Learning from Rip Currents to Wayfind Higher Education: Towards an Onto-Epistemology of Oceana

Abstract

With the goal of healing and reasserting my connectedness/communion with Oceana ways of being and knowing, this study sought to identify experiences in which I conflicted with coloniality and then reconceptualize those experiences as rip currents from which to understand a system’s “shape of the bottom” (the foundation a school is built upon); “the waves and weather conditions” (the climate-social, political, economic); and “people-made obstacles that cause a shadow or deflection” (the policies we enact) so that I may transform the system itself. Further, by engaging in Critical Autoethnography as Wayfinding, I engaged in deep reflection to interrogate how I find my way in higher education and how my wayfinding can be better integrated with Oceana (from the ocean) ways of being and knowing. This study has three key findings: 1) lessons from rip currents; 2) how rip current lessons inform how I wayfind in Higher Education; 3) Oceana onto-epistemology. This study ultimately concludes that if we want educational system change and the creation of thriving, equitable, dynamic learning environments, then we need onto-epistemologies that exist outside the imperialist, colonial onto-epistemology that is at the heart of current educational design.