Academy of Finland’s Programme for Development Research: Webinar on Tuesday 14 December at 10.00–15.30

We have participated in the Webinar organized by the Academy of Finland in cooperation with the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We have presented our team and project location, and then the research focus, methodology and preliminary findings. Here below I report some excerpts from the presentation, but first of all, I have acknowledged all research collaborators. Their names are in the following slide.

“The theme of our research project is located at the intersection between the accomplishment of the right to education for all, as stated by the SDG4, and the right to pertinent education, as stated by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights for Indigenous Peoples of 2007. In a country that is Plurinational by Constitution, Education contributes significantly to reinforcing political emancipation and territorial self-determination of indigenous peoples. This intersection has been articulated through programmes of Intercultural Bilingual Education (IBE). For indigenous students, IBE means to support emancipatory pathways via revitalization of traditional languages, land-based knowledges, and philosophies of life that respect humans and non-humans in nature. These components form a whole that can maintain their identities against rural-urban migration and assimilation into the urban-Hispanic hegemonic culture. Intercultural education is an education that can represent a way for young indigenous people to exit marginalization and poverty, not as individuals but within their own communities and indigenous nationalities. The preservation of indigenous communities on their lands can guarantee protection of ecological diversity against land use changes, and especially deforestation and extractive mining that cause environmental and climate changes.

In methodological terms, we looked at different policies of education and their contingent impacts in terms of access, pedagogies and results, through different tools. The research methodology has been mainly qualitative and we have used interviews, walking interviews, focus groups, mapping, and projects of caring through design in times of Covid-19.

Some of the research foci have been:

  1. Analysis of policies, conflicts and negotiations on education between State ministries and indigenous organizations; considering that in some cases, they were not alone but closely linked to negotiations for territorial rights and environmental planning. Examples are Planes de Vida (life plans) of the kichwas that see students as important agents.
  2. Analysis with statistics on schooling of indigenous and rural peoples in Pastaza; and statistics of students of the Universidad Estatal Amazonica (UEA) that self-identify as members of indigenous nationalities. There has been an increase of students who identify as Indigenous at the national level and in the UEA in the past years. The work has also provided an analysis of the problems in the transition between secondary and tertiary education, and between school and work related to the acquired education.
  3. Analysis of school topics and their reference to environmental sustainability; and of educational materials and pedagogies that have been used with the aim to revitalize indigenous knowledge, onto-epistemic plurality and inter-generational learning.
  4. Analysis of home-school mobility and school accessibility, especially considering some recent turbulences (or challenges) posed by the Organic Law on Education, by strikes, and by Covid-19: showing the importance to integrate socio-cultural, territorial and mobility justice perspectives into the global agenda of quality education, and also looking at the importance of the envirionmental and territorial engagement of students who attend schooling in their communities. .
  5. Accessibility has also been studied in terms of digital divide especially during the Covid-19 that has exacerbated educational inequalities, to which the state response has been weak. The UEA has self-organised distribution of laptops and gigabites thanks to other private funding. A subproject has build networks of information and care between the UEA and student of the Pontificia Universidad Catholica del Ecuador.

Until 30.12.21 you can watch the replay from the webinar here. The presentation of our project starts at the 1:45′.

‘Education and Social Justice in the Pluriverse’ – EADI ISS Conference, 5 – 8 July 2021

On Tuesday 6 July, our group was excited because we were finally able to organize the panel at EADI ISS Conference that had been postponed for one year due to coronavirus pandemic. The idea of the panel was at first connected to the forthcoming special issue for the journal Globalizations. Therefore, the panel was included in the category of “harvesting”, meaning that the presentations were on researches at their “mature” stage. The discussion was then based on the drafts the participants had sent beforehand. We had two sessions with nine presentations that looked at pluriversal educational alternatives and critical intercultural education from different perspectives and in different regional and cultural contexts.

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From discourse to structure: intercultural education from the experience of the Universidad Estatal Amazónica (UEA) – EADI ISS Conference 2021, 5 – 8 July 2021, The Hague

The text is an excerpt from the paper that Ruth Arias (UEA) has presented at the Conference.

