Countering Coloniality in Educational Research: From Ownership to Answerability

In this theoretical article, I argue for a relational stance on learning as a way of reckoning with educational research as part of the settler colonial structure of the United States. Because of my geopolitical location to the United States as a settler colony, I begin by contrasting the stances of anticolonial and decolonial. I then analyze the ways in which educational research is animated by settler colonialism in its constant pursuit of property and ownership. Through examples of research, I make visible how the physical practices of settler colonialism are echoed through material and figurative practices of education and perpetuate colonial relationships. I close with a call for educational research to become answerable to knowledge about learning through learning as being-in-relation that recognizes education and educators investments in settler colonialism.