Epistemological process towards decolonial praxis and epistemic inequality of an international student

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the epistemic inequality of international students as a “new” inequality that is under-represented in the current debates about decolonisation (albeit shaped by colonial discourses depicting international students as in deficit and incapable of meeting the standards of (colonial) universities). In this theoretical context, the paper reflects on a multi-modal digital methodology used in a research project that aimed to understand how international students deploy their epistemological resources to learn the curriculum. The paper describes selected artefacts submitted by the students around which their epistemic frames were expressed, suggesting where these may be concealed by epistemological situatedness of the lecturers. Based on the analysis of these artefacts, the paper develops and interrogates an epistemology for support towards interrogating the role of our own epistemological binaries in adversely affecting students’ epistemic frames in the curriculum. As such, it contributes to a gap in the literature around decolonial pedagogy, and its role in tackling educational inequalities.

KEYWORDS:

• Epistemic inequality
• international students
• meta-reflexivity
• decolonising higher education
• decolonial praxis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We used Maldonado-Torres’s definition which conceptualises coloniality as: long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limit of colonial administrations. Thus, coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and many other aspects of our modern experience. In a way, as modern subjects we breathe coloniality all the time and everyday (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243).

2 Paulo Freire (1996), the father of critical pedagogy, had this to say about praxis: that its complexities would only be resolved through “true commitment to the people, involving the transformation of the reality by which they are oppressed” (Paulo Freire, 1996, p 126). There are three dimensions to transformative praxis: theory, values and practice, which means that “discovery cannot be purely intellectual but must involve action; nor can it be limited to mere activism but must include serious reflection: only then will it be a praxis” (Paulo Freire, 1996, p. 133).

3 Many of the basic assumptions of critical pedagogy were questioned by Ellsworth in her paper “Why doesn’t it feel empowering: working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy” (1989). This provoked a response from Giroux.

4 Biesta’s (1998) argument is that critical pedagogy is impossible because it cannot be conceived as a technique and its outcomes cannot be predicted because human interactions and justice (key aspects of critical pedagogy) are boundless, unpredictable and incalculable.

5 Some of the recent problematisations of critical pedagogy in education (e.g. Ruiz & Fernandez-Balboa, 2005; Breuing, 2011; Kuntz & Petrovic, 2018), especially the notion that Friere’s characterisation about the paralysis of the oppressed stands in contrast to the autonomy, agency and competition required from the students nowadays (De Lissovoy, 2018).

Additional information

Funding

Economic and Social Research Council.