George J. Sefa Dei – författare

Containing both theoretical discussions of globalization and specific case analyses of individual African countries, this collection of essays examines the intersections of African education and globalization with multiple analytical and geographical emphases and intentions. The 11 essays critically analyze the issues from historical, cultural, and socio-economic perspectives. Of interest to both educators and scholars who are interested in a more in-depth understanding of the current reign globalization, African Education and Globalization is an important and timely read.

Indigenous knowledges are understood as the commonsense ideas and cultural knowledges of local peoples concerning the everyday realities of living. This definition refers to the epistemic saliency of cultural traditions, values, belief systems and world views that, in any indigenous society, are imparted to the younger generation by community elders. It is also refers to world views that are products of a profoundly direct experience of nature and its relationship with the social world.Bringing new and complex readings to the term 'indigenous', this collection of essays from Canadian and international contributors is an invitation to critically engage in the discussion of indigenous knowledges and their implication for academic decolonization. The essays are divided into four sections: Situating Indigenous Knowledges: Definitions and Boundaries; Indigenous Knowledge: Resistance and Advocacy; Indigenous Knowledge and the Academy; and Indigenous Knowledge and Transforming Practices. Collectively the essays situate indigenous knowledges in relation to conventional knowledges, validate the existence of multiple sources of knowledge, and examine the varying strategies, projects, and theories that are currently being developed in support of indigenous knowledges. The book draws attention to some of the nuances, contradictions, and contestations in affirming the place of indigenous knowledges in the academy, while maintaining that different bodies of knowledges continually influence each other to reveal the dynamism of all knowledge systems.

As many as one million untrained youths will enter the Canadian labour market by the year 2000. And yet, 60 per cent of jobs being created in Canada require at least a high school education. The drop-out rate is one of the most crucial issues that Canadian educators face.Traditionally, we have pinned dropping out on individual failure or specific situations such as pregnancy, substance abuse, and family troubles. The authors of this book suggest that the problem is more complex. Race, class, gender, and other forms of social difference can affect how education is delivered. For Black students, whose drop-out rate is disproportionately high, race is a key element in disengagement. The authors turn to the experiences of Black and non-Black students, teachers, parents, and community workers to try and reconstruct the social, structural, and institutional practices that lead Black youth to lose interest in and leave school.Based on a three-year study in the greater Toronto area, Reconstructing 'Dropout' establishes a new frame of reference for understanding the dilemma. It is a call for social action and transformation that should not be ignored by researchers, teachers, administrators, and the Black community at large.

One is always struck by the brilliant work of George Sefa Dei but nothing so far has demonstrated his pedagogical leadership as much as the current project. With a sense of purpose so pure and so thoroughly intellectual, Dei shows why he must be credited with continuing the motivation and action for justice in education. He has produced in this powerful volume, Teaching Africa, the same type of close reasoning that has given him credibility in the anti-racist struggle in education. Sustaining the case for the democratization of education and the revising of the pedagogical method to include Indigenous knowledge are the twin pillars of his style. A key component of this new science of pedagogy is the crusade against any form of hegemonic education where one group of people assumes that they are the masters of everyone else. Whether this happens in South Africa, Canada, United States, India, Iraq, Brazil, or China, Dei’s insights suggest that this hegemony of education in pluralistic and multi-ethnic societies is a false construction. We live pre-eminently in a world of co-cultures, not cultures and sub-cultures, and once we understand this difference, we will have a better approach to education and equity in the human condition.

Building on the theoretical and philosophical work found in Removing the Margins, Inclusive Schooling: A Teacher's Companion to Removing the Margins lays out a practical approach to inclusive schooling for educators. As an accompanying volume, this companion guide helps move inclusive schooling from theory to social action.Removing the Margins identified and challenged many of the cultural and systematic paradigms that perpetuate racism and other forms of oppression in mainstream schooling. Inclusive Schooling shows that by collapsing the artificial boundaries between schools, off-school sites, local communities and families, and by welcoming the spiritualities, languages, and indigenous knowledges that students bring with them, schools can be transformed from sources of oppression into sites for social transformation.

New Perspectives on African-Centred Education in Canada is the first study of African-centred schooling in the Canadian context. Starting with an in-depth look at the creation of an Africentric public school within the Toronto District School Board, it tells the story of the movement behind that school's creation and lays bare a rich history of activism, organization, and resistance on the part of numerous African Canadian communities and their allies. The book presents a critical overview of the issues facing racialized students and offers a unique vision of African-centred education as a strategy for student engagement and social transformation.The authors, well known public commentators on African-centred education in Canada, offer a comprehensive analysis of the media controversy surrounding African-centred schools, as well as candid reflections on the personal challenges of fighting a largely unpopular battle.

Dei argues that analyzing the intersections of race, class, gender and sexual oppression is essential if we are to fully address educational equity, social justice and change. He examines how we can value our differences while equitably sharing power, and discusses ways to counter the reproduction of societal inequalities in our schools.

