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As an Aboriginal woman critiquing Australia's education system as a site of ongoing colonialism, I aim to actively resist the temptation to perform research within Western hegemonic research paradigms, and instead seek ways to disrupt normative research practices with the what, how, and why of research. In this paper, I utilise Indigenous autoethnography as a cultural imperative to 'walk my talk', embedding an autoethnographic dataset of reflection, poetry, emotion, and subjective blurting in response to my experiences of colonialism in the academy. Indigenous autoethnography allows a space from which I can expose (and resist) the abnormality of the 'normal'; fulfil cultural, ethical and relational obligations; and recentre axiology and ontology as a starting place for research. This paper seeks to contribute to the small but growing literature on Indigenous autoethnography, to offer another pathway for Indigenous scholars to follow, as well as illuminate normative research practices for non-Indigenous researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper defines the notion of dialogic local space and highlights its importance to teaching and learning. A dialogic local space values multiple local realities as it invites us to listen to, take up, and have confidence in our own local everyday and personal realities, and to listen to, consider, and respond to other local realities. This openness can deepen and widen how we know and see our own realities. We show what a dialogic local space can look like in a second grade classroom community. We employ sociocultural discourse analysis to illuminate one teacher's pedagogical choices in a month-long poetry Writing Workshop unit for seven-and-eight year olds. We present a big picture look at the unit and then take a close look at five minilessons. Findings detail ways this teacher's minilesson design, flow, and content cultivate dialogic local spaces, and how a dialogic stance, manifest in classroom talk practices, encourages students to participate in these spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of empty space in haiku and its potential in education is the focus of this paper. The author examines the emptiness embodied in the practice of writing haiku through examples of Basho's life and haiku, and her own experience as a teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a retrospective look, from a distance of thirty-five years, at the lasting influence of a poetry therapy class on one of its participants. It chronicles how words written by a classmate, never seen or heard from after the class dispersed, had a lasting influence on her life. It builds on a theory borrowed from science, the entanglement theory, which suggests that particles in the sub-atomic realm, once connected remain forever in contact with each other. Drawing from the framework of the class, it speculates on extrapolating the physical theory of entanglement to a theory of human connections. It suggests underlying patterns in which lives fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, patterns so complex as to be beyond human understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phenomenological reflection can refer to methods for analyzing empirical data and, more broadly, to a guiding philosophy that can be used to facilitate reflection upon an experience or phenomenon. Such reflection can help to uncover assumptions that would otherwise remain implicit or taken for granted. Common practice in phenomenology is to gather insights from various sources (e.g. poems, legends) in order to enrich our understanding of the phenomenon. Grounded in the writing of Max van Manen, the author provides a phenomenological reflection on the experience of studying Latin and translating poetry, as a defense of the liberal arts. In doing so, the author suggests that the goal of evaluating one's education primarily in terms of its practical or technical value may itself have to be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the epidemic of alienation created by colonization and the ideologies that maintain systems of domination. More specifically, it argues that a decolonizing holistic pedagogy can help address the root of our individual and collective alienation to facilitate healing. This position is supported by the findings of an ethnographic study, conducted in 2013–2014, highlighting Poetry for the People (P4P), an arts/activism course started by poet-activist-professor, June Jordan, at UC Berkeley. The article opens with a theoretical framework that centers healing and love as decolonial priorities and pedagogical imperatives, and speaks to the mindbodyspirit labor, restoration, and creativity involved in decolonizing education. Emphasizing the need for decolonizing epistemologies to inform classroom dialogue, this article points to the power inherent in those dialogues for creating connections that mend alienation and for generating apertures for personal and social transformation. However, it is the voices of the P4P participants interviewed that give testimony to the effectiveness of a decolonizing holistic pedagogy to foster rigorous investigation of self and society, authentic community-building across difference, as well as the healing power of writing, sharing, and witnessing others share personal/political poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]