Diverse Epistemologies Research Articles

Cognitive imperialism in artificial intelligence: counteracting bias with indigenous epistemologies

AbstractThis paper presents a novel methodology for integrating indigenous knowledge systems into AI development to counter cognitive imperialism and foster inclusivity. By critiquing the dominance of Western epistemologies and highlighting the risks of bias, the authors argue for incorporating diverse epistemologies. The proposed framework outlines a participatory approach that includes indigenous perspectives, ensuring AI benefits all. The methodology draws from AI ethics, indigenous studies, and postcolonial theory, emphasizing co-creation with indigenous communities, ethical protocols for indigenous data governance, and adaptation of AI algorithms. Case studies in natural language processing, content moderation, and healthcare demonstrate the methodology’s effectiveness and importance. By offering a concrete methodology for decolonizing AI, this paper contributes significantly to AI ethics and social justice, providing a roadmap for equitable, culturally respectful AI.

How to … do decolonial research.

The imperative for decolonial research in health professions education (HPE) is rooted in a resistance to coloniality, which characterises modern medicine and HPE. Coloniality is a residual effect of colonialism, which upholds White, Western, Eurocentric knowledge systems while simultaneously marginalising diverse epistemologies. We outline the problematic nature of coloniality in HPE typified in unequal research partnerships, skewed student exchanges and poor representation of diverse authors. Decoloniality advocates for the active disruption and dismantling of colonial hierarchies to promote epistemic justice. We suggest a practical framework for applying decolonial principles in research, emphasising awareness (critical consciousness), deliberation (reflexivity) and action (transformative praxis). Practical steps for decolonial practice include interrogating research conceptualisation, sharing power and diversifying research teams, adopting participatory and reciprocal (mutually beneficial) methodologies, (re)centring marginalised voices and amplifying 'Other' knowledges, and disrupting hegemonic dissemination practices. By employing decolonial strategies, researchers can produce equitable, socially accountable and epistemically just scholarship, ultimately enhancing the relevance and impact of HPE research for all people globally.

The Dialectics of Modernity and Tradition: A Decolonial Critique of the University’s Role in Shaping Social Consciousness

Positioned at the intersection of reason and practical life, the study dissecs the university system’s dual role in upholding and contesting the hegemonic narratives of modernity. Through a dialectical analysis, the paper argues how universities have unconsciously perpetuated modern Western concepts of progress and rationality, often overshadowing traditional and indigenous ways of understanding. The article highlights the imperative for universities to undergo a decolonial transformation, integrating contemporary and traditional epistemologies in a dynamic synergy fostering a more encompassing and inclusive societal awareness. The article recommends that academic institutions actively integrate and value diverse epistemologies, challenging long-held Western-centric pedagogies for a more inclusive educational environment. Therefore, dissecting the nuanced interplay between modernity and tradition within universities, this study hopefully will contribute to a deeper understanding of decolonial processes in shaping more holistic and representative knowledge systems in academia.

Advancing equity in cross-cultural psychology: embracing diverse epistemologies and fostering collaborative practices.

Psychology, and cross-cultural psychology (CCP) in particular, plays a pivotal role in understanding the intricate relationship between culture and human behavior. This paper sheds light on the challenges of inequity and marginalization, especially concerning scholarship from the Global South, which have roots in historical colonial practices. It highlights how intellectual extractivism and the predominance of Western research methodologies often overlook the contributions of Global South scholars and indigenous ways of knowing. Such imbalances risk narrowing the scope of psychological inquiry, privileging American and European perspectives, and undermining the richness of global human experiences. This paper calls for a shift toward more equitable collaborations and the recognition of diverse epistemologies. By advocating for genuine representation in research and valuing local knowledge, it proposes pathways for a more inclusive and authentic exploration of human behavior across cultures.

Disobedience, (dis)embodied knowledge management, and decolonization: higher education in The Gambia

AbstractIn this work, we sought to uncover the key strategies and challenges to the integration of Indigenous knowledge as knowledge management practices at a public university in The Gambia. It is often axiomatic in the literature that the incorporation of diverse epistemologies is a key resource for sustainable development; therefore, activities associated with the management of knowledge, particularly in higher education, are worthy of elucidation. We discovered that knowledge management activities at a university in The Gambia were often informal and required the invisible work of faculty. It was through the implicit use of tacit knowledge and epistemic disobedience that faculty were able to build upon a colonized curriculum that denied the presence of other knowledge. However, in the end, faculty were dependent on the power of referents within and without the institution to formalize their knowledge management practices. This work fills an essential gap in the extant literature on how the work of university faculty and managers, when situated within a knowledge management perspective, can contribute to decolonization and foster sustainable development.

