new meanings of college going. Rather than focus on production, mechanization, and ignoring social justice, a lemonade metaphor emphasizes the nonlinear aspects of college-going processes, foregrounds power relations within these processes, and humanizes educational purposes and journeys. We encourage educational researchers to take up taste as a heuristic device to reveal something different about educational phenomena that will, in turn, have material consequences.     

International organizations (IOs), epistemic tools of influence,and the colonial geopolitics of knowledge production in higher education policy

Abstract

While other scholars have analyzed the way that international organizations (IOs) in higher education policy may contribute to neocolonial domination, this paper illuminates not only on how IOs’ epistemic activities promulgate one-size fit all solutions, but centers the colonial structures of knowledge/power that inform the why (or logic) of these IOs’ epistemic activities and their effects. A decolonial analysis of discursive artifacts and tools such as policy reports, performance indicators, and technical assistance, of the OECD and World Bank, suggests that standardized IO policy processes and practices reproduce global inequities. In collusion with other policy actors, these IOs constitute and perpetuate coloniality in global higher education, through enacting a god-eye point of view, colonial difference, and the geopolitics of knowledge. This article proposes a set of questions that may open the possibility of ‘delinking’ from modern/colonial world systems and pushes us to decolonize our imaginaries of the landscape of global HE.     

Spirituality in the academy: reclaiming from the margins and evoking a transformative way of knowing the world

In this paper, the author's first and foremost objective is to render the answer to the following question: Why is spirituality marginalized in the academy? The author searches for the answer to this question in the terrain of knowledge production and worldviews that permeate the Western academy. The author examines the landscape of the neo‐colonial academy and delineates the conditions that restrict the spaces for spirituality. The author's second objective is to explore possible answers to the following question: How would centering spirituality transform our ways of knowing? The author attempts to answer this question by providing some preliminary ideas on the question of epistemology, methodology and methods in a spiritually based inquiry. The author concludes that this journey is endless and this paper is just a stepping stone to the discussion revolving around the integration and centering of spirituality within the academy.     

Centering embodied learning in anti-oppressive pedagogy

Academia has traditionally valued cognition and intellectual processes, eschewing the significance of other bodily domains involved in teaching, learning, and theorizing. Grounding the analysis in our experiences as diversely positioned academics, we argue that embodied teaching and theorizing provide a unique means of delivering material consistent with the aims of social justice education, while simultaneously challenging neoliberal paradigms. Acknowledging both students' and faculty members' discomfort and/or resistance to embodied approaches, this analysis contributes to discussions about critical approaches to dismantling neoliberalism and developing an alternative framework of understanding through which conventional paradigms of thought may be challenged.     

Whiteness as futurity and globalization of higher education

Higher Education - Amid growing debates about globalization of higher education (HE) reproducing inequalities, an analysis of race as the organizing influence underlying this global phenomenon...