Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

The context of Being, Interculturality and New Knowledge Systems

Margaret Kumar, Thushari Welikala, Margaret Kumar, Thushari Welikala

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800430082
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

This book approaches notions of Being, Interculturality and New Knowledge Systems, through a team of expert contributors who share their evidence-based knowledge constructed within diverse geo-political borders. It explores the disjuncture, assumptions, and beliefs associated with the concepts of Being, Interculturality and New Knowledge Systems, to reveal avenues for reconsidering untapped bodies of knowledge and how they are being positioned within teaching, learning and researching in higher education.

This volume is built on conceptual and theoretical insights from a range of different disciplines, and explores the social-historical underpinnings of Being, 'becoming' and 'to be'. The book deepens understanding on Indigeneity and how culturally diverse, environmentally sustaining, interculturally and transnationally unprecedented, alternative knowledges have long been disregarded as globally irrelevant and intellectually insignificant. It attempts to address the missing connections between what is recognised as 'global knowledge' and the locally situated, underrepresented knowledges that are being constructed within diverse types of peripheries across contexts.

This edited volume is essential reading for academics, researchers, policy-makers and students in higher education.

Part I

Being

Chapter 1

Theorising the Concept of Being in Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The changing face of research relationships

Margaret Kumar

Abstract

Language emanates from the individual who articulates from a coding system, whether oral or written, a construct of relational and communicative devices that determines who they are and what they would like to be. The concept of Being or ‘to be’, foregrounds a diverse range of definitions and extrapolations into the attributes of individuals, individuality, communities, and societies. The aim of the chapter is to unravel issues in the theorising of the concept of Being and its relationship to Indigenous Knowledge Systems for research students, through a teaching framework. A further aim is to explore the correlation of Being and Indigenous Knowledge Systems with the changing face of research relationships in a contemporary global setting. I shall, firstly, draw on relevant conceptualisations of what is Being under a Western framework. I, then, problematise this concept through Indigenous Knowledge Systems with a review of the literature on the issues surrounding its use. In the third part of this chapter, I focus on the changing face of research relationships by exploring the alignment of Being with the principles of Indigenous Knowledge Systems and their connectivity within a global framework. In this way, I foreground a significance of differentials and a re‐imaging of thought and perception in the way research into Indigenous and Aboriginal societies is positioned.

Keywords: Being; to be; Aboriginal and Indigenous Knowledge Systems; culture and community; shared knowledge; protocol

Introduction and Contextualisation

I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the Elders and students of the Nations of Australia with whom I have had the privilege of teaching and working alongside.

The acquisition of the linguistic nominal terminology of the lexicon ‘being’ leading to what constitutes the definition of Being in cultures has been foregrounded in various ways through several trajectories. In this chapter, through a philosophical approach, I draw on conceptualisations, surrounding the theorising of Being under a Western framework and so lead to its perceptions in Indigenous Knowledge Systems. The aim is to provide through a pedagogical teaching process, an unravelling of the concept of Being to delineate the phraseology that constitutes the meaning of Being¹ in Indigenous Knowledge Systems. In this way, I bring to the fore, what I term a significance of differentials and a re‐imaging of thought and perception in the way research into Indigenous societies is positioned within a Western pedagogical setting. It is envisaged that this will lead towards offering a pathway of how the concept of Being can be adapted within a Western framework in accordance with Indigenous Knowledge Systems. It is also hoped that through this process there will be a deeper awareness of the transformative nature of research relationships, subject to the uniqueness and diversity of societies.

Positioning and Methodological Standpoint

I am a non‐Indigenous academic teaching and researching in an Indigenous, Western educational and cultural environment. This has been influenced by my background which is situated in an indentured Indian past, a postcolonial history, a Western, educational, cultural, multilingual, and multicultural background.

My methodological standpoint is from an autoethnographical experiential perspective where I take a twofold approach. The first is, to borrow from Pathak (2010, p. 1), disrupt the ‘traditional academic voice’ and find one that articulates the many facets and nuances that present who I am as an academic in the role that I have as an educator. The second is to view myself as a participant in teaching and learning. As part of this undertaking, I follow Roth (2009, pp.1–4) in objectifying how ‘I’ as the Self need to be ethically aware of how the two roles of participant as the subject and participant as the researcher are modelling each other to reach a dialogic outcome.

I work with postgraduate Indigenous research students with the aim of providing a foundational basis in research skills and supervision that is enabling. As part of the process of undergoing research training, my students find the extrapolating of concepts confronting. This happens when trying to draw meanings of a concept used in Western terminology with an Aboriginal one. One such is the concept of Being. Moreover, in coming to terms with what is Being and how to apply it to their own research, students have been challenged by several variances in what constitutes Being in the frameworks of Western and Aboriginal Knowledge Systems. The comprehending of this terminology is integral to my formative discourse with the students in the research analysis of their study. Thus, my purpose in this particular inquiry is to enable a research platform for students on how to ‘disrupt’ this concept and gain new meaning to advance their research through differing constructs of knowledge. Subsequently, through a framework of teaching, this study is based on guiding my students towards a theorising of the concept of Being in Western and Aboriginal Knowledge Systems and so leading to an informed judgement on how to apply the concept in their research which is going to be structured within cultural and Western constructs. The emphasis is also to guide students to an agentive space (Kumar, 2004) that contributes to bringing new knowledge to an Academy, without compromising Indigenous Knowledge Systems. To attain this outcome, the following study was carried out.

