Peer-Reviewed Articles by Marc Higgins
Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies (JCACS), 2019
Drawing inspiration from Ellsworth's (2005) work on thinking with pedagogically non-prescriptive ... more Drawing inspiration from Ellsworth's (2005) work on thinking with pedagogically non-prescriptive objects and the pedagogies they permit and prohibit, we turn our attention to similar educational "texts" increasingly used in STEM (i.e., science, technology, engineering, mathematics) education-board games. We tinker with board games as they refuse and resist the ways that STEM education often privileges cognitive destinations rather than relational learning journeys that enfold the whole learning self, the content, as well as the materiality of learning. We ask, how might games simultaneous act as locations of, and as, pedagogy that inflect experiences of student learning? To answer this question, we explore the pedagogical intents expressed by game designers themselves by their design diaries, blogs and interviews while thinking with Ellsworth's concept of pedagogical pivot. In exploring game designers' statements, we map out some of the potentialities that this pedagogical medium might offer STEM teaching and learning.
Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 2019
Within science and technology education, concepts of justice, in/equity, and ethics within scienc... more Within science and technology education, concepts of justice, in/equity, and ethics within science education are simultaneously ubiquitous, necessary, yet un(der)theorized. Consequently, the potential for reproducing and reifying systems of power remains ever present. In response, there is a recent but growing movement within science and technology education that follows the call by Kayumova and colleagues (2019) to move "from empowerment to response-ability." It is a call to collectively organize, reconfigure, and reimagine science and technology education by taking seriously critiques of Western modern science and technology from its co-constitutive exteriority (e.g., feminist critiques). Herein, we pursue the (re)opening of responsiveness with/in methodology by juxtaposing differential, partial, and situated accounts of response-ability: de/colonizing the Anthropocene in science teacher education in Canada (Higgins); speculative fiction at the science-ethics nexus in secondary schooling in Australia (Mahy); and a reciprocal model for teaching and learning computational competencies with Latinx youth in the US (Aghasaleh and Enderle).
Nature, as a creative ontology, and the ethico-political possibilities inherent within have been ... more Nature, as a creative ontology, and the ethico-political possibilities inherent within have been seemingly occluded in the field of science education. By Thinking with Nature (TwN), we return to the ontological dimensions of practice and research methodology in science education. Drawing on new material feminisms, educators are invited to follow the contours of minor concepts with/in Nature. Thinking with Gilles Deleuze and Karen Barad, our theoretical tinkering follows the contours of minority within Nature, as opposed to the passive observation of brute matter, to illuminate concepts of possibility hidden in plain sight: holobionts and lightning. By following Nature’s inherent queerness, becoming-minor, TwN provokes an enactment of ethico-political response-ability in research on science education. Above all else, this paper should be read, not as a prescription, but a provocation for TwN and following the contours of minor(ity) concepts.
This special issue of The Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education offer... more This special issue of The Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education offers a series of articles that take seriously the notion that methodology is not only a legitimate object of study for critical approaches to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, but also an important location to labour in working towards both ecological and social justice to-come. Within this editorial introduction, we briefly frame why disrupting and displacing methodologies in STEM education matters. Next, we sketch out the guiding metaphor that informs the naming of this special issue: tinkering with theory. Lastly, we give a short overview of the papers within this special issue.
Describing methodological design in decolonizing research as the intersection of theory, practice... more Describing methodological design in decolonizing research as the intersection of theory, practice, and ethics, we share four focused micro-stories from our respective research projects. The metaphor of braiding represents the methodological design process within each of our research stories, significantly influenced by Dwayne Donald's (2012) Indigenous métissage. Heather grapples with notions of reciprocity, Brooke considers the role of place in the construction of teacher identity, Marc engages with reworking photovoice, and Julia brings relationships with plants into her methodological design. Intentionally interrupting each other and ourselves, we feature the moments and movements of research design that are iterative, recursive, messy, and sometimes stuck, in contrast to the linear, untainted and dogmatic methodologies that assert themselves around us. Meanings and relationships may be produced in braiding our micro-stories together, exceeding what might be possible if they were presented separately. Readers may be invited into imagining the design of decolonizing methodologies beyond those we enacted.
