Decolonizing Educational Research by Leigh Patel

Decolonizing Educational Research by Leigh Patel

Decolonizing Educational Research examines the ways through which coloniality manifests in contexts of knowledge and meaning making, specifically within educational research and formal schooling. Purposefully situated beyond popular deconstructionist theory and anthropocentric perspectives, the book investigates the longstanding traditions of oppression, racism, and white supremacy that are systemically reseated and reinforced by learning and social interaction. Through these meaningful explorations into the unfixed and often interrupted narratives of culture, history, place, and identity, a bold, timely, and hopeful vision emerges to conceive of how research in secondary and higher education institutions might break free of colonial genealogies and their widespread complicities.

"Decolonizing Educational Research brilliantly interrogates the prevalent positivistic research frameworkIn an accessible, poetic, yet rigorous language, Leigh Patel courageously challenges even well-intentioned researchers and powerfully analyzes how educational research, by and large, produces careerist scholarship that remains linked to colonial scholarship. All educators and social scientists who take research seriously must read this book.

--Donaldo Macedo, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA

"An important crossroads for critical educational research . . . Patel has done something quite generous and generative for educational research: she has offered it an opportunity to reframe and redirect itself. She has offered it a lifeline."

--Eve Tuck, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada, from the foreword

Leigh Patel is Associate Professor of Education in the Department of Teacher Education/Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College, USA.