J_NYEMAH FINA_FINAL_ PORTFOLIO_SEPTEMBER_15_ 2014

Academic Portfolio: GEDU 9010

Prepared in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

in Educational Studies, Mount Saint Vincent University (MSVU), Halifax Nova Scotia

“Territorial claims-making is part of the growth of a lion.” A West African proverb.

And so as lions grow they are involved in claims-making. They achieve their claims of growth

by pursuing a journey in the land of competing claims of authority, and by making marks on

trees and land to establish the boundaries of their territory, which they defend.

This academic portfolio is one of my many marks and sojourns of “knowledge claims-making”

on the journey to “Western academia and professionalism”.

Prepared and Presented by: Joseph Nyemah, PhD Student, ID: 0641501

Supervisor: Dr. Donovan Plumb, Professor, MSVU

Committee members: Dr. Susan Brigham, Associate Professor, MSVU

Dr. Leslie Brown, Professor, MSVU

External examiner: Dr. Jim Sharpe, Associate Professor, MSVU

June 2012 to October 2014

Academic Portfolio for Joseph Nyemah, PhD Student, ID: 0641501, MSVU, Defended on October 1, 2014

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Introduction

This is an academic portfolio. But before I proceed, I pay attention to Philip Smith’s (2001)

argument that “At the start of any text it can be useful to define the central concept” (p.1). An

academic portfolio indeed is “a summary of your major activities and accomplishments,

documenting the nature and extent of your contributions as well as your role and achievements”

(University of Western Australia, 2014, para. 2). This definition is very relevant, not only

because my portfolio is about my activities and achievements, but also, a reflection of my

capacity and awareness of when it is appropriate to lead, follow and manage. In developing

some of the artifacts included in this portfolio, for instance, I led colleagues, followed the

guidance of others, and worked independently.

An academic portfolio is a “collection of documents and writings that you assemble in order to

demonstrate that you have the appropriate prior and experiential learning to earn a university

level credit” (Athabasca University, 2014, Para. 1). But one’s academic portfolio cannot simply

be a set of catalogued documents; it must be “reflective … of teaching, research, and service

performance” (Seldin, 2009, p.2). An academic portfolio should be a validation of “claims [that

people] make about themselves (University of Manitoba, 2014, p.1). The foregoing definitions

appropriately convey the attributes and contents of this academic portfolio.

This portfolio is about me. I am an African, who is also learning to be an Africanist by

endogenously exploring Africanity, particularly some of the cultures of Africa. Africanity is

theoretically complex, and not addressed in this portfolio, partly because it is not part of the

objectives. But I write these words about my identity at the beginning of this portfolio for two

reasons. First, according to Edgar Schein (1995) our sense of being right or wrong is strongly


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linked to our identity. Second, because I present this portfolio by narrating stories – stories with

evidentiary artifacts – that critically reveal me as I gradually begin to understand and use the lens

of what I call “Western academia and professionalism” in exploring Africanity, specifically,

some African cultures.

Story telling is a beautiful and important element of some African cultures and intellectuality

because it is imbued with nature, spirituality, religion, romance, values, metaphors and

criticality. African story telling is driven by both the mind and the heart. That is why African

stories are often not told from a piece of paper. This portfolio, although academic and written on

paper, is presented in what I refer to as the African way – expressing myself from my heart and

mind. Consequently, the principal story that drives this academic portfolio is about a popular

West African proverb, “the visitor shall never have the last word”. There are several explanations

for this proverb dictated by different African intellectual contexts. One of the explanations, for

example, is that, at the end of your visit to a friend, you should say - thanks for hosting me - then

allow the friend/host to do the closure.

But what I call “Western academia and African intellectuality” are not too distinct from each

other because, for instance, Hans-Georg Gadamer, a Western philosopher and former associate

of Heidegger, once argued that “I have designated as a central point of hermeneutical procedure

that one [the researcher] is never supposed to have the last word” (Gadamer, 2006, p. 91). This

statement is very close to the West African proverb that drives the narrative of my portfolio. I

suppose that Gadamer is referring to the hermeneutic researcher, who in the context of the West

African proverb and my learning journey, I refer to as the stranger, visitor and learner - me.


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In this portfolio I do not have the last word, because I consider myself a visitor, stranger and

learner seeking knowledge, place and identity in the world of Western academia and

professionalism. A portfolio “support[s] and make[s] tangible the things you want to say about

yourself… and may be used to assess strengths and weaknesses” (University of Manitoba, 2014,

P. 1). Consequently, the last word in my portfolio belongs to some of the people – the people that

I brand as Western academics – my academic supervisors. These academics have witnessed

some of the sojourns of my intellectual evolution and transformation, as I begin to use the lens of

Western academia and professionalism in exploring the acculturation of Liberian refugees in

Atlantic Canada. There are empty pages at the end of this portfolio where these academics are

invited to say the last word.

As required by MSVU, this portfolio is organized into five categories including 1) general

knowledge; 2) in-depth knowledge; 3) research knowledge and competencies; 4) professional

and collegial competencies; and 5) teaching and instructional competencies. Each category

contains artifacts demonstrating my knowledge-claims or territorial markings as lions do to

demonstrate their maturity. The artifacts included under general knowledge demonstrate my

intellectual claims for broad familiarity and understanding of prominent social scientific and

educational theoretical traditions and trends related to educational studies. The artifacts included

under in-depth knowledge reflect my thorough and detailed knowledge of the purposes of

education, culture and power that are central to my doctoral studies.

In the research knowledge and competencies category, the constituent artifacts demonstrate my

critical analytic capacity to undertake research by employing contemporary methodological

tools. The professional and collegial competencies category contains artifacts that attest to my

capacity to demonstrate a range of professional competencies that can enhance active


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professional engagement. Lastly, the teaching and instructional competencies category contains

artifacts that demonstrate my ability to facilitate the transfer of knowledge, both within academic

and professional contexts. The presentation of each artifact is characterized by its history (by

whom, why and when was it produced), summary and the logic for its inclusion.

General Knowledge

In 2008, the Atlantic Metropolis Centre – a public policy and academic research agency – invited

me to speak at a symposium that it had organized at Saint Mary's University in Halifax. Because

the audience was mainly graduate students, I decided to speak about some of the challenges that

university graduates confront while entering the labor market. The presentation was engaging

and focused on the purpose of education, and the advantages and disadvantages of general and

specialized knowledge. A sociology professor from Dalhousie University succeeded me at the

podium and argued that a PhD education narrows the labor market opportunities for graduates

because they become too specialized as opposed to undergraduate education that offers general

knowledge and the basics of professionalism that one needs to have a high-paying job.

The professor’s argument had significant bearing on my decision to pursue doctoral studies, as I

contemplated and dreaded the possibility of a doctoral education cornering, stigmatizing and

precluding me from various labor market opportunities. After all, I needed a high-paying job that

would allow me to support my family. But increasingly during the three years that ensued, I also

became curious about the idea that higher education would simply be for the purpose of

acquiring a high-paying job. Education for some, I thought, might be aimed at a unique self-

actualization. This internal dialogue about general knowledge, specialized knowledge and the


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purpose of education leads me to the introduction of my first artifact under the portfolio category

of general knowledge.

Initially written in 2013 as a term paper in the course contemporary educational theory - GEDU

9003 - facilitated by Dr. Donovan Plumb, I revised it by incorporating his feedback and renamed

it as An expanded reflection over Not for profit: why democracy needs the humanities, by Martha

C. Nussbaum (2010). Nussbaum’s key argument is that, increasingly, contemporary society is

embracing two contrasting purposes of education – education for profit-making and education

for human development. Reading and reflecting on the book clarified thoughts spurred by the

symposium at Saint Mary’s University about the purpose of education. The book and my

consequent reflection had strengthened my perspectives and motivation for doctoral education.

The new perspectives and motivation are that, primarily, pursuing a doctoral education should

not be driven by the hope of obtaining a high-paying job, but rather that it might enable one to

nurture his/her ability to think critically – this is personal.

My reflection on Nussbaum’s (2010) argument – the two contrasting purposes of education -

does not offer a counter thesis; rather it is a critical commentary on the expanded ramifications of

what I believe is a cogent and timely argument. As opposed to being contrasted by design and

implementation, I argue that the two purposes of education need to be complementary.

Additionally, this artifact is significant because, in my proposed dissertation, I intend to examine

the place of education in the acculturation of Liberian refugees.

But discussing the purpose of education - why we learn - cannot be divorced from how we learn,

partly because they are both complementary in influencing the ways in which education helps us

to navigate the world after university. Consequently I continue this trajectory of the portfolio by


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introducing my second artifact - an essay review of the book New perspectives on African-

centred education in Canada, written by George Sefa Dei and Alof Kempf (2013). Dr. Susan

Brigham, MSVU, introduced this book to me in 2013 as I was working on an education policy

research paper for African Nova Scotians. The book is focused on the role of culture in learning

processes, particularly for African diaspora people. The authors used the book to contribute to

the development of Africentricity, a concept that emphasizes the centrality of culture in teaching

African diaspora students.

Reading and critiquing the book through the essay review reconnected me to the specificity of

my identity and culture, and how they uniquely influence my purpose of education. I particularly

found a beginning point to talk about the unique self-actualization facilitated by education - not

simply about a high-paying job – but also about using doctoral education to critically express my

culture. I argue in the essay that much more work is required to critically trouble and develop

Africentricity as a pedagogical frame. But I also agree with the authors that the starting point is

to promote Africentricity as a program/pedagogical tool integrated within existing systems of

education and not as an independent school. I make this point with the recognition that

promoting Africentricity confronts the hegemony and dominance of the Eurocentric paradigm of

education. Finally, I should point out that the combined artifacts under this category of my

academic portfolio, has enabled me to begin to explore the politics of education.


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In-Depth Knowledge of Themes(s)

The Dalhousie professor’s argument that a PhD education narrows one’s labor market

opportunities has many connotations. One of these interpretations - arguably is that - to accept

that a doctoral education narrows one’s labor market opportunities is to reject, corner or trivialize

the significance of in-depth knowledge or the ability to examine issues with criticality. This is

important because it is the in-depth knowledge of several theorists on specific issues that

establishes the basics of how society functions in many ways. For example, those who become

specialized in conflict, critical race and power theories help us to understand the hidden politics

of conflict, race and power. With this background, I introduce my third artifact - The politics of

access to education for women within the context of intercultural contact and acculturation for

Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada: critical mapping of a proposed doctoral research – which

I wrote in 2013

My third artifact is not a proposal; but rather the emergent conceptualization or framing of my

proposed doctoral research. I critically clarify the theoretical, methodological and practical

(implications for community) dimensions of my proposed dissertation research. The paper

contains my critical engagement with scholars on some of the concepts that are central to my

proposed doctoral research, and demonstrates my capacity to explore research themes in-depth.

But the politics associated with education is not just along gender identities; it is also about

culture, race, power and a host of other issues that one must explore in claiming in-depth

knowledge about the subject. Consequently, I introduce my fourth artifact - What is culture? A

critical review of the literature - which I wrote in 2014.


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Culture is very central to my proposed doctoral dissertation. Consequently, I decided to explore

its conceptualization and definition through a critical review of the relevant literature. My intent

for writing this paper was to help me gain critical insight into the theoretical and political

characteristics of culture, and interestingly, I have accepted an invitation to present the paper at

an international academic conference on Border in Globalization, Carleton University, Ottawa,

September 25 – 27, 2014.

“In a letter of 1675, the scientist Isaac Newton wrote: if I have seen further it is by standing on

the shoulders of giants” (Smith & Riley, 2011, p. 29). Trusting Newton’s experience, I explored

the theoretical antecedents of the conceptualization of culture by drawing on the critical insights

of some influential social theorists including Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Georg

Simmel, Friedrich Neitzsche and W.E.B. Du Bois. I argue that culture is a fluid concept

consequently; intellectual projects aimed at defining it are inconclusive, flawed with exclusivity,

ubiquity, and political, social, economic and environmental biases.

The literature review demonstrates my capacity to critically connect and trouble existing

knowledge-claims by scholars. Sadly, as I engaged the various social theorists, I also concluded

that the joy of philosophical criticality is somewhat embedded in mental instability. This

conclusion is controversial because I have no evidence to explain as to whether it is mental

instability that induces philosophical criticality or if it is the later that induces the former. Smith

and Riley (2011), however, point out that all of these social theorists that I had explored - had

experienced some form of mental breakdown. But what is more fascinating about these scholars

is their ability to use education to critically trouble the logic of some of the orthodoxies of

society.


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Research Knowledge and Competencies

Many people often pursue doctoral studies particularly to develop research knowledge and

competencies, and this is actually a core requirement for most, if not all academic doctorates.

Although, and as the Dalhousie professor had argued, this comes with the risks of being limited

to the research territory of the labor market; it is a valuable and unique self-actualization for

many scholars. Research knowledge and competencies enable scholars to make contributions to

problem solving and public policy development. This is a key area of interest to me as I pursue

my PhD in educational studies.

As a way of demonstrating my research knowledge and competencies, I introduce the following

paper as my fifth artifact – Talking research process: A messy spot on the doctoral student’s

journey. This paper is a critical commentary over a broad range of research concepts including

paradigm, epistemology, ontology, axiology, methodology and methods. After completing two

doctoral courses – Advanced Research Seminar focused on Methods (EDUC 8053/GEDU 9055)

and Methodological Perspectives on Educational Research (EDUC 8023/GEDU 9002) - I wrote

this paper in 2014 as a personal initiative aimed at reflecting on some of the contemporary

debates about research design.

All of my research activities have local relevance, for instance, my sixth artifact - Improving

education for African Nova Scotians: a critical review of the literature – does not only

demonstrate my ability to undertake research that is informed by secondary data, it also

contributes to a critical discourse that has local currency in Nova Scotia. Under the supervision

of Dr. Brigham, who also chairs the research committee of the Delmore “Buddy Daye”

Africentric Learning Institute (DBDALI), I was contracted as a research assistant to write an


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education policy research paper for the institute in 2013. Consequently, this paper is a critical

examination of the historical, political and cultural factors that influence education for African

Nova Scotians, and contains practical public policy recommendations. It is an artifact that

reflects my capacity to intellectualize Africentricity and critical race theory as key research

themes.

But the education context of African Nova Scotians is only one segment of the theoretical

complexities of the province that require specialized analytic skills from scholars. This is partly

because in addition to the indigenous Black community, NS attracts immigrants from the African

continent. Their integration process raises several critical questions in this context, for instance,

are they reconnecting with the indigenous Black community? Are they creating a new Black

community? Or are they integrating into a multicultural community? These questions are the

point of transition to my seventh artifact, which is a research proposal - The role of cultural

communities in immigrant retention: a case study of African immigrant cultural communities in

Nova Scotia.

I sit on a private, public sector and university research committee, managing a Social Sciences

and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded $4 million project, aimed at examining some

of the implications of border crossing in the current context of globalization. The academic

leadership of the committee involves 11 universities from North America and Europe. This

research proposal was written in 2014 and contributes to the project. The research proposal has

an approved budget of $10,000 and demonstrates my leadership capacity to work within a

multidisciplinary team in research design. The team includes a graduate student, a professor who

supervised my master’s thesis, and an associate professor from Dalhousie University. I play a

dual role as a community partner and as a mentor for the master’s student.


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As the title suggests, the proposal aims to critically examine the role of cultural communities in

endogenously facilitating immigrant settlement and retention in NS. The paper demonstrates my

capacity to explore a broad range of research themes, for instance, I proposed in it two

interrelated theories of culture including dissonant acculturation and social conformity theories

as the framework. The theory of dissonant acculturation holds that there may be different

patterns of acculturation within the same family (Portes, 1999). The theory of social conformity,

on the other hand, presupposes that the acculturative behavior of immigrants as it relates to a

collectivity is driven by “the desire to fit in with others, strategic benefits from coordination,

incentives to free ride on the information of others, and the tendency to interact with people

similar to oneself” (Bednar, Bramson, Jones-Rooy & Page, 2010, p.414). These theories are also

very relevant to my proposed doctoral dissertation research.

In concluding this section of the portfolio, I would like to emphasize that because of the

centrality of research knowledge and competencies to my PhD aspirations, it is only under this

category that I have included three artifacts. In the first of these three artifacts, I reflect on some

of the contemporary theoretical debates about research. Consequently, the paper adequately

prepares me for the design of my proposal. The second artifact - an extensive literature review -

prepares me to critically entertain debates between various scholars on the politics of education.

This skill is a key ingredient that will inform my doctoral proposal and dissertation. Finally, the

third artifact is characterized by every aspect of the research process (conception, design, ethics

approval, field data collection, analysis and publication) and adequately prepares me to complete

my dissertation.


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Professional and Collegial Competencies

While in junior high school, my science teacher once told me something that is a bit different,

but related to the Dalhousie University professor’s argument about labor market behaviors

towards graduates. The science teacher had argued that general knowledge, specialized

knowledge, and all other competencies are likely to give you negative returns if you have poor

social skills to build and maintain professional and collegial relationships. This argument is the

bridging point to the next two artifacts because they demonstrate my ability to work within or

lead high profile multidisciplinary professionals.

The first of these two artifacts, which is the eight in this academic portfolio is - Cooperating to

Build a Better Nova Scotia Conference: A Celebration of the United Nations Declaration of 2012

as the International Year of Cooperatives. The paper is a synoptic description of two panel

discussions, which I organized and chaired during this academic and professional conference

organized by a partnership between academics and community development professionals at

MSVU, November 22 – 24, 2012. The first panel - Nova Scotia cooperatives and the global

context – successfully attracted the participation of a professor at Saint Mary’s University, an

associate professor from Dalhousie University and a community development practitioner.

I succeeded in attracting proposals from these panelists because I had argued in the synopsis that

the advent of the internet, combined with the influence of globalization and capitalism, propel

large scale, transnational and multi-billion dollar corporations as the drivers of economic growth

around the world. I pointed out; however, that history reminds us that cooperatives, although not

always as financially large as conventional business firms, have existed in communities for

generations. To entice scholars, however, I rhetorically questioned the ability of cooperatives to


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concurrently pursue economic growth and remain committed to the aspirations of grassroots

families.

In describing the focus of the discussion for the second panel - Cooperative innovation: policies,

practices and debates on social enterprise and collective entrepreneurship – I argued that the

late 1970s marks the arrival of new forms of communal enterprises. Some of these enterprises

adopt the cooperative model, using market-based tools to address some of the ills of society. As a

way of attracting insightful academics and the relevant community base practitioners, I argued

that these innovative processes have not always been without controversy. They do not only

create an identity crisis, they also attract questions of accountability, economic mediocrity and

ethics.

But professional and collegial competencies also include a unique ability to lead people in

delivering a public good, for instance, a public policy. This argument transitions me to the

introduction of my ninth artifact - Social enterprise strategy development process – a

presentation of strategy discussion points, which I designed and delivered to a working group of

senior government officials on September 3, 2014. Preparing and delivering this presentation is

one of my responsibilities within government to refresh and publish an existing strategy. The

presentation which is also commented on by a lawyer is an analysis of some of the legislative

and regulatory considerations that are associated with charities’ involvement in profit-making. It

explores contexts such as Scotland, Australia, England and a few Canadian provincial

jurisdictions. In conclusion, these two papers demonstrate my collegial and professional

competencies as required by the portfolio criteria.


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Teaching and Instructional Competencies (academic readiness)

Many academic doctors, like the sociology professor at Dalhousie University whom I have

continued to engage in this narrative, have narrowed their labor market opportunities to teaching

– a valuable commitment to society. Other academic doctors teach in a different way, by

delivering critical discourses to various audiences of students, academics, bureaucrats, and

parents, just to name a few. The following two artifacts demonstrate my teaching and

instructional competencies in and outside of academia. The first of these is my tenth artifact -

Africentric policy issues in life-long learning: GSLL 6220 680 – which is the outline for a course

that I designed and was supposed to teach during the summer of 2014 at MSVU, thanks to the

recommendation of Dr. Brigham.

This graduate course leads students through an exploration of historical and contemporary public

policy in NS, and its implications for African Nova Scotian learners. The course encourages

students to draw on Africentricity and critical race theory to critically trouble the politics of

public policy development, specifically education policy in a complex majority-minority context.

The goals of the course are to provide students with a: a), critical understanding of the politics –

reconciling varying interests - of public policy development; b), broad understanding of public

policy, particularly education policy analysis; and c), deepened understanding of the link

between education policy and social justice.

I will claim here that my teaching and instructional competencies are eclectic, because the 11th

artifact – Cultivate the ecology of humanity – the last artifact in this portfolio is focused on

public speaking or the intellectual engagement of diverse student, faculty and professional

groups. The paper is a keynote address which I delivered to an audience of the students and


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teachers of Sugarloaf High School, Campbellton, New Brunswick, on Feb. 24, 2014. The

community of Campbellton is located in rural New Brunswick thereby limiting the population’s

exposure to other cultures. Consequently, the school is challenged to attract and retain immigrant

and international students. Following a series of inappropriate racial activities against visiting

Brazilian students, the authority invited me to deliver a lecture on diversity and racial harmony.

In engaging the audience, I particularly drew on stories from academic research to carefully

address some of the intricacies associated with accommodating cultural difference. For instance,

I mentioned an encounter between a Novajo First Nation parent and an Anglophone school

teacher that resulted to a non-confrontational clash of cultures.

Conclusion

This academic portfolio is a critical and careful constellation of artifacts that reveal my

intellectual evolution on a journey to Western academia and professionalism. This task is not

simple, because it involves making right choices in selecting appropriate artifacts from a pot of

intellectually competitive artifacts in which I have invested. But the artifacts that I have chosen

are relevant and significant. They are relevant primarily because they appropriately respond to

the academic portfolio requirements established by MSVU. The artifacts are also relevant

because they weave and straddle the requirements of the University and the focus of my doctoral

dissertation research. Their particular significance lies in their characteristic reflection of my

capacity and awareness of when it is appropriate to lead, manage and follow. But I will not say

the last word – I ask the examiners to do so on the following page.


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Next Steps

This portfolio is obviously not the end of my doctoral journey; it is rather a sojourn on the route.

But more importantly, it will inform the next stages including the research proposal, ethics

application and data collection and dissertation processes as follows:

Research proposal: my research proposal will draw significant insight from some of the artifacts

in this portfolio, particularly: The politics of access to education for women within the context of

intercultural contact and acculturation for Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada: critical

mapping of a proposed doctoral research; the role of cultural communities in immigrant

retention: a case study of African immigrant cultural communities in Nova Scotia; and Talking

research process: A messy spot on the doctoral student’s journey, and Critical commentary on

methodology and a presentation on post-colonialism.

Management scientists offer several models and stages for organizational growth, but for the

purpose of illustrating how this portfolio informs my doctoral research proposal development, I

introduce Allen’s (2012) three stage model of organizational development. The first stage in

Allen’s (2012) model is high performance – clear statement of mission, respect for people, good

communication, high involvement and design of workflow. The second stage is stability – clarity

of goals and direction, consistency in priorities and policies, agreement on roles and basic

management procedures. The third and last stage is chaos – crisis, loss of focus, shifting

priorities, etc… I choose this model because my proposal development is synonymous to its

second stage – the need for stability and clarity - I intend to clarify my research goals and its

theoretical and methodological perspectives.

In the artifacts under research knowledge and competencies, I have provided several theoretical

and methodological propositions for my doctoral research that need to be refined. The approved


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research proposal provides me with an opportunity to test some of the theories and

methodologies through primary research. Dissonant acculturation and social conformity; and

qualitative research are the proposed theoretical framework and methodology respectively. These

theories and methodology are under consideration for my doctoral research. In the coming

months, I will mentor a graduate student at Dalhousie University to implement the proposal, and

I am hopeful that the process will inform my choice of theories and methodology.

Ethics application: although Dalhousie University is different from MSVU, the ethics proposal

processes are not significantly different. I have mentored the graduate student at Dalhousie

University to develop and submit an ethics proposal for implementing the research. The ethics

application is approved, and the process has strengthened my capacity to prepare for my ethics

application at MSVU.

Dissertation: this portfolio contains several literature reviews, for instance, there is an extensive

literature review on the conceptual and definitional dimensions of culture that is likely to inform

the theoretical background of my dissertation. I intend to return to this literature review process

by not only focusing on the concepts of my dissertation research, but also, its proximate

externalities. Returning to the argument of the sociology professor from Dalhousie University, I

am aware that a doctoral education requires that I am specialized in a particular area; but I am

also cognizant of not being oblivious of the longitudinal dimension of knowledge. Consequently,

I intend to pursue a process of reflection and professional engagement that will include

producing papers on rural extension and social entrepreneurship.


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The Last Word By Examiners – this page is intentionally left blank.


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Portfolio References

Allen, K.R. (2012). The 3 stages of organizational development: prescriptions for achieving

outstanding and sustainable results. The Center for Organizational Design. Retrieved

March 18, 2014 from http://www.centerod.com/2012/02/3-stages-organizational-

development/

Athabasca University (2014). What is a portfolio? Centre for Learning Accreditation. Preparing

your portfolio. Retrieved March 16, 2014 from http://priorlearning.athabascau.ca/what-is-

a-portfolio.php

Bednar, J., Bramson, J., Jones-Rooy, A. & Page, S. (2010). Emergent cultural signatures and

persistent diversity: a model of conformity and consistency. Rationality and Society. 22:

407. DOI: 10.1177/1043463110374501. Retrieved from ww.rss.sagepub.com at Saint

Francis Xavier University on May 26, 2013

Gadamer, H-G. (2006). Looking back with Gadamer over his writings and their effective

history: a dialogue with Jean Grondin (1996). Theory Culture Society 23(1): 85–100.

Portes, A. (1999). Immigration theory for a new century: some problems and opportunities. In

Hirschman, C., Kasinitz, P. & DeWind, J. (eds.), The handbook of international

migration (p. 21-33). The American experience. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Ryerson University (2014). Career Development and Employment Centre. Retrieved March 16,

2014 from

http://www.ryerson.ca/career/students/createyourportfolio/

Schein, E. (1995). Kurt Lewin’s change theory in the field and in the classroom: notes toward a

model of managed learning. Retrieved from

http://www2.tech.purdue.edu/Ols/courses/ols582/SWP-3821-32871445.pdf

Seldin, P. (2009). The academic portfolio: a new and more effective way to document teaching,

research and service. Pace University. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from

http://www.niad.ac.jp/ICSFiles/afieldfile/2010/02/03/no13_2009forum_report02_2_2.pdf

Smith, P. (2001). Cultural theory. Malden, MA.: Blackwell Publishing Limited. Retrieved

January 10, 2014 from

http://books.google.ca/books?id=JFm8IAYu2gUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge

_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

The University of Western Australia (2014). Guide for the use of an academic portfolio.

Retrieved March 16, 2014, from

http://www.hr.uwa.edu.au/working/promotion/academic/portfolio

University of Manitoba (2014). What is a portfolio? Retrieved March 16, 2014 from

http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/management/programs/undergraduate/coop/media/student-

career-portfolio-guide.pdf

http://www.centerod.com/2012/02/3-stages-organizational-development/

http://www.centerod.com/2012/02/3-stages-organizational-development/

http://priorlearning.athabascau.ca/what-is-a-portfolio.php

http://priorlearning.athabascau.ca/what-is-a-portfolio.php

http://www.ryerson.ca/career/students/createyourportfolio/


http://www.niad.ac.jp/ICSFiles/afieldfile/2010/02/03/no13_2009forum_report02_2_2.pdf

http://books.google.ca/books?id=JFm8IAYu2gUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false


http://www.hr.uwa.edu.au/working/promotion/academic/portfolio

http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/management/programs/undergraduate/coop/media/student-career-portfolio-guide.pdf

http://umanitoba.ca/faculties/management/programs/undergraduate/coop/media/student-career-portfolio-guide.pdf


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Category I: General Knowledge (theory and trends)

Artifact # 1: Contrasting Purposes of Education - An Expanded Reflection Over

Martha Cravan Nussbaum’s (2010) Not For Profit: Why Democracy Needs the

Humanities? Term paper (revised): Contemporary Educational Theory

Joseph Nyemah, PhD Student, ID #: 0641501

Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2013.

Abstract

Nussbaum argues that education has two contrasting purposes in contemporary society – human

development and profit making. Corporatism according to the author is increasingly promoting

the latter and pushing the former to the periphery of education. Nussbaum does not argue that

one of these educational purposes is more important than the other. She contends that society

needs both of them to build high performing economies sustained by vibrant social democracies.

