Pedagogies of Enlightenment or Entitlement?

Hospitality, School Yoga, and the Trials of Decolonization

Authors

  • Tasha Ausman University of Ottawa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18733/cpi29593

Abstract

Mindfulness and wellness practices are increasingly becoming part of the curricular landscape in secondary schools in Canada, particularly with growing attention to the mental health of students during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. This research examines the implementation of a school yoga program introduced to students bubbled in classroom cohorts in a school in Gatineau, Quebec. This paper employs Derrida’s framework of unconditional hospitality to ask whether it is possible for diasporas to reclaim indigenous knowledges through practices of ethical relationality, even as his philosophy brings to light some of the impossibilities of overturning the historical power relations entrenched in colonial pasts and the ongoing prevalence of White supremacy.

Author Biography

Tasha Ausman, University of Ottawa

Tasha Ausman is a Part-Time Professor at the University of Ottawa, and a full-time mathematics and science teacher with Western Quebec School Board. Her research employs decolonizing, psychoanalytic, and post-colonial frameworks in the areas of Curriculum Studies, Mathematics, and recently, Queer Studies. Her work appears in the Journal of the Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies, Multicultural Education Review, and Transnational Curriculum Inquiry. As well, her co-authored work appears in book collections including Disney, Culture and Curriculum (Routledge, 2016) and The Critical Youth Studies Reader (Peter Lang, 2014). She is currently working on research approaches to decolonize science and mathematics teaching in secondary classrooms, and on curriculum employing curriculum studies frameworks to understand the intersection between visual-arts-based pedagogies and biology.

Migrating Colors. An image showing fall colors superimposed over a lake, with a cloudy sky.

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Published

2021-08-17

Issue

Vol. 12 No. 2 (2020): Living Stories of Migrancy: Exile, Unconditional Hospitality and Transnational Citizenship

Section

Articles, Illustrations and Verse