Decolonial and sustainable epistemological, teaching, and research approaches have emerged in recent years as a goal for many disciplines across different contexts. The fundamental motivation for this sea change is to explore and expose coloniality, questions of justice and relevance embedded within traditional epistemology, pedagogy, and research. A further task is to sharpen the focus of the disciplines on contributing to social justice and transformation and addressing practicalchallenges.
There are various points of implementation and different challenges that accompany decolonial efforts. They include but are not limited to, the rediscovery of pre-colonial epistemologies, cross-disciplinary collaboration, creating space for voices outside disciplinary and academic spaces and visual and participative methods. Implementing disciplinary change towards decolonial and sustainable teaching and research is not simple. This approach to epistemology, pedagogy and research is complex and controversial. The sources and places of controversy are plentiful and can, in some ways, present challenges and uncertainty across contexts and disciplines. Conversely, these changes herald great opportunities to draw sustainable connections between the academy and local community, between disparate disciplines and be more relevant.
Technology has increasingly taken centre stage in transforming sustainable epistemological, pedagogical and research approaches. One example is bridging the gap between stakeholders by integrating technology into research methods across contexts. The integration of technology into teaching and learning. Of course, this raises the question of accessibility and ethics, which can facilitate inequality.
This session explores these complexities and possibilities for building decolonial and sustainable epistemological, teaching and research approaches. The papers in this session focus on various disciplines and challenges, ranging from spatial methods to urban sustainability history and sociology. Additionally, context also ranges from research to practice and from school level to higher education. The papers focus on the progress that scholars internationally have made, thevarious challenges they faced and explore possibilities. Engaging in these conversations creates space to share experiences and explore possibilities for collaborative work across contexts.