Western Reform of Western Education –
A Bibliography of Noteworthy Books and Articles
Prepared by Sara Swetzoff ([email protected], 202-257-1101) for the
International Institute of Islamic Thought
March 26, 2014
Preliminary definition of ‘the West,’ or ‘Western’:
The term ‘the Western world’ is generally understood to refer to the
geographic areas that trace their intellectual heritage to Greco-Roman
civilization. This includes Europe as well as countries spawned by European
colonialism and dominated by European-heritage populations. Western
civilization is heavily associated with Judeo-Christian heritage and worldview. In
modern times, the Western world has been characterized by the Renaissance,
the Protestant Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment. The Western world is
also associated with its colonial endeavors that took place between the 15th and
20th centuries; Edward Said famously argued that the concept of the ‘West’ was
popularized in this context as colonial powers sought to define themselves in
opposition to the uncivilized ‘East’ and thus justify their conquests.
It is worth noting that the definition of ‘the West’ shifted during the Cold
War. In this context ‘the West’ came to refer the ‘first world’ of NATO members
and other countries aligned with the United States, while the ‘second world’ was
composed of Russia and other Soviet-influenced eastern bloc countries. This
phenomena highlights some of the gray areas of the term and requires us to
consider the extent to which ‘the West’ came to be defined by economic status
versus cultural characteristics. Notable differences between Western and
Eastern Europe persist – such as Eastern Europe’s lack of participation in
colonialism and its relative exploitation at the hands of the Western European
economy – but today we mostly talk about eastern Europe and Russia as part of
the ‘West’ because of their Judeo-Christian heritage and participation in the
European intellectual tradition.
Like Western Europe, Eastern Europe and Russia subscribe to a concept
of secularism that was born out of Greco-Roman and Enlightenment-era thought;
in other words, despite the differences generated by communism and the Cold
War period, Russia and Eastern Europe are Eurocentric in their worldview.
Claiming to achieve a separation of church and state, secularism (and Marxism as
well, arguably representing a more extreme version of secularism) is charged
with having instead simply encoded Western values, including those derived
from Judeo-Christian belief, into a different packaging that attempts to pass itself
off as neutral and universal while in fact it derives from a specific cultural
context.
Many consider Western colonialism to persist in the form of the
contemporary phenomena of neoliberalism and globalization. However, this
binary of the colonist and the colonized is becoming more ambiguous as nonWestern superpowers such as China exert their economic influence over the
Middle East and Africa.
This bibliography covers Western critiques of Western education,
including many reforms and critiques carried about by non-Western cultures
and minorities within the Western milieu. Because Western education is seen as
deeply entwined with colonialist structures and mentalities, scholars have
increasingly focused on education reform as a ‘decolonizing’ movement. At this
point the movement is still somewhat decentralized and no broad primers on the
subject have been published yet, but introductory texts on postcolonialism cover
some of the central subjects relevant to reform of Western education. For the
most part there is a disparate array of work related to decolonizing modern
Western education coming from variously named and defined movements, as
well as emerging from particular disciplines and school subjects, both within
Europe and North America and beyond. The standardization of terminology and
the question of what to focus on in the history of colonialism is still unresolved.
The modern Western education apparatus and its role in the Eurocentric
mode of production and control of knowledge within the context of the
colonial world system, from the sixteenth century to the present
(postcolonialism and education):
Abdi, Ali A. (2009). Education for human rights and global citizenship. Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press.
Alcoff, Linda Martin (2000). Power/knowledges in the colonial unconscious: A
dialogue between Dussel and Foucault. In Linda Martin Alcoff & Eduardo
Mendieta (Eds.), Thinking from the underside of history: Enrique Dussel’s
Philosophy of Liberation. Lanham, MD: Rowaman & Littlefield Publishers.
Altback, Philip G. (1971b). Education and neocolonialism: A note. Comparative
education review, 15(2). Pp. 237-239.
Altback, Philip G. (1977). Servitude of the mind? Education, dependency, and
neocolonialism. Teachers college record, 79(2), pp. 187-204.
Altbach, Philip G. & Kelly, Gail P. (Eds.) (1978). Education and colonialism. New
York: Longman.
Altbach, Philip G. (1971a). “Education and neocolonialism.” Teachers college
record, 74 (4), pp. 543-558.
