Reinventing the Wheel: Reflecting on Cognitive Dissonances

This evening, I began my third semester in the Doctor of Education program, with a course on Culturally Responsive Leadership in Diverse Educational Settings. Tonight's panel discussions made me reflect on several ideas. First was to focus my dissertation and research project independently of relying on established thoughts and terminology. For instance, I wish to study how racialized settlers experience Canada and its Indigenous relations, navigating intersections of cultures and power dynamics in societal hierarchies. For the past while, I have been using the terms reconciliation and decolonization to help me situate my research with existing concepts. This is also what I have been encouraged to do with Literature Review assignments. While this new advice is contrary to the established quest, I was positively rattled by this new approach. This is especially when those established terms and studies limit my ideas and curiosities. Without the boundaries that enforce where my topic fits, I can imagine a more nuanced and unexplained problem of practice that needs to be addressed.

Another discussion centered around the notion that equity, diversity, and inclusion work is under threat and that professionals that work in these fields are undergoing a fight or flight scenario. One of the panel members tonight frankly answered that communities and diversity are not going away, so there is no need to panic. Just a week or two ago, the University of Alberta made headlines for removing their Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion department, but sure enough, it was replaced by a new name: Access, Community, and Belonging. I wished it was Access, Belonging, and Community (ABC), but oh well. Just as the panel member had said, the work does not disappear, but it simply gets renamed and updated according to societal temperatures and funding pressures. Perhaps this new label addresses what the organization aims to do more accurately. Regardless, the discussion today also pointed towards including the community of study when conducting research and engaging in authentic consultation for the co-construction of knowledge, rather than extracting information for one-sided gain. This aligns with the Indigenous teachings of reciprocity, which is a value that is often championed in the business world as win-win scenarios. If one exposes themself to enough ideas and thoughts over the years, commonalities and patterns can be easily made.

During the class discussions, one of my classmates mentioned that reinventing the wheel is necessary because we, individuals and society, all change over time. This means that the latest "wheel" becomes outdated eventually and ends up excluding people that did not get considered before. This is why the work must continue endlessly to reassess and reconfigure to reinvent the wheel again. This was yet another cognitively dissonant idea that intrigued me tonight. Pluralism and multiplicity of ideas and thought are so enriching for me and I am reminded of why I love spending thousands of dollars of my own money to take these classes in advanced programs. Overall, it was a wonderful way to start a new class in the new year, in a new semester.