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CIRGE

Category: Doctoral Education Social Justice

Doctoral education in social science and the meanings of social justice

Dr. Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela, director of the PhD in Education at the Universidad de Tarapacá (Chile) and Dr. Patrick Sachew, dean of the Bremen International Graduate School in Social Science (Germany) shared their experiences on how their specific context shaped their practices.

Carolina explained that the deep inequalities of the Chilean higher education system, manifested in the high centralization of the country and big difference between rich and poor, have been determinant in the design of the doctoral program.

“The Universidad de Tarapacá” is located in a border zone, 2000 kilometers away from Santiago, close to the limit of Perú and Bolivia, where there is in an important percentage of immigrant people and indigenous Aymara people. Our doctoral program in Education is new and the only one located in the north of Chile, as such, we have put great emphasis in launching a research line that is relevant for the region”.

Patrick discussed that in the context of Germany, different trajectories by class continued being relevant

Viewing the landscape of doctoral education against the horizon of policy: Placing ourselves in the academic arboretum

First webinar of the series “Committing Ourselves to Justice: Doctoral Education for Complex Times”.  Organized by CIRGE

Register here

When: November 18th 2019

Time: 9.30 am (Pacific Time)

Physical location: Miller Hall, Room 411, College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle

Digital Location:  https://washington.zoom.us/j/395503138

Download Zoom

Abstract

What does it mean to have a land-based perspective of higher education? In this discussion I draw our attention to the “landscape” of doctoral education, questioning institutional histories, campus boundaries and academic missions in the region that has been called the “Pacific Northwest.” Beginning with the establishment of research universities in this area and into the present, we can trace the narratives that justify settler-colonial place-making and territorialism through academic “innovation” and “discovery.” With doctoral education at the forefront of academic renewal and (re)production, it is critical that efforts to make higher education more relevant and inclusive are “rooted” in an understanding of the exclusionary policies and practices at the foundation of our institutions.

About the Speaker

Dr. Amy Scott Metcalfe focuses on higher education in Canada and the North American region, including critical approaches to internationalization, academic labour and mobility, and critical policy studies in education. She has a particular interest in visual research methods in education, with an emphasis on photographic methodologies and visual analysis. Dr. Metcalfe’s research has won several national and international awards, including the Canadian Society for the Study of Higher Education’s Research and Scholarship Award, and the Award for Significant Research in International Higher Education from the Association for the Study of Higher Education. She presently holds a UBC Killam Faculty Research Fellowship for her project titled, “Building Cascadia U: Settler Colonialism and the Cascadia Innovation Corridor.”

Committing Ourselves to Social Justice: Doctoral Education for Complex Times

A series of web-seminars organized by the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE) and co-sponsored by the Center for Studies  in Higher Education, Berkeley.

In times of rising nationalist governments, environmental crisis, hate speech and acts against marginalized communities, the intellectual drivers and engaged community of doctoral education, have a responsibility to question the norms and values that cause inequality and exclusion in society at the local, national, and global levels.

Doctoral education is the most advanced level of education that individuals can achieve and one of the spaces where different types of knowledge are discovered, passed on from one generation of scholars to the next, and re-interpreted in the process. These functions give doctoral education unique access to individuals and institutions that are in positions of authority in different nations, and consequently, an extra responsibility to work toward democracy, inclusion, diversity, and equity; in short, social justice.

Actors and institutions involved in doctoral education are called to reveal and question the pivotal forces underlying manifestations of injustices through the multiple processes of research, teaching, and interactions with different social communities.

With the goal to make visible the role that doctoral education plays in questioning systems of exclusion and inequality, the Center for Innovation and Research in Graduate Education (CIRGE) is inviting scholars across the world to participate in the CIRGE life lecture and webinar Series “Committing Ourselves to Social Justice: Doctoral Education for Complex Times.” This series aims to provide doctoral students, instructors, departments and funders of doctoral education, a better understanding of the structures, practices, and pedagogies that would need to be addressed in different disciplines and organizations, to be more inclusive, embrace diversity and equity.

CIRGE acknowledges that the meaning of social justice is tied to specific political and cultural contexts. Rather than starting with a (single) definition of the term, the CIRGE series will begin with an open investigation of what “social justice” does and would look like for various academic disciplines and university communities across the world.

Some topics the series will speak to:

  • What are the institutional and disciplinary structures that need to be addressed in doctoral education to make visible its commitment to social justice?
  • What possibilities and limits exist in your institution to maintaining social justice?
  • What is known about issues of access, retention, and graduation rates in doctoral education across different populations and in different countries?
  • Whose knowledge counts in doctoral education? Who benefits from the knowledges discovered?

Interested in presented in the web-seminar series in the future:

Please contact Roxana Chiappa | rox.chiappa@ru.ac.za (Lecturer at Rhodes University)

Series