In this essay review, I barely disagree with Nussbaum in any major way. I expand and

contextualize the author’s claims in light of unfolding educational changes in society.

Nussbaum (2010) argues that education has two contrasting purposes in contemporary society.

These two purposes include education for human development and education for profit making.

Grounded in the arts and social sciences, education for human development, according to

Nussbaum, aims to produce citizens who are enlightened, socially conscious, compassionate and

independent minded. The author argues that contrary to the education for human development

purpose, education for profit making, aims to produce citizens who can only work successfully in

corporations that emphasize economic bottom-line and pay little or no attention to how their

activities negatively affect the environment and humanity in general.

Nussbaum’s book is not insignificant by any means. Zemsky, Wegner and Massy (2005) had

earlier given us reasons for us to take a break and reflect over what education is all about. In


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their book, Remaking the American University: Open for Business, these authors crisply argue

that after the Second World War, “the American University was expected to play a major role in

the pursuit of broad societal goals, a role that no one expects the university to play now” (p.2).

The authors continue to claim that the university is transformed from being the breeding ground

for values of social democracy such as “protest against the war in Vietnam, promoting civil

rights and such government programs as the Peace Corps and components of President Johnson’s

Great Society (p. 2, cited in Rothfork, 2006, p. 3) to a key player in global economic

competitions.

Nussbaum has got her argument timely and accurate about the increasingly contrasted

trajectories of the two purposes of education. Education for human development and profit

making are becoming very distinct instead of complementing each other. In some universities,

for instance, it is not uncommon that the business and sociology programs would have very little

or no collaboration between them. This is partly, but significantly, because they are conducted in

ways that portray them as two education programs that are extremely unrelated. The broader

society, through some of its institutions that generate and articulate public opinions, also plays a

key role in orchestrating the widening distinction. Time Higher Education (2013), Maclean’s

(2013) and U.S. News Rankings (2013) magazines annual university rankings, for instance,

distinguish universities by labeling them as the business education universities or the arts and

social sciences education universities.

These distinctions that label universities as the place for business or arts and social sciences

education also permeate the decision making processes of potential students in choosing

universities. A few years ago, I was an international student at Saint Francis Xavier University, a

small primarily undergraduate university in rural Nova Scotia. I later wanted to relocate to an


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urban university so as to meet more people since Canada was very new to me. I then began to

consult people in the local community about the description of universities in Halifax, the

provincial capital of Nova Scotia. Most of the people that I talked to repeatedly claimed that in

terms of undergraduate education, Saint Mary’s University was the place for business education.

Mount Saint Vincent University, on the contrary, was described as the school for women’s

education, another way they used to describe the arts and social sciences education.

My experience about the description of universities in Halifax is important for two reasons as it

relates to Nussbaum’s argument about the increasingly diverging purposes of education. Firstly,

the labels factored significantly into my choice for a university because I wanted to pursue an

interdisciplinary program that weaved business and the arts and social sciences education.

Secondly, I believed these differentiating labels and used them to advise other potential

international students. I inadvertently became a contributor to what I believe is an unnecessary

effort to divorce the two purposes of education.

There is also another factor that, although Nussbaum does not include in her book, I would like

to point out from my anecdotal experience. In retrospect, I come to the conclusion that the

process of contrasting the two purposes of education is often gendered. This is because the

description of Mount Saint Vincent or any university as the place for women’s education or arts

and sciences education is a gender stereotype, which assumes that business education is for men

and that women have nothing to do with it. Many scholars, feminists in particular, will be

disappointed by this misleading and unwarranted feminization of the arts and social sciences

education.


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Nussbaum is not arguing that society must choose or prioritize one of these two education

purposes: human development and profit-making. She contends that society needs the two

education purposes to build high performance economies that are sustained by vibrant social

democracies:

The national interest of any modern democracy requires a strong

economy and a flourishing business culture. [And ] that this economic

interest, too, requires us to draw on the humanities and arts, in

order to promote a climate of responsible and watchful steward-

ship and a culture of creative innovation. Thus we are not forced

to choose between a form of education that promotes profit and a

form of education that promotes good citizenship (p.8).

Nussbaum has got the foregoing argument right and I would advance it by adding that the

education systems of many countries are orchestrating a dangerous distinction between these two

purposes of education. Nussbaum appropriately asserts that, “a flourishing economy requires the

same skills that support citizenship, and thus the proponents of what I shall call “education for

profit,” or (to put it more comprehensively) “education for economic growth” (p.8). I imagine

that many scholars and practitioners would agree with Nussbaum. But I also believe that very

few scholars and practitioners are working to correct this quandary because, partly as Stephen

Brookfield (2007) would argue, it is gradually becoming a learned dominant ideology for society

to accept that these two purposes are at the opposing extremes of what education offers

contemporary society.

Nussbaum also points out that contemporary society is not only widening the distinction between

education for profit making and human development, it is also marginalizing the latter to the


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disadvantage of the former with little or no consideration of the consequences. She argues that

“radical changes are occurring in what democratic societies teach the young, and these changes

have not been well thought through” (p.2). Nussbaum’s description of these unfolding changes is

true but her claim that they are not well thought through is debatable. There are deliberative and

highly contentious discussions about what to teach in the classroom, or what I termed curriculum

politics in many countries around the world. Unfortunately proponents of the profit making

education purpose are winning. This is what Nussbaum should have acknowledged.

Every recent election in the United States, for instance, has been characterized by public debates

examining whether schools should focus on teaching students mathematics and science skills or

arts and social sciences skills. This debate which assumes that the two skill sets are unrelated can

also be found in many European countries as The Harris Center (2013) observes:

In 2000 the Welsh Government (formally known as The National

Assembly for Wales), with its economy struggling, affirmed that

entrepreneurship was the solution to its problems. The formula

was simple: entrepreneurs create businesses which create

employment (para. 1).

Although The Harris Center (2013) does not provide all of the details on the process, I argue that

the process was well considered based on the fact that it went through the national assembly. The

Center also points out that the process included the views of academics by asserting that “the

Welsh Government engaged with universities to devise [the] enterprise education policies to

entice graduates to stay in Wales and create their own jobs” (para. 2). The purposes of education

are also often well debated during provincial elections in Canada, where I have been living for

the past eight years. These examples show that contrary to Nussbaum’s claim, the process is well


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thought through. Society is simply making the wrong choice through a process that is somewhat

democratic.

There are, however, some scholars, including Ozmon (2012) and Apple (2006) who offer a

slightly different and technical perspective about the process of considering which purpose of

education should be at the center of the school curriculum in the United States. These education

scholars argue that, instead of education experts, politicians and business leaders are increasingly

driving the curriculum content discussions. This is an important point of clarity in describing the

polemics that characterize what I believe is an unnecessary separation of the two purposes of

education. Corporatists and politicians have become overwhelmingly involved in curriculum

politics and the increasing involvement is successfully advancing their interests.

Although Nussbaum does not admit that corporatism is winning the debate, she makes a

convincing argument about why the proponents of the profit making purpose are taking over

education. She appropriately observes that “thirsty for national profit, nations, and their systems

of education, are heedlessly discarding skills that are needed to keep democracies alive” (p.2).

There is, also, Jeffry Aaron Snyder (2013), who observes that “the White House website and the

Higher Education home page features the following banner headline: EDUCATION –

Knowledge and skills for the jobs of the future” (p.2). According to Snyder (2013) “from

President Obama on down the line, policy makers appear to believe that the only value of

postsecondary education is that it offers a pathway to success in an increasingly competitive

global market”(p.2).

Considering that Obama is frequently touted by his Republican rivals as an extreme leftist with

an anti-business agenda aimed at radically transforming America into a socialist state, his alleged


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position on the purpose of education is a contradiction and a slap in the face of many on the left

including Nussbaum. But it is also hard to deny that economic growth, economic

competitiveness and economic innovation are the mantra for many contemporary democracies.

The key question that society needs to address is whether by shaping education to primarily

promote economic growth to the disadvantage of human development, we are doing justice to

humanity.

Nussbaum offers a harsh but honest prophesy on what we should expect if society continues to

pursue the profit making purpose of education to the disadvantage of human development. She

argues that “if this trend continues, nations all over the world will soon be producing generations

of useful machines, rather than complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize

tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements”

(p.2). Nussbaum continues with this powerful prophesy by charging that “the future of the

world’s democracies hangs in the balance” (p.2). Although Nussbaum might have hyperbolized

the magnitude of the consequences in her prediction, I believe she has got her prophesy right to a

greater extent based on what is already happening.

The Harris Center (2013), reflecting on the Welsh Government’s education policy to promote

entrepreneurship education as a solution to its economic crisis, argues that “the crux of the

formula was, and is, the entrepreneur [but] the result has been a new class of academics called

'prac-ademics' (para. 2). My interpretation here is that the Welsh Government’s education policy

have produced a generation of academics who lacks the understanding of theory and its

importance to practice. This is important because one of the critiques of those who are

disinterested in the arts and social sciences education is that it produces a group of intellectuals

who are not useful during decision making processes in corporate boardrooms. They also often


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use this argument to avoid the development of relationships between business education and arts

and social sciences education.

Describing the educational context of the United States, Apple (2006) also contends that “for-

profit companies are increasingly “creating law schools; managing elementary, middle, and

secondary schools; and engaging in education on factory floors and in businesses” (p.6).

Christopher Connell (2013) also recently wrote an article entitled Starbucks, Wal-Mart offer

classes--for university credit that I argue increases the plausibility of Nussbaum’s daunting

prophesy. Connell (2013) reported that:

a growing number of Fortune 500 companies, like Walmart, have

grown tired of waiting for colleges and universities to produce the

skilled workers they need and have started offering their own classes

instead. And as an added bonus for employees: Many of these

courses – from Starbucks' Barista Basics to Jiffy Lube's finance

fundamentals -- are eligible for college credit (para. 3).

This corporate university phenomenon is significant and has far reaching ramifications because

as Connell (2013) observes, “colleges also recognize the Starbucks training for academic credit

through the American Council on Education's College Credit Recommendation Service, an

organization that reviews and puts its stamp of approval on workplace courses” (Discussion

section 2, para. 1). The permeating influence of corporatism into the education system is not only

marginalizing education for human development, it also has the potential to threaten academic

integrity by flooding the professional field with degrees issued by unconventional or industry-

style academic institutions.


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Connell (2013) indirectly substantiates my argument that the industry-style university project is a

potential threat to the identity and integrity of conventional universities by observing that,

“McDonald's operates full-fledged Hamburger Universities in London, Munich, Sydney, Sao

Paulo, Tokyo, and Beijing” (Discussion section 3, para. 5). It will be hard to reverse this trend

because many industries often want to recruit employees who are already exposed to their work

philosophies. The corporate university model is an easier route for achieving this objective

because it circumvents the orthodox ways of granting degrees.

I would like to advance Nussbaum’s argument by adding that corporatism is also changing the

social composition of the classroom in North America. When I applied to study at Dalhousie

University in 2005, one of my key arguments was that because I was a refugee student from

Liberia, my presence in a classroom with students from North America and other parts of the

world would enrich the learning experience. I was very confident that this was a winning

argument and I am still confident that it is relevant. However, even with Liberia currently ranked

as low as 174 among 186 countries in the United Nations (2012) human development index

rankings, I am no more confident that this argument can win. This is mainly because universities

these days have developed a stronger appetite for students from the world’s emerging economies

than from developing countries. One of the consequences of not having students from the

world’s poor countries in Western university classrooms is the risk for education to become

oblivious of another part of humanity.

American scholar, William Pinar (2012), agrees by contending that this is a terrible time for

America’s learners, as they are denied the opportunity to discover and cultivate their talents or

comprehend the world around them. This is aligned with one of Nussbaum’s key claims that the

school curriculum has gone too far in incorporating business objectives to the disadvantage of


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human development goals. But the influence of corporatism in promoting the profit making

purpose of education is not limited to North America and Europe. As Connell (2013) rightly

points out:

The corporate university is not solely an American phenomenon.

The Brazilian energy giant Petrobas enrolls 1,000 employees at

a time in classes at Petrobas University in Rio de Janeiro and at

satellite campuses in Sao Paulo and Salvador. The Indian technology

giant Infosys sends all 15,000 engineers it hires each year to its

Global Education Center in Mysore for 23 weeks of classes (Discussion

section 3, para. 5).

As a strong believer of life-long learning, I am not opposed to the practice of industries

promoting professional development for employees. What I do find problematic is the creation of

full flesh corporate universities and the granting of degrees by what I believe are unconventional

and unprepared academic institutions. Unfortunately some governments are also involved. A few

years ago, for instance, the provincial government of Nova Scotia, my current employer, through

its corporate training agency, introduced what it termed a master’s certificate program. Although

the government has abandoned this program (I did not find it the website as I was writing this

paper), I believe it was introducing a dangerous threat to education because it blurred the identity

and integrity of master’s degree education that should be earned prior to rigorous academic work

managed by certified academic institutions.

Nussbaum only highlights the increasing influence of corporatism over the school curriculum.

However, there are more and more, other ideological groups who want to define the curriculum

content or the purpose of education to suit their social interests. Christian conservatives in the


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United States are fighting to eliminate diversity and global learning by demanding the removal of

non-Christian religious teachings and other subjects that help students understand the cultures of

other societies (see Pinar, 2012). Nussbaum will have more reasons to complain about if she ever

had coffee with Pinar (2012) and Apple (2006).

Recently, Trinity Western University in British Columbia opened up a contentious debate when

its application to establish the first ever religious law school in Canada was refused by the

Council of Canadian Law Deans (Movsesian, 2013). The University “requires students, faculty

and staff to honor traditional Christian sexual ethics: no sex outside heterosexual marriage, [but]

the deans argue that the requirement discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation in violation

of Canadian law” (Movsesian, 2013, para. 2). Nussbaum contributes to the beginning of a

contentious debate that is set to expand in many different ways.

Nussbaum also highlights how the influence of corporatism over the development of education

has profound implications for the breakdown of social cohesion in many parts of today’s society.

The author contends that:

We seem to be forgetting about the soul, about what it is for

thought to open out of the soul and connect person to the world in a

rich, subtle, and complicated manner; about what it is to approach

another person as a soul, rather than as a mere useful instrument

or an obstacle to one’s own plans; about what it is to talk as someone

who has a soul to someone else whom one sees as similarly deep

and complex (p. 6).

Nussbaum has got the foregoing argument right. By primarily focusing on cultivating profit

making skills in students, education is fail to help students acquire a critical understanding of the


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world necessary for the promotion of mutual respect, ethical practices and dignity for those who

are powerless and different. As Bronson Alcott once argued, education should be “the process by

which thought is opened out of the soul, and, associated with outward things, and reflected back

upon itself and thus made conscious of the reality and shapes of things” (cited in Nussbaum,

2010, p. 62). This I argue is how the education for human development purpose can contribute to

the critical awakening of students’ consciousness about social reality.

The marginalization of the human development purpose of education in favor of cultivating

profit making, as argued by Nussbaum also significantly contributes to a failure of society to

constantly identify and thwart injustices and inequalities. In his book, “Educating the 'Right'

Way: Markets, Standards, God, and Inequality”, Apple (2006), does not only agree with

Nussbaum that the education for human development purpose is increasingly being marginalized

by profit making interests, he also argues that it weakens society’s ability to be conscious of and

disrupt discriminations, injustices and oppressions:

Education is too often thought of as simply the delivery of

neutral knowledge to students. In this discourse, the fundamental

role of schooling is to fill students with the knowledge that is

necessary to compete in today’s rapidly changing [economy].

It is unfortunate but true that most of our existing models of

education tend to ratify or at least not actively interrupt many of

the inequalities that so deeply characterize this society. Much of

this has to do with the relations between schooling and the economy

(p. 5).


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Nussbaum advances the argument from another perspective by contending that it is easier for

people to treat each other as objects to be manipulated if they have never learned any other way

to see and know one another. There is, also, Andrew Sayer (2011), who in this book, Why Things

Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life, powerfully speaks about how this

kind of parochialism in education and the broader society can lead to a negative abstraction of

people as clients or consumers.

As I have earlier articulated, increasingly, many Americans argue that their country’s system of

education is being reconfigured, if not already, to abandon the education for human development

purpose in favor of cultivating profit making skills among students. The American system of

education is deeply “corrosive and since1970, the American dream is no longer social democracy

but getting rich, and quickly. We are now thinking economistically, we have substituted endless

commerce for public purpose” (Judt, 2010, p. 19, cited in Pinar, 2012, P. xi). Pinar himself

argues that within the changing American public education, schools have been converted from

educational institutions to businesses.

I want to briefly concentrate on the link between the contrasting trajectories of the school

curriculum and the threat to the promotion of social democracy as articulated by Judt (2010, p.

19, cited in Pinar, 2012, P. xi). This argument is substantiated by the widely held view that many

corporate institutions are barely democratic; hence their growing influence in education is likely

to threaten the promotion of democratic practices. Democracy requires a society in which

reasoned argumentation skills are nurtured in children as future leaders. In articulating his theory

of communicative action, Habermas (1987), for instance, contends that argumentation and the

skills of communication in general carry with them a democratic impulse. He believes that we

undermine democracy when the public space for critical discussion is not being maintained.


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There is, also, the Reverend Dr. Moses Coady (1939), who once argued that “human energy

must be unleashed by the discussion of ideas” (p.159). Unfortunately, this is exactly what the

purpose of education that supports profit making ignores.

But why is America’s system of education, as argued by Pinar (2012) abandoning its tradition of

fostering a teaching culture of social democracy? Apple (2006) unequivocally blames this new

trajectory on what he describes as the increasing influence of conservatism since the past two

decades. America, according to the author, is witnessing an odd, but powerful combination of

forces indoctrinated with conservative ideologies that many educators, community activists,

critical researchers, and others believe poses substantial threats to the vitality of the nation,

schools, teachers, and children.

There are several important skills that society loses when its system of education is heavily

focused on helping children to gain profit making skills to the detriment of the human

development purpose of education. Nussbaum briefly articulates three of these skills, which she

argues are often a consequence of the lack of self-examination, embedded in the education for

profit purpose. The first of these skills according to the author is the inability to pursue clearly

defined goals. When children are not taught self-examination skills they are likely to enter the

labor force with a lack of reflexivity that is often an ingredient of unethical behavior.

Evidence of the lack of clearly defined goals as a consequence of students not being able to

exercise reflexivity can follow them from the classroom to the labor force and sometimes ruin

their careers. After graduation, some students, for instance, accept jobs in banks and other

financial institutions in which they are charged with the responsibility of unethically selling

financial products and services to the masses. As we individually learn from experience, many


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young professionals who are not able to quickly clarify their career goals lose years of working

in jobs that they are grossly unhappy with.

In her book, The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity, Margaret Archer (2012) revealed

through research that students who were able to exercise reflexivity abandoned their jobs in

banks, insurance and other financial institutions because of what they observed and believed

were socially unconscious business practices. Most of the students, according to the author, went

on to pursue employment opportunities in social enterprises or businesses that pursue the triple

bottom line – environmental, social and economic. The students, I argue, were able to abandon

their jobs and pursue different opportunities because they had the ability to clarify their goals – a

skill that is associated with self-examination and what Nussbaum coined as the human

development purpose of education.

The inability to exercise self-examination, according to Nussbaum often conditions people to be

easily influenced. Being too easily influenced is also associated with the inability to ask

questions. This is important for the building and sustenance of democratic institutions (see

Habermas, 1987). Citizens in a democracy must be able to question and acquire an understanding

of why certain decisions are made and what will be the implications on their lives. This is

important for maintaining a healthy working place but also for the critical intellectual

development of children.

“How did you get to know my name when we have never seen each other before” was the

reaction of a five year old kindergarten student, son of a Liberian refugee family in Canada

whom I encountered during the Easter weekend of 2013. Although the boy’s age challenged him

to remember that we had previously encountered each other several times, his questioning skills

are characteristic of a critically curious child who recognizes unusual trends and wants to know


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why. I do not know as to how and where the boy learned his critical questioning skills; however,

Nussbaum argues that the education for human development purpose has a profound role in

equipping children with such skills.

The third and last problem that Nussbaum associates with the lack of self-examination

precipitated by the education for profit making purpose is the tendency to treat others with

disrespect. The lack of self-examination, the author argues leads to the false and myopic thinking

that only our own society is pure within. This “can only breed aggression” (p. 29), Nussbaum

argues. Education does not support stability and humility in society if it marginalizes the human

development purpose in favor of the aspirations of corporatism. As curriculum theory argues, for

intelligence to be cultivated in fundamental and democratic ways, it must be set free of corporate

goals. Intellectual freedom must allow for meditative, contemplative modes of cognition, and for

exploring subjects especially those associated with the arts and social sciences (Fish 2008, cited

in Pinar, 2010). Society certainly needs a system of education that creates the enabling

environment for empathy.

Some of the root causes of the 2008 global financial crisis, specifically, the collapse of the

housing market in the United States that resulted to the displacement of hard working families

from their homes can be linked, partly, but significantly, to the infiltration of education by

unscrupulous corporate teachings that, according to Nussbaum, produce passive citizens, who are

unable to question and criticize authority. But is also a contradiction to what business needs to be

successful, as Nussbaum clearly points:

Business leaders also understand the importance of creating

corporate cultures in which critical voices are not silenced,

a culture of both individuality and accountability. Leading


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business executives in the United States argue that they trace

some corporate disasters- failure of certain phases of NASA

shuttle program; failure of Enron and Worldcom; to a culture

of yes-people where authority and peer culture ruled the roost

and critical ideas were never articulated (p. 53).

Nussbaum has got her argument right. By saturating education with profit making skills and

pushing the values of social democracy on the margins, corporatism is also committing a suicide.

Investigation by the media (see Bandler and Varchaver, 2009), for instance, into the famous

Bernard L. Madoff’s $50 billion dollar swindle in the United States revealed that his success to

deceive investors and even many of his staff flourished on the culture of yes-staff.

Bandler and Varchaver (2009) argued that over the years preceding the 2008 financial crisis,

some staff within Madoff’s investment firm had developed suspicions about the way it was

managed, yet they remained silent and continued to lure the masses. The firm’s staff falsely

marketed it as a stable financial institution that guaranteed healthy returns on investments.

Fortune investigation discovered that many employees were aware that Madoff’s refusal to

replace his computer, a 1980 AS/400 IBM server was a mystery to the firm’s Internet technicians

(Bandler and Varchaver, 2009). Also, in his article, Madoff Scandal Still Haunts Victims, Wall

Street Journal reporter, Dan Strumpf (2012) makes a similar claim about the silence of educated

business professionals in the management of Madoff’s corrupt investment firm.

The ongoing marginalization of the arts and social sciences, that Nussbaum in her book has far

reaching ramifications for the functions of many societal institutions. A democratic education

that is delivered through the arts and social sciences does not only have the potential to facilitate

reflexivity, it can also contribute to the promotion of a culture of accountability, physical safety


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and innovation. As Nussbaum appropriately underscores, “by emphasizing each person’s active

voice, we also promote a culture of accountability” (p. 54). The author also argues that some

airplane disasters are associated with a pilot culture of deference to authority.

Nussbaum is right that corporatism is being suicidal by hijacking education. This is because the

growth of today’s economies is heavily driven by a culture of innovation. Bu if, as we can see,

education continues to prioritize a curriculum that is built on rote teaching methods, it is unlikely

to produce students who can later become innovative in their professional careers. Business

innovation, Nussbaum argues, is proven to be guided and stimulated by diversity of ideas. The

ability to respectfully generate varying ideas and questions, analyze risks and entertain

disagreement based on reasoned argument is often a learned culture that students acquire from

the school.

On April 5, 2013, I attended a university – government social policy innovation forum at

Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. The provincial deputy minister for policy and

priorities, at the meeting, argued that the limited partnership between government and university

researchers in the province is partly linked to a lack of space to entertain critical public

discourses. I would not only agree with the deputy minister’s argument, but I will also add that

our inability to create a space for critical public discourses has reduced our capacity to manage

our local democracy with empathy, and to facilitate social innovation within government.

I will advance my argument about the lack of empathy with a short story. I am a former refugee

from Liberia. I basically escaped to Canada to find a better life and after a few years, it would be

reasonable for me to declare that I am gradually achieving my goals. I am gradually becoming

educated and I am able to have a job through which I can meet my economic needs. I am also


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successfully integrating into society by building useful connections with many people. However,

one day I came from work and began to reflect over the process of my social and economic

integration into Canadian democracy. But I encountered several questions – how possible that in

this country where I came to seek success there are people who are grossly impoverished; why

the original inhabitants of this land of success are poor and I, an immigrant am not that poor?

There are many more questions that I can ask on this puzzling phenomenon, but the important

point here is that there isn’t a public space where I can raise them. Our systems of education,

Nussbaum argues are not helping to create these public spaces for critical debates.

Finally, I want to point out here that I will do a great deal of injustice to Nussbaum and the other

education scholars whose views I have entertained in this paper if I present their arguments as if

an increased emphasis on the education for human development model would prevent many of

the injustices, inequalities and dishonesties that we experience in today’s society. Nussbaum

clearly points out that democratic education and the ability for students to independently think

critically and reflexively alone do not guarantee a set of good goals and a moral society, “but it at

least guarantees that the goals pursued will be seen in relation to one another and crucial issues

will not be missed by haste and inadvertence (2010, P. 49). Her argument is rather that, a

balanced system of education that considers the two purposes of education has the potential to

infuse social stability and a sense of justice in many of today’s institutions.

Conclusion

Martha Craven Nussbaum argues that education has two contrasting purposes in contemporary

society – education for human development and education for profit. The major premise of her

argument is that corporatism is increasingly marginalizing the education for human development


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purpose in favor of profit making. Although Nussbaum clearly and convincingly articulates the

logic of this phenomenon, she fails to acknowledge that it is a debate that corporatism is

winning. Nussbaum does not argue that one of these purposes is more important than the other.

She contends that they are complementary and should be concurrently pursued in education.

I also corroborate Nussbaum’s argument about the increasingly contrasted two purposes of

education by entertaining the views of other contemporary scholars, particularly from the United

States. I argue that many scholars agree with Nussbaum that the influence of corporatism is high

jacking the school curriculum. I agree with Nussbaum that by hijacking education, corporatism is

successfully committing a suicide because the human development purpose of education is

needed for the sustenance of corporate institutions.

References

Archer, M. S. (2012). The Reflexive Imperative in Late Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Bandler, J. and Varchaver, N. (2009). How Bernie Did it. The Cable News Network. Retrieved

April 7, 2013, from

http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/24/news/newsmakers/madoff.fortune/

Brookfield, Stephen. (2007). The Power of Critical Theory for Adult Learning And Teaching.

Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill International (UK) Ltd.

Coady, M. (1939). Masters of Their Own Destiny. New York: Harper and Row.

Connell, C. (2013, April 16). Starbucks, Wal-Mart offering classes - for college credit. CNN

Money. Retrieved from: http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/15/pf/college/corporate-

classes/index.html

DeLeon, A. (2008). Oh no, not the “A” word! Towards an anarchism for education.

Educational Studies, 44(2), 122–141.

Elder-Vass, D. (2011). The Causal Power of Social Structures: Emergence, Structure and

Agency (Reissue.). Cambridge University Press.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/24/news/newsmakers/madoff.fortune/

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/15/pf/college/corporate-%20classes/index.html

http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/15/pf/college/corporate-%20classes/index.html


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Maclean’s (2013). Retrieved from

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/rankings/

Movsesian, M. (2013, January 22). Controversy over Proposed Christian Law School in Canada.

Retrieved from:

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/22/controversy-over-proposed-

christian-law-school-in-canada/

Ozmon, H. A. (2012). Philosophical Foundations of Education, 9th

Ed. Toronto: Pearsons.

Rothfork, J. (2006, March 27). Remaking the American University: Open for business.

Education Review, 9(3).

Sayer, A. (2011). Why Things Matter to People: Social Science, Values and Ethical Life

(1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. (Available via MSVU Library Online)

Strumpf, D. (2012). Madoff Scandal Still Haunts Victims. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April

7, 2013, from

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324339204578171422302043906.html

The Harris Center (2013). Are universities creating entrepreneurs or just ticking boxes?

