Decolonizing the evidence‐based education and policy movement: revealing the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform

Shahjahan, Riyad A.

doi:10.1080/02680939.2010.508176

Cited by 118 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…I argue for the significance (or imperative) of developing an analytic understanding of coloniality in global educational policy because there is a scarcity of anticolonial theoretical perspectives in critical educational policy analysis (Rizvi and Lingard 2010), particularly in relation to globalization of higher education (see Rhee 2009;Sidhu 2006). The anticolonial perspective is salient because it brings to policy analysis the questions of Eurocentrism/Whiteness, colonial histories, the political economy, knowledge production, and power relations (see Appadurai 2001;Connell 2007;Shahjahan 2011;Smith 1999). For the most part, critical scholarship on higher education policy continues to ignore colonial experiences, and, thus, perpetuates Eurocentrism in policy analysis (Connell 2007;Pratt 1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…This article considers the degree to which the OECD is an imperial agent in higher education policy today. I address this question by critically examining the role of the OECD in the production of a global testing regime in higher education currently underway -International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO) initiative -from an 'anticolonial perspective' (see Shahjahan 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coloniality and a global testing regime in higher education: unpacking the OECD’s AHELO initiative

Shahjahan

2013

Journal of Education Policy

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The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is currently engaging in a worldwide feasibility study entitled International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO). This feasibility study seeks to develop measures that would assess student learning outcomes that would be valid across different languages, cultures, and higher education institutions. Drawing on anticolonial perspectives, this article provides a critical policy analysis of the AHELO project. Based on a review of the AHELO texts, it presents two themes: (1) crisis and imperial logic in policy production and (2) Anglo-Eurocentrism as global designs and colonial relationships. It argues that, through AHELO, OECD is striving to construct a global space of equivalence for teaching and learning in higher education, and in so doing, perpetuates coloniality in global higher education. It concludes by noting some comparative observations between AHELO and Programme for International Student Achievement in terms of the increasing role of global knowledge for policy tools in educational policy.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coloniality and a global testing regime in higher education: unpacking the OECD’s AHELO initiative

Shahjahan

2013

Journal of Education Policy

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“…No es por casualidad que estas políticas indujeron e inducen al uso de indicadores cuantificables y medibles, que han sido una de las estrategias privilegiadas por las organizaciones internacionales y supranacionales. Es más, si vamos atrás en el tiempo, tal como llama la atención uno de los autores que escribe a partir de los postulados de las teorías poscoloniales, las decisiones basadas en la evidencia tienen sus raíces en los procesos (iluministas) de burocratización, estandarización y normalización que tuvieron lugar de forma concomitante con el comercio de esclavos y el sistema de plantaciones, los cuales constituyeron experiencias de disciplinación e ingeniería social, de producción en serie, de sistematización de la vida humana y de institucionalización de la estandarización de procesos (Shahjahan, 2011). En el contexto actual y de una forma más genérica, «la objetivación numérica de fenómenos sociales» sirve también para «despolitizar las cuestiones políticas al naturalizar determinadas interpretaciones de la realidad en detrimento de visiones alternativas».…”

Section: Colonialidad Y Comparativismo Evaluador En Países Periféricounclassified

Para discutir la hegemonía epistémica evaluativa eurocéntrica: un enfoque exploratorio