To be able to promote effective anti-colonial and decolonial education, it is imperative that educators employ indigenous epistemologies that seek to threaten, replace and reimagine colonial thinking and practice. Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance hopes to contribute to the search for a more radical decolonial education and practice that allows for the coexistence of, and conversation among, “multiple-epistemes.” The book approaches the topics from three perspectives:the thought that our epistemological frameworks must consider the body of the knowledge producer, place, history, politics and contexts within which knowledge is produced,that the anti-colonial is intimately connected to decolonization, and by extension, decolonization cannot happen solely through Western science scholarship, andthat the complex problems and challenges facing the world today defy universalist solutions, but can still be remedied.Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance is an excellent text for use in a variety of upper-division undergraduate and graduate classrooms. It is also a valuable addition to the libraries of writers and researchers interested in indigenous studies and decolonialism.

Cartographies of Blackness and Black Indigeneities acknowledges the saliency of Blackness in contemporary social formations, insisting that how bodies are read is extremely important. The contributors to this volume elicit or produce both tangible and intangible social, political, material, spiritual and emotional effects and consequences on Black and African bodies, globally. Cartographies of Blackness and Black Indigeneities is a call to celebrate Blackness in all its complexities, including race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, (dis)ability, spiritualities, and geographies. Understanding Blackness is to insist on Black and African political and cultural appreciation of the phenomenon outside of Euro-colonial attempts to regulate and define how Black and African bodies are perceived. This book intersperses discussions of Blackness with Black racial identity and cultural politics and the required responsibilities for the Global Black and African populations to build viable communities utilizing our differences—knowledges, cultures, politics, identities, histories—as strengths.

Connecting cultures to educational settings is an essential component of critical pedagogy. This book addresses many of the key issues and challenges in decolonizing the African school curriculum. It highlights important philosophical arguments on the challenges and possibilities of achieving these goals in a meaningful manner. Topics covered in the book include: operationalizing the key terms of “inclusion” and “curriculum”strategies for Africanizing the school curriculum, andthe implications of local knowledge for schooling reform.This book also raises a variety of key questions: how do we frame an inclusive anti-colonial African future and what is the nature of the work required to collectively arrive at that future?what education are learners of today going to receive and how will they apply it to their schooling and work lives?how do we re-fashion our work as African educators and learners to create more relevant understandings of what it means to be human?how do we challenge colonizing and imperializing relations of the academy? What are the possibilities and limits of counter-visions of education? how do we make school curricula inclusive through teaching, research and graduate training in questions of Indigeneity and multi-centric ways of knowing?The book identifies specific areas of an “inclusive/decolonized curriculum agenda” through educational programming and reform. It is essential reading to any student or teacher concerned about understanding the many facets of an African school curriculum.

Decoloniality and African Education: Contested Issues and Challenges is a vibrant and vital collection of essays that addresses the challenges, possibilities, and responsibilities for the future of de- and anti-colonial African education. Decolonization has become a buzz word of late, so the term is used in this context with a certain trepidation. But the themes of this book go beyond mere rhetoric by creating specific approaches to dismantling colonial educational systems in African and to create a new environment for African education duly informed by local cultural resource knowing, known from grounded everyday practices of authentic African educators. In other words, a revision of educational practices informed by what educators know and are doing for the lessons in envisioning schooling and education in Africa. In this endeavor, while we seek lessons and partnerships with others, African educators are urged to think through solutions specific to the problems and challenges in schools today, and meet the call of our times to provide education to young learners that not only empowers them, but also provides them with background knowledge, cultural grounding, and specific lessons that will enable them to craft their own futures. So how do we “do” decolonial education from the standpoint of African educators and learners everyday schooling practice and knowledge? Decoloniality and African Education argues that a careful embrace of African Indigenous and cultural knowings determine the successful response to this question. It engages both the “decolonial” and the “anti-colonial,” with a reading that the “decolonial” (as many have pointed out, see Parry, 1994) is a process and a path toward an end, which is the goal of the “anti-colonial” (see Dei, 2022).Decoloniality and African Education is essential reading for students and scholars committed to the improvement of educational outcomes for African American students. It’s a book that empowers educators and raises awareness about African-based teaching environments. It can be used in a variety of courses, including African Studies, African Development, Anti-Colonial Thought and Indigenous Knowledge, and the Pedagogical Implications of Decolonization.

This book makes a strong case for the inclusion of Indigenous Elders’ cultural knowledge in the delivery of inclusive education for learners who are members of minority communities.

This book makes a strong case for the inclusion of Indigenous Elders’ cultural knowledge in the delivery of inclusive education for learners who are members of minority communities.

