Glocal Brokers and Critical Discourse Analysis

Conceptualizing Glocality in Indigenous Education Research and Reform

Abstract

Few issues encapsulate the tension of “glocality” in education more substantively than the debate surrounding who should undertake research on Indigenous education, and how it should be done. In this article, two non-Indigenous educational researchers both working with Indigenous Education Research and Reform, alongside the guidance of Indigenous mentors, grapple with the questions of if and how non-Indigenous critical research methodologies can complement, and thereby reduce, the peripheralization of Indigenous knowledges and epistemologies. This article explores the opportunity for dialogue between two often polarized hazards. On one hand, non-Indigenous researchers with non-Indigenous epistemologies risk increasing the marginalization of Indigenous ways of knowing. On the other, research on Indigenous education is threatened with further ostracism if it is inaccurately perceived as only the domain of Indigenous peoples, and only facilitated through Indigenous epistemologies.

The authors share their experiences in using a non-Indigenous critical research methodology, Critical Discourse Analysis, to explore Indigenous Education Research and Reform. Particularly, the authors share their experiences, both in employing non-Indigenous critical research approaches in Indigenous contexts whilst also attempting to honor local Indigenous epistemologies. This article contributes to the discussion of how “trans-systemic” knowledge, the discursive space between Indigenous and non-Indigenous understandings, can illuminate the concept of “glocality” in educational research methods. In conclusion, the authors contend for the role of “glocal brokers” who navigate between Global and Local—between Indigenous and non-Indigenous—understandings to foster connections and communicative opportunities that can further elevate and integrate Indigenous ways of knowing into broader discourse concerning Indigenous Education Research and Reform.