Retrieved from

http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=nsixiugab&oeidk=a07e7g837js1

65957bf

Time Higher Education (2013). Retrieved from

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/

United Nations (2012). Human Development Index Rankings. Retrieved from

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/

U. S. News Rankings (2013). Best Graduate Schools. Retrieved from:

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools

Zemsky, R. Wegner, G. R., & Massy, W. F. (2005). Remaking the American University:

Market-Smart and Mission Centered. New Brunswick, NJ & London: Rutgers

University Press.

http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/rankings/

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/22/controversy-over-proposed-christian-law-school-in-canada/

http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2013/01/22/controversy-over-proposed-christian-law-school-in-canada/

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324339204578171422302043906.html

http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=nsixiugab&oeidk=a07e7g837js165957bf

http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=nsixiugab&oeidk=a07e7g837js165957bf

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/

http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools


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Artifact # 2: Sefa Dei & Kempf’s (2013). New perspectives on African-centred education in

Canada, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press Inc. (book review essay).


Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2013

The book New perspectives on African-centred education in Canada deserves the critical

attention of Canadian education bureaucrats, politicians, academics and parents. Educators,

George Sefa Dei and Arlo Kempf provocatively address current debates over the

Africentric/Afrocentric education project that aims to improve education for African descended

peoples in North America through a curriculum that is built on the history and culture of Africa.

The authors respond to the suspicions of parents, politicians and government bureaucrats over

the potential ramifications of Africentric schools; and to academics who question the theoretical

underpinnings of Africentricity. In this review essay, I critique the effectiveness of the authors’

response to critics of the Africentric project.

In addressing their critics’ suspicions over the ramifications of Africentric schools, the authors

display a major intellectual integrity by drawing on the Ontario education system to admit that

the Africentric education project attracts controversies, suspicions and legitimate questions.

Almost two years after the elementary Africentric Alternative School (AAS) was

created in Toronto, and shortly after the release of well above average school

test scores at AAS, the controversy is back. The Toronto District School

Board has announced that it is considering opening a second African-centred

program to be located in Oakwood Collegiate, in the city’s northwest. Fears

of crime, accusations of segregation, and sepia-toned calls for multicultural

education once again ring out in the mainstream press (p. 5).


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But the structure of the statement is not completely helpful. By arguing that because an

Africentric school has produced good results, so the authority is opening a second African-

centred program, the authors seem to suggest that the two terms, Africentric school and African-

centred program, are peacefully interchangeable. This is problematic for two reasons. Firstly, it

appears to conceal one of the controversies associated with Africentric schooling. As the authors

evidently point out, many parents and government bureaucrats are uncomfortable with

Africentric schools because they associate them with the reintroduction of segregation and view

them as a rejection of multiculturalism. “For others, it [Africentric school] represented a new

form of segregation that went against everything their forefathers had spent their lives fighting

for” (P. 59).

Secondly, by suggesting that Africentric school and African-centred program can be

interchangeably used in tranquility, the authors seemingly contradict a fundamental premise of

the book. “We use the terms African-centred schooling and African-centred education rather

than Afrocentric or Africentric education and schooling. In so doing, we make a small but

important distinction” (p.22). But Sefa Dei and Kempf can be reprieved from my minor critique

of contradiction because; their articulated distinction between African-centred education and

Africentricity/ Africentric schooling is a helpful intellectual contribution to the evolution of the

African diaspora education project.

As demonstrated in the book, there is contrasting support for African-

centred/Africentric/Afrocentric schools (independent of existing schools) and programs

(integrated into existing schools), and Sefa Dei and Kempf provide a nuanced clarification. As

you read the book, you realize that the African diaspora education project is problematic as an

independent school because it attracts isolation in an increasingly globalized system of education


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in Canada. Conversely, Africentricity as an epistemology or a program within institutions

enriches the learning environment with alternatives and addresses legitimate fears for the

reintroduction of segregation that seem to polarize the Ontario school context.

Anyone who reads this book is likely to gradually become aware that it is a thoughtful defense of

a project and its philosophy that are under profound public scrutiny. This is because the authors

pursue a strategy that analytically categorizes their critics and uses their social characteristics to

dispute their criticisms over the Africentric project. Sefa Dei and Kempf argue that among those

who criticize the African diaspora education project are a group of people “who swallow public

(as opposed to academic) meta-narratives imbued with the fear of Blackness or Africanity hook,

line, and sinker” (p.73). The authors then dismissed this group as people “who will malign

anything African and deny the legitimacy of African ways of knowing” (p. 73).

The authors’ description of this group of critics as ignorant of the project might be appropriate

but the premise of their dismissal is troubling. There are, for instance, African Canadian families

in Nova Scotia, who clearly fit the authors’ description because they are illiterate to read about

the premise of the project and unfortunately, no one has explained to them using non-academic

language. Their resistance is not only underpinned by a lack of knowledge of Africentric schools,

but also largely by the facts of history – lived experiences of segregation. It is problematic to

argue that their suspicions and resistance are simply fuelled by fears of Blackness or Africanity.

They deserve a carefully articulated explanation, through non-academic language, that

Africentric schools and African-centred programs will not reintroduce segregation. Sefa Dei and

Kempf have missed this point.


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The authors also describe another group of their critics as people who “may be well intentioned

but that nevertheless work with Eurocentric frames of reference in order to understand,

investigate, and condemn African-centred education” (p. 73-74). This description and the counter

argument are convincing. Western educational epistemologies are driven by hegemonic

Eurocentric processes that are often resistant to alternative frames. The African diaspora

education project will have to deconstruct this hegemony.

The authors describe their last group of critics as people who pursue “critical interrogations that

appear or express a genuine concern about the relevance of place, contexts, and history in

discussing African-centred knowledge” (p. 74). Sefa Dei and Kempf are very tolerant to the

critiques of this group, because they agree that African-centred schools and Africentric schools

must be rigorously troubled by academics. But the authors’ tolerance for the views of academics

and dismissal of illiterate community members’ views is somewhat elitist. There is a need to

equally address the concerns of community members who have limited information about the

African diaspora education project just as we will do with academics who are interested in its

abstract foundation. The African-centred education project, by definition and application

remains incomplete and must evolve to a greater extent. This is notwithstanding, Sefa Dei and

Kempf should be commended for contributing to the process.


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Category II: In-Depth Knowledge of Themes(s)

Artifact # 3: The Politics of Access to Education for Women within the Context of Intercultural

Contact and Acculturation for Liberian Refugees in Atlantic Canada: Critical

Mapping of a Proposed Doctoral Research (reflection over my proposed

dissertation research - not a proposal).


Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2013

Abstract

This paper contains a critically nuanced presentation of my proposed doctoral research in educational studies. It argues that the overall objective of my doctoral research is to investigate if and how the implications of intercultural contact and politics of acculturation affect access to Western education for Liberian refugee women in Atlantic Canada. The significance of the studies is articulated as personal – an expansion of my master’s research, and contributing to academic and public policy research by seeking to expose the hidden and disarticulated challenges of welcoming refugees and immigrants from cultural contexts that are different from Canada. The study will draw on qualitative methodology and methods, and two interrelated theories of intercultural contact (ecological framework) and acculturation (cultural formation). I propose to include it in my portfolio because it demonstrates my developing ability of academic clarity, criticality, thoroughness and rigor in research.

Introduction

Drawing on theories of intercultural contact and acculturation my doctoral research in

educational studies seeks to critically analyze access to education for Liberian refugee women in

Atlantic Canada including the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward

Island. I am particularly interested in analyzing any implications that the politics of intercultural

contact and acculturation might have for Liberian refugee women’s access to Western education

within the context of spousal relationships. The purpose of my doctoral research is to investigate

the cultural histories of Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada and critically trouble any tensions


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that may be caused by shifting cultural values, practices and gender roles as these refugees

encounter and cross various cultural borders in their interactions with Canadians, and

particularly, as women seek Western education in their new homeland.

The overarching question, therefore, is as follows: is access to Western education for Liberian

refugee women impacted by politics of intercultural contact and acculturation? Using a

qualitative approach, informed by open-ended questions and case study analysis, specific

emphasis will be placed on concepts such as the politics of culture, cosmopolitanism,

acculturation, gender, patriarchy and power from the perspective of intercultural contact for

refugees. My doctoral research will contribute to academic and policy research by addressing the

paucity of research on the implications of intercultural contact and the politics of acculturation

over access to Western education for Liberian refugee women in Atlantic Canada. The research

will also contribute new epistemologies on access to Western education for refugee and

immigrant women from countries - socially, culturally and economically different from Canada.

Context

The academic literature on intercultural contact and acculturation for refugees and immigrants

reveals multidimensional (Tastsoglou, 2006) - politically fluid and static (Pessar & Mahler,

2003) – patterns. The literature, however, is bias by overtly focusing on radical shifts affecting

concepts such as gender relations (Kabeer, 2000) and cultural values and practices that affect

language (Chamberlain & Leyesdoff, 2004), dress codes (Nyemah & Vanderplaat, 2009),

reproduction (Morokvasic, 1998) and religious beliefs, and paying little or no attention to a

needed critical examination of how intercultural contact and the politics of acculturation might

also affect access to education for refugee women. In the article titled Refugee camps as conflict


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zones: The politics of gender, Jennifer Hyndman (2004), for instance, provides a critically

provocative analysis of the politics of intercultural contact and acculturation among refugees,

particularly women. Hyndman (2004) empirically argues that refugee women typically flee from

traditional, patriarchal cultures to technological and democratic societies; hence, their settlement

may induce radical shifts in cultural values and practices related to gender roles.

The internal politics that characterizes refugee spouses’ negotiation over access to Western

education for women after settling in Western countries is never or rarely troubled by academic

and policy researchers. The scantiness of research on this issue is particularly huge for Liberian

refugees in Atlantic Canada. Between 2000 and 2012, about five thousand Liberian refugees

arrived in Canada, mainly through the Canadian Government Assisted Refugee program

(UNCHR, 2012). About six hundred Liberian refugees currently live in Atlantic Canada

(Liberian Association of Nova Scotia, 2013). Like many other refugees and immigrants in

Canada, Liberian refugees constantly encounter and cross various cultural, social, gender,

economic, religious, political, educational and legal borders as they interact with Canadians,

particularly in the cosmopolitan cities of Atlantic Canada (Nyemah, 2008).

As it relates to education, George Sefa Dei and Arlo Kempf (2013) argue that “while there is

nothing uniquely African about a love of learning, education has been a central tool for the

liberation of African people around the world” (p.59). Although the authors do not specifically

mention refugees, they point out that education “has a strategic and political place in the lives of

diasporic African peoples” (p.59). The African diaspora in Canada and the United States,

unfortunately, is increasingly being populated by refugees. This demographic shift among

African diaspora populations emerged from the collapse of the culturally troubling European

colonization project, the quagmire that characterizes Western cultural values and prescriptions


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for self-governance among Africans, and Western extraction of natural resources that

depopulates African villages and modifies their ways of life – cultural values and practices.

As a consequence of the aforementioned phenomena, the Liberian refugees who are part of my

doctoral studies in Atlantic Canada are part of the African diaspora population who Sefa Dei and

Kempf (2013) argue have a unique love for education. Sefa Dei and Kempf (2013) identify one

of the motives behind African’s pursuit of education by positing that “African-descended people

have long linked conceptions of upliftment (as advanced by Garvey and his followers),

emancipation, and equal rights to schooling and education” (p.59). The authors, however, do not

speak to the politics of access to education that punctuates the process of using education as a

tool for emancipation. The politics that emerges when education is sought as a tool for

emancipation and equality, is well documented in the contexts of Blacks in South Africa

(Soudien, 2010), and Aboriginal peoples in Canada (Wotherspoon, 2009). My proposed doctoral

research seeks to address this gap, specifically among Liberian refugee couples in Atlantic

Canada.

But even with the specificity on the African diaspora, Sefa Dei and Kempf’s (2013) argument

about African peoples’ love and motivation for education requires a critical demographic and

geographic disaggregation to eliminate the risk of constituting a metanarrative. Research shows

that, for instance, access to education is gendered and negatively affects girls in Sub-Saharan

African countries (Tembon & Fort, 2008), including Liberia the original homeland of the

refugees in my proposed doctoral research. Plan (2012), an international education agency,

argues that in Sub-Saharan Africa, girls’ “experience of education is impacted and influenced by

policies, cultural practices and traditional values” (para. 2). In its 2012 annual report, Plan (2012)

rhetorically raises the following questions:


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Why is it that across Africa girls are still less likely than boys to enroll and

remain in school? Why, in 47 out of 54 African countries, do girls have less

than a 50% chance of going to secondary school? Why, even at school, do

girls continue to face discrimination and abuse which threaten to

undermine the potentially transformative power of the education they

receive? (para. 5)

The foregoing questions constitute a critically compelling argument for academic and policy

researchers to dialectically trouble access to education for African women, particularly those

who as a consequence of political instabilities and natural disasters, settle as refugees with their

spouses and families in Western countries like Canada. It is worth questioning whether the

barriers, specifically those cultural values and practices that negatively affect access to education

for women in Africa are part of contextual continuities – cultural mobility in this case - by

accompanying and affecting access to education for refugee women. This is important to

examine among Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada, where access to education is not supposed

to be restrained by cultural values and practices.

The United Nations Children’s Education Fund - UNICEF (2013) also caricatures a troubling

picture of access to education for women in Africa in a way that critically challenges Sefa Dei

and Kempf’s (2013) claim that Africans associate education with equality. UNICEF’s argument

is also an imperative for scholars to examine the existence of contextual continuities focused on

the mobility of cultural values and practices that could hinder education for women among

African refugees in Western countries, like the Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada who will

participate in my doctoral research:


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Girls make up the majority of the nearly 120 million children who are out of

school. An even greater majority of those who do get some schooling do not

reach the fifth grade. Girls – more often than boys – are consistently denied

opportunities to go to school for an array of reasons including those related to

HIV/AIDS, gender discrimination, domestic demands, traditional practices,

safety concerns and inappropriate physical and learning environments at

schools (Section 2, para. 1).

Access to education for women in Africa is certainly challenging, and Ogbu (2004) and Ghazala

(2006) are apparently right in their argument that points to a link between migration and a quest

for education for many African women. The unique situation of refugee women, particularly in

the context of spousal relationships, is that some of them come with their families, which could

also facilitate the mobility of their cultural values and practices that hinder education for women.

My proposed doctoral research, thus critically seeks to investigate whether these Liberian

refugees are experiencing cultural contradictions that have impacts on access to education for

women in the context of acculturation in Canada where education is nominally not restrained by

culture.

The need to investigate the existence of cultural contradictions – supporting and hindering

education - for Liberian refugee women in Atlantic Canada has currency because Ogbu (2004)

also reminds us that some African cultures can deter education in post-migration. Research also

shows that Liberian refugees in Halifax, Nova Scotia grapple with an identity crisis (Claveau,

2010). My doctoral research, therefore, seeks to critically track any cultural values and practices


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that may conflict with Canadian cultural values and practices by affecting access to education for

women among these Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada.

Significance

My proposed doctoral research in educational studies has personal, public policy and academic

significance. The research is personally significant because it is an expansion of my master’s

research in international development studies, completed in 2007 with Liberian refugee couples

in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This expansion is a critical inquiry into an exposed, but non-analyzed

and disarticulated trajectory of my master’s research for a host of technically practical reasons.

The objective of my master’s research was to investigate whether there is a relationship between

refugee migration and changing gender relations. I addressed this question by analyzing the

migration histories of five Liberian refugee couples. Drawing on feminist research and using a

qualitative approach, my master’s research revealed a web of unfolding gender trends

fundamentally propelled by intercultural contacts (Nyemah, 2008). The women that I

interviewed seemed to embrace and enjoy a renegotiation of gendered relationships with their

spouses.

Contrary to how these Liberian refugee couples culturally lived in Liberia, the women joined

men to participate in the labor market by being fully employed. This new practice - employment

for women - was also a cultural adaptation imposed and necessitated by the Canadian labor

market and gender context in which dual earning is a cultural norm. At the beginning of this

cultural shift among the Liberian refugees - dual earning within couples - men controlled the two

incomes, but women gradually negotiated and began to exercise control over theirs by securing


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separate bank accounts. These refugee women were also demanding that their husbands

participate in domestic labor such as cooking and cleaning – another radical shift - from their

traditional practices.

Although the Liberian refugee men in my master’s research expressed frustrations over these

cultural shifts in gender relations, their women seemed to relish them. The women assertively

argued that these new practices were part of the ways of life in Canada and that the law would

protect them if their men/spouses became resistant or violent. The study revealed that Liberian

refugee women acquired these new perspectives through interactions with Canadians on public

transportation, in churches and at English Language learning centers. The influence of settlement

agencies including the Immigrant Settlement and Integration Services and the YMCA during

refugee orientation was also emphasized as a key transmitter or conduit of Canadian cultural

values and practices from Canadians to Liberian refugees. Refugee men, however, were

uncomfortable with these contextual discontinuities – the disruption of their cultural values and

practices - and viewed them as threats to their positions within the family.

I had addressed the question of my master’s research through a gender lens. But in retrospect, I

reflexively question if the gender lens had not limited how much I could have learned from this

study. It seems to me that primarily, it is culture, and not exclusively gender that is under threat

in the perspective of these Liberian refugee men. I therefore argue that, there is a need to

intellectually trouble the hypothesis of Liberian refugees’ culture being undermined by other

cultures in a complex web of intercultural contacts during the settlement of refugees. This

argument is worth exploring because it would be uncritical to assume that Liberian refugee men

do not recognize that the economic success that comes with their women’s access to education


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and participation in the labor market will exponentially contribute to the success of their

families.

My proposed doctoral research also has significance for public policy because there is potential

for uncovering new epistemologies that can expand our understanding of the disarticulated or

hidden cultural implications for welcoming refugees and immigrants from other cultures of the

developing world. Each year, Canada grants asylum to more than 22,000 refugees from around

the world (Citizenship & Immigration Canada, 2013). This is an excellent humanitarian gesture,

but the ensuing ramifications of intercultural contact and the politics of acculturation,

particularly as it relates to access to education for refugee women elude the understanding of

public policy makers. Understanding the educational experiences of refugee women is

particularly important because unlike immigrants, they live with psychological scars from forced

displacements.

A critical understanding of intercultural contact and acculturation in the context of border

crossing is also important in Canada where federal and provincial governments tout immigration

as a strategic means to inject vibrancy into an aging population and ensure economic stability. A

recent statement by the federal Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Chris Alexander (2013)

emphasizes this strategic position:

And I don’t need to tell you as Vancouverites that immigration is one of Canada’s

most vital public policy issues. It’s not just an issue of bringing people from there

to here or of achieving those efficiencies and reforms in the program to do it

quickly. It’s a question of our economic future. It is about nation-building, in

that the future of our country depends on getting the economic mix right,

economic policies right, the skills set of our workforce right. And immigration


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has a huge role to play in that (para. 4).

During the 2013 legislative elections in Nova Scotia, immigration was also a common if not the

major talking point in the platforms of the opposing political parties. The leader of the

Progressive Conservative Party, Jamie Baillie (2013), for instance, seemed more audacious on

immigration by claiming that he wanted to be the first premier to increase the population of the

province to one million. Baillie (2013) specifically argued that he would have achieved this

immigration milestone by building “a stronger case with the federal government to permanently

increase the cap for new Canadians to Nova Scotia under the provincial nominee program” (p.

9). However, what is critically missing in these political discourses by Alexander (2013), Baillie

(2013) and other Canadian policy makers is the critical examination of the implications of

intercultural contact and the challenges of acculturation as immigrants and refugees settle and

interact with Canadians.

The families who will participate in my doctoral study come from northwestern Liberia, where

access to Western education is limited for women (Claveau, 2010). The region is the center of

the traditional Sandi society that teaches girls how to become obedient wives (Azango, 2012).

The Sandi also practices female genital mutilation (Simon, 2012). Typically, men make

important family decisions, especially those concerned with external relations (Lupic, 2012). In

this context, the men hold more power over women. This is problematic in post-migration

Canada, where male and female equality is a pronounced value. Upon arriving in Canada,

Liberian refugee couples experience great pressure to adopt new skills and attitudes to survive in

their new country (Nyemah, 2008). Given the patriarchal nature of this population’s traditional

gendered roles, I intend to particularly investigate if men are not reluctant to permit their wives


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to pursue Western education. This is important because access to education for women is not

supposed to be restrained within the Canadian cultural, social, educational and legal context.

My proposed doctoral research also has academic significance because it will fill a critical gap in

the literature on the politics of intercultural contact and acculturation over access to education for

refugee women. The work of “Derrida (1978, cited in Cornforth, 2010, 167) taught us to look

with suspicion on the relations of power in any situation of dualism”. Liberian refugee men in

Atlantic Canada are living within the contrasting influences of their traditional cultural values

and Canadian values. It is worth exploring whether these mixed cultural influences affect access

to Western education for women. Researchers have extensively explored the concepts of

intercultural contact and acculturation among diaspora populations in the United States (Viruell-

Fuentes, 2007; Chhuon, Hudley, Brenner & Macias, 2010), Canada (Nyemah & Vanderplaat,

2009; Chareka, Nyemah & Manguvo, 2012) and Europe (Polek, Wöhrle & Oudenhoven, 2009)

but there is limited concentration on how the concepts affect access to education for refugee

women, particularly Liberian refugee women in Atlantic Canada.

In 2011, a female African immigrant professor, for instance, was killed in an act of domestic

violence in Nova Scotia, the province that is host to the largest Liberian refugee population in

Atlantic Canada. The woman was not a refugee, and although events like this are always

complicated to explain because of emotions and competing untested theories, it was extensively

reported (CBC, 2011) that tensions between the victim and her husband over education and

employment played an important role in her death. My research will provide a unique analysis

from the perspectives of both refugee men and women on access to education for women.


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Research Questions

My proposed doctoral dissertation research seeks to understand the impacts of intercultural

contact and the politics of acculturation on access to education for Liberian refugee women in

Atlantic Canada. Primarily, the research inquires whether access to Western education for

Liberian refugee women is impacted by politics of intercultural contact and acculturation. The

study will specifically seek to answer the following questions: is access to education for Liberian

refugee women in Atlantic Canada affected by their traditional cultural values and practices as it

is in Liberia, and if so, why and in what ways? Do intercultural contact and acculturation impact

on access to education for Liberian refugee women in Atlantic Canada, and if so, why and in

what ways? Are Liberian refugee men’s perspectives on access to education for their women in

Atlantic Canada different from those they held in Liberia, and if so, why and in what ways? Are

Liberian refugee women’s perspectives on access to education for themselves in Atlantic Canada

different from those they held in Liberia, if so, why and in what ways?


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Key Concepts

Figure I: Doctoral Research Concpt Map

Western education for refugee women

Culture

Cultural relativism

Purpose of education

Difficult conversation

Acculturation politics


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My proposed doctoral dissertation research will be grounded on a rigorous examination of

several interrelated concepts including culture, cultural relativism, acculturation, the delicacy of

entertaining a difficult conversation and the politics of the purpose of education. Committing to a

critical treatment of these concepts is academically significant for me because at the end of my

doctoral studies, I would like to comfortably make measurable epistemic claims within the

territory of culture and education as a scholar. I do not intend to incorporate a detailed

examination of these concepts in this paper because space and time are limited. However, below

is a synoptic picture of how far I intend to explore these concepts in longitude and latitude.

Culture - is a fluid concept that is problematic to define because it is contextually relative and

intellectually political. But I will choose Zimmermann’s (2012) argument that “Culture is the

characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by everything from language, religion,

cuisine, social habits, music and arts” (para.1) as my point of departure to specifically explore

gender, patriarchy and power as the relevant subsets within the context of my research.

Cultural relativism – my point of departure here is the premise that “cultures exist, they differ

from one another, they’re coherent and yet diversity persists within them” (Bednar, Bramson,

Jones-Rooy & Page, 2010, p. 107) to particularly explore globalization, migration,

multilateralism, cosmopolitanism and Female Genital Multination (FGM) as part of the

antecedents and fabrics of the politics of cultural relativism.

Acculturation politics – this is a rich and broad area of academic inquiry. Paul Smokowski

(2006, p. 14) defines acculturation as the “phenomena which results [result] when groups of

individuals having different cultures come into continuous first hand contact with subsequent

changes in the original culture patterns of either or both groups” (citing Redfield, et al, 1936, p.


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149). Berry’s (2003) work is critically extensive in providing theoretical insight into the politics

of acculturation by disaggregating it into what he calls four different strategies including

assimilation, marginalization, separation and integration. Under acculturation politics, I intend

to explore biculturalism, an outcome of Berry’s (2003) theorization of acculturation that

describes the process of being knowledgeable in two cultures (LaFromboise, Coleman, and

Gerton, 1993).

The concept of dissonant acculturation, which refers to different patterns of acculturation within

the same family (Portes, 1999) is also a relevant part of my critical treatment of acculturation,

because it has potential to become a source of tension. What happens, for instance, when a child

or spouse becomes the translator within the family because of his/her ability to acculturate

faster? I will also explore the concept of enculturation, a trajectory of acculturation in which

immigrants or refugees, particularly people from the second generation onward are learning and

recovering their lost culture (Soldier, 1985). The Gaelic community in Nova Scotia, which is

currently teaching and promoting its culture, is a perfect example in this context (Nova Scotia

Office of Gaelic Affairs, 2013). I also intend to explore ethnogenesis – not only the learning of a

culture, but also integration into some of its subcultures that can produce a mixed set of values

and cultures (Berry, 2003). Research with Jamaican immigrants in the United States, for

instance, reveals that men changed their gender role expectations by being involved in domestic

work, while still retaining their perception of the home as the territory for women (Foner, 2001).

Difficult conversation – A difficult conversation, according to Stone, Patton and Heen (2000) is

anything that is hard to talk about. The authors argue that sexuality, race, gender, politics and

religion are often some of the subjects that are associated with difficult conversations and

questions. The foregoing articulation by Stone, Patton and Heen (2000) is conceptually


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congruent with some of the characteristics of the intellectual environment of education. The key

issues of my doctoral research are very delicate to discuss, particularly within some cultural

contexts like that of the Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada. I will critically examine the

delicacy of entertaining a difficult conversation as part of the broader theoretical grounding for

my research.

The purpose of education – I intend to draw on the contributions of Nussbaum (2010), Pinar

(2012) and Apple (2006) to trouble the purpose of education in contemporary society. This is

important because my doctoral research is concerned with the politics of access to education for

women. All of these concepts and sub-concepts will deeply inform the theoretical perspectives of

my research.

Methodology

The concept methodology encompasses research process and procedures (Ponterotto, 2005), or

the logic and philosophical assumptions that guide any natural social, or human science study,

whether articulated or implied (McGregor, 2011). Methodology is philosophical because it

questions and provides the framework in which data is gathered for creating knowledge. When

you speak of methodology, according to McGregor (2011), you are also talking about four

branches of philosophy. These include metaphysis - concerned with studying the nature of being,

existence, and reality; epistemology – concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge; logic –

studies forms of valid argument; and axiology – concerned with the role of values and of the

researcher in the generation of new knowledge. This background is important because it reflects

the interconnectedness of the research process.


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I am of the conviction, however, that the choice of a research methodology is personal. This is

partly because scholars often disagree over what constitutes the best methodology for any

particular study (Creswell, 2003 & MacCleave, 2006). There are three well recognized

methodologies which include empirical, interpretive, and critical, but each has a different

understanding of what counts as knowledge, reality, logic and the role of values and of

researchers (Gephart, 1999 & Niglas, 2001, cited by McGregor, 2011). These differences also

propel me to believe that the choice of a particular methodology must be driven by the goal of

the study. This means that the methodological philosophy of a study must address its questions

and objectives.

A key methodological goal for my doctoral research is to analyze the cultural politics of access

to education for refugee women within the context of intercultural contact and acculturation for

Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada. The intent is to deeply understand the educational

experiences of ten refugee couples, with a particular focus on access to education for women. I

do not intend to generalize the results as a way of presenting the educational experiences of all

refugees (see Maxwell, 2005 on generalization of research results); although Lincon and Guba

(1985) rhetorically argue that the only generalization in qualitative research is no generalizations.

My study will also make a unique methodological contribution to academic research because I

intend to devote a significant inquiry into the perspectives and experiences of refugee men as a

way of understanding the politics that characterizes access to education for Liberian refugee

women within the context of intercultural contact and acculturation. In the article Men's

Perceptions of Women's Rights and Changing Gender Relations in South Africa: Lessons for

Working With Men and Boys in HIV and Antiviolence Programs, Dworkin, Colvin, Hatcher and

Peacock (2012) explore “the ways that men who are engaged in HIV and antiviolence


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programming can often be simultaneously resistant to and embracing of changes in

masculinities, women’s rights, and gender relations” (p. 97). I intend to build on these authors’

call for researchers to incorporate the experiences of men in the analysis of women’s oppression.

