Injustice within education shuts out critical voices and creates an environment that encourages false or biased narratives. This is seen through the phenomenon of colonization of education. The growing commercialization of education is part of this puzzle, but financial barriers are only one piece of the problem. Further aspects of colonization in education include an overemphasis on rule-following and punishments, overextended faculty, BIPOC faculty leaving at high rates, and performative diversity and inclusion efforts (Lehman, 2020).
Many working in education have seen at least one of these common afflictions within the workplace. Other processes include higher education institutions giving recognition to faculty only when publishing with traditional publishers, many institutions still acting under an authoritative system that ignores the voices of students, staff, and faculty, and short-term hiring of staff or educators that prevents long-term mentoring of students. Injustice within education allows these harmful practices and others to reinforce biased historical narratives and research, limiting the success and impact of many students and faculty, especially those who are not white, male, and heterosexual individuals. In addition, colonized education causes the most harm on Indigenous and Black students, consequences can include a loss of identity, a limited sense of the past, as well as disassociation with heritage (Nwanosike & Onyije, 2011).
International Open Access Week has chosen the theme “Community over Commercialization” for the past two years, matching one of the crucial goals of decolonization in education. Open educational practices can help break down many current barriers including financial, diversity of materials and authors, as well as the prioritization of community. But while a step in the right direction, open educational practices alone are not enough to create scholarly equity. Crissinger (2015), Meagher (2021), Dutta, et al. (2021), and Berger (2021) have all highlighted the areas where open educational practices fail to move past colonization systems.
This presentation will discuss recent literature on decolonizing education as well as the literature that discusses how open educational practices are also in need of decolonization. Open educational practices are at an important moment in history where education is undergoing turbulent times. For open practices to advance and become more widespread, they must first divorce from colonization practices which prevent scholarly equity. Educators cannot work on decolonizing education and then be introduced to practices that must go through the process again. As open advocates, we must have these discussions and chart the path to decolonization.
Included in
[Session 6B]: Global Access and EquityReferencesAsher, N. (2009). Chapter 5: Decolonization and education: Locating pedagogy and self at the interstices in global times. Counterpoints, 369, 67-77. Berger, M. (2021). Bibliodiversity at the Centre: Decolonizing open access. Development and Change, 52(2), 383-404. Crissinger, S. (2015, October 21). A critical take on OER practices: Interrogating commercialization, colonialism, and content. In the Library with the Lead Pipe. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2015/a-critical-take-on-oer-practices-interrogating-commercialization-colonialism-and-content/ Dutta, M., Ramasubramanian, S., Barrett, M., Elers, C., Sarwatay, D., Raghunath, P., ... & Zapata, D. (2021). Decolonizing open science: Southern interventions. Journal of communication, 71(5), 803-826. Farrow, R., Coughlan, T., Goshtasbpour, F., & Pitt, B. (2023). Supported Open Learning and Decoloniality: Critical Reflections on Three Case Studies. Education Sciences, 13(11), 1115. Lehman, R. (2020, June 26). Ten ways to identify colonized education practices. Academe Blog. https://academeblog.org/2020/06/26/ten-ways-to-identify-colonized-education-practices/ Meagher, K. (2021). Introduction: the politics of open access—decolonizing research or corporate capture?. Development and Change, 52(2), 340-358. Melanie Reyes & Elizabeth A Segal (2019) Globalization or Colonization in Online Education: Opportunity or Oppression?, Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 39:4-5, 374-386, DOI: 10.1080/08841233.2019.1637991 Nikki Luke & Nik Heynen (2021) Abolishing the frontier: (De)colonizing ‘public’ education, Social & Cultural Geography, 22:3, 403-424, DOI: 10.1080/14649365.2019.1593492 Nwanosike, O. F., & Onyije, L. E. (2011). Colonialism and education. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 2(4), 41-47.
Author KeywordsEducation injustices, colonization, open commercialization
