Beginning re-search: Towards an understanding of vulnerable education

This thesis is about how one begins to decolonize their self. The first chapter explores a literature, which has guided the theoretical discussion within such an endeavour. Within my personal narratives, I examine themes of oppression and oppressed, femaleness and maleness, as well as other relations within space and time. In chapter one I offer a possible way to ethically conduct educational research with others. I suggest a method that questions the different forms of colonizing knowledges. In chapter two I trace my patriarchal oppression. I explore post-colonialism as well as decolonization and look critically at the complex themes of living, as a minority, within a dominant culture in Canada. The third chapter examines how a teacher, researcher, learner, and others can bring and reproduce vulnerable knowledge in a classroom and in educational research. Chapter four is an example of how one might conduct educational research vulnerably. In this chapter I also explore how an educational researcher might conduct an interview co-jointly with a research participant. In the last chapter I examine how literary texts have historically helped to socially construct a one-dimensional representation of relationships between men and women. Throughout I turn to feminist deconstructive tools in order to help me understand concepts of “patriarchal domination.” As a result, I suggest that one must become strategically become a feminist male in order to do so. Lastly, in this chapter I return my search of how one begins to decolonize their self back towards a researched beginning.