Challenges of educational research from a decolonial perspective

Abstract

In this article, we develop a critical reflection on the challenges of educational research from a decolonial perspective. We argue at the outset that the decolonial epistemological turn present in the growing set of Latin American, Brazilian, and Amazonian academic production in the field of education needs to be accompanied by a methodological turn, which possesses an inventive and transgressive capacity in the processes of knowledge production. We use as theoretical sources contributions of decolonial thinking, black feminist epistemologies, popular

education, participatory action-research, and other counter- hegemonic thinking paradigms. We analyze, in particular, the

need to overcome the pedagogical coloniality and eurocentrism present in universities and in traditional processes of knowledge production; the construction of a participatory perspective and a political-transformative commitment to the social and educational realities investigated; the need to research education in dialogue with the experiences lived by subalternized subjects – their memories, ancestral elements, and wisdoms. Among the challenges pointed out, we also propose the incorporation of sensitivity and ethical commitment in the investigations, the assumption of corporeality in the processes of knowledge production, the construction of sensitive and decolonial writing and the adoption of intersectionality as a methodological perspective of decolonial research.