In her presentation at the EADI ISS Conference 2021 – Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice, Ruth Arias from the Universidad Estatal Amazonica (UEA) has spoken of the necessity of interculturality as a central axis of the Pluricultural State. However, interculturality is a challenge in Ecuador, and especially in higher education. Indigenous and Afro-descendant students access and complete their studies in alarmingly inequitable conditions (Mato, 2008). Policies to modify monocultural higher education need to address structural problems of the population they are intended to serve (Cuji, 2012). This aspect is not only related to the education sector, but is overall political.

The talk started with a video self-produced by Mariana Canelos (Student of Communication), Indira Vargas (Tourism Engineering graduate), Dixon Andi (Environmental Engineer, Laboratorio de plantas) and edited by Mario Rodríguez Dávila y Diego Lucero Rivas. The three UEA students and graduates, from the kichwa nationality, have presented their point of view on interculturality in higher education.

 

Continue reading “From discourse to structure: intercultural education from the experience of the Universidad Estatal Amazónica (UEA) – EADI ISS Conference 2021, 5 – 8 July 2021, The Hague”

Working group session: innovating pedagogical practices and alternative conceptualisations of development emerging from local communities in Latin America

 Compiled texts from authors’ presentations and abstracts.

Our research group participated in the 6th joint Nordic Development Research Conference, held online from 21 to 22 of June, by the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The conference is organized jointly by the Finnish Society for Development Research, the Danish Association of Development Researchers in Denmark, the Norwegian Association For Development Research, and the Swedish Development Research Network., usually attracting development researchers and policy-makers from Nordic countries and research collaborators from the global South. This year’s theme: Development, Learning and Education: Post-pandemic Considerations, invited participants to reflect on development, learning and education and how pressing global crises, as climate change and COVID-19, intensified pressures for radical transformations that challenge conceptualizations of “learning” as well as “unlearning” in development.

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Conference in Ecuador: II International Scientific Convention UEA 2021

Text: Riikka Kaukonen Lindholm

[Haz clic aquí para version en español]

In the turn of May and June, the research group members took part in the II International Scientific Convention by the Amazonian State University (Universidad Estatal Amazónica, UEA) organized online. With opening speech given by the rector David Sancho, the conference provided a platform for scientific conversations around three different topics: Plurinationality, Ancestral Knowledge and Knowledge Management; Urban Tourism, Heritage and Territorial Development; Environmental Management and Conservation of Biodiversity, that represent important areas of study for the UEA that develops research and higher education in the Amazon region of Ecuador. Our research group contributed to the part of the conference programme focused around the topic of Plurinationality, Ancestral Knowledge and Knowledge Management coordinated by the rector Oliver Meric.

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Overview of the year 2019 and glimpse to the upcoming project activities

During the year 2019, fieldwork and data collection were the main activities of the project. The project team met during three periods of fieldwork in Ecuador. In January, Paola Minoia and Andrés Tapia interviewed and discussed with key actors, including professionals and experts in education, ancestral knowledges, decoloniality and interculturality, as well as with Indigenous leaders and representatives of NGOs, in Quito and Pastaza. In March-June and September-October, Tuija Veintie, Johanna Hohenthal, Andrés Tapia, Katy Machoa, Tito Madrid and students of the UEA visited the IBE upper secondary schools in Pastaza and interviewed directors, teachers, students and parents. Three schools were selected for more comprehensive field study: UEIB “Camilo Huatatoca” in Santa Clara, UEIB “Sarayaku” and UEIB “Kumay”. In these schools, we conducted a higher number of in-depth interviews with teachers and students, questionnaire surveys, classroom observation, as well as participatory mapping and photography with the students.

Upper secondary school students produced over 20 maps and hundreds of photographs illustrating their school journeys and culturally meaningful places in the Indigenous communities. Sometimes the drawing was a bit challenging. For example, during the thunderstorm in Kumay water dripped to the tables from the roof and there was very little light in the classroom even though it was morning (photo on the right). (Photos: Johanna Hohenthal 2019)

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Call for Papers: Education and social justice in the pluriverse

We cordially invite contributions to our panel at  EADI ISS Conference 2020: Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice held in the Hague, Netherlands, 29 June – 2 July 2020.

