This thesis focuses on issues regarding educational justice in Canadian higher education institutions. We are specifically interested in the low education rates of indigenous university students. We adopted an intersectional perspective and chose to exclusively work with indigenous women pursuing higher education at the university level. The analysis of the school career of indigenous women is particularly enlightening to better understand the justice or injustice of Canadian educational systems because of the complexity of the multiple forms of oppression they face.
The social justice theory of Amartya Sen, founded on the capability approach, and the main concepts to which it relates, shape the basis of this study’s theoretical and conceptual framework. This theory focuses on the individuals’ choices of being and doing. The main objective of this thesis is to assess the influence of the context of studies on the possibilities of indigenous women to achieve the school career they want.
Based on a multicase study, we investigated two universities in the province of Quebec (Canada). One of the universities offers very limited support to indigenous students, while the other has numerous measures, policies and services directed towards indigenous students. In each university, we conducted a three-staged data collection process: a) an educational policy analysis (national, provincial and of local policies); b) semi-structured interviews with staff members (faculty and administrative staff) on their professional experience with indigenous students; and c) life story interviews with indigenous women about their school careers.
Our multidimensional analysis process looked at different social levels. At the macrosocial level, we conducted a literature review of the respondents' contexts of study. At the mesosocial level, we conducted a thematic analysis of the data gathered from interviews with university staff. At the microsocial level, we made a thematic analysis of the students' school careers. To conclude the analysis, we did a cross-sectional analysis of these three levels of data, which allowed us to meet our research objective.
This thesis provides several interesting conclusions. Our results identify the effects of international, national, provincial and local initiatives on the deployment of our participants’ educational possibilities. For example, the international measures addressing indigenous education are mainly based on the conception of equal rights. Our results, however, suggest that these kinds of measures have low impacts on the participants' educational possibilities. Their impacts appear more important at a rhetorical level. The national measures for graduate indigenous students are mainly based on scholarship programs. Our results show that this type of measure favors indigenous women's access to and success in university studies, while creating certain discrimination, particularly against those with children. The results also demonstrate that the most efficient way to promote educational justice for indigenous women is to work on the local level in educational institutions and specifically, on conversion factors. Based on the capability approach, the concept of conversion factors makes it easier (or more difficult) for students to use resources (rights, services, scholarships, etc.) and to turn them into real opportunities to achieve the desired school career. Indeed, educational institutions can rely on positive conversion factors (an office or room for indigenous students, indigenous symbolic presence, particular events intended to provide information for indigenous students, etc.) to increase the real opportunities of indigenous students and, conversely, remove negative conversion factors (discriminatory rules or practices, overly strict selection criteria, etc.) that hinder the real possibilities of these students. Without taking account of the various possibilities that students may have by using resources, educational institutions can create injustices. Equal treatment for all often implies unequal treatment for the disadvantaged. Our results also expose the oppressive effects of the interlocking injustices faced by indigenous women on their school career. For instance, indigenous women are required to work harder compared to indigenous male or non-indigenous women to achieve the educational career they desire in the Canadian postcolonial education systems. However, this situation leads them to resistance activism. The university, a breeding ground for injustice, is also a fertile ground for the mobilization of indigenous women. This last part confirms the importance of considering the intersectionality of the discrimination faced by indigenous women when creating laws, policies, measures and programs.
To conclude, the cross-sectional analysis of the data suggests that depending on their conception of justice, educational measures impact in different ways the school career of indigenous women. Accordingly, we argue that the justice conception of equal freedoms articulated through the capability approach could possibly lead to a decolonization process of Canadian universities, particularly through actions directed on the conversion factors.