Dalene Swanson

DIRECTOR OF ACCESS TO DEGREE STUDIES, UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING.

My research interests and expertise span reconceptualist curriculum perspectives, mathematics education, cultural studies, critical theory, critical / ethical internationalisation in education, democracy in education, and social and ecological justice. I am interested broadly in critical, ideological and socio-political perspectives in education and society. I mostly write from poststructural and de/post-colonial perspectives. In particular, I have expertise in critical global citizenship, democratic education, and indigeneity, especially the African onto-epistemology of Ubuntu. Philosophical and social concerns around poverty, marginalisation, (neo)colonialism, oppression, as well as my research into what I call “the construction of disadvantage” frame much of my work. Hegemonic tenets within neoliberalism, economic development and globalisation reflect ongoing concerns of injustice, and I have research and personal commitments to social and ecological justice and egalitarianism. I also have expertise in critical arts-based and narrative methodologies (especially the qualitative methodological approach I developed, 'critical rhizomatic narrative'), and other creative, post-foundational and counter-hegemonic research and writing methodologies and practices. I also bring arts-based approaches to bear on mathematics education as a decolonising practice.