Afonso¹

2017

RASE

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Discussing Eurocentric evaluative epistemic hegemony: an exploratory approach Para discutir la hegemonía epistémica evaluativa eurocéntrica: un enfoque exploratorio ResumenEn el presente artículo pretendo, de una forma aún exploratoria, reunir algunos presupuestos de las teorías poscoloniales/descoloniales para elaborar un pensamiento crítico sobre la hegemonía de determinadas políticas, procesos e instrumentos de evaluación (o de medición educativa), que son claramente eurocéntricos (o euroamericanos) y que integran la actual agenda educativa global. Sin pretender contribuir para subsanar cualquier posible laguna pero reconociendo que, a pesar de las conocidas excepciones, el campo de las políticas de evaluación se encuentra relativamente saturado por abordajes repetitivos y previsibles, me resulta llamativa la capacidad hermenéutica de los presupuestos poscoloniales/descoloniales, cuya presencia en el campo del pensamiento crítico es cada vez más inevitable. Entre otros aspectos, quisiera llamar la atención sobre la urgencia en la construcción de relaciones y condiciones más justas y democráticas entre los diferentes países del sistema-mundial, especialmente en lo que se refiere a la producción del conocimiento, a través de la evaluación. En este sentido, si los países periféricos o semi-periféricos del sistema-mundial, en diferentes zonas del globo, adoptan de manera acrítica los indicadores definidos por el centro o no son capaces de resistir a la dominación cognitiva, o bien no cuestionan la integración subordinada en programas de evaluación comparativa internacional (como PISA y el AHELO), en cuanto instrumentos al servicio de una hegemonía epistémica eurocéntrica y euroamericana, la agenda educativa global continuará consolidándose únicamente como la expresión de los intereses del capitalismo, ampliando así, cada vez más, la colonialidad del conocimiento científico y evaluativo. Palabras claveSistema mundial, eurocentrismo, presupuestos descoloniales, hegemonía evaluativa eurocéntrica. AbstractIn this article I assemble, in an exploratory manner, some assumptions of postcolonial/decolonial theories so as to critically consider the hegemony of certain policies, processes and evaluation tools (or academic measurement) that make up the current global educational agenda. Without claiming to contribute to overcoming any possible gap, yet recognising that, in spite of known exceptions, the field of assessment policies is pretty much saturated with repetitive and predictable approaches, I feel called upon by the hermeneutic capacity of postcolonial/ decolonial assumptions, whose presence in the field of critical thinking is increasingly inescapable. One aspect to which I would like to draw attention is the urgency of building fairer and more democratic relations and conditions between the various nations of the world system, particularly with respect to the production of knowledge, and its evaluation. With this in mind, if the peripheral and semi-peripheral countries of the world system in different parts of the...

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“…Fanon's claims about the psychic violence perpetrated in the name of the violation of one's sense of self have also been taken up in discussions of multicultural teaching (Allen 2004;Bingham, 2006;Dutro & Bien, 2014;Leonardo, 2009;Leonardo & Porter, 2011), of migration and education (Phoenix, 2009), in discussions of bilingual education (Grinberg & Saavedra, 2000), and -alongside critical race theory and disability studies (Watts & Erevelles ,2004) -been used to critique flagship national policies on education and social mobility (Wun, 2012). His analyses have also been applied to contemporary international educational policy debates (Shahjahan, 2011), including also the colonisation of the body within educational institutions (Shahjahan, 2014). Taking Bourdieu and Fanon were inspired by the same political context: Bourdieu was sent to do national service in Algeria in 1955, and it was there that he came to abandon philosophy for sociology, and shifted methodologically to ethnography (Bourdieu, 2004;Go, 2013;Yacine, 2004), also inspiring his critiques of education (Calhoun, 2006;Robbins, 1993 clearly envisaged education as a means of democratization and the forging of agentic subjectivities through collective engagement.…”

Section: Fanon and Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fanon and the child: Pedagogies of subjectification and transformation

Burman

2016

Curriculum Inquiry

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Frantz Fanon's analysis of colonial experience has widely influenced educational theory and practice. Yet despite much focus on the gendered and sexed dynamics of racialization processes, and their applications to the dynamics in particular of teaching and learning, surprisingly little attention has been given to how these intersect both with generational relations and the models of children/childhood on which his account relies. In this paper, Fanon's representations of childhood across all his texts are analysed and evaluated. It is argued that attending to the diversities and instabilities of these representations not only strengthens critical engagement with Fanon's ideas conceptually, methodologically and in terms of pedagogical process, but also prompts reassessment of their contemporary relevance for, and corresponding challenges to, current pedagogical and political practice.

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Decolonizing the evidence‐based education and policy movement: revealing the colonial vestiges in educational policy, research, and neoliberal reform

Cited by 118 publications

References 69 publications

Coloniality and a global testing regime in higher education: unpacking the OECD’s AHELO initiative

Coloniality and a global testing regime in higher education: unpacking the OECD’s AHELO initiative

Para discutir la hegemonía epistémica evaluativa eurocéntrica: un enfoque exploratorio

Fanon and the child: Pedagogies of subjectification and transformation

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