The methodological approach to data collection and analysis for my doctoral research will be

qualitative. Very often instead of describing or defining what it is, some scholars articulate

qualitative research as an alternative to quantitative research. I argue that this is problematic

because, for instance, defining apples as the fruit that do not have many seeds as oranges falls

short of the required definition. Uwe Flick’s (2008) argument, for instance, that as opposed to

collecting numbers, qualitative research collects text, almost slips into this intellectual habit of

using differentiation as definition. However, the author later contends that the primary interest of

qualitative research is to use the perspectives of participants to construct their everyday reality.

Knoblauch, Flick and Maeder (2005) contend that there is a growing proliferation of qualitative

research that is driven by differences in methods and theoretical orientations, national contexts,

disciplines and nonacademic interests. For instance, grounded theory and phenomenology

research are very prominent in qualitative research, but each might have nuanced methodological

principles based on specific interests. Examples of differences between national contexts such as

Germany, United Kingdom and the United States are well documented by Knoblauch, Flick and

Maeder, (2005). We can also appreciate that a qualitative research in nursing that involves

vulnerable patients might be driven by different methodological principles different from

qualitative research in management or education. Such differences are likely be characterized by

ethical considerations.


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There is also a growing and different trajectory of qualitative research that is driven by

professional interests outside of academia. A labor force research contracted to consultants by

governments, for instance, might use qualitative methodologies but the methodological

principles are likely to be different from what academics would employ in using qualitative

methodologies to conduct the same study. It is undeniable that this proliferation and

diversification raise important questions about standardization (see Flick, 2008) that are both

stimulating and problematic. I argue, however, that such questions about standardization are also

good for qualitative research because they provide opportunities for creativity that could

additionally pave the way for critical reflexivity among practitioners.

My research methodology is qualitative. This means that I will not only ask what these Liberian

refugee couples are experiencing, but also, how and why, so as to understand their experiences

(see Pryor, 2010 & Creswell, 2003). The development of qualitative research is historically

linked to the principles of appropriateness. Qualitative research was developed partly to aid

Westerners interested in studying non-Western cultures because it provided the framework to

view cultures through the eyes of those who own them (Flick, 2008). I believe that my particular

focus on questions such as why and how are relevant to the understanding of the cultural

experiences of the Liberian refugees.

As is often the case with qualitative research, I intend to solicit the active involvement of

participants in data collection (Barber, 2004; Purdam, Wilson, Afkhami & Olsen, 2008) and, by

engaging them in conversation about the meaning of their experiences, in data analysis (Willis,

2001). Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the world of research

participants (Flick, 2008, citing Denzin & Lincoln, 2005). I intend to use the lens of the


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participants to understand their educational experiences within the context of intercultural

contact and acculturation in the cosmopolitan cities of Atlantic Canada.

I also intend to employ qualitative methods for the study. Ponterotto (2005, citing Denzin &

Lincoln, 2000b) argues that qualitative methods refer to a broad class of empirical procedures

designed to describe and interpret the experiences of research participants in a context-specific

setting. Qualitative methods are the technical procedures that are used in data collection and

analysis. The qualitative methods that I will use are semi-structured interviews, critical discourse

analysis, and life history analysis. These methods will enable me to focus on a limited number of

couples and probe the research questions (MacCleave, 2006) on access to education for women,

intercultural contact and acculturation. The methods will include stringent measures for privacy

and confidentiality. Due to the participants’ sensitivity to gender issues (Azango, 2012), I will

seek to interview each separately.

My Identity

Educator, Edgar Schein (1995) argues that our sense of being right is strongly linked to our

identity. As a Liberian man, my identity affords me a perspective that could impact my

researcher role in this study. Reflexively, I will be able to understand men’s experiences in

navigating the politics of intercultural contact and acculturation and the implications for women

and their education. I am also a former refugee, who is constantly involved in public speaking,

reflexively sharing my experiences and the related research that I pursue. This research will

particularly enrich my dialogue with the various audiences to successfully translate knowledge

into policy and practice that promote gender equality and education.


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Theoretical Framework

Given the Liberian refugees’ experiences of migration, my proposed doctoral study will draw on

several interrelated theories of intercultural contact and acculturation. There is a huge variety of

literature that proposes and uses different theories of intercultural contact, acculturation and

cultural change in examining the ramifications of border crossing by various cultural groups.

There is, however, limited attempt to apply some of these theories to the examination of the

settlements of African refugees, particularly access to Western education for Liberian refugees in

Canada. There is potential for uncovering new epistemologies from the application of theories of

intercultural contact and acculturation to the context of Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada,

partly because of their cultural history on access to education for women.

In their article, Emergent cultural signatures and persistent diversity: a model of conformity and

consistency, Bednar, Bramson, Jones-Rooy and Page (2010) “describe a multi-dimensional

model of cultural formation” (p. 407) theory within the context of intercultural contact. The

authors’ cultural formation theory is premised on two inherently paradoxical characteristics – “an

internal desire to be consistent and social pressure to conform” (p.407). As a minor critique, I

argue here that this theory critically glosses over the possibility that these two contrasting forces

are generated from within the same individual. Scholars interested in the theory of cultural

formation within the context of intercultural contact and acculturation should seek to critically

trouble the possibility that many refugees and immigrants internally desire concurrently to be

consistent with their cultural practices and values, and conform to the cultural practices and

values of their new place of settlement.


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My doctoral studies, for instance, hypothesizes that a Liberian refugee man in Atlantic Canada

might not want for his wife to pursue Western education as a way of preventing her from

questioning some aspects of their culture. The premise of this hypothesis is strengthened by the

fact that many societies expect women to serve as the custodians of culture (Nyemah, 2008), and

that some religious conservative groups in the United States are opposed to some liberal

education subjects for their children as a way of preventing them from questioning the tenets of

their religious beliefs (Mash, 2011). Conversely, cognizant that education for his wife might

positively impact on the economic status of his family, the same Liberian refugee man might be

internally perturbed that his decision to be culturally consistent is detrimental to the success of

his family. The phenomenon of negotiating competing cultural values is psychologically

complex for the individual and should not be simplistically characterized as the disagreeable

confluence of internal and external forces as Bednar et al. (2010) suggest.

In her book, The power to choose. Bangladeshi women and labor market decisions in London

and Dhaka, Kabeer (2000) also explores a similar psychologically conflicting situation as

individual women internally struggled to be culturally consistent by avoiding men, but at the

same time develop economic ambitions for which they choose work in places where they interact

closely with men outside of their families. These are, two excellent examples showing two

contrasting cultural forces generated from within the same individual. Kabeer (2000) encourages

us to understand the situation of these women through the concept of false consciousness.

Equally, women who perform female genital modifications confront an internally different but

psychologically comparable dilemma. Gyn (1997) argues that “mentally castrated, these women

participate in the destruction of their own kind – of womankind – and the destruction of strength


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and bonding between women” (cited in Johnsdotter & Essen, 2010, p. 29) by circumcising other

women.

The aforementioned minor critique aside, the theory of cultural formation that Bednar et al.

(2010) propose is very relevant for examining the politics of intercultural contact and

acculturation over access to education for women among Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada.

The cultural formation theory provides a unique vantage point from where I can critically gain

insight into how Liberian refugee couples negotiate the delicate tasks of maintaining their

traditional cultural values and practices, while trying to also integrate into the wider Canadian

society. I will adapt the application of the cultural formation theory by being sensitive to the

identification of various trends that can make new contributions to academic and policy research,

not only in the context of Liberian refugees, but refugees and immigrants in general.

Bednar et al. (2010) catalogue an array of scholars who have used the cultural formation theory

in different contexts. Some of their findings are debatable and difficult to critically ignore. The

authors cite Fisman and Miguel (2007) who in using the theory of cultural formation argued that

there is “a correlation between home country corruption levels and unpaid parking tickets issued

to diplomats in New York City” (cited on p. 410). Bednar et al. (2010, p. 410) also posit that

“Miguel et al. (2008) have found a correlation between a soccer player’s tendency to be

penalized in Europe and the prevalence of violence in his home country.”

I argue that the findings of Fisman and Miguel (2007) and Miguel et al. (2008) reported by

Bednar et al. (2010) constitute an uncritically simplistic analysis. Often, some scholars easily fall

into the trap of intellectual laziness by uncritically linking corruption and violence in non-

Western countries to corruption and violence in the countries of origin by those who commit


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them. Certainly this is a possibility, but as academics, we need to critically address additional

harder questions. How about, for instance, the possibility that diplomats, refugees and

immigrants commit corrupt and violent practices because as the theory of cultural formation

holds, they do so due to social pressure to conform?

The American, Barrack Obama, for instance, had to settle 17 years of unpaid parking fees in

order to be eligible for registration as a presidential candidate (Colby, 2007). There ware, also,

several of his ministerial nominees who were withdrawn for tax fraud related charges. Obama,

for instance, nominated Tom Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services but Daschle

did not even get a senate hearing due to several corruption charges related to tax evasion (Stein

& Weiner, 2009) discovered in vetting his profile. In Canada, we are currently witnessing

allegations and confessions over astronomical financial corruption within the senate and Prime

Minister’s office (Delacourt & MacCharles, 2013). There are also professed financial kickbacks

with taxpayers’ money within the provincial government of Quebec (Montgomery, 2013).

Within these contexts of corruption, it is simplistic for any serious research to link the corrupt

practices of diplomats to corruption in their home countries without considering the pressure to

culturally conform in a new location.

As it relates to sport violence both on and off the pitch, Ukrine, England and Italy compete for

the title of the world’s most violent soccer fans and players in the world (Arrowsmith, 2013). “The

English are usually given credit for bringing hooliganism to soccer, but recently it has spread to

all corners of the continent (Jardine, 2011, para. 3) of Europe. Any research that points to a link

between the foreign players’ offences against the established rules and violence in their home

countries deserves to be critically troubled by scholars.


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I will abandon these easily accessible anecdotes of corruption and sport violence in Western

countries that are home to numerous refugees, immigrants and professional athletes from Africa

and other Southern countries. I however, argue that the work of Fisman and Miguel (2007), and

Miguel et al. (2008) that correlate unpaid parking tickets by diplomats in New York, and soccer

violence with corruption and violence in the countries of origin of the perpetrators as reported by

Bednar et al. (2010) is a narrow and uncritical application of the cultural formation theory.

But Padilla and Perez (2003) provide a historically distinct contribution to theories of

intercultural contact by highlighting the work of “Robert Park the best known of the melting pot

theorists” (p. 36). Park in 1914, according to Padilla and Perez (2003), “undertook the study of

what happens to people from diverse cultures and languages when they come into contact with

one another (p.36).” Working at the Chicago school of sociology, Park proposed the ecological

framework as, “a three-stage model—contact, accommodation, and assimilation” as described by

Padilla and Perez (2003, p.36).

Park’s ecological framework holds that “contact between peoples from different cultures forces

them to seek ways to accommodate to each other to minimize conflict” (Padilla & Perez, 2003,

p.36). This ecological framework is relevant and I intend to apply it to the research context of my

doctoral studies with Liberian refugee families in Atlantic Canada. This is partly because, I

hypothesize that these refugees are constantly negotiating to accommodate cultural differences to

facilitate their integration into the greater Canadian society. Alluding to the acculturation of

newcomers in the United States, Park had argued that “as immigrants learned to accommodate

the dominant group, a process of cultural assimilation ensued culminating in intermarriage and

amalgamation” (Padilla & Perez, 2003, p.36).


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Padilla and Perez (2003) chronicle the work of anthropologists Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits

(1936), who expanded the ecological framework by emphasizing the significance of “continuous

first-hand intercultural contact and subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either

or both groups” (p.36). The key perspective here is that intercultural contact does not only

engender cultural change among immigrant or refugee groups, but also the host communities.

This point is significant because it suggests that host communities might be indifferent to

refugees and immigrants for fear of altering local cultural values and practices. Is it possible, for

instance, in the context of my proposed doctoral studies, that Canadians are proactive in

transmitting their cultural values and practices, such as access to education for women to

Liberian refugees as a way of preventing the mobility of repressive cultural values and practices?

Conservative groups in the United Kingdom, for instance, are opposed to the construction of

mosques, because in their view, mosques are a breeding ground for values and practices that

clash with Western values and practices.

Linton and Herskovits (1936), according to Padilla and Perez (2003) also provide a nuanced

expansion of the ecological framework by arguing that “acculturation did not imply that

assimilation would ensue automatically” (p.36). This is critically true because refugees, for

instance, might adapt the language of their new location, while at the same time resisting or

denied other cultural values and practices, for instance living in suburban locations to enjoy

nature and tranquility. The contrasting cohabitation of acculturation and non-assimilation within

refugee and immigrants groups and individuals is what some scholars refer to as the dualism of

being here and there (Chun, Balls Organizta & Marin, 2003) or the present-absent status (Jacoby,

2004) in acculturation. Berry’s (1980) emphasis on the “importance of multicultural societies,

minority individuals and groups, and the fact that individuals have a choice in the matter of how


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far they are willing to go in the acculturation process” (p.37) is a critical expansion of the

ecological framework.

Conclusion

This paper contains a critically nuanced presentation of my proposed doctoral research in

educational studies. It argues that the overall objective of my doctoral research is to investigate if

and how the implications of intercultural contact and politics of acculturation affect access to

Western education for Liberian refugee women in Atlantic Canada. The significance of the

studies is articulated as personal – an expansion of my master’s research, and contributing to

academic and public policy research by seeking to expose the hidden and disarticulated

challenges of welcoming refugees and immigrants from cultural contexts that are different from

Canada. The study will draw on qualitative methodology and methods, and two interrelated

theories of intercultural contact (ecological framework) and acculturation (cultural formation).

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Artifact # 4: What is Culture: A Critical Review of the Literature


Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 2013.

Introduction

In this literature review I argue that culture is a fluid concept consequently; intellectual projects

aimed at defining it are inconclusive, flawed with exclusivity, ubiquity, and political, social,

economic and environmental biases. The paper has two major foci. The first is an examination of

the contributions of some earlier and notable social theorists to the conceptualization of culture.

The second focus is an examination of the intellectual work that aims to define culture. The

conceptual work on culture is foundational and accentuates the essence of the concept, while the

definitional work is descriptive.

As a point of departure, I contend that ongoing debates over culture can be categorized as

political and theoretical claims. The political claims are characterized by the labeling,

legitimization and counter-labeling and de-legitimization of cultures, often through unrelated

lenses. This process is fraught with colonial and hegemonic intricacies because it raises questions

of power and injustice, and attracts further debates focused on cultural relativism (Cowell, 2010;

Burke, 2010); often a contentious premise of cultural uniqueness in an increasingly globalized

world. This paper is not focused on this political category of claims over culture.

The deliberations in this paper are concerned with the second category of claims over culture

which I term theoretical. This process of theoretical claim-making over culture is characterized

by a web of definitional dialectics seeking to coin a phrase that intellectually conveys the

meaning of culture descriptively. I am focused on this aspect partly because the term “culture not


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only implies problems of epistemic representation, in other words problems of knowledge, but

also problems of justice, which require the empirically tenable representation of others and their

life practices” (Straub & Weidemann, 2006, p.13).

Culture as Conceptualized

Several social theorists during the time period from the eighteen to the twentieth century made

enormous intellectual investments aimed at advancing the conceptualization of culture. Their

contributions continue to be revisited and expanded in contemporary critical cultural scholarship.

In their recent book Cultural Theory: An Introduction, Smith and Riley (2011) excellently

chronicle the intellectual contributions of several social theorists, for instance, Karl Marx, Emile

Durkheim, Max Weber, George Simmel, Friedrich Neitzsche and W.E.B. Du Bois to the

conceptualization of culture. My analysis of Smith and Riley’s (2011) synopsis of Marx’s is that

he had an evolving conception of culture that morphed from the essence of materialism and

economics to the social and abstract complexity of human emotions and relationships.

According to Smith and Riley (2011), “Under [Marx’s] materialist understanding of industrial

society, culture (along with politics and the law) was seen as an epiphenomenal super-structure

built upon a determinant economic base” (p.30). Because of this view, Marx has been criticized

by many contemporary critical cultural scholars as being anti-cultural, because he exclusively

emphasizes economic and material classism and the interest of the bourgeoisies. But Marx can

be reprieved because his materialist perspective of culture later evolved to “a more humanistic

vision with an emphasis on the mental life of the subject. He spoke of species as being a form of

solidarity toward which people aspire” (Smith & Riley, 2011, p.32). He had, for instance, linked


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culture to alienation – a complex form of psychological detachment and isolation (Brookfield,

2007).

According to Smith and Riley (2011), Emile Durkheim, another social theorist, posited that

“society was very much a moral phenomenon held together by sentiments of solidarity. These

play their part in ensuring the survival of a smoothly, functioning, well-integrated society in

which every piece had its place” (p.34). My analysis of these scholars’ characterization of the

contribution of Durkheim is that he injected the lens of analytics or logic as another way through

which culture can be comprehended. This is because according to Crossman (2014), Durkheim

had categorized society as simple and industrial, the latter being cohesive and functioning

through a mechanical solidarity; while the former is marked by a division of labor resulting to

organic solidarity. I argue, however, that Durkheim’s characterization of non-Western/European

societies, premised on his doctoral research with Aboriginal communities in Australia is a

simplistic view of a culturally complex group of people.

In advancing his notion of solidarity as a key way of understanding culture, Durkheim, according

to Smith and Riley (2011) also argued that religion was a key tool for bonding, and sharing

sentiments. The authors’ critique of Durkheim is that by encouraging us to view culture as a

force of unity, he glosses over the fact that culture is also a force of difference and division. This

critique is worth attending to. In a seminar organized by Connecting Cultures (2013), a

multicultural forum in the United Kingdom, a local participant argued that “culture can

sometimes be the cause of separation” (p.3), while another participant from the Netherlands also

buttressed the divisive characteristic of culture by positing that “Unfortunately, culture is that

one thing that divides us instead of uniting us into being a little part of mankind” (p.3). These

participants’ perspectives can confirm that Durkheim’s contribution to the conceptualization of


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culture, although analytically insightful, is skewed by being blind to the divisiveness of the

concept.

Durkheim’s analytic perspective of culture is synonymous to the contribution of Max Weber in

two distinct ways. Firstly, “At the center of Weber’s relevance for cultural theory is his

understanding for human action” (Smith & Riley, 2011, p.42), for which he proposed two

contrasting modes including value action and goal-oriented action. He had argued that value-

action was driven by “cultural beliefs and goals, such as the search for religious salvation, while

goal-oriented action (also known in cultural theory as purposive rationality, means-ends

rationality and instrumental action), was driven by norms of efficiency” (p.42). Weber’s analytic

lens accentuates the place of the abstract content of belief (Kim, 2012). A key point to emphasize

here is that Durkheim and Weber help us to understand culture through the lens of analysis, but

they also accentuate the place of religion in theorizing culture.

I argue here that Georg Simmel’s contribution to the conceptualization of culture is intellectually

provocative. Simmel talks about the influence of money as being an end to human action – a

contradiction to Marx’s that production is the end (Smith & Riley, 2011), but agrees that it leads

to life being impersonal and alienated. The claim that human action is influenced by money is

debatable because it lacks any analytic stratification. Simmel also argues that the overwhelming

bombardment of information and the description of the individual by others undercut his/her

ability to be autonomous (Bridge & Watson, 2002; Smith & Riley, 2011). Simmel has got this

point right, because in contemporary society, our cultural beliefs, values and actions are

exogenously, and intrusively so, influenced by advertisements and other market forces.


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Simmel’s prescription, however that “in order to cope with this intrusion, we must shut down our

emotional responses by keeping a distance, remaining aloof, etc…” (p.53) fails to encourage our

understanding of the psychological complexity of culture (see Berry, 2003). This is because he

metaphorically suggests that culture is a non-emotional equipment that the owner can switch on

and off as desired. But the way Simmel links the intrusive perspectives of others over the

individual to culture is critically insightful and stands parallel to the work of W.E.B. Du Bois

(2013), whose contribution to the conceptualization of culture also emphasizes how other

individuals and groups find themselves at the center of an endogenous and exogenous struggle

over their identities and cultures. Du Bois describes this psychological struggle over culture as

“double consciousness” (James, Este, Bernard, Benjamin, Lloyd, & Turner, 2010). Du Bois’

contribution to our understanding of culture is uniquely conveyed in the context of race.

There is also Friedrich Neitzsche, who makes a notable contribution to the conceptualization of

culture. Like Durkheim and Weber, Neitzsche’s conceptualization of culture comes through his

critiques of religion. He had challenged “existing modern morality by showing that the so-called

goodness of modern man is not virtuous, that his so-called religion is not religious, and that his

so-called truths are not truthful (Kaufmann, 1959 [1950]: 97)” (cited in Smith & Riley, 2011, p.

56). Neitzsche mainly challenges the tendency by some religious groups to promote their values

as the purest and most moral over others. He characterizes the Judeo-Christian religious

enterprise as being imperialistic, hegemonic and capitalistic. I point out here that Neitzsche’s

contribution to our understanding of culture emphasizes the place for relativism, particularly as it

relates to values, morals and religion as some of its key constituents.

I will begin to conclude this section of the paper by introducing the contribution of the Italian,

Antonio Gramsci, another social theorist to the conceptualization of culture. Gramsci’s


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contribution to the conceptualization of culture comes through his major adult education project

in which he sought to sensitize oppressed Fiat factor workers about how they were being

oppressed by the bourgeoisies (Brookfield, 2007). Drawing on the concept of cultural hegemony,

Gramsci sought to educate the masses about how they contributed to their own oppression by

supporting and learning to not oppose the ruling class (Mouffe, 1979a; Kenway, 2001). The key

point that Gramsci contributes to the conceptualization of culture is that the concept is also a

learned ideology. Gramsci, however, fails to provide a methodology or a paradigm for

countering hegemonic oppressions.

I do not intend to summarize and critique all of the social theorists who have contributed notably

to the conceptualization of culture. Such a task is equivalent to the writing of a book, which is far

beyond the purpose of my paper. One of the critiques against Brookfield (2007), Smith (2001)

and Smith and Riley (2011) and others who, for instance, chronicled the work of most of these

social theorists, is a lack of depth and breadth or simply omitting other notable theorists. But

what I have gleaned from my summary and critique above is that these theorists have informed

our understanding of culture as constitutive of religion, values, morality, difference, unity, power

and oppression. The concept is abstract, concrete and learned. These characterizations are not

exhaustive, however.

Culture as Defined

In his compendium of vocabularies associated with culture, Raymond Williams (1979), also a

major contributor to the conceptualization of culture argues that “culture is one of the most

complicated words in [the] English language… because it has now come to be used for important


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concepts in several distinct intellectual disciplines and incompatible systems of thought” (p.87).

The author’s contention is not insignificant by any means. But more importantly, it perfectly

foregrounds my critiques of the contributions of the varied scholars who have attempted to

define culture. Williams’ (1979) insight about the difficulties in defining culture is in fact an

intellectual preemption aimed at responding to the inevitable critiques to his own definition of

culture.

Before injecting his personal insight, Williams (1979) draws on an historical sixteen century

thought which metaphorically defined culture as the breading of crops and animals, and the

development of the human mind. Smith (2001) also confirms this historical perspective by

contending that “During this period, the term began to refer also to the improvement of society

as a whole, with culture being used as a value-laden synonym for civilization” (p.1). This sixteen

century intellectual relic of culture as a concept has currency because it encourages us to think of

culture as a process. But I contend that this thought is problematic because it fails to articulate

culture as a structure, for instance, an artifact that is visually perceivable and touchable.

I am also going to argue that the historical theoretical perspective that metaphorically

characterizes culture as a breading or gardening process has quantum political undercurrent

driven particularly by a European desire to “essentialize”, differentiate and explicate humanity.

The time period spanning the sixteen through to the eighteen century is marked by increased

intercultural contacts between Europeans and Africans resulting to the infamous scramble for

Africa – the colonial division of the geography, resources and peoples of Africa by Europeans

(Michalopoulos & Papaioannou, 2011). Europeans at the time, sought ways to not only take

control of Africa, but also to distinguish Africans from Europeans by injecting a value-laden

meaning into culture as a concept.


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In contributing to our understating of culture, Friedrich Neitzsche talks about this differentiating

of humanity as - will to power – “a drive in a force or entity to distinguish itself or to resist being

reduced to the likeness of other forces and entities thereby expressing its difference” (Smith &

Riley, 2011, p. 57). As Smith (2001) rightly argues, “A typical usage of the time might compare

the nations of Europe that had culture with the barbarism of Africa” (p.1). This derogatory

“expression included technological differences as well as those of morals and manners” (Smith,

2001, p.1).

In his later work, however, Williams (1989), chooses to introduce his own definition of culture

by arguing that “Culture is ordinary: that is the fact. Every human society has its own shape, its

own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these in institutions and in arts

and learning” (p.87). The author also emphasizes “whole way of life” (p.87) as a synoptic

definition of culture. There are three important observations about Williams’ (1989a) definition.

Firstly, it is simplistically complex, because it conveys a sense of ordinariness, uniqueness and

entirety and the acquisition of knowledge that can be both endogenous and exogenous as a

process. These attributes can be intellectualized in many varied ways.

Secondly, Williams’ (1989a) definition offers a counter response to the sixteen to nineteen

century thought by being value-neutral. Thirdly, it is an apparent cautious intellectual attempt

that appreciates relativism as an important attribute of culture, espoused in contemporary critical

cultural theory (Texas A & M University, 2013). These three observations are confirmed by

Andrew Hartman (2009), who argues that “Williams conceived of culture as “customary

difference”: Our culture is that which we are accustomed to and that which others are not” (para.

5). Williams’ (1989a) contribution is certainly commendable, but as Smith (2001), argues in

pointing out some of the difficulties associated with defining culture, “One of the lessons that we


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have learned from poststructuralism is that a neutral, omniscient text is an impossibility” (p. viii).

My critique of Williams’ definition is that by trying to be inclusive, it becomes too ubiquitous.

Defining culture remains elusive and divisive among contemporary scholars even with the

historic contributions of their predecessors (Apte, 1994). The existence of varying views on

defining culture can be confirmed by Helen Spencer-Oatey (2012) who in cataloguing

definitional quotations on culture discovered that “In 1952, the American anthropologists,

Kroeber and Kluckhohn, critically reviewed concepts and definitions of culture, and compiled a

list of 164 different definitions” (p.1). These anthropologists, according to Spencer-Oatey (2012)

found very little consensus on the definition of culture.

Avruch (1998) argues that the difficulties in defining culture are linked to three problematic

usages. In the first and as “exemplified in Matthew Arnolds’ (1867), culture referred to special

intellectual or artistic endeavors or products” (p. 9; cited in Spencer-Oatey, 2012, p. 1). This

definition, according to Avruch (1998) is problematic because it excludes or characterizes other

people as culture-less. The second and as “pioneered by Edward Tylor (1870), referred to a

quality possessed by all people in all social groups, who nevertheless could be arrayed on a

developmental continuum from “savagery” through “barbarism” to “civilization” (Avruch, 1998,

p. 8; cited in Spencer-Oatey, 2012, p. 1). In Avruch’s (1998) view, this definition is inclusively

extreme to the point that even animals would have a culture. Avruch (1998) does not have a

point here! What, for instance, is wrong with categorizing the behavior of animals, or even

bacteria as a culture? Our understanding of culture cannot be narrowed to human morality.

The third usage that Avruch (1998) points to is rooted in the work of Franz Boas and Johann von

Herder which rejects the use of culture that is value-laden and differentiates people derogatively.

This is a point that I had equally espoused earlier in this paper. But Avruch’s (1998) overall


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argument is not about the individual contents of these three usages; the argument is rather about

eclecticism in trying to define culture. The author has got a point because, for instance, one can

argue from these definition that the intellectual attempts to define culture are not only

disagreeable, they are inconclusive – a fundamental argument of this paper.

Zimmermann (2012) argues that “Culture is the characteristics of a particular group of people,

defined by everything from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts” (para.1).

This is a commendable contribution because the author’s use of the term “everything” casts a

wider net and suggests a critical awareness of the ubiquitous nature of culture. But

Zimmermann’s (2012) attempt to be inclusive is not without flaws. Leah Watkins (2010), for

instance, argues that “it [culture] is influenced by numerous other factors, such as geography and

climate, politics, religion and history” (p. 696). Watkins’ (2010) argument convincingly exposes

some of the limitations of Zimmermann’s (2012) effort.

