About Us and Not About Us: Theorizing Student Resistance to Learning about Race and Racism from Underrepresented Faculty

Three early-career scholars write across their experiences as underrepresented faculty who teach required diversity courses to future educators in a predominantly white, small, state college. The authors theorize student resistance to course material and to faculty of color teaching about race and racism in a series of tableaus of their classrooms. They examine the ways that students\u27 tactics of avoidance, consuming the Other, and I won\u27t learn from you are simultaneously \u27\u27about us and not about us, unmasking uneven assumptions about the role of diversity courses in teacher preparation programs

Unfinished Decolonisation and Globalisation

This article locates John Darwin’s work on decolonisation within an Oxbridge tradition which portrays a British world system, of which formal empire was but one part, emerging to increasing global dominance from the early nineteenth century. In this mental universe, decolonisation was the mirror image of that expanding global power. According to this point of view, it was not the sloughing off of individual territories, but rather the shrinking away of the system and of the international norms that supported it, until only its ghost remained by the end of the 1960s. The article then asks, echoing the title of Darwin’s Unfinished Empire, whether the decolonisation project is all but complete, or still ongoing. In addition, what is the responsibility of the imperial historian to engage with, inform, or indeed refrain from, contemporary debates that relate to some of these issues? The answer is twofold. On the one hand, the toolkit that the Oxbridge tradition and Darwin provide remains relevant, and also useful in thinking about contemporary issues such as China’s move towards being a global power, the United States’ declining hegemony, and some states and groups desires to rearticulate their relationship with the global. On the other hand, the decline of world systems of power needs to be recognised as just one of several types of, and approaches to, analysing ‘decolonisation’. One which cannot be allowed to ignore or marginalise the study of others, such as experience, first nations issues, the shaping of the postcolonial state, and empire legacies. The article concludes by placing the Oxbridge tradition into a broader typology of types and methodologies of decolonisation, and by asking what a new historiography of decolonisation might look like. It suggests that it would address the Oxbridge concern with the lifecycles of systems of power and their relationship to global changes, but also place them alongside, and in dialogue with, a much broader set of perspectives and analytical approaches

Models of <i>KPTN</i>-related disorder implicate mTOR signalling in cognitive and overgrowth phenotypes

KPTN-related disorder is an autosomal recessive disorder associated with germline variants in KPTN (previously known as kaptin), a component of the mTOR regulatory complex KICSTOR. To gain further insights into the pathogenesis of KPTN-related disorder, we analysed mouse knockout and human stem cell KPTN loss-of-function models. Kptn -/- mice display many of the key KPTN-related disorder phenotypes, including brain overgrowth, behavioural abnormalities, and cognitive deficits. By assessment of affected individuals, we have identified widespread cognitive deficits (n = 6) and postnatal onset of brain overgrowth (n = 19). By analysing head size data from their parents (n = 24), we have identified a previously unrecognized KPTN dosage-sensitivity, resulting in increased head circumference in heterozygous carriers of pathogenic KPTN variants. Molecular and structural analysis of Kptn-/- mice revealed pathological changes, including differences in brain size, shape and cell numbers primarily due to abnormal postnatal brain development. Both the mouse and differentiated induced pluripotent stem cell models of the disorder display transcriptional and biochemical evidence for altered mTOR pathway signalling, supporting the role of KPTN in regulating mTORC1. By treatment in our KPTN mouse model, we found that the increased mTOR signalling downstream of KPTN is rapamycin sensitive, highlighting possible therapeutic avenues with currently available mTOR inhibitors. These findings place KPTN-related disorder in the broader group of mTORC1-related disorders affecting brain structure, cognitive function and network integrity.</p

Luncheon: Curriculum on Selfsame Land: Confronting Settler Colonialism and Antiblackness

Luncheon: Curriculum on Selfsame Land: Confronting Settler Colonialism and Antiblacknes

