In times of polarization, social conflict, and continuing systemic violence, it is the responsibility of education to play a significant role in addressing this systemic violence, deconstructing hierarchies, and embracing differences. However, Black, Indigenous peoples, POC, women, queer, non-binary, trans, and disabled folks continue to bear the immense burden of globalization, neoliberalism, and settler-colonialism, whether it be in educational spaces, workplaces, communities, or the home. No longer are educational policies bound only to social and political norms dictated within their own states, but are also influenced and shaped by transnational, capitalist corporations that determine the allocation of power (Grewal & Kaplan, 1994). Historically, anti-colonial, anti-racist, queer, labour, student, and feminist political organizing have resisted these structural and cultural injustices. As a part of these movements, transnational feminists, led by feminists of colour, resist homogenizing and exclusionary practices that historically favour white, Eurocentric understandings of the world (Herr, 2014). These transnational feminists create theoretical, methodological, and practical frameworks for solidarity across transnational contexts that advance education as a conduit for collective dialogue and action. This collective dialogue and action therefore has the potential to advance education by offering ways of theorizing and analyzing educational narratives, pedagogy, and policy in relation to the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, caste, ability, religion, nationality, and other relevant social differences across diverse geographic locations.
As inspiration for the 2024 Graduate Student Research Conference (GSRC), we lean on a transnational “feminist ethics of complex solidarity” (Tambe &Thayer, 2021, p. 20). As such, we aim to engage in meaningful conversations and learn from the experiences of collectives that seek to collaborate on shared concerns despite and because of their differences. These conversations are made possible because of the rich diversity of students from the occupied land of Turtle Island and their various perspectives and epistemologies, which have the potential to enrich our understandings of difference through a transnational lens.
Our vision for the 2024 GSRC is to foster these productive dialogues and create space for knowledge exchanges and the development of potential political solidarities among participants that inspire the creation of a more equitable world, rooted in the necessary embracement of our differences. This entails the arduous scholarly task of constructing cross-discipline analyses of power structures and systems that produce hierarchies of sameness and injustice in education (Keating, 2005), in tandem with articulating points of resistance that emerge through local practices. It also encompasses scholarship that centers innovative pedagogies, curricula, and educational leadership strategies that inform the future of transformative and inclusive education.
To this end, we acknowledge that our scholarship at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and beyond may be varied across educational disciplines, but also assert that our educational projects can be enhanced by engaging in conversations that push us beyond traditional frameworks of thinking. Through panels and moderated discussions that increase our understanding of differences and diverging perspectives, we hope to inspire scholarly conversations that challenge the misguided attempts at homogeneity which hinder the potential of education to address structural and cultural violence.
Critical conversations that cross theoretical paradigms, nations, and social locations, however, require commitment and careful consideration to ensure that all voices are heard. Through this attempt to complicate presumed homogeneity, we hope to foster a space that can contribute to a more robust understanding of our individual work in relation to other academic peers, as well as a space that highlights the potential of education to be a disruptor of the status quo. Therefore, this year’s proposed themes for GSRC invite researchers, graduate students at all stages of their research, practitioners, and artists alike to disrupt the presumed legitimacy of dominant educational narratives by identifying the ways in which overlapping oppressions affect each of our educational disciplines, highlighting existing modes of resistance, and imagining new ways of moving forward. Further, we challenge conference participants to consider what a world would look like in which we not only connect, but flourish, at our points of difference. As organizers of the 2024 GSRC, we hope that students will be inspired to engage in transnational conversations that will contribute to the building of better futures.
Theme #1: Difference and Belonging
How does cultivating difference in classrooms impact teaching and learning? Which exclusionary practices must be removed from educational spaces and which radical practices must be implemented in order to make it possible for differences to flourish? What does it look like to connect at our various points of difference without depending on binary narratives of “in-group” and “out-group” identities? How have marginalized groups of people constructed, debated, and embodied difference without falling prey to homogenizing definitions of belonging?
Theme #2: Resistance and Agency
How have educational systems, policies, institutions, and/or communities of practice grown from the legacies of those who have resisted and mobilized against colonial, racist, ableist, misogynist, transphobic, xenophobic, anti-queer, climate change-related, and economic violence and injustice? How can we as educators engage with resistance movements that struggle against the reinstitution of Westernized, heteropatriarchal, colonial ideals? Do you think the classroom space is conducive for fostering agency in students and teachers and how can we support this process?
Theme #3: Cross-community Conversations
In what ways does your research contribute to or bridge cross-community conversations? How can fostering conversations across diverse social, political and geographical contexts enhance our various educational disciplines and projects? How can we engage with the perspectives of those who exist at the intersections of different and sometimes conflicting community perspectives? In what ways must we exercise caution when making space for transnational conversations in education?
Theme #4: Transformative Theory and Practice
How can transnational conversations bridge theory and practice? What role do transnational conversations play in inspiring solidarity between formal and informal educational practices and grassroots activism? What educational and developmental theories, pedagogies, and resources can contribute to transformative theory and practice and how? Who are the stakeholders and decision-makers that protect the status quo, and how do their interests and actions impede transformative theory and practice?
Theme #5: Future Educational Imaginaries
How can the ideas, relationships, and conversations we engage in at the 2024 GSRC shape our vision of the future of education? What role do we as presenters, participants, students, and faculty play in creating that future? What kind of ethical implications might we consider in designing research that will inform a more equitable future? What challenges do we anticipate resulting from these future imaginaries and how can we proactively mobilize to meet these challenges?
Open Call: We welcome proposals outside these questions that engage with the overarching theme of 2024 GSRC and/or educational studies in general. The following suggestions are by no means exhaustive, and your submissions should not be limited by them. Students are invited to participate in the conference by submitting proposals for the following: poster sessions, individual papers and panels, roundtable presentations, workshops, and artistic or alternative presentations. Please see Submission Rules and apply here.
This call is now closed. Please visit our registration page to secure your place at the 2024 OISE GSRC!