Equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization have long been central to many CSSE members’ research, teaching, service, and personal work. Several groups within CSSE were founded with the explicit purpose of advancing equity in and across scholarly communities, including CASIE (Canadian Association for the Study of Indigenous Education), CASWE (Canadian Association for the Study of Women and Education), QSEC (Queer Studies in Education and Culture), and RÉÉFMM (Regroupement pour l’étude de l’éducation francophone en milieu minoritaire). Fundamentally, the purpose of CSSE is to serve as a scholarly society where all educators – including professors, students, researchers, and practitioners – can gather and share their work in diverse ways. CSSE is the major national voice for those who create educational knowledge, prepare teachers and educational leaders, and apply research in schools, classrooms, institutions, and communities across Canada.

Yet, as many of our members know all too well, efforts toward equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization are not complete, nor are they universally successful in ensuring CSSE is a safe, equitable, ethical community where all members feel welcomed, included, and supported in their scholarship. This work requires explicit commitment, specific action, and ongoing attention. Achieving equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization is not a “one and done.” Instead, if CSSE is to achieve these goals – and continue them – then as a scholarly society we must take action, address barriers, and navigate complex intersecting issues in ways that meaningfully support our members and the communities we serve.

While equity, diversity, inclusion, and decolonization have long been central to the scholarship of many CSSE members, several salient events have sparked further attention and action which bear mentioning: (1) During the 2019 conference, a Black graduate student was harassed and racially profiled by another conference delegate. A detailed account of this unacceptable incident is available on the Black Canadian Studies Association (BCSA) website. (2) The COVID-19 pandemic led to the cancellation of CSSE 2020 and two years of online gatherings, introducing new barriers and throwing into sharp relief other barriers that had long affected education and society, including CSSE. (3) In 2021, the Federation published Igniting Change, a report and call to action chaired by Dr. Malinda Smith with contributions from a wide-ranging group of scholars, including longstanding CSSE member Dr. Marie Battiste. A full copy of the Igniting Change report is available on the Federation website.

Drawing on the Igniting Change report, CSSE understands the terms Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization to refer to:

• Equity – Equity is concerned with justice and fairness. Equity is a state of being, a process, and a condition that is rooted in fundamental human rights, and, therefore, is not reliant on individual choice or voluntarism. Equity requires proactively identifying and combatting discriminatory ideas, attitudes, behaviours, as well as systems, policies, processes, and practices that lead to disadvantage. It is concerned with a legal and ethical commitment to doing what is right and necessary to achieve such a state through proactive measures to identify root causes, and design interventions to remove obstacles to fair opportunities and experiences.
• Diversity – Diversity is a characteristic of human societies that has been used in multiple ways across the postsecondary education sector. It includes the whole range of human, cultural, and societal differences among populations across Canada. Diversity encompasses identity difference, and the representation of students, staff, faculty, administrators, and senior leadership in the academy. Social diversity also includes the protected grounds under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Aboriginal and Treaty rights, and human rights legislation, such as race/ethnicity, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, and disability. Diversity is also used to differentiate types of knowledge production, educational institutions and units within institutions, such as faculties, schools, departments, programs, and institutes. Diversity also encompasses the nature and content of curricula, research, teaching, service and engagement
• Inclusion – Inclusion entails interconnected actions to dismantle barriers that impede participation, engagement, representation, and empowerment of members of diverse social identities and from various backgrounds. Inclusion means that we design our educational and cultural spaces from the beginning so that they can be used fully by all peoples and all communities. Inclusion foregrounds the social and institutional relations of power and privilege, drawing necessary attention to who gets a seat and voice at the decision-making tables, and who is empowered by institutional processes, policies, systems, and structures.
• Decolonization – The principles, processes, and practices of decolonization are fundamental to a more equitable, diverse, enlightened, and inclusive social sciences and humanities community in Canada. Decolonization is a necessary and ongoing process of unlearning, uncovering, and transforming legacies of colonialism, as well as utilizing the educational and knowledge systems available to relearn and rebuild the social, cultural, and linguistic foundations that were lost, or eroded through colonialism. Decolonization also requires making space, balancing, generating, and enabling diverse knowledge systems to thrive in the academy as well as in and through educational and knowledge transmitting places for Indigenous Peoples, the formerly colonized or continuing colonized nations, peoples, and cultural knowledge systems.

For more on the Federation’s Igniting Change report, we encourage you to visit the links below: