Interrupting the mindset of educational neocolonialism: Critical deliberations from East and West international adult educators

Abstract

Applying international and comparative education and cultural perspectives, through critical comparative reflection, this paper examines issues and challenges of adult learning, teaching, and research endeavors between the East and the West. First, a brief literature review illuminating the obstacles and barriers for a two-way exchange between East and West is presented to argue and call for an interchange through which the West might endeavor to listen to and learn from intelligent life beyond its own borders (Merriam and Associates. Non-western perspectives on learning and knowing. Krieger: Malabar. 2007; Milligan, Stanfill, Widyanto, & Zhang. Educational Studies, 47(1):50–70, 2011). Second, via critical personal narratives, two international adult educators’ lived issues, experiences, and reflections demonstrate the pressing necessity that invites us to recollect critically what has been “dismissed or at very least delegitimatized” (Reagan. Non-Western educational traditions: Indigenous approaches to educational thought and practice 3. New York: Routledge. 2010), in the discourse of conceptualizing educational thoughts and practice, and argue for consciousness to challenge our own ethnocentrism and the ethnocentrism of others that could help make the learning from each other more authentic and equally value from both sides. Finally, it concludes with recommendations that may facilitate further deliberations—philosophically, theoretically, and practically. The paper calls for a different mindset that helps interrupt educational neocolonialism in the globalized world. It also aims to help create a “third space” for bridging educational understandings and learning between East and West accurately, and more effectively.