Conference Agenda

The United Nations (2015) sustainable development goals acknowledge that extractive relations must change for climate justice to be realised. Yet marginalising practices in education continue to reinforce disadvantage and impede the learning across sectors needed for societal change to reach the breadth and depth of scale required. Decolonization of educational practices can enable perspective and voices to vitalise the sensemaking needed to provide timely suggestions and solutions that have long been overlooked due oppressive structures.

This panel will engage in Freirean dialogue (Freire & Macedo, 1987) around the multiplicity of calls to create critical pedagogies of social justice through the curriculum that work to decolonize higher education.

Our collective research spans critical scholarship, education, decolonization, multilinguistic perspectives, art-based approaches, sustainability, media studies, and wellbeing of youth across the globe. Drawing on the breadth and depth of our expertise, we seek to advance conscientization and praxis of decolonization in academic institutions and related spheres of social activism. Using our own ways of knowing and being, we will work within the panel and with the audience as we discuss curricular possibilities in which to engage in educational decolonization. In keeping with the notion of Freirean dialogue we do not speak at, lecture, or academically grandstand; taking our scholarship and commitments seriously, we create an equitable and shared space within our panel, drawing on social justice pedagogies (Freire; 1972; Freire & Macedo, 1987; Gomez, 2015; Gramsci, 1957) and Indigenous knowledges (Wahinkpe Topa & Narvaez, 2022; Kimmerer, 2013; Cajete, 1994) to create spaces of transformational possibility.

The panelists represent various and overlapping spheres in education and research. Dr. Markides is a Métis educator who leads professional learning in Indigenous education, arts-based research, and critical pedagogy. Dr. Cross is an interdisciplinary and critical scholar who practices arts-based pedagogies that support marginalized voices to effect policy change in masters that affect them including work with Scotland Indigenous traveling people. Dr. Steinberg is a critical pedagogy, youth and media scholar. Her work at Kainai Nation Blackfoot Reserve in Canada spans a decade, receiving multiple international awards for her recent documentary, The Elders' Room, with filmmaker Dr. Michael B. MacDonald. Dr. Graham Jeffrey’s research in Arts and Media also includes wellbeing of young people in diverse communities; his work in India importantly connects both with the recycling hub in Mumbai and with the Rohinga Refugees. Dr. Mark Langdon’s work is in social activism and community development, supporting marginalized voices within climate talks. Dr. Sylvie Roy’s research brings to together critical and multilingual perspectives in the transnational context. The panel chair, Dr. Sandro Carnicelli’s current research is based on critical pedagogy in curriculum design and tourism education; specifically, he is working in Brazil both as a visiting professor at the Federal University of Parana and using his position of privilege to help with special issues focusing on the work coming from the Global South. The important work of decolonizing higher education is ongoing and a priority that will be addressed through critical dialogue.

Example of Panelist Positioning:

As a Métis scholar, I (Jennifer Markides) question the backwards movement in North America – a return to the “good old days” of taught racism and learned ignorance regarding the occluded histories and marginalized voices in the classroom. Working with Indigenous communities and school divisions in Northern Alberta, we ask the youth, families, and community what they want to be taught in schools. They have asked for their cultural teachings, history, language, values, and practices be included in curriculum. We are working to create space and opportunity for their curriculum to be valued as equal and privileged within existing systems of education.