Panel abstract:

The comprehensive development project manifested in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposes through the SDG4 an overall engagement on “quality education for all”. It endeavors to support social justice by promoting equal access to education for the most deprived groups. However, the SDG4 does not acknowledge the existing epistemic diversity around the world and the need to support alternative ways to learn and produce knowledge. Neither does it contain any reference to the UN declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples of 2007. Thus, Indigenous perspectives, knowledges and alternative forms of education remain marginalized. To promote global social and epistemic justice, education should include equal representation of diverse epistemologies, knowledges and educational practices. Without comprehensive understanding of epistemic pluralism, interculturality and hegemonies of power within the society, well-meaning educational programs may end up reproducing models of neoliberal multiculturalism and ideas of primitive otherness, and fail to promote equal relations among existing cultures. Instead, a radical project on intercultural education should reflect the principles of relationality between lands, beings and knowledges (Walsh 2018) linked to the distinctive territorial and ecological realities and sustaining transformation projects to reverse structural injustices.

This session is organised by members of EADI Working Group on “Post- and Decolonial Perspectives on Development and welcomes papers that discuss pluriversal educational alternatives in diverse contexts. We particularly welcome contributions from young scholars and participants from the Global South and/or with Indigenous background. Abstracts of 500-600 words including key literature, theoretical and methodological approaches and keywords should be submitted by 15 December. Authors of accepted abstracts should send draft papers by March 2020. Full papers are circulated within the presenters and organizers before the conference. After the conference, the organizers invite the authors to submit their revised manuscript for possible publication in an upcoming special issue in an international journal.

Looking forward to receiving your abstracts! Please follow the instructions here.

Organizers: Paola Minoia, Johanna Hohenthal and Tuija Veintie, Development Studies, University of Helsinki

Thinking about development and good living

Text and photograph by Tuija Veintie

Picture of Paola Minoia with Mikko Ylikangas.
Paola Minoia presenting at Development Days 2019. On the left: Mikko Ylikangas, Academy of Finland.

At the end of March our Helsinki based research group members participated in Development Days 2019, the annual conference organized by the Finnish Society for Development Research. This year the conference theme “Repositioning global development: changing actors, geographies and ontologies” invited the conference participants to critically examine and redefine the meanings of development, and discuss alternatives to the dominant discourses on development.

In his keynote lecture Ashish Kothari presented examples of alternatives from around the world, including self-governance initiatives, economic transformations and different educational initiatives that are rooted in local cultures and ecologies. He urged the audience to examine the structural roots of sustainability and inequity, and vision alternative futures from the grassroots up.

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Greetings from the autumn conferences in the North: key messages on diversifying and decolonizing academic research

Text by Johanna Hohenthal

This autumn the project members participated in several conferences and seminars in the Nordic countries that all somehow addressed the themes of decoloniality, interculturality and diversity in academic research. First, on 15-18 August, the 4th Annual Conference of the World-Ecology Research Network (WERN) was held in Helsinki, Finland. The WERN has an important decolonial commitment focusing on the “critique of Nature/Society dualism as a cosmology and world-historical practice of domination”. In this year’s conference, the keynotes, panels and working groups discussed on topical issues related to expropriation, capitalocene, extractivism, and power relations in academic research. The second event was a two-day seminar “Doing diversity/interculturality/decoloniality in development research” organized by the Finnish development research doctoral network (UniPID DocNet) in Tvärminne, Finland, 27-28 September. The presentations and discussions in the seminar largely centered around the questions on how to decolonize and diversify thinking and practices in the academic teaching and research work. In the following week, 5-6 October, the reflection on these themes continued in the first workshop of the research network Decolonial critique, knowledge production and social change in the Nordic countries (DENOR) in Gothenburg, Sweden. As stated by the leader of the network, Adrián Groglopo, in his welcoming words, the decolonial initiative is especially important in the Nordic context, because the Nordic “race” has for long enjoyed its privileged position on the expense of other nations and even been put on the pedestal as a model that the others should follow. Finally, the 10th conference of the Nordic Latin American Research Network (NOLAN) was organized in Oslo, Norway, 25-26 October. The conference addressed important issues related to human and environmental rights and the state of democracy that have implications especially for the lives of indigenous and other minority groups in Latin America. The conference also had a number of interesting working group sessions on indigenous identity, environmental governance and education.

In this writing, I will briefly return to the key messages from the above meetings that are significant also for our project. See also the related forthcoming text written by Paola Minoia in Convivial Thinking. Continue reading “Greetings from the autumn conferences in the North: key messages on diversifying and decolonizing academic research”