In this article, we, a multivocal-thinking-assemblage, trouble what we feel is the dogmatic ima... more In this article, we, a multivocal-thinking-assemblage, trouble what we feel is the dogmatic image of thought in science education. Beginning with Lars Bang's (2017) dramatic and disruptive imagery of the Ouroboros as a means to challenge scientific literacy we explore the importance of dreams, thinking with both virtual and actual entities, and immanent thinking to science education scholarship. Dreaming as movement away from a dogmatic image of thought takes the authors in multiple directions as they attempt to open Deleuzian horizons of difference, immanence, and self-exploration.
The purpose of this article is to differentially engage in the work of thinking with Indigenous t... more The purpose of this article is to differentially engage in the work of thinking with Indigenous theorists and theories with decolonizing science education research methodologies in mind. As a rejoinder to Tracey McMahon, Emily Griese, and DenYelle Baete Kenyon's Cultivating Native American scientists: An application of an Indigenous model to an undergraduate research experience, we extend the notion of educationally centering Indigenous processes, pedagogies, and protocols by considering methodology a site in which (neo-)colonial logics often linger. We suggest that (re)designing methodology with Indigenous theorists and theories is an important act of resistance, refusal, and resignification; we demonstrate this significance through braiding together narratives of our engagement in this task and provide insights as to what is produced or producible.
Post-qualitative research methodologies require us to work within, against, and beyond our method... more Post-qualitative research methodologies require us to work within, against, and beyond our methodological inheritance to respond to the world’s ongoing becoming. It is our responsibility; yet do we have the ability to respond to that which is beyond and yet-to- come? This article begins by asking this question of the process it engages in: concluding. Following an exploration entangled practices of textual closure, (fore)closure, and the clôture of metaphysics, the article expands outward through the relation between closure and responsibility. Specifically, the lived concept of response-ability as an engaged practice of (re)opening the lines of closure (beyond knowledge already known) to respond to and enact responsibility for that which is not-yet and/or to-come. Drawing from Kuokkanen, Spivak, and Barad, response-ability is explored respectively as necessary homework, as (not) hearing the call of the other, and as account-ability toward co- constitutive relationality. The article concludes with further lines of questioning as to what it might mean to responsibly inherit (post-)qualitative methodological pasts and futurities.
What might it mean to inflect the current focus on public memory encapsulated in monuments by con... more What might it mean to inflect the current focus on public memory encapsulated in monuments by considering an equally important yet more subtle or (not so) monumental agent: educational institutions as products and producers of colonial logics and ways of being in relationship? In this essay, the authors offer pedagogical orientations that seek to embed curriculum in a multiplicity of colonial here-nows and there-thens that always already constitute our places of learning and learning selves in the making.
The purpose of this article is to explore what Michel Foucault refers to as “the” critical attitu... more The purpose of this article is to explore what Michel Foucault refers to as “the” critical attitude and its relationship to science education, drawing from Foucault’s (The politics of truth. Semiotext(e), New York, 1997) insight that the critical attitude is but a critical attitude. This article is a rejoinder to Anna Danielsonn, Maria Berge, and Malena Lidar’s paper, “Knowledge and power in the technology classroom: a framework for studying teachers and students in action”. Where Danielsonn and colleagues think with Foucaultian power/knowledge to examine and (re)consider teacher-student didactic relations in science and technology education, this article critically examines the power/knowledge relationship between science educators and science education to critically explore the modes of criticality produced and produceable. Particularly, I explore possibilities for and of critique that stem from and respond to what Bruno Latour (Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1993) refers to as the crisis and critique of critique.
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Four emergin... more Free early access here: http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/DPeWG7wffnXeGPN89Hx2/full
Four emerging scholars of education extend the methodological space inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory through focusing on research design. The notion of de/sign is presented and employed to counter prescriptive method/ology that often sutures over pedagogical possibilities in research and educational settings. Key methodological themes (e.g., voice, agency, subjectivity, data) are (un)tailored in order to work within, against, and beyond conventional humanist qualitative methodology. Patchwork methodologies take shape as key theorists and theories pierce, (un)stitch, snag, embroider, patch, and mend the fabrics of distinct research contexts, components, and commitments. Previews of the productions that result from attending to the enacted and embodied relationship between research de/sign and theory are presented. A discussion of the ways in which patchwork(ing) methodologies provokes new questions, analytical frames, and types of findings concludes the manuscript.
