ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how dominant political, economic, and linguistic hierarchies affect the dynamics of knowledge exchange. The first key theme demonstrates the influence of language on knowledge. It indicates how multiple languages facilitated the earliest transmission of learning, and then how a select few languages became dominant across geographical borders and began to shape learning, knowledge systems, and dissemination. The second theme discusses the impact of the market economy and neoliberalism on knowledge systems. It explores how the commodification of higher education has led to competition between institutions and how this, in turn, has prompted standardization in the neoliberal global north. It then identifies the issue that institutions who wish to compete in the global market of higher education face: whether to adopt a set of existing standards from a neoliberal perspective or to develop new systems that align with values, ways of learning, and knowledge building that thrive in settings unfettered by neoliberalism.
The third theme considers the impact of the export of “western” pedagogies on the dynamics of knowledge exchange. It highlights the movement of transnational education, from higher-income countries to lower- and middle-income countries. It indicates how this unidirectional flow of transnational education perpetuates the process of embedding “western” pedagogies across the globe and calls for an alternative approach.
The second half of this chapter focuses on the possibilities of rebalancing the power dynamics of knowledge systems from the global north to global south. It considers how the mobility of individual academics has the potential to provide opportunities 261 for individuals to situate themselves in other cultures and, through the immersive experience of living and working in unfamiliar environments open their eyes to ways of thinking and learning that they had not previously considered. It discusses how decolonization of the curriculum intends to challenge western homogenization and reconstructs learning with an honest unmasking of the colonial lenses that have provided only half the narrative.
Finally, this chapter lays out a model of “critical global pedagogies” – an applied approach to curriculum design that aims to rebalance the power dynamics of knowledge systems and exchange. It outlines how the use of specific pedagogic principles can disrupt dominant knowledge systems and enable new voices to be heard.