Amin, Samir (1989). Eurocentrism. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Andreotti, V. (2011). Actionable Postcolonial Theory in Education. New York:
Palgrave MacMillan.
Andreotti, V., Souza, L. (2012). Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Citizenship
Education. New York: Routledge.
Andreotti, V. (2014) (Ed.) The Political Economy of Global Citizenship Education.
New York: Routledge.
Cannella, Gaile S. & Viruru, Radhika (2004). Childhood and postcolonization:
Power, education, and contemporary practice. New York:
Routledge/Falmer.
Crossley, M. & Watson, K. (2003). Comparative and international research in
education: Globalization, context and difference. London, UK: Routledge
Falmer.
Crossley, Michael & Tikly, Leon (2004). Postcolonial perspectives and
comparative and international research in education: A critical
introduction. Comparative education, 40(2), pp. 147-156.
Dussel, Enrique (1993). Eurocentrism and modernity (Introduction to the
Frankfurt lectures). Boundary 2, 23(3), pp. 65-76.
Dussel, Enrique (1995). The invention of Americas: Eclipse of “the Other” and the
myth of modernity. Translated by Michael D. Barber. New York:
Continuum.
Dussel, Enrique (1998a). Beyond Eurocentrism: The world-system and the limits
of modernity. In Fredric Jameson & Masao Miyoshi (Eds.). The cultures of
globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Dussel, Enrique (1998b). Globalization and it victims of Exclusion: From a
liberation ethics perspective. The modern schoolman, LXXV, pp. 119-155.
Ginsburg, Mark B. (2002). Imperialism and education. In David Levinson, Peter
W. Cookson & Alan R. Sadovnik (Eds.), Education and sociology: An
encyclopedia. New York: Routledge.
Giroux, Henri (1983). Theory and resistance in education. South Hadley, MA: Bergin
& Garvey Publishers.
Giroux, Henri (2005). Schooling and the struggle for public life: Democracy’s
promise and education’s challenge (second edition). Boulder, CO: Paradigm
Publishers.
Grosfoguel, Ramon & Cervantes-Rodriquez, Ana Margarita (2002). Unthinking
twentieth-century Eurocentric mythologies: Universalist knowledges,
decolonization, and developmentalism. In Ramon Grosfoguel, Ana Margarita
Cervantes-Rodriguez (Eds.), The modern/colonial capitalist world-system in
the twentieth century: Global processes, antisystemic movements, and the
geopolitics of knowledge. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Grosfoguel, Ramon (2002). Colonial difference, geopolitics of knowledge, and
global coloniality in the modern/colonial capitalist world-system. Review,
25(3), pp. 203-224.
Hickling-Hudson AR, (2011). Teaching to disrupt preconceptions: Education for
social justice in the imperial aftermath, Compare: a journal of comparative
and international education p.453-465.
Loomba, Ania (1998, second edition 2005). Colonialism/Postcolonialism (The
New Critical Idiom). New York: Routledge.
Mayo, P., Borg, C. & Dei, G. (2002). Editorial introduction: Postcolonialism,
education and an international forum for debate. Journal of postcolonial
education, 1, pp. 3-7).
Mignolo, Walter D. (2000a). Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern
knowledges, and border thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Unviversity
Press.
Popkewtiz, Thomas (1997). The production of reason and power: Curriculum history
and intellectual traditions. Journal of curriculum studies, 29(2), pp. 131-164.
Popkewitz, Thomas S. (2000). Reform as the social administration of the child:
Globalization of knowledge and power. In Nicholas C. Burbules & Carlos
Alberto Torres (Eds.), Globalization and education: Critical perspectives.
New York: Routledge.
Quijano, Anibal (2007) Coloniality and modernity/rationality, Cultural studies,
21(2-3), 168-178
Quijano, Anibal (2008). Coloniality of power, Eurocentrism, and social
classification. In Mabel Morana, Enrique Dussel & Carlos A. Jaurequi
(Eds.), Coloniality at large: Latin America and the postcolonial debate.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Tikly, Leon (1999). Postcolonialism and comparative education. International
review of education, 45(5/6), pp. 603-621.
Tikly, Leon (2004). Education and the new imperialism. Comparative education,
40(2). 173-198.
Venn, Couze (2006). The postcolonial challenge: Towards alternative worlds.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Viruru, Radhika (2006). Postcolonial technologies of power: Standardized testing
and representing diverse young children. International journal of
educational policy, research, and practice. 7, pp. 49-70.
Young, Robert J.C. (2001). Postcolonialism: An historical introduction. Malden,
MA: Blackwell Publishers.
Willinsky, John (1998). Learning to divide the world: Education at empire’s end.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Indigenous knowledge and education:
Adams, David Wallace (1995). Education for extinction: American Indians and the
boarding school experience, 1875-1928. Lawrence, KA: University of
Kansas Press.
Battiste, Marie (2008). The struggle and renaissance of indigenous knowledge in
Eurocentric education. In Malia Villegas, Sabina Rak Neugebauer & Kerry
R. Venegas (Eds.) Indigenous knowledge and education: Sites of struggle,
strength, and survivance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Reprints
Cajete, Gregory. Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education. Kivaki
Press, 1994.
Deloria, Jr., Vine (1999). Knowing and understanding: Traditional education in
the modern world. In Vine Deloria Jr. Spirit & reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr.,
reader. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing.
Deloria, Jr., Vine (1999). The burden of Indian education. In Vine Deloria Jr.,
Spirit & reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., reader. Golden, CO: Fulcrum
Publishing.
Fals-Borda, Orlando & Mora-Osejo, Luis E. (2003). Eurocentrism and its effects: A
manifesto from Columbia. Globalization, societies and education, 1(1), pp.
103-107.
McLaughlin J, Hickling-Hudson AR, (2005) Beyond Dependency Theory. A
Postcolonial Perspective on Educating Papua New Guinea Students in
Australian High Schools, Asia Pacific Journal of Education p193-208
McDonald, Kara (2006). Learning whose nation? In Yata Kanu (Ed). Curriculum
as cultural practice: Postcolonial imaginations. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
McGovern, Seanna (1999). Education, modern development, and indigenous
knowledge: An analysis of academic knowledge production. New York:
Garland Publishing.
Quijano, Anibal (2005). The challenge of the “indigenous movement” in Latin
America. Socialism and democracy, 19(3), pp. 55-81.
Reyhner, Jon & Eder, Jeanne (2004). American Indian education: A history.
Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press.
Villegas, Malia, Neugebauer, Sabina Rak & Venegas, Kerry R. (Eds.) (2008).
Indigenous knowledge and education: Sites of struggle, strength, and
survivance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.
Colonialism and Islamophobia:
Grosfoguel, Ramon (2006). "The Long-Durée: Entanglement Between Islamophobia
and Racism in the Modern-Colonial Capitalist/Patriarchal WorldSystem." Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of SelfKnowledge V(1): Fall.
Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2005). Decolonization and the new identitarian
logics after September 11t: Eurocentrism and Americanism against the
new barbarian threats. Radical philosophy review, 8(1), pp. 35-67.
Mignolo, Walter D. (2014) “Spirit out of bounds returns to the East: The closing
of the social sciences and the opening of independent thoughts.” Current
Sociology, published online 19 March 2014. (emailed to Dr. Sinanovic)
Western education and the Black American experience; colonization,
resistance and reform:
Anderson, James D. (1988). The education of blacks in the south, 1850-1935.
Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Allen, Ricky Lee (2001). The globalization of white supremacy: Toward a critical
discourse on the racialization of the world. Educational theory, 51(4), pp.
467-485.
Yosso, Tara J., Parker, Laurence, Soloranzo, Daniel L. & Lynn, Marvin (2004).
From Jim Crow to affirmative action and back again: A critical race
discussion of racialized rationales and access to higher education. Review
of research in education, 28, pp. 1-25.
Conceptualizing a decolonized, pluralistic model of education / curriculum
studies:
Appelbaum, Michael Peter (2002). Multicultural and diversity education: A
reference handbook. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Apple, Michael W. & Buras, Kristen L. (2006). Introduction. In Michael W. Apple
& Kristen L. Buras (Eds.). The subaltern speak: Curriculum, power, and
educational struggles. New York: Routledge.
Dei, George J. Sefa & Kempf, Arlo (Eds.) (2006). Anti-colonialism and education:
The politics of resistance.