Zimmerman’s (2012) definition also delegitimizes some aspects of my personal culture, because

people of my cultural heritage, the Grabo in Southeastern Liberia, for instance, practice a system

of naming children that is not influenced by any of the variables cited by the author. Culture

dictates for the Grabo ethnic group that the naming of newborn babies is defined by

reincarnation, a belief system that identifies a baby as the reincarnation of a deceased family

member. Family in this context refers to a group of about 30 nucleus families linked by a

common patrilineal heritage.

In his book, The Experience of Culture, Michael Richardson (2001) argues that “culture is a

mediating process that serves communication and acts as an intermediary between different

realities” (introduction). The author offers significant insight that defines culture from a

functional perspective, metaphorically as a force of gravity that unites a culturally homogenous


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group. This definition is important because certain common cultural characteristics, such as

language, religion and staple food can mediate between individuals of a particular cultural group.

Within a group of expatriates, for instance, French speakers are more likely to congregate with

other speakers than with Arabic speakers.

But this functional lens of articulating culture by what it does within a homogenous group is not

without flaws, because it glosses over the negative bearings that culture exhibits as a function

over the affinity of heterogeneous groups by dichotomizing them. Bednar, Bramson, Jones-Rooy

and Page (2010, p. 409), for instance, cite “Axelrod’s (1997) culture model [which] assumes that

agents mediate interactions based on social distances.” Religious beliefs and ethnic practices, for

instance, have been a key factor in the civil war that subsequently split Sudan (Ali, 2011; Akol,

2013) and continue to threaten stability in the new South Sudan (Allafrica.com, 2013).

From another functional vantage point, Wilkesmann, Fischer and Wilkesmann (2009, p. 466,

citing Hofstede, 1994) define culture as the ‘‘collective programming of the human mind that

distinguishes the members of one human group from those of another’’. This definition coheres

with my earlier critiques of Richardson’s (2001) definition that culture does not only unite, it

also divides people. Wilkesmann, Fischer and Wilkesmann (2009), however glosses over the fact

that culture can also act as a point of connection for a particular people. But these scholars’

definition has a dimension that chronicles culture as abstract and learned.

Advancing this abstract and cognitive perspective of culture, Jenks (2005, p. 8) asserts that

“culture is a consideration of all that which is symbolic; the learned, ideational aspects of human

society”. Jenks (2005), however, points out that historically, “To speak of the cultural was to

reaffirm a philosophical commitment to the difference, particularity and supposed plasticity that

is ‘humankind” (p.8). The author further contends that “European linguistic convention equates


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‘culture’ largely with the idea of ‘civilization’… Both ideas may be used interchangeably with

integrity in opposition to notions of that which is vulgar, backward, ignorant or retrogressive” (p.

9). Jenks’ (2005) offers a laudable critique by arguing that “everyday language usage of the term

culture carries along with it senses of particularity, exclusivity, elitism, specialist knowledge and

training or socialization” (p.11). This is a somewhat confirmation of the premise of my critique.

Conclusion

The purpose of this paper is to examine the theoretical discussions aimed at developing a

definition of culture. I first examined the works of some notable social theorists that

conceptualize culture. This analysis is important because it critically and historically informs our

understanding of culture in a foundational way. My conclusion from analyzing the conceptual

works on culture is that the concept is constitutive of religion, values, morality, difference, unity,

power and oppression. The concept is also abstract, concrete and learned. These

characterizations are not exhaustive, however. In the second section of the paper, I critiqued the

various definitions of many scholars and found no consensus for an agreed definition. This

finding confirms my principal argument that the task of defining culture is inclusive and flawed

with exclusivity and political biases, because the concept is fluid and ubiquitous.

In the end, culture is a construct which is infused with the social, economic, political and

environmental biases of the individual for whom a definition is attributed. Culture is complex, it

evolves and manifested in situations, beliefs, artifacts and language. It is indeed, everything to

everyone.


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Category III: Research Knowledge and Competencies

Artifact # 5: Talking research process: A messy spot on the doctoral student’s journey

Joseph Nyemah, PhD Student, Educational Studies

Mount Saint Vincent University, 2014

Introduction

One of the key milestones on the doctoral student’s journey is research – critically analyzing and

clarifying, or in some cases, complicating an already puzzling and sophisticated phenomenon. In

this paper I draw on my doctoral research with Liberian refugee couples in Atlantic Canada to

reflect over the place of the research process on the doctoral contour with a particular emphasis

on methods and methodological perspectives of social research. I particularly trouble the

concepts of paradigm, ontology, epistemology, axiology, methods and methodology to advance

McGregor and Murnane’s (2010) argument that they are a messy spot on the doctoral silhouette

or journey.

Jonathan Grix’s (2002) article Introducing students to the generic terminology of social research

is my point of departure. Grix (2002) has accomplished two tasks that are critical to the

expansion of my reflection. First, the author provides a detailed description of the key concepts

associated with the process of social research; including ontology, epistemology, methodology,

methods and sources. Second, he argues that sound research must not only recognize the

interconnected relationships between these concepts, it must also be conscious that each has a

particular position or place in the evolution of the research process. Grix (2002) argues, for

instance, that the research method cannot be selected before the questions are defined.


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Grix (2002) provides a structured “directional and logical relationship” (pp.180) between the key

research concepts that unfolds sequentially as (paraphrasing) ontology – what is out there to

know; epistemology – what and how we know about it; methodology – how can we go about

acquiring that knowledge; methods – which precise procedures can we use to acquire it; and

sources – which data can we collect. Although I will likely choose to follow Grix’s (2002)

directional and logical relationship framework in defining my doctoral research process, I do

have some minor critiques. I am particularly worried that the framework is somewhat

mechanistic in sequence. This is partly because I subscribe to the belief that there are multiple

ways of discovering a particular knowledge.

I should, however, point out that my minor critiques of Grix’s (2002) framework would be unfair

if I fail to disclose my social identity. This is partly because, according to educator Edgar Schein

(1995), our sense of being right is strongly linked to our identity. It is also unfair, as Anne

MacCleave (2006) rightly argues, to criticize a particular paradigm from the perspective of a

different paradigm. I come from a particular African culture that values storytelling, driven by

the heart – emotions and spontaneity as opposed to the logic of preplanned linearity. Grix’s

(2002) directional relationship framework, as I have argued, is mechanistic because it reflects

some aspects of a particular European-American thought in analyzing and viewing reality.

This European-American thought holds that the “real world can be understood largely through

the positivist application of science and hypothesis testing, and that time is linear” (Paxton, 2010,

pp. 122). In many areas of European-American culture, according to Paxton (2010), there is

emphasis on timely adherence to agendas, and orderliness than spontaneity. My intent here is not

to generalize this positivist frame as a research philosophy of all European-Americans, but rather


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to argue that Grix’s (2002) framework is located within it as a cultural paradigm in analyzing

phenomena and viewing the world.

The structure of this paper begins with an examination of the key research concepts: paradigm,

ontology, epistemology, methodology, methods and sources. I explore each of these concepts

and articulate where I stand as it relates to my proposed doctoral research. Several scholars,

including Merriam and Simpson (2000), MacCleave (2006), McGregor and Murnane (2010)

argue that the understanding and application of these research concepts are confusing both for

students and experienced academic researchers. Some researchers, for instance, seemingly

confuse methodology with methods by using them interchangeably. I therefore, critically

examine the characteristics of these research concepts and locate them within my doctoral

research process. My deliberations are also guided by Creswell’s (2003) argument that there is

no agreement among scholars over the research process.

Paradigm

The concept, paradigm, does not necessarily have a particular place in the research process. We

cannot, for instance, locate paradigm on Grix’s (2002) directional and logical relationship line

that I have previously discussed in this paper as an independent concept. Conversely, we can

describe the entire directional and logical relationship framework as a paradigm, or describe any

one of the concepts as a paradigm. This is partly because according to the free dictionary (2013),

paradigm refers to a set of assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that constitutes a way of

viewing reality for the community that shares them, especially in an intellectual discipline.

Paradigm also implies “a rather unified and progressive system of beliefs that revolves around


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the object of knowledge” (Koro-Ljungberg, 2008, p. 218), or stable and hierarchal systems that

legitimate knowledge based on priorities and internal expectations established within paradigms

(Kuhn, 1996). From these definitions, I argue that one’s ontology – a way of viewing the world

can be considered a paradigm.

Contributing to the discussion, McGregor and Murnane (2010) also argue that the concept,

paradigm, has two dimensions. The first is philosophical, encompassing the basic beliefs and

assumptions about the world. The second is technical, encompassing the methods, and

techniques adopted when conducting research. Considering paradigm as a philosophy of

research as these authors argue, I contend then, that for instance, positivism – a research

philosophy driven by prediction; interpretivism – driven by description; and critical theory –

driven by emancipation, are paradigms. But each of these research philosophies can also be

considered as ontology, because each espouses a unique way of viewing reality. Merriam (1988),

for instance, refers to positivism as a paradigm, and as I have previously mentioned, Paxton

(2010) also provides a critical reflection on what he termed White paradigm.

There are also several scholars who agree with McGregor and Murnane (2010) in their

classification of paradigm as a technical process. For instance, Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004)

used the phrase mixed method research paradigm and Guba (1979) and Mhlauli (2011) described

what they called naturalistic inquiry paradigm in their respective research. Hammersley and

Martyn (2002) also mentioned qualitative or quantitative research paradigm, which I argue

depicts paradigm as a research philosophy. Based on these examples, I contend that, although

usually associated with an implied worldview, or a theoretical stance, paradigm can be used to

describe almost anything within the research process. In their typology of basic beliefs and

alternative inquiry paradigms, Guba and Lincoln (2008), for instance, clearly demonstrate that


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positivism, postpositivism, critical theory and constructivism are examples of paradigms (see

also Ponterotto, 2005). Examining the various theoretical contributions on paradigm is important

for me because as a doctoral student, I do not only need to be conversant with paradigm as a

research concept, I should also be able to articulate any research philosophy and process that I

choose to employ as paradigms.

For the purpose of this paper, and broadly describing research philosophies as paradigms, I

would like to locate myself using two selected examples. I am mainly drawn to the research

paradigms of post-positivism and critical theory. Postpositivism acknowledges an “objective

reality that is only imperfectly apprehandable” (Ponterotto, 2005, p. 17). The key argument here

is that human intellectual capabilities are fallible and that life’s phenomena are basically

intractable, and therefore, one can never fully see and understand a true reality. I am attracted to

this philosophy because, for instance, I believe that the data that we collect from research

participants is only probably correct. Interviewees can always choose to provide true or false

answers during research. There is also the factor of interest that has enormous influence over the

data collection process. As researchers we should be aware that we often pursue certain research

problems or questions because of our interests (Habermas, 1972); participants also do the same

when they provide answers to questions.

There is often a lot of intellectual tension resulting from attempts by some scholars to vigorously

distinguish themselves as postpositivists from positivists – the former emphasizing theory

falsification and the latter emphasizing theory verification and espousing the notion that true

reality can be fully captured and understood (Lincoln & Guba, 2000). But actually the two

research philosophies have a lot in common. For instance, they both advocate for objectivity on

the part of the researcher, although postpositivists would hold this as ideal rather than attainable.


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On this point, I align myself with the postpositivist paradigm because I don’t believe that the

researcher can be completely objective. The reasons why I chose, for instance, to focus my

doctoral research on Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada strongly invalidates any claims of

objectivity. I do have a vested interest in facilitating the social and economic integration of the

community and I want to do this by researching and sharing their challenges with the right

stakeholders.

What do I mean also by saying that I am a critical theorist or attracted to critical theory as a

research paradigm? The critical theory research paradigm “serves to disrupt and challenge the

status quo” (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1994 and 200, cited in Ponterotto, 2005, p. 129). The

“knowledge interest involved in critical theory is emancipatory – the unmasking of ideologies

that maintain the status quo by restricting the access of groups to the means of gaining

knowledge and raising of consciousness or awareness about the material conditions that oppress

or restrict them” (Usher, 1996, pp. 22). This paradigm rejects the possibility of an apolitical

social theory. I am attracted to it because, for instance, I approach access to education with the

suspicion that some people are likely to be interested in denying others so as to promote

inequality. My interest in the context of my proposed doctoral research is to detect and reverse

this situation if it exists.

My position that I have articulated as a critical theorist clearly reflects that I cannot be fully

objective – my minor point of disagreement with postpositivism philosophy as a research

paradigm. This is because I am not only pursuing research because of my interest in the issue; I

am also expecting that the upshots will be emancipatory for the participants. As Ponterotto

(2005) contends, the critical theory research paradigm is driven by a theme of emancipation and

transformation in which the researcher’s proactive values are central to the task, purpose, and


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methods. The author further argues that the critical theory research paradigm acknowledges a

reality shaped by ethnic, cultural, gender social and political values. As I pursue my doctoral

research, I am driven by the conviction that reality, for instance, access to education, is mediated

by power relations that are socially and historically constituted.

I will conclude this section of the paper on paradigm as a research concept by presenting some

elements of Guba and Lincoln’s (2008, p. 257-261), typology of basic beliefs of alternative

inquiry paradigms in research to show a synoptic characterization of postpositivism and critical

theory as research paradigms:

Issues Research paradigm

Postpositivism Critical theory

Ontology critical realism, reality but only imperfectly

apprehendible

Historical realism – virtual reality shaped by social,

political, cultural, economic, ethnic and gender values;

crystalized over time

Epistemology modified dualist/ objectivist; critical tradition/

community; findings probably true

Transactional/ subjectivist; value-mediated findings

Methodology modified experimental/ manipulative; critical

multiplism; falsification of hypotheses; may include

qualitative methods

Dialogic/ dialectical

Axiology propositional knowing about the world is an end in

itself, is intrinsically valuable

Propositional, transactional knowing is instrumentally

valuable as a means to social emancipation, which is

an end in itself, is intrinsically valuable

Voice Disinterested scientist as informer of decision

makers, policy makers, and change agents

Transformative intellectual as advocate and activist

Inquiry aim Explanation: prediction and control Critique and transformation; restitution and

emancipation

This table provides a synoptic framework of the position of postpositivism and critical theory as

research paradigms. However, as I have already mentioned, I am drawn to these paradigms, but I

hold contrasting views on some of the issues particularly under postpositivism. For instance, as it

relates to the voice of the researcher, I am not a disinterested scientist; I do have a vested interest

in my doctoral research.


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Ontology

In graduate school we speak extensively about ontology, particularly during course work focused

on research methods. Ontology relates to the theory of existence, or more pointedly examining

what it means to exist or to be (McConnell-Henry, Chapman and Francis, 2009). It is the study of

the form and nature of reality (Paxton, 2010) or simply the researcher’s view of the world

(Langerbach, Vaughn and Aagaard, 1994). An important argument here is that as researchers, we

individually have unique ways of pointing out and articulating what we believe is reality. The

way we see reality, I believe is both innate and learned. For instance, I believe that my

understanding of romance is innate, because I am naturally or biologically conditioned to feel

comfortable with the opposite sex.

But I am also often suspicious of power, oppression and compassionate elitism in some aspects

of my professional life because my experiences are punctuated and informed by these concepts.

Whenever I pursue research that is aimed at examining human relationships, I am driven by the

notion that one party is dominant and another is exploited. I am also quick to recognize this way

of viewing the world by others. A few years ago, I made a professional visit to the Democratic

Republic of Congo with a Paris based international humanitarian organization. Drilling bole

holes to improve access to safe drinking water was one the agency’s programs so it had imported

several pipes and drilling equipment into the country. However, almost all of the local staff,

although involved in the drilling process had believed that my French expatriate colleagues were

not just drilling bole holes for water; they were also secretly extracting diamonds, gold and other

mineral resources.

I am using the Congolese story to demonstrate how one’s ontology is informed by learning and

experience, partly because James Baldwin (1998, p. 321) argues that:


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it is to history that we owe our frames [ontology] of reference,

our identities… people who imagine that history flatters them …

are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become

incapable of seeing or changing themselves… and they suffer

enormously from the resulting personal incoherence.

The ontology of these Congolese about the humanitarian work of the French is deeply informed

by the history of colonization and exploitative resource extraction. Paxton (2010) argues that “for

many of us who are White, our ontology springs from our history of deterministic, reductionist,

rational, and objective ways of verifying what is real” (p. 122). Researcher, Nereda White

(2010), an Indigenous Australian, vividly argues that she was more comfortable with the use of

Indigenous worldview and Indigenous methodologies in researching education and leadership

among Indigenous Australians because they informed her experiences.

I had earlier mentioned that I am attracted to the postpositivism and critical theory research

paradigms. Postposivists, Ponterotto (2005) argues, “accept a true reality but they believe it can

be apprehended and measured imperfectly; a position [also] known as critical realism” (p. 130).

As I approach my doctoral research with Liberian refugees, I believe that the study can only

reveal some aspects of the true reality that surrounds the politics of access to education among

the participants. Also as a researcher attracted to critical theory, I am aware that one of my goals

is that my doctoral research will contribute to some ways of improving the lives of the

participants. Some might rightly argue that the inherent influence of emotion and emancipation

are a weakness for the quality of the study, but I also contend that the fact that I acknowledge

them is a point of intellectual strength.


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Epistemology

Epistemology concerns itself with the theory of knowledge or how knowledge is acquired

(McConnell-Henry, Chapman and Francis, 2009). The concept is “concerned with the

relationship between the knower - the research participant, and the would-be knower - the

researcher” (Ponterotto, 2005, p. 129). The key argument is that the concept describes the

process of gathering information. From this technical perspective, epistemology encompasses

methods and methodologies used in data collection and analysis (Langerbach, Vaughn and

Aagaard, 1994). A postpositive researcher, according to Ponterotto (2005), may use semi-

structured or brief interviews. A critical theorist researcher is also likely to conduct

conversation-style interviews that allow participants to talk about their experiences in ways that

are not structured and linear.

As a researcher attracted to postpositivism research paradigm, I am aware that I may have some

influence on the data collection process, particularly because I am also a former Liberian

refugee. But I am also aware that ensuring objectivity and the independence of research

participants are important guidelines for the research process. This is what Ponterotto (2005)

calls the dualism/objectivism spectrum. I believe that all researchers should acknowledge this

factor, because it shows that we are not completely detached from the context, the issue and the

participants of the research. In some cases, in order to gain the trust of research participants, the

researcher must locate him/herself into the context. This might require the building of

relationships with the research participants.


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Axiology

Axiology is concerned with the role of the researcher’s values in the scientific process. It is the

study of values and ethics focused on how human societies make meaning of life’s mysteries and

question what is intrinsically valuable (Paxton, 2010 and McGregor, 2011). Axiology has a

profound role in the research process. For instance, as a doctoral student, the choice of how and

what is important to focus my dissertation research on, who to talk to and the specific questions

to ask is influenced by certain values that I live by. Although I am attracted to the postpositivism

research paradigm, I disagree with its argument that there is no place for values, hopes,

expectations and feeling in the research process (Ponterotto, 2005). This is because as a

researcher interested in critical theory, I have a vested social, moral or political interest in my

research that is easily detected in my rhetoric – or the language that I employ. Another critical

researcher might characterize this differently – working hard to ensure that the impact of values

on the research process is accounted for.

Methodology

The concept methodology encompasses research process and procedures (Ponterotto, 2005), or

the logic and philosophical assumptions that guide any natural social, or human science study,

whether articulated or implied (McGregor, 2011). Methodology is philosophical because it

questions and provides the framework in which data is gathered for creating knowledge. When

you speak of methodology, according to McGregor (2011), you are also talking about four

branches of philosophy. This include metaphysis - concerned with studying the nature of being,

existence, and reality; epistemology – concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge; logic –


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studies forms of valid argument; and axiology – concerned with the role of values and of the

researcher in the generation of new knowledge. This background is important because it reflects

the interconnectedness of the research process as I have discussed earlier in this paper.

I am of the conviction that the choice of a research methodology is personal. This is partly

because scholars often disagree over what constitutes the best methodology for any particular

study (Creswell, 2003). There are three well recognized methodologies which include empirical,

interpretive, and critical, but each has a different understanding of what counts as knowledge,

reality, logic and the role of values and of researchers (Gephart, 1999 and Niglas, 2001, cited by

McGregor, 2011). “Empirical research is based on observed and measured phenomena and

derives knowledge from actual experience rather than from theory or belief” (Penn State

University, 2014, para. 1). It also refers to “a class of research methods in which empirical

observations or data are collected in order to answer particular research questions” (Moody,

2002, p. 1).

Referred to as qualitative research in some disciplines, interpretive research “is conducted from

an experience-near perspective in that the researcher does not start with concepts determined a

priori but rather seeks to allow these to emerge from encounters in the field” (University of Utah,

2014, para 1). Interpretive researchers “thus attempt to understand phenomena through accessing

the meanings participants assign to them” (Orlikowski and Baroudi 1991, cited by Walsham,

1993, p.2). Interpretive methods of research start from the position that our knowledge of reality,

including the domain of human action, is a social construction by human actors and that this

applies equally to researchers” (Walsham, 1993, p.3). One of the key arguments here is that

there is no objective reality that researchers can discover.


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I am particularly attracted to critical qualitative research. Very often instead of describing or

defining what it is, some scholars articulate critical qualitative research as an alternative to

quantitative research. I argue that this is problematic because for instance, defining apples as the

fruit that do not have many seeds as oranges falls short of the definition. Uwe Flick’s (2008)

argument, for instance, that as opposed to collecting numbers, critical qualitative research

collects text almost slips into this intellectual habit of using differentiation as definition.

However, the author later contends that the primary interest of critical qualitative research is to

use the perspectives of participants to construct their everyday reality.

Knoblauch, Flick and Maeder, (2005) contend that there is a growing proliferation of qualitative

research that is driven by differences in methods and theoretical orientations, national contexts,

disciplines and nonacademic interests. For instance, grounded theory and phenomenology

research are very prominent in qualitative research, but each might have nuanced methodological

principles based on specific interests. Examples of differences between national contexts such as

Germany, UK and the US are well documented by Knoblauch, Flick and Maeder, (2005). We

can also appreciate that a qualitative research in nursing that involves vulnerable patients might

be driven by different methodological principles different from qualitative research in

management or education. Such differences are likely be characterized by ethical considerations.

There is also a growing and different trajectory of qualitative research that is driven by

professional interests outside of academia. For instance, a labor force research contracted to

consultants by governments might use qualitative methodologies but the methodological

principles are likely to be different from what academics would employ in using qualitative

methodologies to conduct the same study. It is undeniable that this proliferation and

diversification are raising important and problematic questions about standardization (see Flick,


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2008); however, I argue that they are also good for qualitative research because they provide

opportunities for creativity that could additionally stimulate critical reflexivity among

practitioners. In the following sections of the paper, I provide a synoptic description of my

proposed doctoral research with a particularly emphasis on methodological perspectives.

The case study – my proposed doctoral research

Each year, Canada provides asylum to more than 22,000 refugees from around the world

(Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2013). Between 2000 and 2012, through the Canadian

Government Assisted Refugee program, more than 5,000 Liberian refugees were resettled in

Canada. Six hundred of them currently live in Atlantic Canada (UNCHR, 2012; Canadian

Council on Refugees, 2012). Generally the education experiences of the more than 22,000

refugees who arrive annually in Canada are under researched. The limited research information

on the educational experiences of refugees is particularly significant for Liberian refugees in

Atlantic Canada.

In 2007 I completed my master’s thesis research with the Liberian refugee community in

Halifax, Nova Scotia. The study revealed that resettlement to Canada was influencing gender

changes within couples, particularly division of labor and domestic budgeting (Nyemah, 2007).

A second master’s student, Claveau (2010), completed his thesis with the same population and

reported struggles in identity formation. None of these studies, however, provides any

information on access to education.

I want to contribute to addressing the research gap on the educational experiences of refugees in

Canada by focusing my doctoral research in educational studies on analyzing the educational


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experiences of the Liberian refugee population in Atlantic Canada. The need to research access

to education among Liberian refugees is particularly significant because they come from a

country where access to education is historically politicized both within the family and at the

national level. In some rural parts of the country, like the origin of the families that I intend to

engage as participants in my proposed doctoral research, it is common that some parents would

choose to commit more resources to boys’ education than girls’. This cultural philosophy, which

can also be observed in other African and Asian countries is mainly because some parents

believe that boys will do better in school, will not drop out due to pregnancies, and that the

benefits of their education will advance the interests of the family as opposed to girls who will

subsequently join the families of their husbands. This example demonstrates that access to

education is gendered within the family based on the anticipated impact.

Access to education, also, is particularly a historically political subject among Liberians. The

official establishment of Liberia as a state was driven by the repatriation and resettlement of

freed slaves from the United States in the 18th century. The freed slaves were educated, but

chose to oppress access to education for the natives whom they did not only meet on the land,

but were also the majority, constituting about ninety per cent of the total population. Cognizant

of their own experiences about how access to education had enlightened them about freedom and

enabled them to challenge their slave masters in the United States, the freed slaves also wanted

to be masters in Liberia and did not want an educated native population to challenge their rule.

They deliberately suppressed access to education for the natives.

This strategy of suppressing access to education for the natives successfully enabled the freed

slaves to create a dictatorial elite minority rule, marked by nepotism and cronyism that was

unchallenged for more than one hundred years. However, as a few natives gradually became


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educated, they began to challenge and subsequently dethroned the dictatorial government in

1980. I am a former Liberian refugee, and I am aware that to some extent, the educational

experiences of most of the Liberian refugees that I intend to engage in this study are informed by

the historical politicization of access to education in Liberia.

I am particularly interested in understanding the decision making processes for access to

education between husbands and wives among the Liberian refugee population. This is partly

because education for women in post-migration could trigger a change in power dynamics,

specifically gender roles. Canadian scholar Jennifer Hyndman (2004), for instance, argues that

refugee women typically flee from traditional, patriarchal cultures to technological and

democratic societies; hence, their resettlement may change gender roles. Equal access to

education and work is part of the benefits that refugees enjoy when they are resettled from a

developing country like Liberia to a developed country like Canada. Sefa Dei (2004) also calls

for a critical inquiry into culture to understand the educational experiences of African

immigrants in Canada. Some aspects of my research with the Liberian refugee couples will focus

on the influence of gender, patriarchy and culture over access to education.

My study is also important because, education, I believe, can act as a trigger of social, cultural,

religious, environmental, political and economic change in many different ways that challenge

tradition and culture. Some people who are opposed to such change are also opposed to access to

education for others in society. After a few years of going to school, for instance, Malala

Yousafzaia, a Pakistani girl, 15, began to develop a new perspective about girls not having equal

access to education as compared to boys (Quinn, 2013) in her country. Malala subsequently

began to campaign for girls’ education, although in the process, she was fatally shot by Islamic

extremists who reject education for women. The militant group claimed that they targeted Malala


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because she promoted Western thinking and criticized the Taliban’s behavior (Time, 2013). I

argue that Malala’s previous years of education had triggered her campaign for girls’ education

or what the Taliban believed was a campaign to promote Western thought about equality.

Malala Yousafzaia’s story and the recent abduction of girls by Islamists in Nigeria (Chothia,

2014) are particularly exemplary cases that excellently portray not only how education can

trigger change in society, but also how those who feel threatened by such change can react. As

Richard Smith (2005) contends “education is like a culture, a process of inculcation concerned

with civilized thinking and behavior” (p.1), or a process “that frees the learner from the

contingencies of the world that he or she happens to have been born into, opening up a realm of

wider ideas and values (p. 2).”

I reject Smith’s (2005) use of the term civilized, partly because, I believe that it invokes

memories of colonization and displaces the good intentions of education. Conversely, I believe

that the author’s characterization of education allows us to gain insight into how education can

give the individual a new determination with a sense of purpose. As the former British Prime

Minster, Gordon Brown, argues "Malala [has become] a true inspiration for girls’ education

around the world, and am sure that she can become a real leader in the campaign for a school

place for every girl and every boy" (France-Presse, 2013, para. 1).

In Canada, where the Liberian refugees live today, it is well documented that suppressing access

to quality education was partly instrumental in preventing social mobility for Aboriginal people

(Wotherspoon, 2009). Also, In South Africa during the Apartheid era, Blacks were denied

quality education because it would have increased their understanding of citizenship, and

triggered more demonstrations against the brutal White rule (Soudien, 2012). Women,


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particularly Black women, were denied access to education in South Africa. The politics that

characterizes access to education has existed in society for many years. As early as between 427

and 347 B.C.E., one of the sages of humanity, Plato, thought that “boys and girls should be given

an equal [educational] opportunity to develop themselves to the fullest” (Ozmon, 2012, p. 10).

