Decolonizing Research in Cross-Cultural Contexts: Critical Personal Narratives

International scholars share their experiences with the challenges inherent in representing indigenous cultures and decolonizing cross-cultural research.

Winner of the 2005 Outstanding Narrative Research Book presented by the Narrative Research Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association

Drawing from their experiences in cross-cultural research, scholars from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Australia, the United Kingdom, and North America discuss their attempts to reclaim and reposition the representation of indigenous cultures in their work. They raise critical questions that resist the centrality of the English language as a medium of research and of the Western academy as the locus for knowledge production, reframe cross-cultural research agendas to include ways of knowing that have been excluded all too often, and offer creative ways of using cross-cultural collaboration.

Kagendo Mutua is Assistant Professor of Special Education at The University of Alabama.

Beth Blue Swadener is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Arizona State University.