Promoting Liberal Education Through Introductory Psychology: The Perspective-Based Approach

Introductory psychology is typically presented to undergraduates as a set of loosely related topics reflecting the organization of most textbooks. The empirically based evidence presented in the topical format is likely to be limited by progressive knowledge obsolesce and replicability challenges impacting contemporary science. We suggest that psychology instructors consider an alternative course format organized by theories or perspectives. A perspective-centered introductory psychology provides a consistent and pluralistic view of the field and embeds research findings and methodology within psychology’s major explanatory theories. Current trends in undergraduate higher education emphasize career readiness. Development of critical thinking and applying psychological principles to real-world situations, including students’ own lives, may be better achieved through a perspective-based approach. Given that the typical introductory psychology student is a non-major taking the course to fulfil liberal arts requirements, a perspective approach offers several advantages. A focus on understanding human behavior from multiple vantage points is a skill valued by prospective employers of new bachelor’s degree recipients. With its emphasis on divergent and dialectical reasoning, a perspectivecenteredintroductory psychology course can become the centerpiece of the general education curriculum. In addition to promoting post-formal reasoning, a perspective-centered introductory psychology illustrates the diverse epistemologies that have shaped our field.

Interculturalidad en el nivel superior de nuestra América: algunas notas sobre la Argentina

Qualitative research was carried out under the tradition of ethnography in a case study, in which universities from America, Argentina, Chile, and Mexico participated. To have an approach to the training processes with an intercultural approach, the participation of the different educational actors (students, teachers, and researchers) proceeded to interpret the experiences, affirmative actions, projects, and collaborative community processes through intercultural dialogues under the virtual and face-to-face modality. It is concluded that within the substantive actions of teaching, research, and extension, universities have made significant progress, although only in two countries have some actions been institutionalized, autonomous efforts and self-training processes have a situated and experiential character. Likewise, attention to the diversity of students from native peoples depends on institutional policies and inclusion programs of different levels of progress for their interculturalization; as well as the dialogue of knowledge and the recognition of diverse epistemologies for the validation of local knowledge.

Equity, justice and the SDGs: lessons learnt from two decades of INEA scholarship

Environmental justice issues have been incrementally but consistently covered within this journal in the last two decades. This article reviews theoretical and empirical approaches to justice in INEA scholarship in order to identify trends and draw lessons for the interpretation and implementation of the 2030 Agenda and for living within environmental limits. Our review traces how justice considerations were initially covered within new institutionalist scholarship on collective action and social practices, to conceptualizing justice as ‘access and allocation’, to newer notions of planetary justice. We link these trends to scholarship on diverse epistemologies and typologies of justice, including conservative, corrective, distributive and procedural justice, and examine their operationalization within the empirical domains of climate, water and sustainable development. In concluding, we draw out implications for the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. We argue that a just approach is essential to living within environmental limits, with greater synergies needed between collective action and social practice approaches. While justice can be unpacked for practical and political reasons into access and allocation, we find that (procedural) access considerations are more politically palatable in practice than a concern with allocation (distributive justice), which remains much more contested. As such, dominant approaches promote ‘conservative’ or thin market-based notions of justice. We conclude by noting that just allocation is a precondition to just access. A failure to prioritize and achieve more corrective and distributive forms of justice will, without doubt, contribute to exacerbating global ecological degradation.

Pluralising (im)mobilities: anti-Muslim acts and the epistemic politics of mobile methods

ABSTRACT A critical agenda towards pluralising the politics and practice of mobile methods can enable more diverse epistemologies of uneven mobility and urban knowledge. In this article a challenge is offered to normative treatments of mobile methods including walking practices that inscribe dominant ways of seeing the city in anticipation of a liberal, secular, and sovereign subject. Taking empirical examples to ground conceptual insights on ‘fields of power’ and social difference, I suggest that researching together with Muslim women in UK cities (Manchester, Leicester, Birmingham) challenges normative approaches in Euro-American social sciences towards producing knowledge about people and place. It addresses two key questions: how do different Muslim women’s experiences of urban space and anti-Muslim acts impact upon walking practices? What are the everyday politics and conflicts that shape multi-layered and entangled temporalities of urban walking practices? Drawing on Urry’s movement/moorings dialectic, I advance that we need to take seriously stasis caused by physical and perceptual barriers to mobility, such as threat of violence, and to rethink entirely our right as researchers to orchestrate the movement of others. By re-framing mobile methods we can become more attuned to mobility justice and distinct registers of difference in the politics of knowledge production.

Diversity and Epistemic Marginalisation: The Case of Inclusive Education

In the literature on inclusion and inclusive education there is a frequent conflation of (1) inclusion of diverse people, or people in all their diversity, (2) inclusion of diverse worldviews, and (3) inclusion of diverse epistemologies. Only the first of these is plausible—and perhaps even morally and politically mandatory. Of course, more needs to be said about inclusion and its possible difference from integration, conditions of access, etc. Regarding the second type of inclusion, not all worldviews merit inclusion. Moreover, worldviews and epistemologies are not identical: everyone may have a worldview but not everyone has an epistemology. Finally, the idea of diverse epistemologies makes only limited sense, as do the associated notions of ‘indigenous knowledge’, ‘legitimation of knowledge’ and ‘epistemic marginalisation’.

ARTICLE RETRACTED] Ancestralidades reveladas: uma análise da Arqueologia Afrodiaspórica no Brasil

O artigo analisa a expansão dos estudos de Arqueologia Afrodiaspórica no Brasil. Em suas várias abordagens, estes são trabalhos que se debruçaram sobre sítios, vestígios, coleções, lugares, paisagens e remanescentes humanos relacionados à diáspora africana. O objetivo é fazer um balanço do material já publicado, buscando demonstrar o aumento expressivo desse campo. Para tanto, o artigo faz uma breve análise da expansão da Arqueologia no Brasil a partir do final do século XIX, contextualizando o processo de consolidação do campo científico. A análise, de cunho qualitativo, se baseou nas publicações sobre o tema, contudo, não se pretendeu ser um levantamento exaustivo. Associou-se o crescimento do campo, também, a fatores externos, como ações do movimento negro e valorização de patrimônios afro-diaspóricos pelo IPHAN e UNESCO, refletindo-se a respeito do alargamento da noção de patrimônio e da importância de pesquisas orientadas a partir de outras epistemologias.

Diseño de prácticas interculturales de enseñanza de las ciencias basado en evidencia

El profesorado de ciencias se enfrenta a aulas multiculturales, en las que coexisten la epistemología de las ciencias y las epistemologías tradicionales de las comunidades a las que pertenecen los estudiantes. Nuestro objetivo es apoyar al profesorado a la hora de establecer una relación incluyente entre dichas epistemologías, a través de un conjunto de prácticas interculturales de enseñanza de las ciencias (PIEC). Para diseñar las PIEC retomamos el puente epistemológico (PEp) que describe la relación de inclusión como el reconocimiento, validación y uso equitativo de las diversas epistemologías en el aula. Ponemos a prueba las PIEC. Los resultados muestran que la versión de PEp que el profesor participante llevó a la práctica, a través de las PIEC, es alternativa a lo propuesto. Dicha evidencia nos lleva a rediseñar las PIEC para guiar mejor al profesorado a la hora de planificar e implementar el PEp.

Practicing decolonial political geography: Island perspectives on neocolonialism and the China threat discourse

Island peoples around the world remain entangled in colonial processes. Western and metropolitan powers are increasingly deploying discourse of a ‘China threat’ to justify neocolonial entrenchment in the form of greater Western militarisation and economic dominance. In this paper, we investigate how Western and metropolitan powers use the China threat and warnings of economic, environmental, demographic, and military disaster to maintain and deepen colonial influence in former colonies, with special focus on four island states and territories: Guåhan/Guam in Oceania, Kalaallit Nunaat/Greenland in the Arctic, Okinawa in East Asia, and Jamaica in the Caribbean. We undertake this investigation as a means of practicing decolonial political geography, collaborating as a group of scholars from around the world and drawing upon diverse epistemologies and experiences to inform collaborative research and writing. Due to the complexities we have confronted in our efforts to think outside coloniality, this paper foregrounds our decolonial methodology and process, even as we respect our empirical findings.