All of these threads of history, in many different ways, make a profound case for my curiosity to

examine access to education among Liberian refugee couples in Atlantic Canada. In the

following sections of paper, I locate and trouble the place of the key research concepts of

paradigm, ontology, epistemology, method and methods.

Questions

My proposed doctoral dissertation research seeks to understand the impacts of intercultural

contact and the politics of acculturation on access to education for Liberian refugee women in

Atlantic Canada. Primarily, the research inquires whether access to Western education for

Liberian refugee women is impacted by politics of intercultural contact and acculturation. The

study will specifically seek to answer the following questions: is access to education for Liberian

refugee women in Atlantic Canada affected by their traditional cultural values and practices as it

is in Liberia, and if so, why and in what ways? Do intercultural contact and acculturation impact

on access to education for Liberian refugee women in Atlantic Canada, and if so, why and in

what ways? Are Liberian refugee men’s perspectives on access to education for their women in

Atlantic Canada different from those they held in Liberia, and if so, why and in what ways? Are

Liberian refugee women’s perspectives on access to education for themselves in Atlantic Canada

different from those they held in Liberia, if so, why and in what ways?


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Considerations on Methodology and Methods

My research methodology is qualitative. This means that I will not only ask what these Liberian

refugee couples are experiencing, but also, how and why, so as to understand their experiences

(see Pryor, 2010 and Creswell, 2003). The development of qualitative research is historically

linked to the principles of appropriateness. Qualitative research was developed partly to aid

Westerners interested in studying non-Western cultures because it provided the framework to

view cultures through the eyes of those who own them (Flick, 2008). I believe that my particular

focus on questions such as why and how are relevant to the understanding of the cultural

experiences of the Liberian refugees. As is often the case with qualitative research, I intend to

solicit the active involvement of participants in data collection (Barber, 2004; Purdam et al.,

2008) and, by engaging them in conversation about the meaning of their experiences, in data

analysis (Willis, 2001). Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates the observer in the

world of research participants (Flick, 2008, citing Denzin and Lincoln, 2005). I intend to use the

lens of the participants to understand their educational experiences.

I also intend to employ qualitative methods for the study. Ponterotto (2005, citing Denzin and

Lincoln, 2000b) argues that qualitative methods refer to a broad class of empirical procedures

designed to describe and interpret the experiences of research participants in a context-specific

setting. Qualitative methods are the technical procedures that are used in data collection and

analysis. The qualitative methods that I will use are semi-structured interviews, critical discourse

analysis, and life history analysis. Laforest, Belley, Lavertue, Maurice, and Rainville (2009)

argue that semi-structured interviews provide “access to perceptions and opinions, [and] are

effective for gaining insight into problems that are not immediately perceptible but that


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nonetheless cause concern in certain areas or in certain segments of the population” (p.1). They

are also suited for gathering qualitative data, particularly with small samples.

Critical discourse analysis troubles “the relations between discourse, power, dominance, social

inequality and the position of the discourse analyst in such social relationships” (Dijk, 1993, p.

249). It is aimed “at making transparent the connections between discourse practices, social

practices, and social structures, connections that might be opaque to the layperson”

(Sheyholislami, n.d., p.1). Critical discourse analysis is “not only a description and interpretation

of discourses in social context but also offers an explanation of why and how discourses work’

(Rogers 2004, p.2). Life history analysis, on the other hand, “involves statistical methods for

examining all the three aspects of life history information, namely the order, sequence and timing

of events” (Rajulton, 2001, p.344). These methods will enable me to focus on a limited number

of couples and probe the research questions (MacCleave, 2006) on education, cultural change

and gender tensions. The methods will include stringent measures for privacy and

confidentiality. Due to the participants’ sensitivity to gender issues (Azango, 2012), I will seek to

interview each separately.

Several interrelated theories will inform this study. Given the focus on women’s emancipation, I

will draw on critical feminist theory. Brandi Geisinger (2011, p. 9-10) drew on scholarship from

critical race theory to summarize the suppositions of critical feminist theory as follows:

a), Gender oppression is normal, ordinary, and ingrained into society, making it difficult

to recognize; b), Traditional claims of gender neutrality and objectivity must be contested

in order to reveal the self-interests of the dominant (male) groups; c), The experiential

knowledge of women or their “unique voice” is valid, legitimate, and critical for

understanding the persistence of gender inequality, and these unique voices are often

demonstrated through storytelling and counter-narratives; d), Women are differentially

discriminated against depending on the interests of the dominant group, and depending

upon the intersections of their identities and; e), History and historical contexts must be

taken into consideration in order to challenge policies and practices that affect women.


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Critical feminist analysis is particularly relevant because it revealed that access to education is

gendered and negatively affects girls in some Sub-Saharan Africa countries (Tembon and Fort,

2008). Ogbu (2004) and Ghazala (2006) also point to a link between migration and a quest for

education for many African women.

Given the experiences of migration, this study will also draw on the theories of inter-cultural

contact and, especially, theories of cultural change. The theories of cultural change hold that

culture functions as an adaptive system (Ijaz and Abbas, 2010) that helps human communities

relate to their lived contexts (Keensing, 2012). John Ogbu (2004) also reminds us that some

African cultures can deter education in post-migration. A cultural-change focus is relevant as it

can assist in understanding how Liberian refugee cultures might experience their immersion in

Canadian society.

As a Liberian man, my identity affords me a perspective that could impact my researcher role in

this study. Reflexively, I will be able to understand men’s experiences in navigating these

changing gender roles and the implications for women and their education. I am also a former

refugee, who is constantly involved in public speaking, reflexively sharing my experiences and

the related research that I pursue. This research will particularly enrich my dialogue with the

various audiences to successfully translate knowledge into policy and practice that promote

gender equality and education.

The issue of gendered power relations among Liberian refugee couples is important to

understand for many reasons. Firstly, the work of “Derrida (1978, cited in Cornforth, 2010, 167)

taught us to look with suspicion on the relations of power in any situation of dualism”. Liberian

refugee men are living within the contrasting influences of their traditional cultural values and


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Canadian values. Secondly, Liberian refugee men strive to deal with threats to their identities

that come with shifting gender role expectations (Nyemah, 2007). Thirdly, in 2011, a female

African immigrant professor was killed in an act of domestic violence in Nova Scotia. Although

events like this are always complicated, it was extensively reported (CBC, 2011) that tensions

between the victim and her husband over education and employment played an important role in

her death.

The families who will participate in this study come from northwestern Liberia, where access to

Western education is limited for women (Claveau, 2010). The region is the center of the

traditional Sandi society that teaches girls how to become obedient wives (Azango, 2012). The

Sandi also practices female genital mutilation (Simon, 2012). Typically, men make important

family decisions, especially those concerned with external relations (Lupic, 2012). In this

context, the men hold more power over women. This is problematic in post-migration Canada.

Upon arriving in Canada, Liberian couples experience great pressure to adopt new skills and

attitudes to survive in their new country (Nyemah, 2007). Given the patriarchal nature of this

population’s traditional gendered roles, I intend to particularly investigate if men are not

reluctant to permit their wives to pursue education. This is important because educated women

and dual earning families are the dominant norm in Canada. This must be analyzed and

articulated to policy makers because it concerns integration.

Conclusion

The purpose of this paper is to offer a personal reflection over the methodological perspectives

of social research. Consequently, I have critically deliberated the research concepts of paradigm,


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epistemology, ontology, axiology, methodology and methods. My key argument throughout the

paper is that these concepts in terms of meaning and application cannot be seen as structured or

mechanistic. Their application particularly depends on the value, knowledge, context and choice

of the researcher. I have also describe my proposed doctoral research and provisionally offered

some methodological perspectives that are likely to evolve as I move along my doctoral journey.

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Artifact # 6: Improving Education for African Nova Scotians : A Critical Review of the

Literature. Delmore “Buddy” Daye Africentric Learning Institute.

Joseph Nyemah Nyemah

© Delmore “Buddy” Day Afrincentric Learning Institute

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada September 2013

Introduction

This literature review draws on the research lenses of Africentricity and critical race theory to

examine the education context of African Nova Scotians. The analysis has two intertwined foci:

one is a proposition of pathways to strategically inform the overall goal - to improve education

for African Nova Scotians – of the Delmore Buddy Daye Africentric Learning Institute

(DBDALI). This focus is significant because the DBDALI needs a strategic argument that

coheres with the current contextual logic and purposes of education – locally and globally - so as

to successfully engage stakeholders in improving education for African Nova Scotians. The other

focus is to critically contribute to the creation of a rich and stimulating intellectual context for a

meaningful dialogue aimed at improving education for African Nova Scotians.

Theoretical framework

The research lenses of Africentricity and critical race theory are central to this literature review.

Although these two concepts are individually distinct, they are interrelated by a common heritage

in the critical theory tradition. The critical theory tradition is premised on awakening the


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uncritical human intellect to identify, challenge and replace oppression as aptly articulated by

Brookfield (2007, p. viii).

Critical theory views thinking critically as being able to identify, and then to

challenge and change, the process by which a grossly iniquitous society uses

dominant ideology to convince people this is a normal state of affairs.

This critical perspective is appropriate for both the Government of Nova Scotia and the African

Nova Scotian community in working together to improve what the Black Learners Advisory

Committee (BLAC, 1994a and b) describes as a chronic and systemic crisis of education

affecting African Nova Scotians.

Often, Africentricity and critical race theory are manifest in the work of many critical theorists

either as a lens or as a central project. Molefi Kete Asante’s (1998) work on Africentricity, Bell

Hook’s (2003) conceptualization of racism as White supremacy, and Antonio Gramsci’s adult

education project with Fiat factory workers (cited in Brookfield, 2007) are only but a few

excellent examples that show the influence of critical theory. The counter-hegemonic focus of

critical theory is a common characteristic across these concepts, which is an important lens for

understanding the education context of African Nova Scotians.

In their book, Race and Well-Being: The Lives, Hopes, and Activism of African Canadians,

James, Este, Bernard, Benjamin, Lloyd and Turner (2010) argue that “It was Molefi Asante

(1980), in Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change, who first explicitly formulated and

developed the concept of Afrocentrism (also referred to as Africentrism)” (p. 23). The authors

argue that “Afrocentric epistemology in research is grounded in the history, culture, economics,

race, gender, language, and religion of those involved in the research” (p. 22). From another


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perspective, Hunn (2004) argues that “Africentrism is the written articulation of indigenous

African philosophy (an oral tradition) as embodied by the lived experiences of multiple

generations of people of African descent” (p. 68). Africentricity has potential to increase self-

esteem among African Nova Scotians who, according to BLAC (1994a) confront low self-belief

as a barrier to education.

Africentricity is, however, a fledgling concept that deserves to be critically troubled by scholars

in rigorous academic debates - a process that the DBDALI should welcome, support and benefit

from – given its mandate to improve education for African Nova Scotians through the prism of

Africentricity (DBDALI, 2013). Africentricity is fledgling because unlike other contemporary

theories, its use is yet to be popularized in academia over a substantial period of time. There is,

of course, a counter thesis that suggests that Africentricity has been around for a long time

(Asante, 1988), but ignored and undemocratically contained at the periphery of academia which

resists new and alternative ways of knowing.

This paper recommends that the DBDALI support advanced scholarship that contributes to the

intellectual evolution of Africentricity within the educational context of Nova Scotia and

Canada. Contemporary scholarship suggests that there is an evolving theoretical and identity

debate about Africentricity as evidenced by its synonymous use with Afrocentricity and African-

centred schooling. It is important to understand the nuances in these terms, because new and

contrasting epistemologies are emerging, with attendant operational and conceptual ramifications

as articulated by Sefa Dei and Kempf (2013, p. 22):

African-centred/ African-centredness is a broad and fluid concept, informed

by, but distinct from, Afrocentricity and Africentricity, which are far more

specific (often grounded in the U.S. context) and emerge from – and, in a


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sense answer to – a particular canon. African-centred education and

schooling are context-determined applications of Afrocentricity in and for

educational contexts. The African-centred frame is particularly relevant in

education as it allows for clarification of educational purpose and content.

These authors articulate a new perspective that calls for a broader conceptualization of

Africentricity. Their analysis shows contrasting support for African-centred/ Africentric/

Afrocentric schools (independent of existing schools) and programs (integrated into existing

schools). This paper encourages the DBDALI to pay attention to this kind of debate by

entertaining advanced scholarship that will contribute to the conceptual clarity of Africentricity.

Africentricity may be conceptualized as a paradigm, “a rather unified and progressive system of

beliefs that revolves around the object of knowledge” (Koro-Ljungberg, 2008, p. 218); an

ontology, the study of the form and nature of reality (Paxton, 2010); and as an epistemology,

theory of knowledge or how knowledge is acquired (McConnell-Henry, Chapman and Francis,

2009) that puts the African culture – in its broadest sense - at the center of education for African

descended peoples.

This literature review also draws on the research lens of critical race theory. Critical race theory

is a counter-hegemonic lens that is very relevant to the education context of African Nova

Scotians because of the history of systemic oppression well documented by BLAC (1994a). The

development of critical race theory stands on the shoulders of W.E.B. Du Bois (2013) who

“outlined for his black intellectual colleagues, both a historical sociology and theory of race as a

concept” (para. 4). Du Bois’ contribution to the development of critical race theory offers a

unique prism for examining the sometimes silent ways in which racism operates.


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Critical race theory is a tool of analysis, but also, of empowerment and pedagogy; it centralizes

the experiences of those who are adversely affected by racism in ways that help us learn

critically about the systemic functions of racism. Racism operates both as structure and process

(Essed, 2002). Critical race theory recognizes a powerful confluence between power and race,

and argues that these two concepts must be critically troubled in order for it to be considered

useful for improving education for African Nova Scotians.

Context

One of the key recommendations of BLAC (1994a) to the Government of Nova Scotia was to

“Establish an Africentric Learning Institute to assist in curriculum development and conduct

ongoing research on issues impacting on Black learners in Nova Scotia” (p.18). The DBDALI is

the outcome of this recommendation, and this literature review aims to contribute to the strategic

plan which will lead to the actualization of its mandate.

The DBDALI will partner with the African Canadian Services Division (ACSD) of the Nova

Scotia Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, the Council on African

Canadian Education (CACE) and other organizations such as the Black Educators’ Association

(BEA). The ACSD, CACE and DBDALI were conceived by BLAC as an inter-linked approach

to improve education for African Nova Scotians. BLAC (1994a) recommended that “The

Minister of Education establish a Branch in the Department to deal specifically with African

Canadian Education” (p.17). Consequently, “the African Canadian Services Division was

established in February of 1996 to implement the Department's response to the BLAC Report on

Education” (ACSD, 2013, section 2, para. 1). BLAC (1994a, p. 17) also recommended that:


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The Minister of Education elevate the Black Learners’ Advisory Committee

to a Council on African Canadian Education to monitor and continually

analyze the policies of the Department of Education with respect to the

needs of Black learners and educators; to develop a partnership with

senior education administrators and as a mechanism for enhancing

the status and functions of the BLAC vis-a-vis local school boards

and post-secondary educational institutions.

The DBDALI’s role, therefore, is to focus on research that can inform curriculum development

as clearly stated in a recent press release by the Department of Education and Early Childhood

Development (2013) that, the DBDALI “will conduct research, work with educators and

community members, and develop policy, curriculum and resources with a focus on African

heritage and culture” (para. 1). But optimizing the relationship described above is also

imperative for the DBDALI because being the newest of the three organizations; it must build on

the various activities that the ACSD, CACE and BEA have initiated over the years.

The ACSD, CACE, BEA and DBDALI are a response to history that is traceable as far back as

more than two centuries. Over this period, Blacks have experienced some of the worst aspects of

humanity, including various forms of alienation and marginalization. Poor access to education is

one of the troubling and poignant vignettes. As BLAC (1994b) points out, “writing and math

were excluded from the curriculum as they were considered unnecessary accomplishments in

[Black] children who would subsequently be required to perform the meanest tasks” (p.15). This

paper argues that the education system effectively alienated and marginalized Black students

through a policy of knowledge containment.


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The knowledge containment charge in this paper is substantiated by BLAC’s further observation

that “it was clear that the educational goals for Black children were being set by a White society

which had already made up its mind as to the role Black Nova Scotians would play in society”

(p.15). In other words, most of the benefits that one enjoys as a consequence of his or her

education were foreclosed to the Black population. This is an important reminder to both the

Government of Nova and the DBDALI that it will be highly uncritical to think that improving

education alone will address the upshots of the injustices of education that the Black community

confronts. There is a need to develop a broader social, economic, cultural and political agenda

that will enable the Black community to enjoy full citizenship participation.

The Black alienation and marginalization project in Nova Scotia in education was very

successful because it was systemic and operated with the participation of not only the school

system and government, but also, individual community members and the Anglican Church

(BLAC, 1994b) in the province. In the late 1800s in common schools, “some White parents

complain[ed] that their children were forced to sit together with Black children” (BLAC, 1994b,

p. 20). This complaint from some of the White community members encouraged the City

Council of Halifax to legalize the creation of segregated schools for Blacks and Whites in 1876

(BLAC, 1994b). Minutes from “missionary reports clearly indicate that the curriculum of the

African schools was based more on instilling obedience in the Black population than with

providing upgrading skills or knowledge” (BLAC, 1994a, p. 18). According to BLAC (1994a, b

and c), many of the segregated and common schools were operated in, and owned by the

Anglican Church in the province.

This paper does not investigate whether the Anglican Church deliberately, subconsciously or

coercively participated in the creation and implementation of the education project that alienated


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and marginalized Black students because it is outside the main focus of this paper. However,

BLAC (1994b, p. 18) points out that:

The missionary movement throughout the eighteen and nineteenth centuries

customarily coupled the teaching of rudimentary education with Christian

values of humility and contentedness as a method of maintaining law and

order among the British colonies. When White students attending the

common schools [in Nova Scotia] were studying Algebra, the Classics,

English grammar, Latin, Greek, Geography and the use of globes,

their Black counterparts were deliberately restricted to instruction in

reading, writing, arithmetic and the catechism.

The above quote provides a critical insight into the function of how racism and other forms of

discrimination seep into formal education decisions. James et al. (2010) describe this as the

normalization of oppression, a process in which the oppressors become conveniently oblivious or

unaware of, or consider acts of oppression as a normal way of life.

The segregated schools were not only set up as a sustainable mechanism for transforming Black

Nova Scotians into an academically failing population, they were also designed to discourage

Black children from going to school. The Black schools, for instance, only attracted “teachers

willing to work for low pay in isolated communities [and] tended to be under qualified and

barely literate” (BLAC, 1994b, p. 22). BLAC further contends that the “school buildings were

often overcrowded and ramshackle, creating an environment that was not inclined to encourage

Blacks to attend” (p. 22). These conditions were in stark contrast to those of the White schools.

The DBDALI and other actors wanting to improve education for African Nova Scotians must


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take into consideration how these two factors have affected the Black communities at large to

view education - with hate and distrust - because they could potentially correlate with the low

attendance and poor academic performance that remain prevalent among African Nova Scotian

students.

While a lot has improved, a broader systems change is required in orienting schools to equitably

and effectively serve the educational needs of Black students in ways that meaningfully

contribute to the social mobility of the Black community. As Hook (2003) argues, being

conscious of oppressive behaviors does not necessarily prevent a person from committing

oppression. The upshots of not achieving a broader systems change – that accounts for African

Nova Scotian adult literacy, civic participation and active inclusion in the labor market, in this

context - can be correlated with the significant numbers of African Nova Scotian students

underperforming, and being placed on Individual Program Planning (IPP) or dropping out of

school.

Paul Tough’s (2009) studies in the United States revealed that “the children of professional

parents had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, compared to 525 for the children of parents on

welfare” (cited by Marsh, 2013, p. 83). Marsh (2013, p. 83) also cites Rothestein (2004) whose

studies in the same country revealed that “by three years of age, the children of professionals had

larger vocabularies themselves than the vocabularies used by adults from welfare families in

speaking to their children.” The central point of discussion here is to encourage the DBDALI to

contemplate initiating a broader conversation about crafting an agenda that advances contextual

discontinuities – such as the disruption of poverty - by drawing on the contributions of other pro-

social mobility actors within the African Nova Scotian community.


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“Black students face special difficulties in our local schools. Most of them are in General

Courses; few get beyond grade 10, and fewer still advance to post-high school educational

institutions” (BLAC, 1994b, p. 32, citing the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, 1967).

In a further emphasis, BLAC (1994b, p. 32) draws on the Nova Scotia Human Rights’ report to

point out that:

In dividing a class into fast, mediocre, and slow learners, teachers report

that the slow groups are four-fifths Blacks. As the present school system

has no failures in the elementary grades, the students go on to junior high

where their difficulties exacerbate. The auxiliary classes of the junior high

become filled with Black students – estimated as high as 95 percent Black.

The effect of channeling on the Black student is increased loss of self-worth

and high dropout rates.

The foregoing statistics, although developed almost two decades ago, caricature a somewhat

disastrous context of education for African Nova Scotians. The DBDALI must welcome and

support research that demonstrates that poor education for African Nova Scotians is not only a

concern for the Black community, but a core concern of the Government of Nova Scotia that

must be addressed. There is a timely opportunity, for instance, to strategically edit the Nova

Scotia Liberal Party leader’s argument that Government needs to “overhaul the public education

system to focus on literacy, numeracy and creative thinking” (Davenport, 2013, p. 4) by adding

that there is also a need to ensure that the education system serves the needs of all its citizens -

particularly the Black and Aboriginal communities.


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The DBDALI, through research, must seek to gather success stories of how Blacks and other

racially marginalized groups have successfully confronted discrimination within education. The

recommended search for success stories on how Blacks and other marginalized groups are

confronting systemic oppression must focus both on success in education and labour

participation. This double track approach emphasizes the education of African Nova Scotians

and their active participation in the functionaries of mainstream institutions of influence. The

broader agenda that requires some attention is enhancing the social, political, cultural and

economic citizenship of African Nova Scotians. There are several models that can be examined

and possibly replicated in Nova Scotia, in conjunction with, for instance, the Black Business

Initiative (BBI). An interesting model in the United States is the Executive Leadership Council

(2013, para. 1 & 2):

a national organization comprised of current and former African-American

CEOs and senior executives at Fortune 500 and equivalent companies. For

more than 25 years, the ELC [Executive Leadership Council] has worked

to build an inclusive business leadership pipeline and to empower African-

American corporate leaders to make significant and impactful contributions

in the global marketplace and their communities.

Another example is the African American Leadership Institute housed in the University of

California, Los Angeles Anderson School of Management (2013, para. 1 & 2):

UCLA’s [University of California Los Angeles] African American Leadership

Institute distills the wisdom and experience of the nation's top African

American corporate leaders and public figures and identifies the tools

required to prepare today's African American executives for tomorrow's


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organizational leadership. During a 5-month engagement of provocative

and stimulating work on the state of African American leadership, you will

dig deep into key issues from a personal, interpersonal, and organizational

perspective and take away a practical toolkit to increase productivity,

leverage, and value to your organization.

There are several other models including the Diversity Executive (see http://diversity-

executive.com/articles/view/driven-to-success-aaa-pilots-program-for-african-american-

leaders/2) and the National Forum for Black Public Administrators (see

http://www.nfbpa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3293). These kinds of programs are

particularly important examples for the DBDALI which can potentially promote confidence and

increase self-esteem among African Nova Scotian students. They also provide an opportunity for

the DBDALI to create a framework for recruiting research fellows who can serve as organic

intellectuals, feel the elementary passion of the people and articulate their aspirations. A key

learning point from these case studies is the need for the DBDALI to focus on diversifying the

number of enlightened African Nova Scotians by enabling the education of lawyers, medical

doctors, social workers, pharmacists and engineers. A hopeful way to conclude this section of the

paper is to note that after graduating with an electrical engineering degree from Dalhousie

University in 2010, “Shalyn Williams, 27, [became] the first female African-Nova Scotian

engineer” (Herald, 2013, para. 1).

http://diversity-executive.com/articles/view/driven-to-success-aaa-pilots-program-for-african-american-leaders/2



http://www.nfbpa.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3293


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Reflection

Although various forms of discrimination continue to restrict social mobility for minority groups

like the African Nova Scotian and Aboriginal communities in Nova Scotia, there are, also,

undeniable trends that create the perfect conditions for improvements and social justice in

general. These trends also come with many opportunities that the DBDALI cannot afford to

ignore.

Increased receptiveness for social justice

About 50 years ago in Nova Scotia and North America in general, marginalized groups struggled

to build alliances with individuals or groups from the dominant or ruling class in fighting

injustice. Increasingly, this kind of class divide is radically blurring as numerous educated and

young people of privileged identities are questioning prevailing systemic forms of hegemony.

Most contemporary social movements, for instance, the Idle No More and the Occupy

movements that advocate for the rights of Aboriginal people and against the injustices of

capitalism respectively are not only led by the oppressed but also by people from the dominant

class. The DBDALI recognizes that, for instance, if it were to organize a protest calling for

improved education for Black Nova Scotians, there would be many non-Black Nova Scotians in

the crowd. This is a great opportunity for building bridges. These willing partners are

enlightened and have potential to act as elite intellectuals (cf. Brookfield, 2007; Kenway, 2001).

The DBDALI must create a welcoming environment for these various groups of partners.


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Nova Scotia Needs a Vibrant and Educated Workforce

The Nova Scotia Department of Labour and Advanced Education (2013) clearly states that

“Nova Scotia’s economic stability is tied to our ability to compete and respond to changes in the

global market. That ability requires a vibrant and adaptable workforce — a workforce strong in

numbers and in skills” (para. 2). This is a strategic opportunity for African Nova Scotians

because we have a young population that can actively participate in the labour force. Beyond this

economic argument, the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development’s (2013,

para. 1) statement of mandate 2013–14 provides a liberal argument for education by stating that:

Our vision is for every student in every classroom to become well-educated,

confident, responsible adults–with the skills they need to create and work in

good jobs, ready to build a life for families of their own. The four goals for

education in Nova Scotia are:

o Put Students First

o Support Effective Teaching in Every Classroom

o Prepare Young People for Good Jobs, Citizenship

o Strengthen Links Between Schools, Parents, and the Community

This paper does not presume that the DBDALI is unaware of the Department of Education and

Early Childhood Development’s vision and the opportunity it provides to advance its agenda for

improving education for African Nova Scotians. It however, highlights that there are, for

instance, unique opportunities for the DBDALI to work with the provincial government,

particularly the departments of Labour and Advanced Education (in terms of adult literacy), and

Education and Early Childhood Development (in terms of the school’s expectations about the

role of parents) to develop ways by which the reported low involvement of African Nova Scotian

parents and guardians in the affairs of their children’s schooling can be addressed. The DBDALI

should engage these departments to discuss mechanisms around data collection and analysis that


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can inform new approaches to increasing the involvement of African Nova Scotian parents and

guardians in their children’s education.

The Department of Education and Early Childhood Development also mentions - good jobs and

active citizenship – in its mandate. This is an attractive and relevant policy landscape within

which the DBDALI can locate its claim for partnering with the provincial government to address

the systemic barriers that African Nova Scotians confront in education. This claim holds that if

the educational needs of African Nova Scotians are addressed they can significantly participate

in the economy either by job creation or skill provision. People who are educated and have good

jobs are likely to build good families and promote good and active citizenship in their

communities.

Government’s Commitment to Support the DBDALI

The provincial government’s commitment to support the creation of the DBDALI is a unique

opportunity that must be optimized in all possible ways. In a press release dated March 26, 2013,

the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (2013, para. 1) declared that:

The province is investing $2.2 million in a permanent home for the Delmore

"Buddy" Daye Africentric Learning Institute, which will provide more support

and resources for students of African descent. The institute will conduct

research, work with educators and community members, and develop policy,

curriculum and resources with a focus on African heritage and culture.


Page 136 of 190

This announcement creates a sustainable political and policy landscape that can ensure that the

education project for African Nova Scotians is not only a concern for African Nova Scotians, but

also, a concern for the Government of Nova Scotia.