While there have been multiple breaks, shifts and developments within the theories that shape pho... more While there have been multiple breaks, shifts and developments within the theories that shape photovoice (i.e. praxis and feminist standpoint theory), they are rarely accounted for in the ways in which photovoice is (re)constituted. In this paper, I ask and engage with the questions: what might it mean to reconceptualise photovoice through a substitution of these similar yet different iterations of these theories? What is produceable in turn? By placing these (mis)readings of theory in conversation with concepts key to photovoice, empowerment and voice, I provide not what photovoice should be but rather possible possibilities for what it could be.
Photovoice, the most prevalent participatory visual research methodology utilised within social s... more Photovoice, the most prevalent participatory visual research methodology utilised within social science research, has begun making its way into Indigenous contexts in light of its critical and pedagogical poten- tial. However, this potential is not always actualised as the assumptions that undergird photovoice are often the same ones that (re)produce inequalities. Working from the notion that methodologies are the space in between theory, methods, and ethics, this manuscript works with/in the cultural interface between the West- ern theories that shape photovoice (i.e., standpoint theory, praxis) and Indigenous analogues (i.e., Nakata’s [2007a, 2007b] Indigenous standpoint theory, Grande’s [2004, 2008] Red pedagogy) in order to differen- tially (re)braid photovoice. Following a thumbnail description of these four bodies of scholarship, a concept key to photovoice (i.e., voice) is differentially configured with, in, and for the cultural interface to provide research considerations for various stages of participatory visual research projects (i.e., fieldwork, analysis, dissemination).
Within Canadian science classrooms, Indigenous ways-of-knowing and ways-of-being continue to be u... more Within Canadian science classrooms, Indigenous ways-of-knowing and ways-of-being continue to be underrepresented and undervalued. For Indigenous students, this often results in negative experiences and disparate achievement rates when compared to their non-Indigenous classmates. Recent decolonizing science education literature suggests critical examination of Eurocentric systems and modes of thought that uphold and reproduce (neo)colonialism within classrooms alongside the integration of Indigenous perspectives into curriculum. Extending Belczewski's (2009) conception of decolonizing science education and educator, I illuminate the partial and complex failure in translation that occurs between decolonizing theories (i.e., border crossing and reflexivity for decolonial purposes) and associated pedagogical practices of decolonizing science education.Dans les cours de sciences des écoles canadiennes, les modes de connaissances et les identités autochtones continuent d’être sous-représentées et sous-évaluées. Pour les étudiants autochtones, cela se traduit souvent par des expériences négatives et des résultats disparates comparativement à leurs pairs non autochtones. La littérature récente dans le domaine de la décolonisation de l’enseignement des sciences propose de faire une analyse critique des systèmes et des modes de pensée eurocentriques qui soutiennent et reproduisent une culture (néo)coloniale dans les classes, malgré l’intégration de perspectives autochtones dans les curriculums. Partant de la décolonisation de l’enseignement des sciences proposée par Belczewski (2009), j’explique l’échec partiel et complexe qui se produit lorsqu’il s’agit de traduire les théories de décolonisation (par exemple le passage de frontières et la réflexivité appliquées à la décolonisation) en différentes pratiques pédagogiques pour décoloniser effectivement l’enseignement des sciences.
This article extends upon Susan Dion’s theory of the ‘perfect stranger’ by exploring how this pos... more This article extends upon Susan Dion’s theory of the ‘perfect stranger’ by exploring how this position is articulated and embodied by white teachers (N = 67) involved in urban Indigenous education reform. On the lookout for deconstruction, we think with Derrida around the interrelated self/other and familiar/strange binaries that uphold the perfect stranger. We argue that Eurocentrism simultaneously centres and obscures whiteness, resulting in teachers’ misconceptions about culture. We also demonstrate how stereotypical representations of the ‘imaginary Indian’ that these white teachers ‘know’ inhibits their ability to foster and build upon relationships with Indigenous students. We conclude by conceptualizing a model for teacher education that, through a variety of teaching practices and policies, intentionally disrupts and destabilizes the perfect stranger position.