Developing teachers’ research capacity: the essential role of teacher education

ABSTRACT With a focus on the US, I briefly review the literature to examine current trends, and outline a typology of what is meant by educational research for teaching by, with and for teachers, followed by a discussion of why it is important for educators to engage in and commit to such research. The key question in this article is what kinds of research are helpful for program improvement and for high-quality teaching and learning? A follow-up question is where should teachers learn to do such research and what would it mean to be a proficient teacher-researcher? These questions lead to an exploration of the role of teacher educators in helping teachers learn diverse epistemologies, theoretical perspectives, and methodologies to engage in researching the complexity involved in enriching and improving teacher education, teaching and learning.

Teaching in a State of Flux and Uncertainty: Transitioning the Design Studio during COVID-19

Design-based research or DBR is a methodology developed by and for educators that aims to improve the impact, transference, and translation of education research to benefit practice. In DBR, the educator is simultaneously the teacher and the researcher (Kuhn & Quigley, 1997). It is a flexible approach that facilitates iterative analysis, design, development, and implementation, based on collaboration among researchers and practitioners in real-world settings (Wang & Hannafin, 2005). The collaboration in this design-based study acknowledges that researchers also function as educators to create and measure the impact of design interventions (Collins, 1992). In this instance, the interventions were the strategies required to translate communication designcurricula from an on-campus face-to-face teaching and learning studio model to a distance learning paradigm due to COVID-19.
 This abstract presents the impact COVID-19 had on a first-year curricula revitalization aimed to progress students from a standards-based criterion (often accused of shallow learning) to a tertiary culture predicated on active and experiential inquiry. Two main points will be discussed: firstly, the pedagogical components of design studio practice, its cognizance of materiality and craft and objectives to foster students learning and engagement, appreciative of diverse worldviews and epistemologies. Secondly, it will present the disruption and experience of the academic team having to recalibrate,develop and prototype online content to accommodate the technological parameters and functionality of an obsolescent learning management system.
 A review of the syllabus commenced in 2019 to reenergise an outdated studio course for incoming first-year students, with a new brief, intending to function as a scaffold from the passive behaviour, associated with the secondary sectors NCEA1 model, towards an engaged and autonomous learner that is required at tertiary level. Accordingly, identity and belonging were selected as key themes, aiming to advance aspirations for a reciprocal learning culture, encouraged by the need to establish connections and community; the knowledge of identity and agency for self-actualization (Maslow, 1962), alongside understanding relevant media and communication design conventions.
 Dewey (1937) argued that learning is based on social and interactive processes, and the notion that students accumulatively learn more from their peers alsoacknowledges the requirements of specific interventions to construct the conditions for peer-to-peer learning experiences and relationships.
 March 2020 would, however, present another variable that would alter the trajectory of our two semesters substantially: the advent of a global pandemic and the challenges it imposed, requiring unprecedented recalibration as students and lecturers conjointly faced the sudden onset and pivot to adopt the virtual remote classroom.
 This paper will examine the data and findings collated from this period and reflect on the adaptation of a studio paradigm designed for on-campus in-person delivery into an online undertaking, teaching in a state of flux and uncertainty.
 1 National Certificates of Educational Achievement (NCEA) are national qualifications for senior secondary school students in New Zealand.

“Doing hope” as a possible way towards a responsive occupational science

ABSTRACT Europe is facing many major and rapid changes, which have direct consequences for the everyday lives of people experiencing diverse situations of vulnerability. Changes in health care systems, migration, and a growing population of elderly people are just a few examples of these changes in Europe. New ways of living and the struggles associated with them, urge our community to seek sustainable ways towards social justice. I choose to speak from my position as a hybrid scholar (from the in between); formed and trained within diverse epistemologies to reflect on these issues. I aim to open a dialogue about possibilities and responsibilities to become responsive to persons and groups, where failing infrastructures in our communities expose forms of vulnerability. What can occupational science do regarding populations whose vulnerabilities are exposed? What kind of science is needed to meet these challenges? To reflect on this, I will draw on my research experiences of engaging in community building and my teaching experiences preparing future occupational therapists to face these emerging topics. I introduce the concept of ‘third space’ as a possible way for knowledge creation embracing democratic collaboration, negotiation, and contestation in research and learning contexts. I will conclude by engaging in a critical reflection about the epistemic privilege where occupational science is founded, and the urgency to explore and create other frames of collaboration and dialogues that allow us to construct a more just world together.

