Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ On the affective threshold of power and privilege

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

This article effectively draws a link between what it means to learn a discipline and the concept of epistemic justice. "In mastering a discipline, learners need to master the 'underlying game' associated with disciplinary epistemes reflecting ways of thinking and practicing within a particular discipline." Quite right. Consequently, "If these disciplinary epistemes are based on epistemic hegemonies from the global north, then they are potentially exclusionary by definition and will ensure that certain learners either never grasp the 'underlying game' or have significant difficulty in doing so." To oversimplify (only a bit), there are two approaches. One is to change the learner. That's colonization (of the person from the South by the values of the North). The other is to change the game. That's decolonization. The challenge, though, lies in how to decolonize a discipline without undermining its factual basis, utility or relevance. The discipline may, for example, devalue "knowledge that is derived from everyday experiences or common-sense ways of thinking," but it may do so for a very good reason. Image: Loring.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: May 16, 2024 01:45 a.m.

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