Current Canadian scholarly literature, education policy, and curricular documents encourage the p... more Current Canadian scholarly literature, education policy, and curricular documents encourage the participation of Indigenous community members as a key component of Indigenous Education reform. Guided by sharing circles conducted with Indigenous Elders, families, teachers, and support workers, we present community voices and experiences of Indigenous Education in an urban school board through poetic transcription. Our research suggests that four key barriers will have to be overcome in efforts to improve urban Indigenous Education: unwelcoming schools, professionalization of classroom teaching, colonized classrooms, and unilateral decolonization. Poetic transcription is used in this article to centre the voices of Indigenous participants as well as attempt to decolonize our approach to data dissemination of Indigenous voices as white, Euro-Canadian university-based researchers.
Still largely based on EuroCanadian knowledge and Western teachings, Education in Nunavut remains... more Still largely based on EuroCanadian knowledge and Western teachings, Education in Nunavut remains a negative experience for many Nunavut youth as the result of culturally inappropriate schooling and worldview mismatch. Mismatch occurs as the schooling experiences of Nunavut youth, both Inuit and non-Inuit, do not align with the character, values, and traditions of Nunavut. Divergence is especially pronounced within science education. This paper explores Nunavut students’ perceptions of the nature of science and school science education in order to explore the possibilities and problematics involved in shifting towards a cross-cultural science curriculum that is reflective of Nunavut.
Book Chapters by Marc Higgins
Decolonizing and Indigenizing education in Canada, 2020
*Please contact authors directly for a copy of this chapter*
As a collective of Indigenous and... more *Please contact authors directly for a copy of this chapter*
As a collective of Indigenous and ally scholars who lead and teach within the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta, we came together over a seven-month period to explore the intentions: How do the norms of knowledge and measurement that circulate in our faculty of education act as a barrier to decolonizing, Indigenizing, and reconciliation efforts? and how are Indigenous theories of education informing how we conceptualize evaluation and design assessments for Indigenous education coursework? Our process centred a series of four listening circles and was guided by ceremony and the wisdom of Elder Bob Cardinal.
We demonstrate how Indigenous theories of kihkipiw, teacher/teaching, intelligences, and analysis have inspired us to reconfigure research methodology, challenge knowledge and measurement norms that circulate in our faculty of education, and design creative assessment for Indigenous education coursework. We provide glances at our engagement in related circlework in four rounds: (a) the weight of evaluation and assessment, (b) the limitations of normative notions and enactments of evaluation and assessment, (c) reconceptualization of evaluation and assessment, and (d) examples of assessments that mobilize evolving understandings.
Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research, 2019
In this chapter, we turn to Nxumalo’s (2016) ‘refiguring presences’ to attend to and trouble abse... more In this chapter, we turn to Nxumalo’s (2016) ‘refiguring presences’ to attend to and trouble absent presences (e.g. curriculum of Land as settler property and economic resource) and present absences (e.g. Indigenous resurgence) that shape response-able possibilities of engaging Indigenous and place-based education. From this orientation, we consider a) the Western modernist nature/culture binary and b) Indigenous forms of storying place to generate new analytic questions, types of findings, and possibilities for representing knowledge claims. Next, we provide glances at our place(d) stories of (re)learning to listen to and be taught by human, natural, and spirit worlds in relation with/in a month-long graduate-level summer institute in Lamas, Peru. Lastly, we discuss how Indigenous relational ontologies – with deep roots in living places and spiritual practices – enhanced our understanding of their role in reimagining pedagogy, practice, and research in higher education. We conclude with a call to labour the shared and divergent spaces between Indigenous and new materialist approaches to challenge (neo-)colonial logics and relationships, as well as enhance commensurate commitments and projects.
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Peer-Reviewed Articles by Marc Higgins
Four emerging scholars of education extend the methodological space inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory through focusing on research design. The notion of de/sign is presented and employed to counter prescriptive method/ology that often sutures over pedagogical possibilities in research and educational settings. Key methodological themes (e.g., voice, agency, subjectivity, data) are (un)tailored in order to work within, against, and beyond conventional humanist qualitative methodology. Patchwork methodologies take shape as key theorists and theories pierce, (un)stitch, snag, embroider, patch, and mend the fabrics of distinct research contexts, components, and commitments. Previews of the productions that result from attending to the enacted and embodied relationship between research de/sign and theory are presented. A discussion of the ways in which patchwork(ing) methodologies provokes new questions, analytical frames, and types of findings concludes the manuscript.
