As a result of the complex, multilayered, and problematic environment in which they work, two scholars (Black Jamaican and Aboriginal), collaborating across the continents of North America and Australia, complicate the data from standardized testing in their communities to argue for the integration of the historical empowerment of Black, Aboriginal, and Indigenous peoples as a necessity to achieve social justice and equity in global classrooms. The chapter presents the engagement of students in this collaborative inquiry in acknowledgment of the critical role students must play in the transformation of global education. The study reveals just how critical it is to global research to have the benefit of scholars collaborating across borders. The study provides findings and offer recommendations in direct response to the question: How can educators engage students as collaborators within a third space that elevates their voices as successful students?
TopSeeking Social Justice Within The Neo-Colonial Landscape
The authors utilize research centered on intergenerational teaching practices of Indigenous peoples to engage with children of color in an assertion of the legitimacy of their funds of knowledge as essential to classroom pedagogy. The findings of this collaborative inquiry eschew the notion of the continued failure of Black, Indigenous and children of color within schools in the United States and across the globe. The study calls into question the standardization of assessment practices and the continued use of a curriculum that denigrates the history of Black and Indigenous people while asserting the brutality enacted through colonialism as acts of heroism.
bell hooks (1994) reminds us that to educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching so that anyone can learn. Peter McLaren declares, “we desperately need cadres of teachers to speak out and to create spaces where their students can assume roles as razor-tongued public instigators for social good (McLaren, 2015, p.4).” We contend that the Western educational system must take into account these words in examining the wounds caused over time by colonization from which have spawned oppression, racism and alienation resulting in the achievement gap between white children, descendants of the settler class and children of color (including Black, Aboriginal, and other ethnically diverse children), descendants of the enslaved people. Globally, colonization has created and facilitated the elements that led to educational disparity as is evident in the fact that within the West there is not one country born from colonization where the Indigenous or people of color share in any way the quality of life of the descendants of this settler class. The reform movement taking place at the federal, state and district levels has failed to close the achievement gap as has been identified by measures of standardization. The short-sightedness of this approach is revealed through the focus on equality instead of equity which would better address the specific needs of children whose history, background and culture are not incorporated into the curriculum.
This study interrogates how historically, the destruction of culture erodes cultural heritage and with it, social mobility. This negates human rights and dignity leading to the perpetuation of the so-called failure of ethnically diverse children in school. As a result of the complex, multilayered and problematic environment in which they work, two scholars collaborating between the continents of Australia and North America, complicate the data from standardized testing in their communities to “argue for the implementation of critical literacy as a step towards achieving social justice and equity in classrooms across the United States and indeed the world” (McClean, 2014). Rites of passage, storytelling and performance pedagogy must be utilized as central tenets of classroom pedagogy in such a manner that the voice of children is elevated within classroom instruction. This deliberate move towards innovative, nontraditional and experimental methods of teaching will embrace the oral tradition of people of color and in so doing acknowledge the legitimacy of Indigenous epistemology as valuable classroom knowledge. (McClean & Waters, 2020; Waters, 2018). In order to attain equity within school systems across the globe, deliberate action must be taken to bring the dignity of all children into the curriculum and include the history and culture of formerly colonized people resting on the foundation of the funds of knowledge that children of color bring to the classroom with them (Bhabha, 1994; Gonzalez & Amanti, 2005). In pushing for an interrogation of the colonial origins of their background, the African Diaspora and the Aboriginals of Australia, both scholars argue for an engagement with the past and an understanding of how the historical continuities of racial intolerance maintain a system of educational injustice in 21st century classrooms (Johnson, 2019; Solorzano & Yasso, 2001).