But it might also be prudent for the Government of Nova Scotia, or perhaps, particularly the

African Nova Scotian community, through the DBDALI to contemplate entertaining a broader

discussion about social mobility for African Nova Scotians. This suggestion does not presume

that a conversation of this kind is not initiated; rather, it proposes a further reflection on what is

required to enable social mobility within the Black community. For instance, is it possible to

increase parents’ involvement in the affairs of their children’s school if an underlying cause of

the problem is a lack of time and energy induced by poverty-imposed obligations to work more

than 15 hours daily between three different jobs? What about the historical distrust between

parents and the school system? What about the role of families as a key ingredient for producing

a successful student and a good citizen?

This paper argues for the development of a broader social mobility agenda aimed at enabling the

African Nova Scotian to contribute to, and enjoy the full concept of citizenship. There are a

number of initiatives that must support the achievement of the full citizenship objective as

demonstrated in the following diagram:


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This diagram does not capture all of the ingredients required to enable full or good citizenship

within the African Nova Scotian community, rather, it raises new questions about either

coordinating what is already in place or putting in place the missing initiatives. The community

and religious institutions - for instance, the church – must be included in this kind of

conversation because they can contribute to the promotion of good citizenship. The BBI and

other actors within the private sector play a crucial role in economically empowering African

Nova Scotians to enjoy full citizenship. These are only but a few examples that demonstrate the

need for developing a broader and coordinated social mobility agenda for the African Nova

Scotian learner.

One of the key reasons why the anti-Apartheid champion of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, is

revered globally is because he chose to lead his people by looking ahead and not dwelling

exclusively on the injustices of the past. Sometimes our pace to move ahead is impeded by the

Full Citizenship

welcoming education system for

all

welcoming economy

for all

welcoming political

system for all

vibrant family and community


Page 138 of 190

weight of the memory of the past that we carry along. Contemporary Africa, for instance,

confronts a similar phenomenon that weaves together the pursuit of development and memories

of injustice from the unfortunate European colonization project. The DBDALI must continue to

develop a critical understanding of the past experiences of the African Nova Scotian learner, but

the purpose should be how to use the analysis to eliminate further damage to the educational

success of the community. This paper encourages the DBDALI to consider the following factors

as part of a proposed development of baseline indicators for an annual monitoring of the

education context of African Nova Scotians.

Student Dropout: the DBDALI must devote significant resources to understanding and

addressing the evolving trends of student dropout through a sustained research approach. The

Black United Front (BUF), for instance, a political organization established in 1968 by Black

leaders to present a united voice of Black communities, identified student dropout patterns as a

key issue that deserves the attention of the relevant stakeholders (BLAC, 1994b). The African

Nova Scotian community confronts a persistent trend of student dropout and argues that it is a

consequence of the historically poor service that it receives from the school system.

There are several monitoring models that the DBDALI can investigate and adapt to its

programming context from different parts of the world. The University of California Los

Angeles Anderson School of Management (2013, para. 1), for instance, has the California

Dropout Research Project (CDRP) established in 2006 (see http://www.cdrp.ucsb.edu/) to:

synthesize existing research and undertake new research to inform

policymakers, educators and the general public about the nature of

the dropout crisis in California and to help the state develop a

meaningful policy agenda to address the problem.

http://www.cdrp.ucsb.edu/


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The CDPR project uses research information to inform the development of a sound policy

agenda to advocate for the improvement of education for those students who are affected by the

phenomenon in California. The University of California Los Angeles Anderson School of

Management (2013) argues that although there are numerous and varying reasons why students

drop out of school, they can be grouped into two major categories of predictors, including

individual and institutional. The individual predictors account for educational performance,

behavior, attitude and background; while the institutional predictors account for family, school

system and community (Rumberger and Ah Lim, 2008).

Examining dropout in the context of Black students in Ontario, several scholars (Sefa Dei,

Mazzuca, McIsaac& Zine, 1997; Pollard, 1989) have pointed out that structural discrimination,

poverty, Eurocentrism, White male privilege and streaming in the school system are some of the

key factors that influence dropout. These issues require a careful analysis in the education

context of Nova Scotia. This is partly, but significantly because, in order to make a practical

recommendation on addressing student dropout rates, a clear distinction must be drawn between

correlations and causations.

Sefa Dei (1996) argues that researchers must develop a new way of looking at dropout by re-

theorizing and re-conceptualizing the phenomenon. The author cites Lawton (1992) who

completed a synopsis of various models in understanding dropout. This includes the frustration

or low self-esteem model and participation-identification model developed by Finn (1989), the

deviance theory model and structural strain and alienation model developed by LeCompte and

Dworkin (1991), and the cost-benefit-analysis model used by several other researchers. Sefa Dei

(1996) cogently critiqued these models and argued that researchers must focus on a new way of

studying the dropout phenomenon by moving beyond these theories and draw instead on


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grounded theory to delve into the lived experiences of students. This paper specifically argues

for the use of Africentricity and critical race theory as the research lenses that the DBDALI

should draw on.

Low self-esteem: The problem of low self-esteem critically affects Black Canadian students in

unique ways. Research by Joseph and Kuo (2008) revealed that “Black Canadians are exposed to

multiple race-related stressors that require them to adopt a flexible repertoire of general and

culture-specific coping strategies” (p.78). The DBDALI, through the lens of Africentricity,

should research the changing dynamics of self-esteem among African Nova Scotian students and

develop specifically designed community based programs to help students appreciate their social

positions within the school system and the wider community. The literature (BLAC, 1994a and

b) confirms that low self-esteem among African Nova Scotian students is a major factor that

undermines their performance. BLAC (1994a, p. 18), for instance, specifically described the

existence of low self-esteem among Black students:

suppression, destruction and distortion of a group’s history and culture by

others and the surrender of one’s own culture results in low self-esteem.

On the other hand, ignorance and disrespect for African Canadian history

and culture breed low expectations and unhealthy educator assessments of

African Nova Scotian students, personalities and potential.

Our understanding of low self-esteem among African Nova Scotian students is extremely limited

if we exclusively define the phenomenon based on knowledge gained from history. The

historical context is relevant, but low self-esteem is a fluid social concept that can be influenced

by intervening factors over time. “Self-esteem can change over time and between situations. It is

informed by experiences of family, school, friendships and wider society and by how we


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perceive or make sense of these experiences” (University of York, 2013, section 2, para. 1). The

Counseling and Mental Health Center of the University of Texas at Austin (2013, section 3,

para.1) provides a further compelling reason for a continuous assessment of low self-esteem

among students:

Our self-esteem evolves throughout our lives as we develop an image of ourselves

through our experiences with different people and activities. Experiences during

childhood play a particularly large role in the shaping of self-esteem. When we

were growing up, our successes, failures, and how we were treated by our family,

teachers, coaches, religious authorities, and peers, all contributed to the creation

of our self-esteem.

Low self-esteem is a relevant factor that deserves a continuous examination among marginalized

student groups because it has profound ramifications on almost every aspect of their lives. As the

counseling psychologist, Ken Shore (2013), argues, “a student's self-esteem has a significant

impact on the way she [or he] engages in activities, deals with challenges, and interacts with

others. Low self-esteem can lessen a student's desire to learn, ability to focus, and willingness to

take risks” (para. 1). Shore (2013) further observes that “the challenge in working with children

with low self-esteem is to restore their belief in themselves, so they persevere in the face of

academic challenges” (papa. 2).

This paper does not presume that the DBDALI is unaware of extra-curricular programs (see

Wagstaff, 2013) that the Government of Nova Scotia supports for the promotion of self-esteem

among African Nova Scotian students; rather, it contends that this is an opportunity that the

DBALI must optimize. Additionally, this paper argues that the approach to promoting self-


Page 142 of 190

esteem must emphasize the success of students. This is because if we focus too much on

students’ weaknesses their strengths will continue to elude us.

Poor Academic Performance: the DBDALI must pursue research into the changing dynamics

of poor academic performance among African Nova Scotian students. The research approach

will focus on two key areas: the first is the identification of new factors that impinge on the

efforts of Black students to excel academically. It is important to be aware that while the

historical legacy of the African Nova Scotian context has impacted the learning capabilities of

Black students, there are other social factors that are new and rooted in dominant ideology about

Black people’s intelligence in general that need to be identified and countered purposefully. The

second area for research is to develop statistics that show evolutions in the academic

performance of African Nova Scotian students. This is extremely important for successful

advocacy and stakeholder engagement.

Poor academic performance among African Nova Scotian students is a central consequence of

the complex history of the education system of the province. As far back as in the 1970s, the

Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission raised the issue by pointing out that “Black students

face special difficulties in our local schools. Most of them are in general courses; few get

beyond grade 10, and fewer still advance into post-high school educational institutions” (BLAC,

1994b, p. 32). Critical race theory argues that the issue is more complicated by several factors

such as low teacher expectation and prejudice - just to name a few - than simply stating that

Black students are poor academic performers. In their paper entitled “Reality Check” Lee and

Marshall (2009, p. 9) describe the existence of the phenomenon of poor academic performance

among African Nova Scotian students and the school system’s response measure – the Individual

Program Plan (IPP):


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According to the testimonies of parents, students, and other individuals within

the education system, an alarming number of learners from African Nova

Scotian communities have an Individual Program Plan. “An IPP is a

statement of annual individualized outcome and specific individualized

outcomes based on the student’s strengths and needs and that is developed

and implemented for every student for whom Nova Scotia’s public programs

curriculum outcomes are not applicable and/ or attainable.”

The Program Planning Process: A Guide for Parents, p.5.

Africentricity and critical race theory argue that the description here is uncritical and only tells a

small part of the story. Some parents are bewildered by the implications of the concept and the

high marks given to their children who are in IPPs. Critical race theory argues specifically that

African Nova Scotian parents not being involved in their children’s school affairs is “normal” in

the view of the school system. The theory further posits that it is “normal” that the school system

would not investigate if parents understand the implications the IPP has on their children’s

schooling.

Poor academic performance as a phenomenon among African Nova Scotian students requires

both qualitative and quantitative research. Marsh’s (2012) book, Class Dismissed, and the earlier

work of Nathaniel Hickerson (1966) in Education for Alienation, argue that the children of

parents who are alienated by the economy are likely to also be alienated by education. The

DBDALI should work with the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development to

share research data on the performance of African Nova Scotian students for the purpose of

addressing this problem. If ethics and privacy regulations prevent data sharing, the DBBALI

should pursue a community-based research with parents to gain insights into the performance of

African Nova Scotian students.


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Low participation of parents and guardians in their children’s school affairs: The DBDALI

must examine the changing dynamics of the participation of African Nova Scotian parents and

guardians in the education of their children. There is potential to gain new insight into the current

context that can effectively inform how the Black community can continue to work for the

improvement of education for African Nova Scotian students. The current generation of young

African Nova Scotians, like many young people of today, has a slightly different perspective of

education from their parents’. There is a need to research parental dis/engagement with schools

and their children’s education. The DBDALI might make a good impact on this issue if it

develops project activities that are informed by new research.

African Nova Scotian parents not being actively involved in their children’s school affairs is a

concern highlighted by Lee and Marshall (2009). They emphasize the historical factors of

discrimination such as racism, fears of reprisals from the school authority and the fact that some

parents were/are not literate to read and comprehend communications that come from the school

about their children. It is uncritical to also overlook the fact that the school system has

historically not been welcoming to the African Nova Scotian community (BLAC, 1994a and b).

The low participation of parents and guardians in their children’s school affairs deserves a

broader conversation beyond these historical factors. Many parents, not just Black parents, are

increasingly being alienated by the economy – they may work more than 15 hours on several

jobs during the day – and feel robbed of their physical and mental creativity at the end of the day.

Although some of these issues are rooted in the history of discrimination, there is a need for

specifically designed research projects to update the narrative on why parents/guardians are not


Page 145 of 190

involved in their children’s education. Such research must draw on the lenses of Africentricity

and critical race theory.

This paper does not contain a comprehensive list of all of the relevant issues that the DBDALI

needs to pursue. There is, for instance, a need to constantly evaluate indicators such as civic and

labour participation, unemployment and literacy rates, a re-examination of the Transitional Year

Programs at Dalhousie and the Community College, and the public school curriculum and its

ability to attract and retain African Nova Scotian students. Research of this nature will contribute

new insights about changes in the education context of the African Nova Scotian learner.

Conclusions and recommendations

This paper has addressed two key objectives. It has proposed practical pathways for a robust

research driven agenda that can strategically inform the DBDALI’s overall goal to improve

education for African Nova Scotians. Additionally, it has created a rich and stimulating context

for a meaningful dialogue aimed at improving education for African Nova Scotians. Below is a

detailed description of six recommendations. The DBDALI must set measurable results for each

of these recommendations.

Recommendation one

The DBDALI should develop baseline indicators to continuously measure evolutions (the

changing dynamics) in the education context for African Nova Scotians. When selected and

monitored over time (annually preferred), the indicators will constitute a set of compelling

empirical pillars to inform the programming strategy for the DBDALI. This paper has identified


Page 146 of 190

and articulated a few examples of these indicators, such as student dropout, students on IPP,

parents/guardians involvement in their children’s schooling, low self-esteem, academic

performance, civic and labor participation, unemployment and literacy rates, effectiveness of the

Transitional Year Programs at Dalhousie and the Community College, the public school

curriculum and its ability to attract and retain African Nova Scotian students, and particularly the

inclusion of Africentricity.

Logic: Increasingly, contemporary society is becoming actively receptive to the values of social

justice. This is good for the advocacy project aimed at improving education for African Nova

Scotians. And, this paper argues that the DBDALI also recognizes that this new appetite for

social justice comes with increased competition over resources by various groups who are also

marginalized because of their socio-economic status, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, and

disabilities. The DBDALI must continue to advocate with rational arguments.

Recommendation two

The DBDALI should develop a framework for recruiting research fellows who can serve as

organic intellectuals, feel the elementary passion of African Nova Scotians’ for academic success

and community engagement, enrich their vision with conceptual clarity and articulate their

evolving aspirations with credibility. Examples of results under this recommendation include

number of publications, number of doctoral students recruited for research and number of

conferences organized or attended where issues relevant to the education and the broader social

mobility agenda of African Nova Scotians are articulated.


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Logic: The need to create organic intellectuals/ community organizers who can increase or

establish a credible presence for African Nova Scotians in academia and other influential

functionaries of mainstream society cannot be overemphasized. These research fellows or

organic intellectuals will, through research, populate academic and policy discussions with

empirically analyzed evidence demonstrating the need for improving education for African Nova

Scotians.

Recommendation three

The DBDALI should develop a strategic framework for developing executive leadership that can

be a vehicle for populating mainstream institutions with Black talents.

Logic: Education is not only for knowledge acquisition, it is also for knowledge application. One

of the driving reasons behind the need to improve education for African Nova Scotians is social

mobility. The DBDALI cannot afford to divorce learning from labor participation.

Recommendation four

The DBDALI should strategically adopt an advocacy argument that coheres with the current

contextual logic and purposes of education so as to successfully engage stakeholders in

improving education for African Nova Scotians.

Logic: The advocacy project to improve education for African Nova Scotians has been cogently

made on a moral theme – African Nova Scotians deserve a better system of education that


Page 148 of 190

equitably serves them because education is a basic right of every person. There is also an

economic imperative that the DBDALI must develop and articulate.

Recommendation five

The DBDALI should develop a proactive and sustained approach – constantly look out for

opportunities; including developing and sustaining partnerships with community organizations,

which are also committed to improving education for African Nova Scotians.

Logic: Most of the initiatives aimed at improving education for African Nova Scotians are in a

reactive mode as opposed to a proactive mode. This is problematic because it does not

necessarily lead to the provision of sustainable solutions to a chronic and systemic challenge like

the barriers to education for African Nova Scotians. The DBDALI must avoid this response

circle of reactivity by choosing a proactive and sustained approach – constantly look out for

opportunities – that will improve education for African Nova Scotians.

Recommendation six

The DBDALI should examine a broader agenda on social mobility for African Nova Scotian

communities.

Logic: Education is not independent of the economic, social and political institutions that

provide its context; therefore, the DBDALI cannot assume that education will solve all of the

complex problems that African Nova Scotian communities confront. It will also make no

substantial impact if it fails to look at the broader mechanism of coordination within which the


Page 149 of 190

various actors are working to contribute to the goal of enabling African Nova Scotians to enjoy

full citizenship.

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23, 2013, from http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/lhae/Programs/Adult_Education/.

University of York (2013). Low self-esteem. Retrieved July 4, 2013, from

https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/health/problems/self-esteem/.

http://www.slocounty.ca.gov/Assets/CSN/PDF/Flyer+-+Why+students+drop+out.pdf

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/general/abcs/rcom/full/volume4/chapter16.pdf

http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/executive-education/individual-executives/leadership-suite/african-american-leadership-institute

http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/executive-education/individual-executives/leadership-suite/african-american-leadership-institute

http://cmhc.utexas.edu/selfesteem.html

https://www.york.ac.uk/students/support/health/problems/self-esteem/


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Wagstaff, A. (2013). Extracurricular program aims to help African-Canadian students in the

province. Amherst News. The Citizen Record. Retrieved August 31, 2013, from

http://www.cumberlandnewsnow.com/News/Local/2011-01-31/article-

2186510/Extracurricular-program-aims-to-help-African-Canadian-students-in-the-

province/1

Wilkinson, R. G., & Pickett, K. (2010). The spirit level: Why equality is better for everyone.

London: Penguin Books.

Wotherspoon, T. (2009). The sociology of education in Canada: Critical perspectives (3rd

ed.).

New York: Routledge.

http://www.cumberlandnewsnow.com/News/Local/2011-01-31/article-2186510/Extracurricular-program-aims-to-help-African-Canadian-students-in-the-province/1




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Artifact # 7: The role of cultural communities in immigrant retention: a case study of African

immigrant cultural communities in Nova Scotia (proposal)

Proponents:

Principal Investigator: David Black, PhD

Lester B. Pearson Professor of International Development Studies

Director, Centre for Foreign Policy Studies

Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University

Halifax, NS, B3H 4R2

Phone: 902-494-6638

Fax: 902-494-3825

[email protected]

Community Partner: Joseph Nyemah, M.A.; M.Ad.ED

Public Servant, Government of Nova Scotia

Doctoral Student, Mount Saint Vincent University

Research Assistant: Alice Musabende

M.A. Student, International Development Studies

Dalhousie University

Date: February 12, 2014

mailto:[email protected]


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Introduction

Drawing on two interrelated theories of acculturation - dissonant acculturation and social

conformity - within the context of immigrant endogenous retention strategies – immigrants self-

facilitating their settlement and retention - we propose to engage the leaders of the respective

African immigrant cultural communities in Nova Scotia (NS). We want to critically trouble the

assumption that among the respective African immigrant cultural communities in NS, some

cultural communities have stronger settlement and retention capacities than their counterparts

because of differences in their communal acculturation and settlement strategies. Berry (2005)

argues that “not all groups and individuals undergo acculturation in the same way” (p.704).

The theory of dissonant acculturation holds that there may be different patterns of acculturation

within the same family (Portes, 1999). We intend to adapt this theory with the supposition that

there may be different patterns of acculturation within a cultural collective of interrelated

independent immigrant cultural communities. Replacing family with a collective of cultural

communities retains the analytic logic of the theoretical supposition because cultural

communities, among African diaspora peoples are equally important as families (Nyemah &

Vanderplaat, 2009; Chareka, Manguvo, & Nyemah, 2012).

The theory of social conformity, on the other hand, presupposes that the acculturative behavior

of immigrants as it relates to collectivity is driven by “the desire to fit in with others, strategic

benefits from coordination, incentives to free ride on the information of others, and the tendency

to interact with people similar to oneself” (Bednar, Bramson, Jones-Rooy & Page, 2010, p.414).

We propose to analyze how the coordinated cultural activities of the respective African

immigrant cultural collectives differently influence their settlement and retention capacities. The

combination of the two theories of acculturation is critically insightful because it will allow us to


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not only understand the settlement and retention differences between cultural communities, but

also differences in their motivations.

Culture and acculturation are important concepts in our proposed study. Nyemah (2014) argues

that “culture as a concept is fluid and ubiquitous consequently; intellectual projects aimed at

defining it are inconclusive, flawed with exclusivity and political biases, and subject to further

debates” (p.1). But for the purpose of this study, we will agree with Zimmermann (2012) who

argues that “Culture is the characteristics of a particular group of people, defined by everything

from language, religion, cuisine, social habits, music and arts” (para.1). From a psychological

perspective, Berry (1980) argues that acculturation refers to changes in behaviors, attitudes,

values, and identities of individuals. Acculturation occurs at the level of the individual, but also,

for groups. For the purpose of our study, we will focus on the latter.

Context

There is a lack of research information on the organization and activities of the African

immigrant cultural communities in self-facilitating their settlement and retention in NS. Existing

data on the immigrant population in NS are quantitative, but not disaggregated to reflect the

characteristics of the African immigrant cultural communities. The African Canadian Immigrant

Action Research, for instance, only states that African immigrants in NS represent about 30

African countries (Government of NS, 2004). Conversely, the current data are defined by

economics, for instance, they categorize immigrants as business class or skilled workers (see

Goss Gilroy Inc…, 2005; Akbari, Lynch, McDonald and Rankaduwa, 2007; NS Commission on

Building our New Economy, 2013 & 2014.), thereby glossing over African immigrants since

most of them morph from the international student category.


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But in addition to the layer of nationality, the African immigrant population in NS can be

stratified as cultural, refugee and economic migrants. These strata are important because, for

instance, “A refugee is different from an immigrant, in that an immigrant is a person who

chooses to settle permanently in another country. Refugees [on the other hand] are forced to flee”

(Citizenship and Immigration Canada, 2014, section 1, para. 4). Although the focus of our

proposed analysis is culture, since it perfectly superimposes the rest of the layers; the refugee

dichotomy shows how uniquely complex, and yet under-researched the African immigrant

communities in NS are.

African immigrant cultural communities in NS are associated with the African Diaspora

Association of the Maritimes (2014), which according to its mission, “provides the tangible and

intangible infrastructure needed to resettle and motivate new immigrants of African descent to

stay in NS” (section 2, para. 1). There is also the Ugandan Canadian Association of the

Maritimes (2014), which like other African immigrant cultural communities, posits to “organize

social and community events to help promote networking and to have a good time” (para. 1),

purportedly to make Ugandans feel at home, and to stay in NS. The purpose of our proposed

research, thus, is to investigate whether, for instance, the Ugandan community has a stronger

capacity to stay in NS than other African immigrant cultural communities because of its unique

communal cultural activities.

Significance

Understanding the settlement behavior of different immigrant cultural groups of African descent

in NS is important for several reasons. Firstly, the issue of immigrant retention is an important

public policy agenda in NS and Canada. According to Citizenship and Immigration Minister,


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Chris Alexander (2013), “Immigration is one of Canada’s most vital public policy issues… It’s a

question of our economic future. It is about nation-building (para. 4). But as Akbari, Lynch,

McDonald and Rankaduwa (2007) rightly argue, “If immigrants are to make a durable

contribution to NS, the province‘s success in retaining its immigrants is critical” (p.19). Our

proposed research will critically inform the provincial public policy in a unique way that

accentuates the place of culture and collectivity in immigrant retention.

Secondly and as slightly mentioned earlier, NS is perennially challenged to retain its share of the

Canadian immigrant population. A study conducted by Goss Gilroy Inc. (2005), for instance,

revealed that of the 25,493 immigrants who arrived in NS from 1991 to 2001, only 10,290 settled

permanently, reflecting a retention rate of 40 per cent. The challenge of immigrant retention in

NS is compounded by a broader chronic trend of out-migration. According to the Government of

NS (2013), As of October 1, 2013, NS' population was estimated to be 940,567, a decrease of

222 persons (0.02%) over the July 2013 estimate (940,789). Our proposed research is an

opportunity to gain critical insight into the implications of the declining demographics for

African immigrant cultural communities in NS.

NS wants to increase its immigrant retention capacity. In its current immigration strategy, the

Government of NS (2011) seeks to “increase retention of new immigrants to 70 per cent or

better” (p.11). During the 2013 legislative elections in NS, the leader of the Progressive

Conservative Party, Jamie Baillie (2013), campaigned that he wanted to be the first premier to

increase the population of the province to one million. The Nova Scotia Commission on Building

our New Economy (2013) argues that there is a need to ”Develop a current profile of our

immigration attraction, retention, economic activity and geographic distribution” (p.36). Our

proposed research will insightfully complement the host community’s effort by shedding light on


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an immigrant endogenous approach to retention, and how it can be expanded by government and

its community partners.

Thirdly, our proposed research is timely in NS. The Nova Scotia Commission on Building our

New Economy (2014) released its final report on February 12, 2014 and it is saturated with

different information on immigrant attraction and retention. “In our consultations people

commented on the need to create a more welcoming environment for new Canadians” (p.172).

The Commission also argues that NS’ “low rates of attraction and retention for immigrants,

along with our negative inter-provincial migration trend contribute to our weaker economic

growth over the past 30 years” (p.26). It also emphasizes the place of culture “having clusters of

people with shared cultural backgrounds helps with attraction and retention for future

immigration” (p.59). But this report and the provincial immigration strategy are problematic

because they are solution driven with no place for a critical analytic perspective. Our proposed

study is an unsolicited but valuable policy advice to the Government of NS.

Questions

Our proposed research is focused on communities and not individuals. The purpose of the

questions is to provide a deep and critical understanding of trends as opposed to statistical

analysis that can be used to develop generalized conclusions. The key questions, thus, are: how

many African immigrant cultural communities are there in NS? How are they organized? Are

there group cultural activities that influence and differentiate their acculturation and settlement

behaviors? Do some cultural groups have stronger settlement and retention capacities than

others? If so - why and how? If there are successful cultural activities that positively influence

the acculturation and settlement of some cultural groups, are there opportunities for scaling up?


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Methodology and Method

The methodology for our proposed research is qualitative, because as “opposed to collecting

numbers, qualitative research collects text” (Flick, 2008 p.5; cited by Nyemah, 2013, p. 18) to

analyze trends. The primary interest of qualitative research is to use the perspectives of

participants to construct their everyday reality (Nyemah, 2013). We will engage community

leaders to gain insight into the structure, aims and activities of their respective cultural

communities. Each community leadership will be interviewed separately. The purpose is to

critically analyze differences in cultural communal acculturation and settlement strategies that

might make it easier for some African immigrant cultural groups to settle in NS or relocate to

other provinces than others.

We also intend to use qualitative methods for our proposed research. Ponterotto (2005, citing

Denzin & Lincoln, 2000b) argues that qualitative methods refer to a broad class of data

collection and analysis procedures designed to describe and interpret the experiences of research

participants in a context-specific setting. Our chosen qualitative methods for data collection will

involve focus group discussions guided by semi-structured interview guidelines. We also intend

use Internet searches as a way of complementing the data that we will collect from focus groups.

Discourse analysis will be the tool for analysis, because we expect that the data from focus

groups will be descriptive stories.

The final product from the research will be a discussion paper that provocatively to draws the

attention of policy-makers to new opportunities for strengthening immigrant retention

approaches in the Province. We intend to present the results at relevant academic and

government policy conferences and symposiums.


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The Proponents

The three people proposing this research could not be more qualified to do so. The principal

investigator, Dr. David Black, is a senior faculty – professor - of political science and

international development studies at Dalhousie University. David is an Africanist who supervises

several graduate students conducting policy research on the African continent and with its

diaspora populations. The community partner, Joseph Nyemah, is originally from Liberia. While

studying at Dalhousie, Dr. Black supervised Joseph’s graduate thesis focused on Liberian

refugees in NS. He is a NS Government public servant, but keeps one foot in academia to

advance his research interests on culture, gender and education among African immigrants in

NS. The research assistant, Alice Musabende, is a graduate student at Dalhousie University.

Originally from Rwanda, Alice brings journalistic experience and a lot of research skills to the

partnership.

Ethics

Our respective academic affiliations oblige us to conform to ethics procedures if we want to

involve human subjects in any research activity. We will respect this professional value in

conducting the proposed research. We will seek ethics approval from Dalhousie University,

Alice and Dr. Back’s home institution. We believe that we will easily obtain this approval in

time for the study. This is because; our proposed research will have negligible privacy

implications for its participants as we only intend to interview community leaders, who are

public figures due the nature of their positions.