Book Chapters by Marc Higgins
As a collective of Indigenous and ally scholars who lead and teach within the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta, we came together over a seven-month period to explore the intentions: How do the norms of knowledge and measurement that circulate in our faculty of education act as a barrier to decolonizing, Indigenizing, and reconciliation efforts? and how are Indigenous theories of education informing how we conceptualize evaluation and design assessments for Indigenous education coursework? Our process centred a series of four listening circles and was guided by ceremony and the wisdom of Elder Bob Cardinal.
We demonstrate how Indigenous theories of kihkipiw, teacher/teaching, intelligences, and analysis have inspired us to reconfigure research methodology, challenge knowledge and measurement norms that circulate in our faculty of education, and design creative assessment for Indigenous education coursework. We provide glances at our engagement in related circlework in four rounds: (a) the weight of evaluation and assessment, (b) the limitations of normative notions and enactments of evaluation and assessment, (c) reconceptualization of evaluation and assessment, and (d) examples of assessments that mobilize evolving understandings.
Four emerging scholars of education extend the methodological space inspired by Jackson and Mazzei’s (2012) Thinking with Theory through focusing on research design. The notion of de/sign is presented and employed to counter prescriptive method/ology that often sutures over pedagogical possibilities in research and educational settings. Key methodological themes (e.g., voice, agency, subjectivity, data) are (un)tailored in order to work within, against, and beyond conventional humanist qualitative methodology. Patchwork methodologies take shape as key theorists and theories pierce, (un)stitch, snag, embroider, patch, and mend the fabrics of distinct research contexts, components, and commitments. Previews of the productions that result from attending to the enacted and embodied relationship between research de/sign and theory are presented. A discussion of the ways in which patchwork(ing) methodologies provokes new questions, analytical frames, and types of findings concludes the manuscript.
As a collective of Indigenous and ally scholars who lead and teach within the Aboriginal Teacher Education Program (ATEP) at the University of Alberta, we came together over a seven-month period to explore the intentions: How do the norms of knowledge and measurement that circulate in our faculty of education act as a barrier to decolonizing, Indigenizing, and reconciliation efforts? and how are Indigenous theories of education informing how we conceptualize evaluation and design assessments for Indigenous education coursework? Our process centred a series of four listening circles and was guided by ceremony and the wisdom of Elder Bob Cardinal.
We demonstrate how Indigenous theories of kihkipiw, teacher/teaching, intelligences, and analysis have inspired us to reconfigure research methodology, challenge knowledge and measurement norms that circulate in our faculty of education, and design creative assessment for Indigenous education coursework. We provide glances at our engagement in related circlework in four rounds: (a) the weight of evaluation and assessment, (b) the limitations of normative notions and enactments of evaluation and assessment, (c) reconceptualization of evaluation and assessment, and (d) examples of assessments that mobilize evolving understandings.
Link to article: https://journals.kent.ac.uk/index.php/transmotion/article/view/902/1776
To explore this triple(d) understanding of ‘to-come’, each chapter within the dissertation acts as an excursion through a path of science education. Journeying involves strategically straying off the beaten path or tactically taking the pathway in unintended ways to lose sight of the prescriptive and often problematic ways in which the path is regularly travelled. Further, each journey is iterative, travelling through, against, and/or beyond a particular path, wherein the learning is enfolded and carried forward into the next trip.
Equipped with a plethora of deconstructive tools, science education is (re)opened through (re)considering its: a) oppositional, dialectic nature; b) critical modes as protective, rather than productive, of the status quo (i.e., through mirrored correspondence); c) ontological taken-for-grantedness (e.g., through its a priori and singular positioning); and, d) responsibility, as well as ability to respond. In response, I offer a call and analytical frames for: a) dialogue; b) critique as prismatic and diffractive; c) ontological plurality and co-constitutiveness; as well as, d) response- ability, respectively. Insights produced and scholarly contributions from wandering include: a) an exploration of curricular alternatives to scientific literacy, notably Karen Barad’s agential literacy and Gregory Cajete’s ecologies of relationships; b) re(con)figuring visual pedagogies to engage in decolonizing science education. This theory-practice bridging pursues design of a pedagogy of relationally storying nature well positioned to account for and be accountable to Indigenous science to-come.