Advancing social class diversity in Canadian universities

Events

Budd Hall on Knowledge Democracy and Higher Education. Dec 4, 2020

glowing firefly on a grass filed at night

The Shoestring Initiative, founded by Elaine J Laberge a PhD Candidate from a poverty-class heritage, is a grassroots solidarity movement creating communities of mentorship, belonging, support, intercultural connectedness, and advocacy for Canadian university students from a poverty-class heritage. This webinar is part of the String it Together: Finding Togetherness on the Education Digi-scape series. Webinar recordings of past webinars are posted on the site. For more information, contact Elaine @ elaberge@uvic.ca.

Video recording

on YouTube: https://youtu.be/4JlT9XBwcWg

Audio recording

Knowledge Equity Lab and why knowledge democracy/equity is so important: https://knowledgeequitylab.ca/podcast/

Budd spoke about sitting with discomfort to learn. There are many Lil’wat principles to learn from: Celhclh where I am responsible for my own learning and must “always [be] seeking learning opportunities” and Cwelelep where I am learning to recognize “the need to sometimes be in a place of dissonance and uncertainty, so as to be open to new learning” (n.p.). Link to Lil’wat principles: https://sites.google.com/site/lulwatprinciples/home

Amazing FREE resources: Http://www.unescochair-cbrsr.org

Bridging social divides: how can decolonising knowledge help?

Published on 23 April 2021

Peter Taylor, Director of Research
Crystal Tremblay, University of Victoria

Sanford, K., Williams, L., Hopper, T., & McGregor, C. (2012). Indigenous principles decolonizing teacher education: What we learned. In Education, 18(2), 18–34. https://ineducation.ca/ineducation/article/view/61/547 (for some reason the publication seems to be gone. Checking into it)


More on knowledge democracy: (2014) Hall, B, “Manifesto on CBR” in Munck et al Higher Education and Community-Based Research: Creating a Global Vision London: Palgrave-McMillan

Knowledge, Action and Hope: A Manifesto

1. Our Moment- Our Time

Affirming that, the purpose of knowledge is to enhance the well being of all people and not just for economic growth or intellectual property rights,

With deep conviction, that there is a spirituality of knowledge as a way of being, living and learning

Aware that, wherever in this remarkable, contradictory and troubled planet that we live, work, love, struggle, resist and survive, we face a number of persistent and complex common realities including:

  • Growing inequality between and within nations,
  • The irreversible destruction of our biosphere,
  • Increasing levels of violence against women in all societies and all classes,
  • Loss of our global treasury of intangible cultural heritage of Indigenous languages, stories, songs and ways of knowing,
  • Increased fear across social sectors for security and well-being.

2. Knowledge, Society and Power

Cognisant that all knowledge is intimately linked with power, and that the questions of whose knowledge counts and how knowledge can be linked with social change and enlarging the public good is critical to our shared future, we call for:

  • Knowledge workers in social movements, civil society organisations and higher education institutions to contribute to the progressive resolution of the critical challenges facing our communities, our nations and the world,
  • Recognition of civil society and social movement structures and formations as sources of knowledge co-creation and repositories of valuable forms of knowledge,
  • Increased opportunities for all students to be able to learn about democratic approaches to research in theory and in practice,
  • Deepening our understanding of knowledge democracy as a fundamental framework for transformative change.

3. Structures of democratic knowledge

Convinced that new forms of knowledge legitimation in support of the public good require new support and enabling regimes we urge the:

  • Creation of university-wide and discipline specific structures to facilitate community-university research partnerships,
  • Creation of policies and procedures within all higher education institutions to recognise excellence in community-based research as integral to an academic career,
  • Expansion of granting council and research funding agencies investment in civil society led research and community-university partnership research,
  • Support of open access knowledge systems, respecting diversity and pluralism in sites, modes and ways of knowledge production as a building block of open and inclusive societies
  • Support to civil society for synthesing its own practitioner knowledge and spaces for creative and respectful engagement academic knowledge forms,
  • Strengthening of links between the spaces of democratic practice within universities such as community service learning, knowledge mobilization, and community-based research,
  • Decolonization of higher education academic programming through an explicit recognition of multiple epistemologies and multiple forms of representing knowledge
Many names; one purpose: Knowledge equity, knowledge democracy, decolonizing knowledge

Event Description


Knowledge democracy is a discourse that has emerged over the past 10 years in response to many challenges facing higher education institutions: Calls for decolonisation of higher education, Indigenisation of higher education, breaking down the walls of white classist Eurocentric disciplinary knowledge, co-construction of knowledges with and for communities, facing the climate crisis and, of course, responding to the pandemic. Budd Hall and his colleague Rajesh Tandon @RTandon_PRIA from India, in their roles as Co-Chairs of the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education @UNESCOchairCBR, are contributing to discussions around the world on the radical transformations that higher education might be able to imagine. Join Budd Hall for a lively and interactive String it Together conversation about epistemicide, excluded knowledges, change and hope within a context of higher.

Special Guest: Dr. Budd L Hall


@buddhall is a humble, generous and relational leader, teacher and learner. Budd’s a Professor Emeritus, School of Public Administration, University of Victoria, Canada. Budd has 40+ years’ experience in community-based research. He’s world-renowned for his advocacy and activism in advancing equality and equity in higher education for marginalised students including those with lived experiences of persistent poverty. He’s spent his career working with vulnerable populations in Canada and around the world. Budd’s actively engaged in open source and open access scholarship; that is, decolonising knowledge for knowledge democracy. Budd’s also a poet and actively engaged in advancing equality and equity through all forms of poetry.

Twitter

@ShoestringCdn

#StringitTogether

Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/shoestringinitiative

Event Designer and Organizer

Elaine J Laberge, PhD Candidate/ABD, University of Victoria, BC, Canada

www.echoesofpoverty.com

Contact Elaine: elaberge@uvic.ca

Territorial Acknowledgement

This event is being hosted on the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples’ traditional territory and whose historical relationships with the land continue to this day.

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