Open AccessRethinking and Reinventing Intercultural Education in Post-Secondary Institutions: A Critical, Anti-Colonial Approach
Author(s) -
Carrie Karsgaard
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
comparative and international education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2369-2634
DOI - 10.5206/cieeci.v50i1.14539
Subject(s) - sociology , scholarship , institution , colonialism , equity (law) , pedagogy , curriculum , higher education , critical theory , critical pedagogy , internationalization , intercultural relations , politics , political science , social science , intercultural communication , law , economics , microeconomics
Critical and anti-colonial scholarship helps us imagine how intercultural education might begin to address the power imbalances inherent to issues of culture and epistemology. This paper reflexively dialogues anti-colonial theory with my own experiments of practically implementing these theories within the Intercultural Program (IP), an extracurricular program at a Canadian postsecondary institution, to demonstrate possibilities for shaping intercultural education towards ethical ends. Through curriculum, programming, and community-building that is cocreated with students, the IP aspires to shape intercultural education towards social justice and equity, opening spaces for engagement with nondominant epistemologies, and promoting the critical thinking necessary for evaluating the historical, economic, political, social, and ethical implications of students’ own and others’ positions. At the same time, the IP provides a helpful site for exploring the challenges of doing critical work in an internationalizing institution, and the need, perhaps, to move intercultural education away from internationalization within higher education.