Standing TALL: Embracing Disruption for Positive Change

The current rules that govern Western higher education embrace the goals of Eurocentric promises of modernity but have left us unprepared for current challenges to higher education’s purpose and place in society. What if we imagine a new paradigm that uses this disruption to better understand learning, advance multiple knowledge systems, and change all the rules? In this session, participants will critically examine their institution's positionality, spheres of influence, and their own practice through an alternative approach. The Toward a Liberated Learning Spirit (TALLS) model for developing critical consciousness (Pipe & Stephens, 2023) weaves together established critical pedagogies, Indigenous pedagogy and epistemologies, Aníbal Quijano's (2024) Colonial Matrix of Power, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s (1967) Six Steps for Non-Violent Social Change. Participants will consider an alignment of higher education’s purpose in democracy and embracing acts of tender resistance (Tanaka, 2016) to redress this moment and maintain momentum forward.