This book extends a comprehensive overview of the treatment of extremism in education in Bangladesh, using a study of perceptions among students to explore proactive measures for the prevention of various types and forms of extremism prevalent among youth. It offers a critical, holistic, and student-centred study of the role of formal education in shaping perceptions of extremism and intersectional differences among individuals, drawing on data from university students. The author employs post-colonial theory and multicultural educational approaches to highlight how understandings of extremism differ across young adults and policymakers. Ultimately, it demonstrates that students' overall understanding of extremism is much broader than that of policymakers, and how understandings differ between male and female students at the intersection of rural and urban locations and socio-economic positions. As such, it foregrounds a need to involve and organize formal education as a proactive means to raise awareness and counter all forms of extremism, through incorporating specific teaching strategies into pedagogical practices to foster an anti-communalist, humanistic, critical multicultural, and cosmopolitan outlook among students. It will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests across multicultural education, comparative and international education, the sociology of education, extremism, and conflict and peace studies.

This book extends a comprehensive overview of the treatment of extremism in education in Bangladesh, using a study of perceptions among students to explore proactive measures for the prevention of various types and forms of extremism prevalent among youth. It offers a critical, holistic, and student-centred study of the role of formal education in shaping perceptions of extremism and intersectional differences among individuals, drawing on data from university students. The author employs post-colonial theory and multicultural educational approaches to highlight how understandings of extremism differ across young adults and policymakers. Ultimately, it demonstrates that students’ overall understanding of extremism is much broader than that of policymakers, and how understandings differ between male and female students at the intersection of rural and urban locations and socio-economic positions. As such, it foregrounds a need to involve and organize formal education as a proactive means to raise awareness and counter all forms of extremism, through incorporating specific teaching strategies into pedagogical practices to foster an anti-communalist, humanistic, critical multicultural, and cosmopolitan outlook among students. It will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests across multicultural education, comparative and international education, the sociology of education, extremism, and conflict and peace studies.

"This study aims to offer a comprehensive perspective of extremism and suggest some proactive measures for the prevention of various types and forms of extremism prevalent among youth in Bangladesh. To achieve these objectives, this research mainly relies on university students' views about extremism because extremism has largely been rising among young adults in the country. Guided by a set of post-colonial theories and some educational approaches, data were gathered through a few qualitative methods including Active Participatory Discussion Sessions (APDSs), Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), and in-depth interviews (IDIs). Findings show that students' overall understanding of extremism is much broader than that of policymakers. Students mentioned several types and forms of extremism in addition to Islamist terrorism, such as, religious extremism, anti-religious extreme atheism, Bengali ethnocentrism, misogyny/gender-based extremism, and political extremism. Students also identified some issues as extremism that do not fit the general understanding of extremism, and as it is used in the study. Students have developed conceptions of extremism through their observations, experiences, and learning from various sources rather than their school educational experience. Formal education in Bangladesh neither emphasizes controversial topics like extremism, gender and other differences, and sexuality, nor highlights important concepts like difference, diversity, and inequality in educational curricula. Findings also reveal some noticeable differences between the perceptions of male and female students at the intersectionality of rural/urban locations and socio-economic positions. Finally, this thesis highlights the need to involve and organize formal education as a proactive measure to prevent/counter all forms of extremism. It also suggests adding some crucial and controversial topics to K-12 curricula and incorporating specific teaching strategies into pedagogical practices to develop an anti-communalist, humanistic, critical multicultural and cosmopolitan outlook among students"--

Education, development and decolonization provides a historical, theoretical and practical inter-disciplinary analysis of the contemporary trajectory of colonization (including internal colonization) through the linked projects of eurocentric development, globalization and the uncritical adoption of colonial modes of education and learning in schools, communities, social movements and the “progressive” church in Asia, Africa and the Americas.

There is a rich intellectual history to the development of anti-colonial thought and practice. In discussing the politics of knowledge production, this collection borrows from and builds upon this intellectual traditional to offer understandings of the macro-political processes and structures of education delivery (e. g., social organization of knowledge, culture, pedagogy and resistant politics). The contributors raise key issues regarding the contestation of knowledge, as well as the role of cultural and social values in understanding the way power shapes everyday relations of politics and subjectivity. In reframing anti-colonial thought and practice, this book reclaims the power of critical, oppositional discourse and theory for educational transformation. Anti-Colonialism and Education: The Politics of Resistance, includes some the most current theorizing around anti-colonial practice, written specifically for this collection. Each of the essays extends the terrain of the discussion, of what constitutes anti-colonialism. Among the many discursive highlights is the interrogation of the politics of embodied knowing, the theoretical distinctions and connections between anti-colonial thought and post-colonial theory, and the identification of the particular lessons of anti-colonial theory for critical educational practice. Essays explore such key issues as the challenge of articulating anti-colonial thought as an epistemology of the colonized, anchored in the indigenous sense of collective and common colonial consciousness; the conceptualization of power configurations embedded in ideas, cultures and histories of marginalized communities; the understanding of indigeneity as pedagogical practice; and the pursuit of agency, resistance and subjective politics through anti-colonial learning.

This volume presents empirical research on contemporary forms of decolonization and anti-colonialism in practice within areas of Indigeneity, citizenship, migration, education, language and social work. The contributions will be of interest to interdisciplinary education practitioners and students.

Philosophy of education basically deals with learning issues that attempt to explain or answer what we describe as the major questions of its domains, i.e., what education is needed, why such education, and how would societies undertake and achieve such learning possibilities. In different temporal and spatial intersections of people’s lives, the design as well as the outcome of such learning program were almost entirely indigenously produced, but later, they became perforce responsive to externally imposed demands where, as far as the history and the actualities of colonized populations were concerned, a cluster of de-philosophizing and de-epistemologizing educational systems were imposed upon them. Such realities of colonial education were not conducive to inclusive social well-being, hence the need to ascertain and analyze new possibilities of decolonizing philosophies of education, which this edited volume selectively aims to achieve. The book should serve as a necessary entry point for a possible re-routing of contemporary learning systems that are mostly of de-culturing and de-historicizing genre. With that in mind, the recommendations contained in the 12 chapters should herald the potential of decolonizing philosophies of education as liberating learning and livelihood praxes. “This collection of critical and scholarly analyses provides an insightful and timely resource for decolonizing philosophies of education that continue to shape discourses, policies, curricula and practices in all levels of educational and social institutions. It also usefully challenges versions of postcolonial studies that fail to recognize and demystify the continuity of colonial hegemony in contemporary societal formations in both the global north and south.” Toh Swee-Hin, Distinguished Professor, University for Peace, Costa Rica & Laureate, UNESCO Prize for Peace Education (2000) “Decolonizing philosophies of education edited by Ali A. Abdi is a collection of twelve essays by noted scholars in the field who provide strong readings of postcolonialism in education with an emphasis on decolonizing epistemologies. It provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the critical history of colonization, postcolonial studies and the significance of education to the colonial project. This is an important book that provides a global perspective on the existential and epistemological escape from the colonial condition.” Michael A. Peters, Professor, Educational Policy Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign