Graduate Certificate Program at U. Idaho has Students ‘Decolonizing’ Research

Graduate Certificate Program at U. Idaho has Students ‘Decolonizing’ Research

It doesn’t matter if a state is red. Higher education is always progressive.

The College Fix reports:

U. Idaho graduate certificate has students ‘decolonizing’ research

The University of Idaho offers a 13-credit graduate certificate that encourages students to incorporate “Indigenous knowledge systems” and “decolonizing” research methods into their academic work.

A professor at the public university says the goal is to expand scientific understanding through Indigenous cultural knowledge. However, an outside scholar expressed concerns to The College Fix about the program watering down the scientific method and pushing political views.

The “Indigenous Research and Education” certificate says it is designed for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous graduate students; it is offered through the university’s College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences. The university website states that the program prepares students to engage with “Indigenous Knowledge Systems, land education, and community-based research methods.”

The certificate includes courses such as “Decolonizing, Indigenous, and Action-Based Research Methods,” which has a “social justice” focus.

Another class, “Indigenous Land/Water Relations and Governance” has students examine Indigenous knowledge and “critique anthropocentric knowledge systems.” It also explores knowledge “inclusive of ecosystems and other-than-human beings,” the course description states.

Among the program’s stated learning outcomes is for students to “design research that engages methodologies grounded of Indigenous epistemologies, ontologies and axiologies and scholarship in the field of Indigenous research.”

Potential careers for graduates include sociologists, interpreters, museum curators, and political scientists, according to the program website.

How are the certificate’s approaches distinguished from the conventional scientific method? Professor Vanessa Anthony-Stevens told The College Fix that Indigenous methodologies are “relational and situated in context.”

“When put together with the conventional scientific method, these methodologies make relationships and context transparent in approaching and interpreting data,” she said in a recent interview.

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