Decolonial, Pluriversal, Vitality-Centered Pedagogies: (Re)Orienting Education toward Serving Life

Abstract

We are currently experiencing a crisis that is characterized, according to anthropologist Arturo Escobar, by the world-making practices of Western modernity. This crisis can also be described as a struggle between coloniality and decoloniality. Educational institutions shape how we see ourselves, our place in the world, our values, and our actions, and as such, contribute to world-making. Therefore, we need educational spaces that can support the unlearning of destructive world-making practices and learning that supports life. Using a post-qualitive approach informed by decolonial and Indigenous methodologies, this inquiry explores how education can (re)orient towards being in service to life through learning from decolonial educational experiments, within higher education and beyond, that are amplifying world-making practices that support life and divest from and disrupt destructive and dominating world-making practices of coloniality. The research provides emergent lessons from practitioners engaged in these experiments as to how they are co-creating spaces and enacting pedagogies for decolonial, pluriversal, vitality-centered learning and worlds.