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Annexes: budget, timeline and references

Budget

Nb. Item Description Cost ($)

1 Research Assistant salary

(interviews)

75 hrs. X $20.00 1,500.00

2. Planning (literature reviews,

etc…), in-kind

20 hrs. X $20.00 400.00

2. Research Assistant salary

(analysis and reporting)

75 hrs. X 20.00 1,500.00

3 Logistics Printing, phone calls,

etc…

300.00

4. Research result sharing Conferences, etc… 1,500.00

Total 5,200.00

Sources

Partner Contribution ($)

Research proponents 400.00 (in-kind)

Borders in Globalization 4,800.00

Total 5,200.00

Timeline

March 2014 Design Interview Guide/ Seek Ethics Approval

April 2014 Review literature

May – June, 2014 Conduct interviews

July – August, 2014 Write working paper


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References

African Diaspora Association of the Maritimes (2014). About us. Retrieved February 10,

2014; from http://adamns.ca/about/

Akbari, A., Lynch, S., McDonald, J. & Rankaduwa, W. (2007). Socioeconomic and

demographic profiles of immigrants in Atlantic Canada. Retrieved February 10, 2014;

from http://community.smu.ca/atlantic/documents/Atlantic_Report_Final_Nov_26.pdf

Alexander, C. (Sept. 2013). Speaking notes for Chris Alexander, Minister of Citizenship

and Immigration at a presentation on Canada’s immigration policies: Outlook on

immigration and future policy. Pan Pacific Hotel, Vancouver, British Columbia.

Retrieved February 10, 2014, 2013 from

http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/media/speeches/2013/2013-09-26.asp.

Baillie, J. (2013). Change that works. Progressive Conservative, Nova Scotia. Retrieved

February 10, 2014, from http://pcparty.ns.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/PC-Party-of-

Nova-Scotia-Platform.pdf

Bednar, J., Bramson, J., Jones-Rooy, A. & Page, S. (2010). Emergent cultural signatures

and persistent diversity: A model of conformity and consistency. Rationality and

Society. 22: 407. DOI: 10.1177/1043463110374501. Retrieved from

ww.rss.sagepub.com at Saint Francis Xavier University on May 26, 2013

Berry, J. W. (1980). Acculturation as varieties of adaptation. In A. M. Padilla (Ed.)

Acculturation: theory, models, and some new findings, pp.9-25. Boulder, CO: Westview

Press.

Berry, W. J. (2005). Acculturation: Living successfully in two cultures. International

Journal of Intercultural Relations. 29:697–712.

Chareka, O., Manguvo, A & Nyemah, J. (2012). Conceptions of volunteerism among

recent African immigrants in Canada: Implications for Democratic Citizenship

Education. Canada’s National Social Studies Journal, 45 (1), 3-20.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (2013). Canada: A history of refuge. A timeline.

Retrieved October 15, 2013 from http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/timeline.asp.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada (2014). Canada: A history of refuge. A timeline.

Retrieved February 8, 2014, from http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/refugees/timeline.asp

Goss Gilroy Inc.. Management Consultants. (2005). Retention and Integration of

Immigrants in Newfoundland and Labrador – Are We Ready? Atlantic Canada

Opportunities Agency, and Coordinating Committee on Newcomer

Integration. Retrieved February 9, 2014; from

http://www.nlimmigration.ca/media/12678/immigrationstudyfinal.pdf

http://adamns.ca/about/

ttp://pcparty.ns.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/PC-P

http://www.nlimmigration.ca/media/12678/immigrationstudyfinal.pdf


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Government of NS. (2011). Welcome home to Nova Scotia. A strategy for immigration.

Retrieved February 10, 2014; from

http://www.novascotia.ca/jobshere/docs/ImmigrationStrategy-WelcomeHomeToNS.pdf

Government of NS (2013). DailyStats: population estimates (Oct 1 2013); wholesale

trade (Oct 2013); US housing starts & permits (Nov 2013); US Monetary Policy.

Economics and Statistics – email content.

Government of NS. (2004). African Canadian immigrant action research consolidated

report. Retrieved February 10, 2014; from

http://acs.ednet.ns.ca/sites/default/files/aciarp-web.pdf

NS Commission on Building our New Economy (2013). Interim report: shaping our new

economy together. Retrieved February 12, 2014; from http://onens.ca/wp-

content/uploads/2013/05/OneNS-Interim-Report.pdf

NS Commission on Building our New Economy (2014). Final report. Now or never: An

urgent call to action for Nova Scotians. Retrieved February 12, 2014, from

http://noworneverns.ca/

Nyemah, J. (2013). The politics of access to education for women within the context of

intercultural contact and acculturation for Liberian refugees in Atlantic Canada. A

doctoral portfolio paper. Mount Saint Vincent University. Halifax, NS.

Nyemah, J. (2014). What is culture? A critical review of the literature. Mount Saint

Vincent University, Halifax Nova Scotia.

Nyemah, J. & Vanderplaat, M. (2009). The cultural transition of African children and the

effects on parents in post-migration: A preliminary overview of findings. Atlantic

Metropolis Centre Working Paper Series. No. 22, 1 – 18. Accessible at


Polek, E., Wöhrle, J. & Oudenhoven, J. (2009). Immigrants in the Netherlands cultural

distance in adjustment of German and Eastern European. Cross-Cultural Research

44(1):60 – 90. Originally published online 2 December. Retrieved from

www.sagepub.com, At Saint Francis Xavier Uniersity on May 26, 2013. DOI:

10.1177/1069397109352779

Ponterotto, J. (2005). Qualitative research in counseling psychology: A primer on

research paradigms and philosophy of science. Journal of Counselling Psychology, 52,

126-136.

Portes, A. (1999). Immigration theory for a new century: some problems and

opportunities. In Hirschman, C., Kasinitz, P. & DeWind, J. (eds.), The handbook of

international migration (p. 21-33). The American experience. New York: Russell Sage

Foundation.

http://www.novascotia.ca/jobshere/docs/ImmigrationStrategy-WelcomeHomeToNS.pdf

http://onens.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/OneNS-Interim-Report.pdf

http://onens.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/OneNS-Interim-Report.pdf

http://noworneverns.ca/

http://www.sagepub.com/


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Ugandan Canadian Association of the Maritimes (2014). About our community.

Retrieved February 10, 2014, from http://maritime-ugandans.ca/?page_id=2

Zimmermann, K. A. (2012, July 09). What is culture? Definition of culture. Livescience.

Retrieved February 10, 2014; http://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-


ttp://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-d

ttp://www.livescience.com/21478-what-is-culture-d


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Category IV: Professional and Collegial Competencies

Artifact 8: Cooperating to Build a Better Nova Scotia Conference: A Celebration of the

United Nations Declaration of 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives

Session 3.3: Nova Scotia Cooperatives and the Global Context

1330h – 1500hr., Friday, 23 November, 2012

Prepared by: Joseph Nyemah

Chair: Joseph Nyemah

The advent of the internet, combined with the influence of globalization and capitalism propel large scale,

transnational and multi-billion dollar corporations as the drivers of economic growth around the world. However,

history reminds us that cooperatives have always been there. They have always been in the rural and coastal

communities of Nova Scotia, helping fishing and farming families to mobilize, work together and create vibrant local

economies. In Southeast Asia, cooperatives have always been there helping rural and landless families to enterprise

successfully. Cooperatives are empowering communities in Latin America and helping communities to generate

incomes and improve access to health across several African countries. They were only absent to report bankruptcy

and seek capitalization in 2008 when the global economy was on the brink of a collapse. Cooperatives have grown

locally and globally. There are, however, questions about their ability to concurrently pursue economic growth and

remain committed to the aspirations of grassroots families. This workshop draws on innovative research that sheds

lights on the successes, challenges and failures of cooperatives in Nova Scotia, Canada and the global context.


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Session 4.2: Cooperative Innovation: Policies, Practices and Debates on Social Enterprise and Collective

Entrepreneurship

1530h – 1700hr., Friday, 23 November, 2012

Prepared by: Joseph Nyemah

Chair: Joseph Nyemah

The late 1970s marks the arrival of new forms of communal enterprises. Some of these enterprises adapt the

cooperative model, but explore new sectors, such as transportation, insurance and education that cooperatives have

avoided. Some are more socially oriented; using market based tools to address the ills of society. Traditional not-for-

profit organizations also entered the arena by engaging in profit-making activities to strengthen their financial

autonomy and become more committed to advocating their values without threats of losing financing from big

corporations and governments. Others have situated themselves at the intersection of individual financial

development and social justice. The trajectories are many and varied, but innovation, social justice and collectivity

are common characteristics. Traditional cooperatives gradually find themselves surrounded by these new collective

enterprises. Governments and the private sector have also begun to develop partnerships with these enterprises with

the aim of achieving shared objectives. These innovative processes have not being without controversies, however.

They have not only created an identity crisis, they also attracted questions of accountability, economic mediocrity and

ethics. This workshop entertains enthralling case studies, debates, policy implications from academia, government

and the cooperative sector.


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Artifact 9: Social enterprise strategy development process map (presentation delivered to a

group of senior government officials on September 3, 2014).

Joseph Nyemah Nyemah

Regional Planning and Development

NS Economic and Rural Development and Tourism


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Category V: Teaching and Instructional Competencies (academic

readiness)

Artifact 10: Africentric Policy Issues in Life-long Learning: GSLL 6220 680 (course outline)

Mount Saint Vincent University, 166 Bedford Highway,

Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3M 2J6

MAY - JULY

SUMMER 2014

MAY - JULY

SUMMER 2014

Course Description

An exploration of historical and contemporary public policy in

Nova Scotia, and its implications for African Nova Scotian

learners. The course encourages students to draw on

Africentricity and critical race theory to critically trouble the

politics of public policy development, specifically education policy

in a complex majority-minority context.

Course Goals Provide students with a critical understanding of the politics –

reconciling varying interests - of public policy development;

Provide students with a broad understanding of public policy,

particularly education policy analysis;

Provide students with a deepened understanding of the link

between education policy and social justice issue.

Instructor: Joseph Nyemah, MA, M.Ad.Ed, PhD Student

Phone & email: (902) 220-8357/ [email protected]

Time: Monday, 5-7

Location: Collaborate Virtual Classroom

Modules, schedules and readings

Module one: 3-5PM, May 5 & 12, 2014

Africentricity - conceptual and theoretical debates:

Dei, G. & Kempf, A. (2013). New perspectives on African-centred education in

Canada. Toronto: Canadian Scholars' Press. (MSVU Library)

Module two: 3-5PM, Monday, May 19 & 26, 2014

Critical race theory:

Zamudio, M., Russell, C., Rios, F., & Bridgeman, J. L. (2010). Critical race theory

matters: Education and ideology. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis. (MSVU Library)

Module three: 3-5PM, June 1 & 9, 2014

The politics of public policy development:

Government of Quebec (2013). Bill 60: Charter affirming the values of State

secularism and religious neutrality and of equality between women and men, and

providing a framework for accommodation requests. Available at

http://www.nosvaleurs.gouv.qc.ca/medias/pdf/Charter.pdf

Marsh, J. (2011). Class dismissed: why we cannot teach or learn our way out of

inequality. New York: Monthly Review Press. (MSVU Library)

Module four: 3-5Pm, June 16 & 23, 2014

Education: purpose, social mobility and social justice

Nussbaum, M. C. (2012). Not for profit: why democracy needs the humanities

(Reprint.). Princeton University Press. (MSVU Library)

Module five: 3-5PM, June 30 & July 7, 2014

Education reform:

The Education Acts of Nova Scotia; Nova Scotia Department of Education

http://nslegislature.ca/legc/sol/sole.htm

Kelly, Brynn (2003). A Brief Overview of Policy Issues Related to Rural Nova

Scotia’s Black Communities; Rural Communities Impacting Policy Project.

http://www.ruralnovascotia.ca/documents/intern%20reports%2002-

03/2002blackpolicyissues.pdf

Assignments Assignment 1: students will prepare a 10 page position paper

which draws on critical race theory with a focus on lifelong learning

to examine the current NS Workforce Development Strategy,

accessible at

http://www.novascotia.ca/lae/pubs/docs/Labour_Three_Year_Strat

egic_Plan_13-16.pdf. This is valued at 35 per cent of your final

mark. Due May 30.

Assignment 2: students will prepare a 10 page paper which draws

on Africentricity to critically trouble the current school review

process in NS; this is valued at 35 percent of your final mark. .

Students will reduce the review paper to a 2 page briefing note for

submission to the NS school review committee. This is valued at

10 per cent of your final mark. Due June 30.

Assignment 3: book review. Students will choose a recently

published book related to lifelong learning and provide a 3 page

critical review; this is valued at 20 per cent of your final mark. Due

July 20.

http://www.nosvaleurs.gouv.qc.ca/medias/pdf/Charter.pdf

http://nslegislature.ca/legc/sol/sole.htm

http://www.ruralnovascotia.ca/documents/intern%20reports%2002-03/2002blackpolicyissues.pdf

http://www.ruralnovascotia.ca/documents/intern%20reports%2002-03/2002blackpolicyissues.pdf

http://www.novascotia.ca/lae/pubs/docs/Labour_Three_Year_Strategic_Plan_13-16.pdf

http://www.novascotia.ca/lae/pubs/docs/Labour_Three_Year_Strategic_Plan_13-16.pdf


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Course Policies

In consultation with you, your instructor may change the course requirements (if this proves necessary and reasonable) as well as the marking scheme with

reasonable written notice to students taking this course.

It is assumed that students will use appropriate format for presenting assignments. You will find an excellent resource at the MSVU library not only for course

research but also for report writing.

University regulations on Plagiarism and Cheating will be strictly enforced. Correct use of language (English) including gender neutral language is one of the

criteria included in the evaluation of all written assignments. Communicating with me:

The method of communicating with me during the course is via email [email protected]; with occasional face to face meetings or telephone conation as

necessary.

University Policies

Students with Disabilities

Students who have a disability and who require academic accommodations must register with Disability Services

(www.msvu.ca/disabilityservices) as early as possible in order to receive accommodations.

Plagiarism and Cheating

University regulations on plagiarism and cheating and other academic offenses will be strictly enforced. These regulations

including applicable procedures and penalties are detailed in the University Calendar and are posted on department boards

and are found on the website at www.msvu.ca on the Current Students page under Academic Offenses.

Correct Use of Language

Correct use of language is one of the criteria included in the evaluation of all written assignments.

On Research with Humans

Students who conduct research involving human participants must have their research reviewed in accordance with the

MSVU Policies and Procedures for Ethics Review of Research Involving Humans before starting the research. Check with

your course professor or Chair of the department about proper procedure.

mailto:[email protected]


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Artifact 11: Public Speaking Engagement (Acedemic)

Sugarloaf Senior High School, Campbellton, NB, February 24, 2014

Joseph Nyemah, PhD Student

Hello everybody!

And, a big thanks to the principal, faculty and administration of Sugarloaf Senior High School, Campbellton,

NB, for inviting me. From what I have read, Sugarloaf Senior High School is a great institution led by great

professionals, and producing wonderful students. I am emphasizing your greatness because you have

invited me. But also, because, in the culture of my village, located in Liberia, West Africa, if a great

individual, institution or community invites an ordinary individual, the invited individual, although ordinary,

can claim greatness onto him/herself because of the invitation from someone greater.

So kindly permit me, on your merits, to claim that I feel great.

Today is February 24, and in Canada, peoples of African descent celebrate their African Heritage

during the month of February. Historically -

The commemoration of African Heritage Month in Canada can be traced backed to 1926 when Harvard-

educated black historian Carter G. Woodson founded Negro History Week to recognize the achievements

of African Americans. Woodson was criticized for choosing February because it is the shortest month of

the year. But he pointed out that by choosing February; he wanted to honor to the birth dates of key figures

in the emancipation of enslaved blacks: Abolitionist Frederick Douglass (February 14, 1818) and President

Abraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809).

In 1976, as part of the American Bicentennial celebrations, Negro History Week was expanded to Black

History Month. The vast contributions of African-Canadians to Canadian society have been acknowledged,


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informally, since the early 1950s. In December 1995, the Canadian House of Commons officially

recognized February as Black History Month, following a motion introduced by the first Black Canadian

woman elected to Parliament, the Honorable Jean Augustine. In February 2008, now retired Nova Scotia

Senator Donald Oliver, Q.C., the first Black man appointed to the Senate, introduced a motion to have the

Senate officially declare February as Black History Month. It received unanimous approval and was

adopted on March 4, 2008. The adoption of Senator Oliver’s motion was the final parliamentary procedure

needed for Canada’s permanent recognition of Black History Month.

But, my friends, I would like to emphasize that African Heritage Month, Acadian Heritage Month, Greek

Heritage Month, Gaelic and Russian Heritage Months - just to name a few - are actually not about those

cultural groups. They are rather about recognizing and celebrating the ecology of our Canadian human

society, and humanity in general.

Why do I think so?

We are currently witnessing an unprecedented phenomenon – a high incidence of intercultural contact - as

a consequence of the forces of globalization. For instance, today, we have another world – and in this

second world or virtual world – whether in the republic of facebook, republic of instangram, republic of

Google Plus, just to name a few of the many new nations. We have started friendships with people in

countries that we have never visited. And, although some people are culturally distinct from us and

geographically far away in some place across the seas, they produce the food that we eat, the clothes that

we ware and the vehicles that we ride.

My friends, the point that I am trying to advance here is that although we retain our differences, we have

become inter-connected by the things that keep us alive. Because of the background of today’s occasion,


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and the current global context in which differences are superimposed with interconnectedness, I have

decided that my message to you is:

“Seek to cultivate the ecology of humanity”.

My message has three key concepts: cultivate, ecology and humanity, and I have explored them by “right

clicking” the mouse and reading from the “Encarta Dictionary”:

Cultivate - to improve or develop something, usually by study or education; to develop an acquaintance or

intimacy with somebody.

Ecology - the study of the relationships between living organisms and their interactions with their natural or

developed environment; Human ecology, for instance, refers to a branch of sociology that studies the

relationships between human beings and their natural and social environments.

Humanity – the human race considered as a whole; qualities of human being - the qualities or

characteristics considered as a whole to be characteristic of human beings - history, languages, and

philosophy that involve the study of culture and ideas.

My friends, I will base my message on these definitions to challenge you to:

Make an effort to learn about other people whose cultures and ways of life are different from you.

Seek to understand the relationships between differences; and not the differences that are obvious

to our human senses; and the differences that are imposed by generalizations and stereotypes

Seek to engage and understand other cultures as a whole and in a respectable way – often people

respond positively to genuine interests to learn about their cultures…

A sports commentator in the United States recently wrote:

“I must honestly admit that if you tell me that you are gay, I will feel a bit uncomfortable.


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But I will not be uncomfortable because I hate you being gay. I will be uncomfortable because I do not

understand what kind of world you live in. I will be uncomfortable because your world is also part of my

world! I am bothered because of the limitation of my knowledge, and I should seek to cultivate your world.”

(author unknown; Radio text)

My friends, I have decided to quote this sports commentator because in July 2013, during the usual gay

pride parade in Halifax, Nova Scotia, I went with my little boy, who was just five months old at the time, and

my girlfriend. We sat by the roadside under the sun to see the parade. Maybe I seemed tool curious, or

maybe because I sat under the sun with my little boy, or maybe for some reason that I don’t know – some

journalists came to me and requested to talk to me. I told them that I was there with my little family because

I wanted us to celebrate with gay people the thing that made them happy that day.

I still don’t understand the thing that made them happy, and maybe I will never know, but I would like to

know, because they are part of my world. I had cradled my five-month-old son, Tweh, in my arms as the

parade partied down the road. I took my family to the parade because I wanted them to appreciate

diversity. Even though my little boy was too young to understand, I just thought it was important for the

baby to be present. And I treasure the photographs and the newspaper from the event. I want him to see

the pictures and the newspaper article and grow up to understand the whole concept of acceptance and

difference.

My friends, we are challenged to understand the concept of difference in many ways, and you cannot

remove this from the school. Hofstede (1991:8) makes the important point that although certain aspects of

culture are physically visible, their meaning is invisible: ‘their cultural meaning ... lies precisely and only in

the way these practices are interpreted by the insiders.’ Saville-Troike (1997) had observed the following

event at a kindergarten classroom on the Navajo reservation.


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A Navajo man opened the door to the classroom and stood silently, looking at the floor. The Anglo-

American teacher said ‘Good morning’ and waited expectantly, but the man did not respond. The teacher

then said ‘My name is Mrs. Jones,’ and again waited for a response. There was none. In the meantime, a

child in the room put away his crayons and got his coat from the rack. The teacher, noting this, said to the

man, ‘Oh, are you taking Billy now?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ The teacher continued to talk to the man while Billy got

ready to leave, saying, ‘Billy is such a good boy,’ ‘I’m so happy to have him in class,’ etc. Billy walked

towards the man (his father), stopping to turn around and wave at the teacher on his way out and saying,

‘Bye-bye.’ The teacher responded, ‘Bye-bye.’ The man remained silent as he left.

But my friends, This is what you need to know:

From a Navajo perspective, the man’s silence was appropriate and respectful. The teacher, on the other

hand, expected not only to have the man return her greeting, but to have him identify himself and state his

reason for being there. Although such an expectation is quite reasonable and appropriate from an Anglo-

American perspective, it would have required the man to break not only Navajo rules of politeness but also

a traditional religious taboo that prohibits individuals from saying their own name. The teacher interpreted

the contextual cues correctly in answer to her own question (‘Are you taking Billy?’ and then engaged in

small talk. The man continued to maintain appropriate silence. Billy, who was more acculturated than his

father to Anglo-American ways, broke the Navajo rule to follow the Anglo-American one in leave-taking.

This encounter undoubtedly reinforced the teacher’s stereotype that Navajos are ‘impolite’ and

‘unresponsive’, But it also reinforced the man’s stereotype that Anglo-Americans are ‘impolite’ and ‘talk too

much.’


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My friends, when you seek to cultivate the ecology of humanity, you are empowered with

knowledge.

I recently spent a lot of time trying to understand how people choose what they talk about whenever they

are invited as a guest speaker? Of course – most often you are given a topic, but you still have to develop

it. I came to realize that most of the time – it is the speaker’s life experience that puts values and meaning

into his/her message. If for example – your life is all about spending time with your parents – your message

or contribution to a conversation will likely reflect the relationship and personal learning from your parents.

Now, please don’t get me wrong - what we learn from our parents is very valuable to share, but sharing

must fit into context, so be careful so that you are not always relying on that one story from your parents…..

Your contribution to a conversation is less boring if you can offer something specific about a hockey game;

the difference with soccer; the story of Nelson Mandela; not just Facebook, but the story behind it…. How

did it come to be created as such a phenomenon? If, for instance, you are Akarsh Pai, a Grade 12

student and the vice-president of the Student Council here at Sugarloaf Senior High, and you have been

chosen by the Canadian Gene Cure Foundation (CGCF) to participate in their “Gene Researcher for a

Week” program – you will one day have something to share with an audience based on this experience.

Ms. Connie Graham, a Music and English teacher here at Sugarloaf Senior High School recently

encouraged her students to have a discussion about “Manal al-Sharif: A Saudi woman who dared to drive”.

If you pay attention to this story, by critically questioning: Why is the story important? What is our

understanding of freedom? Why women are not prevented from driving in Canada as it is in Saudi Arabia?

What does it mean to be Canadian?

My friends - you will have something interesting to offer in a conversation.


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There is also, Ms Jeannette Murphy, an English teacher at Sugarloaf Senior High School, who recently,

encouraged her students to dialectically trouble the question: Can Money Buy Happiness?

Another Sugarloaf teacher, Ms. Theresa McIntyre, also recently encouraged her students to pounder

over the question: What is the Key to Success?

These are important ways to help you to cultivate the ecology of humanity.

In articulating the human development model of education, Nussbaum (2010) perfectly underlines the

importance for educational systems to encourage and nurture students’ ability to actively use inquiry and

questioning as a way of developing a critical understanding of the contexts of their lives, or lifeworld - the

set of understandings and assumptions that frame how people live with each other (see Habermas, 1987).

Nussbaum (2010) argues that the human development model of teaching is historically associated with the

Western philosophical tradition of education theory, traceable in the work of several renowned educators

including Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Dewey, Friedrich Froebel, Johann Pestalozzi, Bronson Alcott,

Rabindranath Tagore, and Maria Montessori.

According to Nussbaum (2010), the human development model or democratic education tradition holds

that “education is not just about the passive assimilation of facts and cultural traditions, but also about

challenging the mind to become active, competent, and thoughtfully critical in a complex world” (p. 18) that

is increasingly changing. She argues that this model of education is “important in any democracy, but is

particularly important in societies that grapple with the presence of people who differ in nature of ethnicity,

caste, and religion” (p. 54). This model of education is also relevant for Canada, where immigration has

created multiple identities, cultures and beliefs, and where the need to question inequalities and

discrimination is increasingly pertinent.


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And this is what I observe the teachers of Sugarloaf Senior High School are applying by asking students to

talk about what is happening in Saudi Arabia..

I will tell you a bit more about the work of the American, John Dewey:

In his Chicago based education laboratory, Dewey, developed and implemented a teaching philosophy that

guided students to seek to understand phenomena, problems or objects first by identifying and

understanding their fundamental components and origins. Dewey’s philosophy of teaching encourages

students to look beyond, for instance, the observable characteristics of the notepad, chocolate drink or

garment by questioning the antecedences that led to its production - who provided the labor, under what

social and economic circumstances, where particularly, and what impact the extraction of the material

induces on local livelihoods. The epistemic process of learning about a phenomenon by first examining the

basis of its existence is foundational to my message that encourages you to cultivate the ecology of

humanity.

Dewey’s dialectic teaching philosophy that encourages students to question the production of objects is

aligned with the argument that natural and social reality should be understood as an open stratified system

of objects with causal powers. Dewey’s teaching philosophy is important because, when a student in the

United States, Europe or Canada, for instance, is encouraged to question the circumstances of the labor

that is involved in the production of a chocolate drink, the student will possibly discover that many cocoa

farmers in the Ivory Coast, the West African country that is the world’s largest producer of cocoa, are not

only working in perilous occupational health and safety conditions; they are also grossly underpaid and

exploited by governments, private corporations and multilateral organizations through a combination of

neo-liberal policies and corrupt international capitalist structures.


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The students will realize that when you do a value chain analysis, a cocoa farmer in the Ivory Coast earns

only two United States dollars ($2) from the production of one Kilo of cocoa, but a coffee shop owner in

New York will earn a profit of more than twenty United States dollars ($20) on the same quantity of cocoa

with comparatively less input.

About garments - Dewey’s philosophy of encouraging the student to probe the production of a garment is

also likely to lead him or her to discover that there are under-aged girls working in the garment factories of

Bangladesh, who besides being underpaid in hazardous factory working conditions, confront varying forms

of abuse. For example, on January 27, 2013, the Wall Street Journal (2013) carried a story captioned New

Bangladesh Fire Kills 7. The article revealed that a fire at a garment factory in the capital of Bangladesh

killed seven workers, barely two months after a factory blaze left 112 workers dead and prompting

widespread calls to improve safety in the sector.

Did you hear about how, Joe Fresh – the fabric store, was threatened by customers?

Again, the process of discovering this new knowledge about injustice and inequality – is possible if students

are encouraged to cultivate the ecology of humanity. This is what I see the teachers of Sugarloaf Senior

High School are doing. I recently spoke at a capstone event at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova

Scotia. It was organized by the Atlantic Metropolis Centre. I told them about some of the imperatives of

cultivating the ecology of humanity within our educational institutions. I told them that while it makes a lot of

economic sense to recruit students from South Korea, China, Japan, Europe, etc… we miss another part of

humanity if we do not have a student from Ukraine, Ecuador, Bangladesh, Haiti, Mali, South Sudan, etc…

in our classroom.


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My friends, there is so much that I can say here in encouraging you to cultivate the ecology of humanity,

but we do not have the time to do so. As young people – the direction of our society in terms of cultural

harmony, acceptance, tolerance, peace, etc… lies in your hands. And I am really convinced that this school

is doing everything perfect to prepare you to do so. The American journalist, Fareed Zakaria, in his

Commencement Speech at Harvard University, on May 24, 2012, said: “The best commencement speech I

ever read was by the humorist and journalist Art Buchwald. He was brief, saying simply, “Remember, we

are leaving you a perfect world. Don’t screw it up.” So I want to close my message by equally imposing on

you that our society is giving you every possible to allow you to cultivate the ecology of humanity and that

this world is currently peaceful, harmonious and perfect. Please don’t screw it up.

Thank you.

Documents

J_NYEMAH FINA_FINAL_ PORTFOLIO_SEPTEMBER_15_ 2014