This thesis provides an anti-colonial analysis of how Indigenous knowledges have been studied and conceptualized through ethnographic research in the field of development studies. In this analysis I apply meta-ethnography within an anti-colonial discursive framework, a combination that I argue has great potential in the study of power relations in qualitative knowledge production. Firstly, this approach allows me to provide a synthesis of purposively selected ethnographies from the development studies literature; secondly, it requires that I refer to Indigenous scholars’ critical writings in the education literature to analyze development studies ethnographers’ approaches to Indigenous knowledges. The results of this analysis provide a starting point for questioning epistemological racism and colonial power relations at play in knowledge production on Indigenous knowledges in the field of development studies, with important implications for how we teach, study, and conduct research in development.

This thesis provides an anti-colonial analysis of how Indigenous knowledges have been studied and conceptualized through ethnographic research in the field of development studies. In this analysis I apply meta-ethnography within an anti-colonial discursive framework, a combination that I argue has great potential in the study of power relations in qualitative knowledge production. Firstly, this approach allows me to provide a synthesis of purposively selected ethnographies from the development studies literature; secondly, it requires that I refer to Indigenous scholars’ critical writings in the education literature to analyze development studies ethnographers’ approaches to Indigenous knowledges. The results of this analysis provide a starting point for questioning epistemological racism and colonial power relations at play in knowledge production on Indigenous knowledges in the field of development studies, with important implications for how we teach, study, and conduct research in development.

Thesis advisor: Jon M. Wargo / Recent critical literature on science and art education highlights a shift from engagement with disciplinary canons toward expansive, equity-oriented disciplinarity. Efforts to integrate the science and art disciplines, especially under the acronym STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math), have not sufficiently engaged with such within-discipline critique. Left unchallenged, proposals for disciplinary integration cannot meet the transformative potential to which they aspire. Therefore, this 3-paper dissertation adopts an anti-colonial lens to explore conceptualizations of art and science inter- and transdisciplinarity as a collection of interconnected stories of disciplinary reimaginings. Drawing from multiple theories and methods, this dissertation aims to demonstrate the possibilities of transdisciplinarity conceptually, methodologically, practically, and personally. The first paper critically examines current discourse trends that mention transdisciplinarity efforts in K-12 schools, specifically in curricular activity that seeks to expand science learning through the arts. It offers a critique against flattened ways of being and knowing present in schooling and aims to put forward considerations for critical and creative transdisciplinary curriculum development. The second paper presents a vertical case study that investigates how the purposes of art and science transdisciplinarity are defined by multi-level actors: from the macro national and city policy level to that at the microlevel of an art and science museum. Using critical discourse analysis alongside Bakhtin’s concepts of centrifugal and centripetal forces, this study identifies how the purpose of transdisciplinary learning is reproduced and reimagined through discourse at multiple scales. Tensions arose in the pull of how transdisciplinarity was conceptualized, particularly between board members and staff who felt different responsibilities for aligning with national discourse. Finally, the third paper is an autoethnographic study weaving together personal narrative, theory in the arts and cultural studies, and student work from one summer art and science program. Grappling with the art/science disciplinary dichotomy, this last paper troubles framings of the human-nature divide through material inquiry into place. In the discourse of critique and iterative making, the class community follows one student’s movement in a relational encounter with an ant as a disruption of enduring dualisms that signify Cartesian logic. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

This thesis explores the ontological content of the integration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in biomedical education, through a critical exploration of “CAM" policy related documents from the World Bank, the World Health Organization and Health Canada, as a means of contextualizing "CAM" in biomedical education. It also interrogates curriculum documents from a project that seeks to standardize “CAM” in biomedical education. This thesis suggests that there are ontological parallels to the colonial era conversion of indigenous medicine evoked in the contemporary 'integration' of CAM in biomedical education.

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This study investigates two central research problems. These are: What are the healing practices of Aeta women? What are the implications of the healing practices of Aeta women in the academic discourse? This inquiry is important for the following reasons: (a) it focuses a reconsidered gaze and empirical lens on the healing practices of Aeta women healers as well as the lessons, insights and perspectives which may have been previously missed; (b) my research attempts not to be 'neutral' but instead be an exercise in participatory action research and as such hopefully brings a new space of decolonization by documenting Aeta women healers’ contributions in the political and academic arena; and (c) it is an original contribution to postcolonial, anti-colonial and Indigenous feminist theories particularly through its demonstration the utility of these theories in understanding the health of Indigenous peoples and global health. There are 12 Aeta women healers who participated in the Talking Circle. This study is significant in grounding both the theory and the methodology while comparatively evaluating claims calibrated against the benchmark of the actual narratives of Aeta women healers. These evaluations subsequently categorized my findings into three themes: namely, identity, agency and representation. This work is also important in illustrating the Indigenous communities’ commonalities on resistance, accommodation, evolution and devolution of social institutions and leadership through empirical example. The work also sheds light on how the members of our Circle and their communities’ experiences with outsider intrusion and imposed changes intentionally structured to dominate them as Indigenous people altered our participants and their communities. Though the reactions of the Aeta were and are unique in this adaptive process they join a growing comparative scholarly discussion on how contexts for colonization were the same or different. This thesis therefore joins a growing comparative educational literature on the contextual variations among global experiences with colonization. This is important since Indigenous Peoples' experiences are almost always portrayed as unique or “exotic”. I can now understand through comparison that many of the processes from military to pedagogical impositions bore striking similarities across various colonial, geographical and cultural locations.

This study investigates two central research problems. These are: What are the healing practices of Aeta women? What are the implications of the healing practices of Aeta women in the academic discourse? This inquiry is important for the following reasons: (a) it focuses a reconsidered gaze and empirical lens on the healing practices of Aeta women healers as well as the lessons, insights and perspectives which may have been previously missed; (b) my research attempts not to be 'neutral' but instead be an exercise in participatory action research and as such hopefully brings a new space of decolonization by documenting Aeta women healers’ contributions in the political and academic arena; and (c) it is an original contribution to postcolonial, anti-colonial and Indigenous feminist theories particularly through its demonstration the utility of these theories in understanding the health of Indigenous peoples and global health. There are 12 Aeta women healers who participated in the Talking Circle. This study is significant in grounding both the theory and the methodology while comparatively evaluating claims calibrated against the benchmark of the actual narratives of Aeta women healers. These evaluations subsequently categorized my findings into three themes: namely, identity, agency and representation. This work is also important in illustrating the Indigenous communities’ commonalities on resistance, accommodation, evolution and devolution of social institutions and leadership through empirical example. The work also sheds light on how the members of our Circle and their communities’ experiences with outsider intrusion and imposed changes intentionally structured to dominate them as Indigenous people altered our participants and their communities. Though the reactions of the Aeta were and are unique in this adaptive process they join a growing comparative scholarly discussion on how contexts for colonization were the same or different. This thesis therefore joins a growing comparative educational literature on the contextual variations among global experiences with colonization. This is important since Indigenous Peoples' experiences are almost always portrayed as unique or “exotic”. I can now understand through comparison that many of the processes from military to pedagogical impositions bore striking similarities across various colonial, geographical and cultural locations.