This book grounds particular struggles at the curious interface of skin, body, psyche, hegemonies and politics.  Specifically, it adds to current [re]theorizations of Blackness, anti-Blackness and Black solidarities, through anti-colonial and decolonial prisms.  The discussion challenges the reductionism of contemporary polity of Blackness in regards to capitalism/globalization, particularly when relegated to the colonial power and privileged experiences of settler. The book does so by arguing that this practice perpetuates procedures of violence and social injustice upon Black and African peoples. The book brings critical readings to Black racial identity, representation and politics informed by pertinent questions: What are the tools/frameworks Black peoples in Euro-American/Canadian contexts can deploy to forge community and solidarity, and to resist anti-Black racism and other social oppressions? What critical analytical tools can be developed to account for Black lived experiences, agency and resistance? What are the limits of the tools or frameworks for anti-racist, anti-colonial work? How do such critical tools or frameworks of Blackness and anti-Blackness assist in anti-racist and anti-colonial practice?  The book provides new coordinates for collective and global mobilization by troubling the politics of “decolonizing solidarity” as pointing to new ways for forging critical friends and political workers.  The book concludes by offering some important lessons for teaching and learning about Blackness and anti-Blackness confronting some contemporary issues of schooling and education in Euro-American contexts, and suggesting ways to foster dialogic and generative forums for such critical discussions.

The book brings critical readings to Black racial identity, representation and politics informed by pertinent questions: What are the tools/frameworks Black peoples in Euro-American/Canadian contexts can deploy to forge community and solidarity, and to resist anti-Black racism and other social oppressions?

This book critically examines how race is constructed globally to intersect gender, class, sexuality, language ability and religion and answers some very important questions, like how does anti-black racism manifest itself within various contexts?

One is always struck by the brilliant work of George Sefa Dei but nothing so far has demonstrated his pedagogical leadership as much as the current project. With a sense of purpose so pure and so thoroughly intellectual, Dei shows why he must be credited with continuing the motivation and action for justice in education. He has produced in this powerful volume, Teaching Africa, the same type of close reasoning that has given him credibility in the anti-racist struggle in education. Sustaining the case for the democratization of education and the revising of the pedagogical method to include Indigenous knowledge are the twin pillars of his style. A key component of this new science of pedagogy is the crusade against any form of hegemonic education where one group of people assumes that they are the masters of everyone else. Whether this happens in South Africa, Canada, United States, India, Iraq, Brazil, or China, Dei’s insights suggest that this hegemony of education in pluralistic and multi-ethnic societies is a false construction. We live pre-eminently in a world of co-cultures, not cultures and sub-cultures, and once we understand this difference, we will have a better approach to education and equity in the human condition.

One is always struck by the brilliant work of George Sefa Dei but nothing so far has demonstrated his pedagogical leadership as much as the current project. With a sense of purpose so pure and so thoroughly intellectual, Dei shows why he must be credited with continuing the motivation and action for justice in education. He has produced in this powerful volume, Teaching Africa, the same type of close reasoning that has given him credibility in the anti-racist struggle in education. Sustaining the case for the democratization of education and the revising of the pedagogical method to include Indigenous knowledge are the twin pillars of his style. A key component of this new science of pedagogy is the crusade against any form of hegemonic education where one group of people assumes that they are the masters of everyone else. Whether this happens in South Africa, Canada, United States, India, Iraq, Brazil, or China, Dei’s insights suggest that this hegemony of education in pluralistic and multi-ethnic societies is a false construction. We live pre-eminently in a world of co-cultures, not cultures and sub-cultures, and once we understand this difference, we will have a better approach to education and equity in the human condition.

This collection of essays invites readers to think through critical questions concerning anti-racism education, such as: How does anti-racism education centre race as an analytic and simultaneously work with multiple sites of oppression, without reifying hierarchies of difference?

This collection of essays invites readers to think through critical questions concerning anti-racism education, such as: How does anti-racism education centre race as an analytic and simultaneously work with multiple sites of oppression, without reifying hierarchies of difference? How can anti-racism education be engaged to speak to historical questions of power and privilege, within conventional schooling practices? How do we recognize anti-racism education in its many iterations?In this book the authors explore the knowledge that constitutes anti-racism education and the ways in which knowledge constitutive of anti-racism education becomes embodied through particular pedagogues. The authors are anti-racism educators with experiences in diverse settings: the chapters cover various fields and socio-historic geographies, address contemporary educational issues, and are situated within personal-political, historical and philosophical conversations.Anti-racism education is a discursive stance and steeped in politics that shape and are shaped by everyday conversations, theories, and practices. The essays in this collection work through many of the possibilities and limitations of engaging in counter-hegemonic education for transformative learning. Readers will discover lived experiences, theory, practice and critical reflexivity.

This collection adds to our understanding and critical engagement of how gendered and racially minoritized bodies can and do negotiate their identities and politics across several historical domains and contemporary spheres. The contributors explore the relational aspects of difference and the implications for re-conceptualizing anti-racism discourse and practice. The strength of this book lies in its centring the experience of racial minority women (and other racialized bodies) in a variety of social sites, thereby seeking to incite the reader to broaden the examination of social spaces through the lens of an anti-racist feminist scholarship and practice.