Ontologising social justice in decolonised and post-apartheid settings

One topical issue in South Africa since the 1994 democratic elections is how a socially just higher education may be advanced in the context of the decolonial demand for the recognition of diverse epistemologies in the curriculum. The challenge since 1994 however has been what social justice means in the decolonial and post-apartheid settings where injustices continue to be perpetrated on the basis of race, albeit covertly. This article examines African and South African epistemologies and ontologies of social justice, in the context of decoloniality and curricula transformation in higher education, that became more pronounced through the #Feesmustfall protests in 2015. I argue that while social justice occurs within particular historical and political contexts, it is necessary to discern some ontologies of social justice that are not necessarily reducible to contexts. Use is made of Realist (R), Critical Realist (CR) and Race Realist Theory (RRT) perspective to unpack paradoxical constructions of social justice in post-colonial and post-apartheid South Africa.

Exploring Intercultural Understandings of Mental Health for School Contexts

What does mental health mean? As an educator, I have noticed that mental health is a concept viewed by many students and colleagues as “loaded” with stigma and often referenced as a shameful form of illness. It is estimated that one in five high school students will suffer from a mental illness, with the majority not accessing mental health services due to the stigma associated with the illness (Bowers et al., 2013). Wondering how particular understandings of mental health might influence pedagogical approaches, I conducted a preliminary literature review across caregiver professions, including nursing, social work, psychology, medicine and education. Findings indicated that medicalized mental health definitions framed by Western philosophy were prevalent. Conceptions of mental health that represent different cultural perspectives, pluralistic understandings (diverse epistemologies), or other ways of being (ontologies) are isolated and excluded. This roundtable session will be guided by a hermeneutic approach that aims to broaden understandings by asking participants to consider the concept of mental health within cultural traditions, histories, stories, languages, experiences, subjectivities and relations. To further discussion, contemporary conceptualizations are presented through literature, images and symbols.

Global citizenship education and the idea of diverse epistemologies

Three broad kinds of orientation can be identified with regard to (global) citizenship education (GCE): cosmopolitanism, localism, and relationalism. They differ in their respective approaches not only to cultural transmission and instruction but also to knowledge and knowledge production. My aim in this paper is to interrogate the notion of local or indigenous knowledge in GCE research and to investigate whether the postcolonial idea of diverse epistemologies does not employ a mistaken sense of ‘epistemology’. I argue that there are good reasons for an unequivocal and universally applicable understanding of knowledge and epistemology in (global) citizenship education and GCE research – and for being able to distinguish between knowledge and non-knowledge. Geographic, ethnic, racial and gender-based origin and affiliation do not constitute relevant criteria for any such demarcation. Instances in which they are cited as criteria raise questions not of epistemological relevance but rather of social justice.

Doing feminist collaborative event ethnography

Feminist political ecologists have transformed mainstream political ecology since its inception. The foundational and current work of feminist political ecologists indicate that their field is attentive to the epistemological foundations of power, inequities, and inequalities that cut across intersectional identities and hierarchies of difference and at the sites of environmental conflict and governance. Feminist political ecologists have made important theoretical interventions in the interdisciplinary community of political ecologists, but the use of feminist methodologies and 'team-based environmental science' can be expanded. We argue that revisiting feminist methodological commitments is critical for furthering how feminist political ecology examines how, and in what way, power and privilege operate in the contexts where environmental knowledge is produced. We make our argument by drawing upon a multi-year, multi-sited project to describe how collaborative event ethnography (CEE) offers many possibilities to reassess feminist political ecology research designs. We show how the recognition of diverse and plural epistemologies are foundational preconditions to integrating feminist principles in feminist political ecology research. We find that integrating reflexivity, responsibility, and co-production in research designs create opportunities for, and challenges to, carrying out feminist political ecological practice. In so doing, the integration of feminist methodologies are critical to disrupting knowledge hegemonies and providing new modes of practicing feminist political ecologies.Keywords: Collaborative event ethnography, feminist political ecology, feminist methodologies, global environmental governance