The purpose of this project was to lift up the stories of Filipinx staff and their meaning-making, meanings, and enactments of decolonization. Through journaling, an online group meeting, and individual interviews with five staff in higher education in the United States, I aimed to answer the following research questions: How do Filipinx higher education staff make meaning of “decolonizing”? From this overriding question came the following subquestions: What does “decolonizing” mean to Filipinx higher education staff? How do Filipinx higher education staff enact their meanings of “decolonizing”?I created a heuristic to represent the staff’s meaning-making process of decolonizing that emerged through their stories. Within this process, meanings are first catalyzed by encounters with a colonial orientation, which prompt personal growth in the form a decolonizing orientation. This decolonizing orientation is then carried and integrated into one’s professional practice. Later encounters, such as the group process facilitated through this study, also provide further opportunities to shift and integrate their existing decolonizing orientation. Through re-storying, I identified two predominant orientations towards decolonizing in their personal lives: 1) self-acceptance of a particular identity, 2) raised consciousness around issues of power. I also identified three types of decolonizing enactments: 1) bodily transformations, 2) redefining educational purpose, and 3) acts to dismantle oppression Within their professional lives, I identified four overriding decolonizing orientations and six enactments (see Figure 5). The orientations were: 1) educating and empowering students, 2) advocating for inclusion, 3) being “yourself”, and 4) dismantling colonial structures, particularly those that place staff above students. Enactments of these orientations included: 1) raising student consciousness through programming and dialogues on critical topics, 2) speaking up when witnessing oppressive acts, 3) sharing and asserting identity, 4) modifying technical systems through a student-centered lens, 5) working in student-governed spaces, and 6) “kitchen table activism.” Overall, meaning-making, meanings, and enactments of decolonization in higher education for Filipinx staff, are shaped within encounters of conflicting orientations reflecting particular personal, institutional, and historical contexts. This study adds to the conversation on decolonizing higher education by going “underneath” the meanings and delving further into the meaning making and what experiences inform one’s meanings of decolonization through the lens of positionality. Specifically, stories from this study showed how the personal informs the professional, as well as how positionality matters through the lens of Filipinx higher education staff.
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