Hamilton, David & Weiner, Gaby (2003). Subjects, not subjects: Curriculum
pathways, pedagogies, and practices in the United Kingdom. In William F.
Pinar (Ed.), International handbook of curriculum research. Mahwah, NJ:
Lawrence Erlbaum
Hamilton, David (1989). Towards a theory of schooling. London: Falmer.
Hamilton, David (1990). Curriculum history. Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University
Press.
Hickling-Hudson AR, Sidhu R, (2011) Australian universities and the challenges
of internationalization, Universities and Global Diversity: Preparing
Educators for Tomorrow p157-175
Kanu, Yatta (2006a). Introduction. In Yatta Kanu (Ed.), Curriculum as cultural
practice: Postcolonial imaginations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kanu, Yatta (2006b). Reappropriating traditions in the postcolonial curricular
imagination. In Yata Kanu (Ed). Curriculum as cultural practice: Postcolonial
imaginations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kincheloe, Joe L. (2001). Getting beyond the facts: Teaching social studies/social
sciences in the twenty-first century (second edition). New York: Peter Lang.
Kincheloe, Joe L. (2006a) Critical ontology and indigenous ways of being: Forging a
postcolonial curriculum. In Yata Kanu (Ed). Curriculum as cultural practice:
Postcolonial imaginations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Kincheloe, Joe L. (2006b). A critical politics of knowledge: Analyzing the role of
educational psychology in educational policy. Policy futures in education.
4(3), pp. 220-235.
Kincheloe, Joe L. (2008). Knowledge and critical pedagogy: An introduction.
Montreal: Springer.
Lam, Wan Shun Eva (2006). Culture and learning in the context of globalization:
Research directions. Review of research in education, 30, pp. 213-237.
Lipman, Pauline (2004). High stakes education: Inequality, globalization and
urban school reform. New York: RoutledgeFalmer.
Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2002). Postimperial reflections on crisis, knowledge,
and utopia: Transgresstopic critical hermeneutics and the “death of
European man.” Review, 25(3), pp. 277-315.
Maldonado-Torres, Nelson (2004). The topology of being and the geopolitics of
knowledge: Modernity, empire, coloniality. City, 8(1), pp. 29-56.
Merryfield, Merry M. (2001). Moving the center of global education: From
imperial world views that divide the world to double consciousness,
contrapuntal pedagogy, hybridity, and cross-cultural competence. In W.B.
Stanley (Ed.), Critical issues in social studies research for the 21st century
(pp. 179-207). Greenwich, CT: Information Age Publishing.
Merryfield, Merry M. & Wilson, Angene (2005). Social studies and the world:
Teaching global perspectives. Silver Spring, MD: National Council for the
Social Studies.
Oakes, Jeannie (1985). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Oliver, Donald W. (1989). Education, modernity, and fractured meaning: Toward a
process theory of teaching and learning. Albany, NY: State University of
New York Press.
Popkewitz, Thomas (2006). Forward: Hopes of inclusion/recognition and productions
of difference. In Marianne N. Bloch, Devorah Kennedy, Theodora Lightfoot
& Dar Weyenberg (Eds.) The child in the world/the world in the child:
Education and the configuration of a universal, modern, and globalized
childhood. New York: PalgraveMacmillan.
Popkewtiz, Thomas S., Pereyra, Miguel A. & Franklin, Barry M. (2001). History, the
problem of knowledge, and the new cultural history of schooling. In Thomas
S. Popkewitz, Barry M. Franklin & Miguel A. Pereyra (Eds.), Cultural history
and education: Critical essays on knowledge and schooling. New York:
Routledge/Falmer.
Rizvi, Fazal, Lingard, Bob & Lavia, Jennifer (2006). Postcolonialism and
education: Negotiating a contested terrain. Pedgagogy, culture & society,
14(3), pp. 249-262.
Rizi, Fazal (2000). International education and the production of global imagination.
In Nicholas C. Burbules & Carlos Alberto Torres (Eds.), Globalization and
education: Critical perspectives. New York: Routledge.
Shea, Christine M., Kahane, Ernest & Sola, Peter (Eds.) (1989). The new servants of
power: A critique of the 1980’s school reform movement. New York:
Greenwood Press.
