Decolonizing Life Histories: Local Realities in the Global North and Global South

​​​​ Project Summary:​​

• In this ​virtual exchange project, DePaul students had the opportunity to interact virtually with Colombian rural educators. These educators, their rural families and the communities in which they teach have been deeply impacted by the over 50 year agrarian armed conflict. The focus of this project was on the relationship of pedagogy to culture and globalization in which students explored this relationship from different philosophical decolonial perspectives that emerge from the global north and the global south. DePaul and Colombian students collaborated on the development of life history projects. Through these life history projects students explored how the global-local context of their individual life histories had impacted the trajectory of their life course. The life history projects provided students a conversational space from which to develop transnational and critical intercultural perspectives that connected their everyday lives to differing and similar local realities experienced in the global north and global south.   

​ ​​Project Length:​

• ​7 Weeks

​​​​Technology Tools Used:

• ​​Google Docs Conversations
• WhatsApp
• Zoom​​

Communication Type​/ Interaction Mode: ​

• ​​​Async​hro​nous​​
• Synchronous

​​Learning Outcomes: ​

• ​​Students described what globalization and global justice are; how and why globalization has shaped the local realities and perspectives of the Global North (USA) and Global South (Colombia) and given emergence to divergent conceptions about teaching, learning, culture, language and human development.
  
• Students analyzed how and why the differing local realities and perspectives of the Global North and Global South has given emergence to divergent ideas/conceptions about teaching, learning, culture, language and human development.
• Students explained how these divergent conceptions about teaching, learning, culture, language and human development have shaped the life projects of marginalized communities in the Global North and Global South.
• Students identified how and why differing conceptions of teaching, learning, culture and language and human development in the Global North and Global South suggest differing epistemologies (knowledge or episteme systems, ontologies (ways of living and existing in the world) and differing conceptions of global and local futures.
  

​Reflection Component: ​​

• Through the life history project assignments,  selected course readings and documentary film viewings DePaul and Colombian students engaged in reflective discussions.​​
  

​Empathy Building Component: ​

• ​​Students designed a 3-minute​ individual Voicethread video introducing themselves to their group members by describing the story or family history of their first and last names. Students shared the meaning of their names, who they were named for, why their parents gave them that name, or why they chose the name themselves, or if their last name means something in their ancestral language. The aim of this exercise was to help students remember one another’s names through personal connections; and to give a sense of the diversity of cultures and histories that students bring to the class at large. ​
  

For more information about this project, please read the Newsline article found here.​