Fifteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss my current research and film project that investigates ideas around knowing. The film is both an investigation of international and cross-cultural knowledge perspectives as well as a questioning of Western influence and domination. Through interview footage with students and educators the content of the film addresses the experience of non-Western immigrant and native-born students studying in the US. Through creative editing, layering of sound, and disruptions of time the structure and form of the film addresses questions of Western ideological and methodological domination. This film is an extension of my doctoral work, which explores Western ideological dominance by addressing epistemological authority and methodological dogma in education through a multi-layered text that is both written in academicese as well as narrative autobiography and incorporates art, music, web links and poetry to question and comment on Western ideas about knowing and being (Cole, 2018). This work highlights how in educational contexts we can begin to investigate and critically assess knowledge and knowing. I have developed a praxis called borderzone pedagogy, which seeks to open up and expand the ways in which we know and the ways in which we seek out knowing. In early production phase, I have extensive interviews with four international students and shorter interviews with other students and educators. The goal is to understand what it means to be educated from a variety of perspectives, what an inclusive global knowledge is and how educators create inclusive international spaces in their classrooms.