Learning curves: the discourse of Economics and its challenges for students

The Global Financial Crisis and appreciation of the Australian dollar are just two examples of the many aspects of Economics which have kept this discipline as a primary focus for the media in recent years. Economic literacy enhances our understanding of the forces which shape our world. This paper examines the distinctive features of economics discourse and the challenges it poses for both local and international students. Economic models are based on assumptions which simplify the real world and this abstraction from reality may alienate some students from the subject (Hewings, 1990). Changes in economic influences are shown on these models and then analysed in precise language. Learning the language of Economics is an inescapable part of being able to understand the concepts of the discipline. The paper sets out strategies undertaken on a Macroeconomics unit to address these challenges. It emphasises a positive approach which presents the discourse as a learning experience which will enrich the student's life in both the workplace and as a citizen

La descolonización no es una metáfora

Nuestro objetivo en este artículo es recordarle a los lectores lo inquietante de la descolonización. La descolonización trae consigo la repatriación de la tierra y la vida Indígena; no es una metáfora de otras cosas que queremos hacer para mejorar nuestras sociedades. La fácil adopción del discurso descolonizador evidenciado por el creciente número de llamados a «descolonizar nuestras escuelas», o utilizar «métodos descolonizadores» o «descolonizar el pensamiento», convierte la descolonización en una metáfora. Por importantes que sean sus metas, la justicia social, las metodologías críticas o los enfoques que descentralizan las perspectivas del colonizador tienen objetivos que pueden ser inconmensurables con la descolonización. Debido a que el colonialismo de asentamiento se construye sobre una estructura de tríada enmarañada de colono- nativo-esclavo, los deseos descoloniales de las personas blancas, no blancas, inmigrantes, poscoloniales y oprimidas pueden enredarse de manera similar en el reasentamiento, la reocupación y la reinserción que, en realidad, fomentan el colonialismo de asentamiento. La metaforización de la descolonización hace posible una serie de evasiones, o «movidas de colonos hacia la inocencia», que intentan conciliar de manera problemática la culpa y la complicidad de los colonos, y rescatar el futuro de los colonos. En este artículo, analizamos múltiples movidas de colonos hacia la inocencia con el fin de promover «una ética de inconmensurabilidad» que reconozca lo que es distinto y lo que es soberano para los proyectos de descolonización en relación con los proyectos de justicia social basados en los derechos humanos y civiles. También señalamos temas inquietantes dentro de las descolonizaciones transnacionales / del Tercer Mundo, la abolición y las pedagogías críticas del espacio-lugar, que desafían la coalescencia de los esfuerzos de justicia social, dando lugar a alianzas potenciales más significativas

Decolonization is not a metaphor

Our goal in this article is to remind readers what is unsettling about decolonization. Decolonization brings about the repatriation of Indigenous land and life; it is not a metaphor for other things we want to do to improve our societies and schools. The easy adoption of decolonizing discourse by educational advocacy and scholarship, evidenced by the increasing number of calls to “decolonize our schools,” or use “decolonizing methods,” or, “decolonize student thinking”, turns decolonization into a metaphor. As important as their goals may be, social justice, critical methodologies, or approaches that decenter settler perspectives have objectives that may be incommensurable with decolonization. Because settler colonialism is built upon an entangled triad structure of settler-native-slave, the decolonial desires of white, non-white, immigrant, postcolonial, and oppressed people, can similarly be entangled in resettlement, reoccupation, and reinhabitation that actually further settler colonialism. The metaphorization of decolonization makes possible a set of evasions, or “settler moves to innocence”, that problematically attempt to reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity. In this article, we analyze multiple settler moves towards innocence in order to forward “an ethic of incommensurability” that recognizes what is distinct and what is sovereign for project(s) of decolonization in relation to human and civil rights based social justice projects. We also point to unsettling themes within transnational/Third World decolonizations, abolition, and critical space-place pedagogies, which challenge the coalescence of social justice endeavors, making room for more meaningful potential alliances