Study

The study under discussion in this chapter focuses on the philosophical terminology of Being under a Western framework to provide a focus on how the term is perceived in Aboriginal and Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Australia.² Through a review of literature, teaching and dialogic discussion, a deconstruction of the term is explored to show if the term Being is conjoined with issues of indigeneity to constitute the cultural framework of Indigenous and Aboriginal societies. Accordingly, the review of the literature, teaching and dialogic discussion are conducted through a cascading set of questions to lead to an understanding of how the concept of Being can be applied to Aboriginal and Indigenous research.

Further, I carry out this study by employing a formative and summative stance (Dawe, 2020; Hattie, 2003). I utilise three questions as stipulated by the Victorian State Government Education and Training (2020, n.p.) in a formative exploration of concept. The three questions are: ‘What is to be learned?’, ‘How is learning progressing?’ and ‘What will be learned?’. All the questions are interwoven with teaching and dialogic discussion. To reach a summative finding for this formative extrapolation, a fourth question is added. This is: how do I utilise my agentive role in developing the agency of my students in using the lexicon of Being effectively? Moreover, the objective behind the use of the questions in this study is elucidating, in a culturally appropriate way, the theorising of Being in Indigenous Knowledge Systems for the students, in their research study. I investigate these questions through Parts 1–1V. The purpose of the Parts is to show a staggered discussion and review of literature to reach an understanding in how to apply what has been explored in the theorising of the concept.

Part I: What is to be Learned?

To gain an understanding to this question, I firstly contextualise what is Being through a Western perspective. In the context of Greek thought, Dillon (2000, pp. 51–71) promulgates the term as denoting a single, permanent, unchanging, fundamental reality, to which is habitually opposed the inconstant flux and variety of visible things. The word is classified as a substratum that may develop a multiplicity of manifestations that could be incongruent. According to Dillon, ‘there could be unity or infinite multiplicity; eternity and timelessness, incorporeality, rationality, or conversely necessity. [Thus] … being becomes the repository of what can be termed becoming’ (p. 51).

Heidegger (1927; Macquarrie & Robinson, 1962) crystallises the concept of Being in the imagery of Dasein. In a translation of this work, Sutton (2013, p. 2) infers that Dasein is not just a human being, but a fully ‘skilled in life, who was a “being‐in‐the‐world” ’ (p. 2). Critical theorising in this respect with relevance to the students I teach and the affinity to New Knowledge Systems is the understanding that ‘consciousness and interactions give one “a sense of being alive” … the functions we develop from birth achieve a relationship with the world and people in it’ (Sutton, 2013, p. 2).

In an additional translation of Heidegger’s work, Carpuzzi (1998) denotes how Heidegger defines language as ‘the house of being’ (p. 239). In this way, language also becomes ‘the home of human essence’ (p. 274). Heidegger (2000) substantiates the etymological meaning of the word through his focus on the substantive (noun) form of the word Being. He argues that:

essences, provide directions and differences in direction in the possible meanings of the word and how words can be used within a discourse.³ He stipulates that whether or not the primordial form of the word is a noun (substantive) that is: Being, or the verb that is: to be, it coincides with the question of speech and the origin and purpose of language. (pp. 55–60)

This question entails the origin of language.

A deciphering of this meaning is extended by Derrida (as cited in Sutton, 2020).⁴ Derrida verifies that in Heidegger’s view the sense of ‘being is neither the word being nor the concept of being’ (p. 21). He stipulates that Heidegger is looking beyond the ontic being (i.e. the outward, worldly appearance of being). Sutton explains that Derrida advocates that:

the sense of being is … a determined signifying trace … is not to be thought at one go; entity and being, ontic and ontological, … derivative with regard to difference; and with respect to what I shall later call differance, [a] … concept designating the production of differing/deferring. (p. 23)

Importantly, Sutton draws attention to the fact that the meaning of Being is indefinable, or forever deferred.

In deconstructing the several layers that become evident in understanding Being within a Western framework that is relevant to the research students’ outcomes, the next stage of formative learning for students is to explore if the multiplicities detailed above correlate with the conceptualising of Being in the cultures of my students. I do this by posing the second question in Part II.

Part II: How is the Learning Progressing?

To get an understanding to this question, it becomes important to problematise Being through Indigenous Knowledge Systems. In a theoretical understanding of the term, therefore, it becomes important to discuss the derivational origins of the phraseology: Indigenous Knowledge Systems, as it is in the lexicon that the semantic is derived in terms of how it lends itself to the constituting of Being in Indigenous societies. In a significant move, The World Bank Group (2016) signifies the overlapping nature of meaning in how Indigenous and Knowledge Systems are conceptualised in everyday usage. In quoting Warren (1991), they refer to Indigenous Knowledge as the unique local knowledge of a culture and society.

It is the basis for local‐level decision making in agriculture, health care, food preparation, education, natural‐resource management including other activities in rural communities. This knowledge contrasts with the international knowledge system that is generated by universities, research institutions and private firms. (p. 1)

Similarly, in quoting Flavier, de Jesus, and Navarro (1995) advocate that:

Indigenous Knowledge is the information base for a society. It facilitates communication and decision making leading to systems that are dynamic and continually influenced by ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Unravelling
• Part I. Being
• Part II. Being and Interculturality
• Part III. Being, Interculturality and New Knowledge Systems
• Index