Slattery, Patrick (2003). Hermeneutics, Subjectivity, and Aesthetics:
Internationalizing the Interpretive Process in U.S. Curriculum Research.
In William F. Pinar (Ed.), International handbook of curriculum research.
Malwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Swartz, Ellen (1992). Emancipatory narratives: Rewriting the master script in the
school curriculum. Journal of Negro education, 61(3), pp. 341-355.
Willinsky, John (2006). High school postcolonial: As the students ran ahead with
the theory. In Yata Kanu (Ed). Curriculum as cultural practice: Postcolonial
imaginations. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Decoloniality:
Grosfoguel, Ramon (2007). The epistmic decolonial turn: Beyond political-economy
paradigms. Cultural studies, 21(2-3), pp. 211-223. Grosfoguel, Roman
(2002). Colonial difference, geopolitics of knowledge, and global coloniality
in the modern/colonial capitalist world-system. Review, 25(3), pp. 203-224.
Shajahan, Riyad, A Wagner, NN Wane (2009). “Rekindling the Sacred: Toward a
decolonizing pedagogy in higher education.” Journal of Thought 44
(1/2):59-75.
Shajahan, Riyad (2005). “Mapping the field of anti-colonial discourse to
understand issues of indigenous knowledges: Decolonizing praxis.”McGill
Journal of Education/Revue des sciences de l'éducation de McGill 40 (2).
Richardson, Troy (2012). “Indigenous Political Difference, Colonial Perspectives
and the Challenge of Diplomatic Relations: Toward a Decolonial
Diplomacy in Multicultural Educational Theory.” Educational Studies 48
(5):465-484.
A recent call for papers, perhaps useful for further understanding the state
of the field of ‘decolonizing education’:
Special Issue of Educational Studies -- Decolonizing, (Post)(Anti)Colonial, and
Indigenous Education, Studies, and Theories
Co-edited by Stephanie Daza (Manchester Metropolitan University), Luis Urrieta,
Jr. (UT-Austin), and Eve Tuck (SUNY-New Paltz)
Manuscripts (6000-8000 words) due October 1, 2013
This special issue aims to explore emerging questions about how decolonizing,
(post)(anti)colonial and Indigenous education, studies, and theories intersect
and are being (re)conceptualized. Attending to Tuck and Yang’s (2012)
arguments against invoking 'decolonization' as a metaphor, it asks contributors
to explore how this work displaces and/or is complicit in the power/knowledge
distinction marking the Colonial (Gallegos, 1998). In this way, this issue also
aims to examine the limits and possibilities of postcolonial praxis (Subedi &
Daza, 2008) both within and beyond US education, especially considering the
challenge of unequal material conditions, contexts, and complex stories of whom
and what we study (Urrieta, Jr., 2003).
The purpose of this issue is twofold: (1) to take stock of de/colonizing,
(post)(anti)colonial, and Indigenous education, studies, and theories, and (2) to
unsettle the boundaries of post-,de-, and anti-colonial theory and practice, while
exploring the limits, possibilities, and specificity of terms. In addition to singleauthored manuscripts, we encourage co-authored manuscripts that bring
scholars from different theoretical positions into conversation.
Manuscripts might address, but are not limited to, the following questions:
- What are the relationships among post-, de-, and anti-colonial studies, race and
ethno-linguistic affiliation, and Indigenous studies?
- How and why are these concepts and ideas being proliferated, commodified,
and reappropriated in scholarship?
- What is the relationship to global trends (e.g. capitalism, neoliberalism,
democratization, etc.); methodological approaches (e.g. history, anthropology,
etc.); different actors/bodies and subject positions (e.g. border crossers, settlers,
etc.); and especially different geographical contexts (e.g. Does decolonization
mean something different in settler colonial contexts than in others? In what
ways?)
- How do you use, engage, mobilize, critique and/or embrace these terms,
theories, and practices in your research?
- How is your work/theory/practice situated within and against that of articles
already published in Educational Studies specifically (e.g. Gallegos, Villenas, &
Brayboy, eds., 2003), and the field more broadly (e.g. Coloma, ed., 2009)?
- Who can/should be doing this work?
- What is/should be the implications?
- What does complicity in, and displacement of, colonial, imperial, and national
legacies look like?