Interventions ontologiques et épistémologiques en enseignement supérieur pour la justice cognitive : étude de cas du réseau Ecoversities Alliance
This Master’s thesis is grounded in the idea that, despite their positive contributions to society, dominant higher education institutions (HEIs) also generate and perpetuate certain forms of cognitive injustice by overvaluing some ways of being and knowing at the expense of others. To counter this trend, this research project explores alternative forms of higher education that aim to promote cognitive justice—that is, the active recognition and dialogical engagement of diverse ways of being and knowing (Visvanathan, 2006, 2009, 2016). Cognitive justice is at the heart of this project, as it is documented that it can lead to numerous social and environmental benefits that support and preserve multiple forms of life on Earth (de Sousa Santos, 2016, 2017; Leibowitz, 2017; Porto, 2019). More specifically, this research project consists of a case study conducted in partnership with the Ecoversities Alliance, a network comprising more than 260 alternative higher education initiatives around the world, known as “ecoversities.” The objective of the research is to describe how the Ecoversities Alliance and its member organizations (ecoversities) aim to promote cognitive justice. For this purpose, the conceptual framework draws on the concept of cognitive justice (de Sousa Santos, 2014, 2017; Visvanathan, 2006, 2009, 2016) as well as the TREE model (de Oliveira Andreotti et al., 2018; Mika et al., 2020), which helps analyse ontological, epistemological, and methodological interventions within educational projects. The study includes a documentary analysis of articles (n = 28) written by members (founders, learners, and educators) of the Alliance, as well as an empirical analysis involving interviews with founders or directors of ecoversities (n = 10). The findings and interpretation are presented through three articles. The first article outlines the ways of being and knowing valued within different ecoversities. Ontologically, it highlights their conceptions of reality, existence, space, and time, which differ from those generally valued by dominant higher education institutions. The second article focuses on the epistemological interventions deployed by ecoversities. The analysis highlights the different types of knowledge valued within various ecoversities as well as some strategies adopted by the Ecoversities Alliance network to foster dialogue between ecoversities that adhere to different ways of being and knowing in order to promote cognitive justice. Finally, the third article identifies the challenges faced by ecoversities, and proposes a series of levers to address them, and identifies skills deemed relevant to support this work. Overall, this thesis is part of a rapidly expanding field of research, at the intersection between cognitive justice and higher education. It is distinguished by its ontological and epistemological analysis, which is still rare in work on higher education (Stein, 2019). The discussion and conclusion are an invitation to transpose the results of this research into the current societal context, by addressing different stakeholders: those involved in the development of alternatives in higher education, teachers who wish to promote cognitive justice, those responsible for developing educational policies, as well as managers of higher education institutions wishing to contribute to a more equitable world.
Enseignement supérieur, Justice cognitive, Ontologies, Épistémologies, Higher education, Cognitive justice, Écoversités, Savoirs
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