Disrupting colonial barriers to inclusive education for indigenous and multicultural students

1. Disrupting colonial barriers to inclusive education for indigenous and multicultural students Deborah Rockstroh PATT27: A Play on SustainabilityChristchurch, NZ: Dec 2-6, 2013

2. Humans continue to create binaries, and with them an associated belief that they represent conflicting stories, one of which must prevail at the cost of the other. At a time in history when the price of such conflict is measured in terms of the suffering of very large numbers, and potentially in the extinction of the human species, there may be no more important classroom task than to help students develop and appreciate an alternative perspective: different stories need not be oppositional. It is our task, as educators and world citizens, to help our students and ourselves develop the skills needed to continually create and recreate a human story from which no one feels estranged. (Dalke and Grobstein 2007, pp. 111)

3. Sustainable design, development & discourse • emerged from concerns for equitable distribution of ecological ‘resources’ now and into the future • inherent social and ecological dimensions • debates continue about whether these factors can be reconciled • development discourse concurs the failure of ‘technology transfer’ into 3rd world countries • yet as this has occurred throughout human evolution (and is fundamental to Western development), and there have been successful technology transfer stories, perceptions of failure may be attributed to lack of economic growth – a Western cultural construct

4. Multicultural Education in Design & Technology • challenge of meeting needs of students from diverse backgrounds increasing in classrooms • more population mobility due to advantage and disadvantaged circumstances • concerns about engaging indigenous students worldwide continues • UNESCO Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education: first task is to identify barriers, followed by identifying ways to overcome those barriers

5. Culture and Sustainable Development Culture: • a potential dimension of learning and development that has received little attention in D&T education literature • typically perceived as a quality inherent to students from diverse cultural backgrounds Paradox: • strength and resilience of western development due to cultural entanglements • failure to recognize the culturedness of all students

7. Cultural-historical activity theory in D&T Education • Vygotsky (et.al) tradition of cultural-historical activity theory offers a way of thinking about the cultural dimension • Highlights significance of learning, pedagogy that responds to cultural needs and identity of learners • culture maybe conceived as a group of people (e.g. students) who share similar values and practices associated with particular technologies • e.g. intercultural differences – classroom culture drivers are different to business and industry drivers

8. Culture as a culturally constructed standpoint • a way to understand ‘Others’ • failure to understand the self and own culture • attributing stereotyped qualities to all associated with a particular culture • failure to recognize identities • perception that Western technologies and scientific knowledge are superior, more advanced • less flexible, fewer real opportunities for innovation • romanticizing and utopian views ‘return to nature’, tokenistic, cherry-picking ideas that suit • indigenous relationships to land differs from Western resource based view of land, • failure to acknowledge social bonds tied to land • failure to recognize long history of mistakes, conflicts and learning • disregard for 40 – 60,000 years of ‘intellectual property’

9. Colonial thinking • Indigenous and critical writers refer to consequences of colonial thinking as barrier to participation • exclusion and marginalization through often unconscious, everyday activities and associated designs and technologies • potential impact on students from diverse backgrounds

10. Thinking critically • ecofeminism: humans as separate from nature, a dualism of superior-inferior proportions • Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism over eco-centrism • justified domination of ‘One’ over subordinated ‘Other’ • academic and political influence on public thinking: anthropology and archaeology co-opted by colonial governments to problematize the ‘Other’ • counter to economic and technological progress

11. Multicultural education: Disrupting the status quo • recognize education as tool of enculturation for a monoculturalway of thinking • disrupt the status quo to empower students: • attempt to understand different standpoints • celebrate (individual) strengths in diversity • acknowledge Western based assumptions • make culturally constructed assumptions explicit

12. Cited in “Handbook of Cross-cultural psychology, Vol. 3”. (1997) Berry, Poortinga & Pandey (Eds).