Ethical space of engagement : exploring perspectives and practices of indigenization in post-secondary education as situated in place
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The notion of “Indigenization” within the academy has been taken up by Indigenous scholars and activists for more than two decades, and more recently, it has become a priority in the tertiary sector in Canada with federal and provincial endorsement. Still, Indigenization remains a relatively ambiguous concept within higher education. This doctoral dissertation offers a portrait of Indigenization, providing insight into this process within the academy in Canada. It explores the history of this land we now call Canada and the forces that have gotten us to where we are now, having to re-Indigenize, decolonize, and work towards reconciliation. It considers the contemporary landscape of Indigenization, how it is characterized, envisioned, and practiced in higher education. Using an Indigenous métissage methodology and theories of ethical space and ethical relationality, this study looked at two unidentified public post-secondary institutions as positioned on Indigenous territories in British Columbia, Canada, to catch a glimpse of Indigenization in situ within a snapshot in time. Multiple methods were employed to gather knowledge at each case site including physical and virtual space observations, policy reviews, semi-structured interviews with senior administrators, and a questionnaire offered to other institutional personnel. Findings revealed the practical, everyday challenges of Indigenization within institutions such as organizational silos, gaps in communication and perspectives, and a lack of Indigenous peoples to guide, support, and direct Indigenization initiatives. Results also showed deeper and more ideological barriers to consequential Indigenization such as an unhealthy institutional culture, the absence of a cohesive, holistic, and living vision for Indigenization as well as a sincere and robust accountability structure to measure goal progress and success. These outcomes indicate that transformational change is required. At the crux, institutions need to focus on the decolonization of attitudes and perceptions, policies and practices and, simultaneously, the adoption or equal inclusion of an Indigenous governance approach. An ethical space of engagement (Ermine, 2007) is suggested to promote transformational change and bring together disparate perspectives within distinct and complex institutions of higher education to realize meaningful Indigenization. Honouring the spirit, intent, and principles of a treaty partnership is recommended to achieve consequential Indigenization.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.016 | 0.017 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.041 | 0.081 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.025 | 0.009 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.020 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.008 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".