Coming to Know and Knowing Differently: Implications of Educational Leadership

Abstract

Our paper will examine the question of counter-hegemonic knowledge production in the Western academy and the responsibilities of the Racialized scholar coming to know and producing knowing to challenge the particularity of Western science knowledge that masquerades as universal knowledge in academia. We engage the topic from a stance examining the coloniality of knowledge in educational leadership by centering Indigenous knowledge systems in the academy as a means to disrupt Euro-colonial hegemonic knowledging. We ask: How do we challenge the “grammar of coloniality” of Western knowledge and affirm the possibilities of a reimagining of “new geographies” and cartographies of knowledge as varied and intersecting ontologies and epistemologies that inform our human condition as “learning experiences, research, and knowledge generation” practices? The paper highlights epistemic possibilities of multicentricity, that is, multiple ways of knowledge as critical to understanding the complete history of ideas and events that have shaped and continue to shape human growth and development. The paper highlights Indigeneity as a salient entry point to producing counter-hegemonic knowing. The paper concludes pointing to implications for educational “re-search” and African educational futurity.