The Future of Education

This research’s aims were to gain valid insight into the conceptualisations, and experiences of community and online learning with female Indian students labelled ‘international’ by a university in the North of England. The complex relationship between Britain and India has resulted in generations of trauma and a current nationalist state in India, the capitulation of the Indian economy through rogue trading laws and the dismantling of the Indian autocracy. However, Britain’s entanglement with India continues to be of national debate. This feeds into Britain’s exuberant history of being superior. The Indian diaspora is the largest minority ethnic group in the UK (Statistics, 2021). Further exposure to the controversy of empire needs to be maintained through active discussion of the communities that already exist and continue to expand within the UK.  As well as this, the added complexity of the health pandemic covid-19 has resulted in a shift of physical learning and social communities being moved online. The research methodology was designed with the participants to be co-researchers, creating interview questions, interviewing the principal researcher, and helping to develop phase two of the data collection. The qualitative data collection was split into two phases, an online one-to-one conversational interview, and a walking interview that was informed by the participants. Narrative inquiry (Clandinin and Cain, 2004) and reciprocal interviewing (Depmsey, 2018) were used through the data collection process to help challenge the ‘us’ ‘them’ power imbalance between researcher and researched.  I draw upon decolonial, feminist, community theories and frameworks to help contextualise the data. 

Key words: decoloniality; co-participant researchers; community; online learning; empire