Decolonizing Educational Research

Leigh Patel is a Professor of Educational Foundations, Organizations, and Policy at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.

"The book's clarity is an elegant accomplishment. It is a humane breathing of life into what answerability can be, and it is pedagogically powerful, particularly as new generations of scholars deeply attuned and aware of some of the contingencies we must be answerable to, are ready and willing – and perhaps already reaching for, rehearsing or practicing answerability."From the Foreword by Megan Bang, Professor of Learning Sciences and Director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, Northwestern University, USA"We welcome this tenth anniversary edition of Decolonizing Educational Research. Patel’s original argument is perhaps more compelling in light of current attacks on research addressing issues of cultural diversity and equity.The fundamental argument that research in education is limited in its explanatory power when as a field we do not recognize and acknowledge the ways that ontological belief systems rooted in colonial histories blind and restrict our abilities to wrestle with what are important ethical commitments. Education across all levels should address ethical commitments to do good, just as the medical field has an oath to do no harm. Patel’s comprehensive and compelling argument is critically needed at this time of contestation to both inform and inspire re-organization and re-commitments to broaden our ontologies and in so doing enable education as a field to robustly meet the needs of this and future generations."Carol Lee, Professor Emeritus of Education, Northwestern University, USA"When it feels like the wrong parts of our worlds are crumbling and when we feel alone in the work that so many of us are trying to do; when we are straining against the silencing, sometimes it is a book that can be a community. A book can be a balm. This new edition of Decolonizing Educational Research by Dr. Leigh Patel is a remembrance of what can be protected, what we can let go, and the need for imagining beyond what feels immediately practical and possible. Eve Tuck, Professor of Indigenous Studies, New York University, USA"The first edition of this book is a masterpiece. This second, expanded, edition brings a powerful set of additional voices to the table. In so doing, Dr. Patel opens up possibilities, attends to the stewardship necessary for pushing against the colonial nature of research, and creates opportunities for abundance. The abundance is rooted in the collective voices attending to, expanding, and imagining futures that are enhanced and open. I’m grateful for this book."Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, Professor of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, USA"What can research offer as the world burns, again? Tackling this question, this reader gathers radical, decolonial methods shaped by grief and love, and expertly holds the tension of both/and: How do we try to unmake violent systems and imagine new ones while trying to keep ourselves more than simply alive. These chapters ask how we might do research as praxis. What are our collective experiments that try to unpick the world as it is, while redistributing resources, building community, and choosing a freedom that leaves no-one behind. Chapters remind us that research will not save us, but it can help us remember how to fight, offer us new tools to support each other, and build our muscles to imagine something different, something better."Erica Meiners, Professor of Education and Women's Studies, Northeastern Illinois University, USA

• Introduction 1. Educational Research as a Site of Coloniality 2. [Dys]Functionality: Educational Research and Settler Colonialism 3. Research as Relational 4. Answerability 5. Beyond Social Justice Afterword: The Embodied Resistance to Pause: When My Body Rejected Stillness