Abstract
The author examines research on schooling and how the prism of Indigeneity and anticolonial thought help re-envision schooling and education for youth. The chapter focuses on narratives of Canadian youth, parents, and educators from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds as they speak about the school system. The relevance and implications of their voices are highlighted as legitimate sources of cultural resource knowledge that inform teaching, learning, and the administration of education. In the discussion the local ways of knowing among young learners, minority parents, and educators stand at the center of theorizing and seeking ways to improve schools in response to the needs and concerns of a diverse body politic. The author affirms there is much to learn from the ways in which oppressed bodies relegated to the status of racial minorities eventually claim a sense of intellectual and discursive agency as well as ownership and responsibility for their knowledge about everyday schooling.
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Notes
- 1.
Inclusive schooling generally refers to practices in the conventional school system. By contrast, inclusive education refers to areas of education beyond the schools, including off-school sites.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the many students of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) who have assisted me in the various research projects in the Ontario school system. They include the many students I have written or worked with as researchers. I am grateful to the many students, educators, parents, and community workers who have shared with me their views and rich experiences about the Canadian school system. I say thank you also to Mairi McDermott and Aman Sium of the Department of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Social Justice Education (formerly Sociology and Equity Studies), OISE/UT, who commented on drafts of this chapter. The text was initially presented as a keynote address at the Eighth Annual International Symposium on Ethnic and Cultural Dimensions of Knowledge, held at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität (Heidelberg University), Germany , October 7–10, 2009. I offer deep thanks and appreciation to the organizers of the symposium for the invitation to share my ideas. The occasion also marked my first trip to Germany. Lastly, I am grateful to the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for the funding that made these studies possible.
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Dei, G.J.S. (2016). Local Cultural Resource Knowledge, Identity, Representation, Schooling, and Education in Euro-Canadian Contexts. In: Meusburger, P., Freytag, T., Suarsana, L. (eds) Ethnic and Cultural Dimensions of Knowledge. Knowledge and Space, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21900-4_6
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