Marc Higgins, PhD, MEd, BEd, BSc

About

Marc Higgins' research work is an extension of a longstanding involvement with, in, and across the fields of Indigenous education, science education, and media-technology education. Having taken him from Canadian coast (East), to coast (North), to coast (West), this curricular development and pedagogical delivery of inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural educational programming took place in over 50 reserve and urban Aboriginal communities with Ottawa-based, national STEM education not-for-profit organization Actua. From this teaching and learning has stemmed a deep engagement with/in the complexities and complications that occur through the navigation and negotiation of Indigenous and Western modern ways-of-knowing (i.e., epistemology) and ways-of-being (i.e., ontology). In order to work within and against systems that render these encounters a form of pedagogical violence and/or (fore)closure, Marc has been working in the methodological space within and between Indigenous, decolonizing, post-colonial, and post-humanist theories in order to think and practice education and educational research differently around contested curricular concepts (e.g., what "counts" as science) towards ethical forms of Indigenous--non-Indigenous relationality.

Academic Credentials

2016 Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Inquiry in Education, University of British Columbia

Dissertation Title: Wandering within, against, and beyond the pathways of science education: Towards heeding the call of Indigenous science

2010 M.Ed. Lakehead University

Thesis Title: Decolonizing actions that speak louder than words: Science education through multiple lenses in Nunavut

2005 B.Ed. in Intermediate/Senior Physics and Mathematics, L’Université d’Ottawa

2004 B.Sc. in Physics, University of New Brunswick

Research

RESEARCH INTERESTS

My research interests include (but are not limited to):

• Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education
• Unsettling curriculum and pedagogy
• Educational research methodologies
• Inter- and trans-disciplinary inquiry in education

RESEARCH SUMMARY

Books

Wallace, M. F., Bazzul, J., Higgins, M., & Tolbert, S. (2022). Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan

Higgins, M. (2020). Unsettling Responsibility in Science Education: Indigenous Science, Deconstruction, and the Multicultural Science Education Debate. New York: Palgrave Macmillan

Edited Special Journal Issues

Higgins, M., Wallace, M., & Bazzul, J. (2018). Disrupting and displacing methodologies in STEM education: From engineering to tinkering with theory for eco-social justice. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 18(3).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

Higgins, M., & Kim, E.J. (2019). De/colonizing methodologies in science education: Rebraiding research theory-practice-ethics with Indigenous theories and theorists. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 14(1), 111-127. DOI: 10.1007/s11422-018-9862-4

Higgins, M., Mahy, B., Aghasaleh, R., & Enderle, P. (2019) Patchworking response-ability in science and technology education. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 2, 3(2), 356-382.

Higgins, M., & McFeetors, J. (2019). Board games as play-full pedagogical pivots for STEM teaching and learning. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 17(1), 90-110.

Higgins, M. (2018). Reconfiguring the optics of the critical gaze in science education (after the critique of critique): (Re)thinking “what counts” through Foucaultian prismatics. Cultural Studies in Science Education, 13(1), 185-203.

Higgins, M., & Tolbert, S. (2018). A syllabus for response-able inheritance in science education. Parallax, 24(3), 273-294.

Higgins, M., Wallace, M., & Bazzul, J. (2018). Disrupting and displacing methodologies in STEM education: From engineering to tinkering with theory for eco-social justice. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 18(3), 187-192.

Bazzul, J., Wallace, M., & Higgins, M. (2018). Dreaming and immanence: Rejecting the dogmatic image of thought in science education. Cultural Studies in Science Education. DOI: 10.1007/s11422-017-9816-2

McGregor, H., Madden, B., Higgins, M., & Ostertag, J. (2018). Braiding Designs for Decolonizing Research Methodologies: Theory, Practice, Ethics. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 9(2), 1-21.

Wallace, M., Higgins, M., & Bazul, J. (2018). Thinking with Nature: Following the contours of minor concepts for ethico-political response-ability in science education. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 18(3), 199-209.

Higgins, M. (2017). Post-qualitative mo(ve)ments: Concluding remarks on methodological response-abilities and being wounded by thought. Conclusion for special issue in Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 8(3), 89-101.

Higgins, M., & Madden, B. (2017). (Not so) monumental agents: De/colonizing places of learning. Canadian Social Studies, 49(1), 34-38.

Higgins, M., Madden, B., Bérard, M.-F., Lenz Kothe, E., & Nordstrom, S. (2017). De/signing research in education: Patchwork(ing) methodologies with theory. Educational Studies, 43(1), 16-39.

Higgins, M. (2016). Placing photovoice under erasure: A critical and complicit engagement with what it theoretically is (not). International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(5), 670-685.

Higgins, M., Madden, B., & Korteweg, L. (2015). Witnessing (the lack of) deconstruction: White teachers’ ‘perfect stranger’ position in urban Indigenous education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 18(2), 251-276.

Higgins, M. (2014). Rebraiding photovoice: Putting to work Indigenous conceptions of praxis and standpoint theory. Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 43(2), 208-217.

Higgins, M. (2014). De/colonizing pedagogy and pedagogue: Science education through participatory and reflexive videography. Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education, 14(2), 154-171.

Madden, B., Higgins, M., & Korteweg, L. (2013). “Role models can’t just be on posters”: Re/membering barriers to Indigenous community engagement. Canadian Journal of Education, 36(2), 211-247.

Higgins, M. (2011). Finding points of resonance: Nunavut students’ perceptions of science. in education, 17(3).

Book Chapters

Rotas, N., Nxumalo, F., Higgins, M., Madden, B., & Pacini-Ketchabaw, V. (in review, invited). Encountering Indigenous and new materialist onto-epistemologies in educational research. In O. Cielemęcka and W. Stark (Eds.) New Materialism: Networking the European Scholarship on ‘How Matter Comes to Matter’. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.

Higgins, M. (2022). Toward a hauntology of science education. In J. Beier & j. jagodinzski (Eds.) Ahuman Pedagogy (pp. 77-95). New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Dutt, P., Fateyeva, A., Gabereau, M., & Higgins, M. (2022). Redrawing Relationalities at the Anthropocene (s): Disrupting and Dismantling the Colonial Logics of Shared Identity Through Thinking with Kim Tallbear. In M. Wallace, J. Bazzul, M. Higgins, & S. Tolbert (Eds.) Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene (pp. 109-119). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Kirby, V., & Higgins, M. (2022). In Conversation with Vicki Kirby: Deconstruction, Critique, and Human Exceptionalism in the Anthropocene. In M. Wallace, J. Bazzul, M. Higgins, & S. Tolbert (Eds.) Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene (pp. 331-347). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wallace, M. F., Bazzul, J., Higgins, M., & Tolbert, S. (2022). Conclusion: Another Complicated Conversation. In M. Wallace, J. Bazzul, M. Higgins, & S. Tolbert (Eds.) Reimagining Science Education in the Anthropocene (pp. 365-371). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Steinhauer, E., Cardinal, T., Higgins, M., Madden, B., Steinhauer, N., Steinhauer, P., Underwood, M. Wolfe, A., Cardinal, B. (2020). Thinking with Kihkipiw: Exploring an Indigenous theory of assessment and evaluation for teacher education. In S. Cote-Meek and T. Moeke-Pickering (Eds.), Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada (pp. 73-90). Vancouver, BC: Canadian Scholars.

Higgins, M. (2019). Positing an(other) ontology within science education: Towards different practices of ethical accountability within multicultural science education. In K. Scantlebury & C. Milne (Eds.), Material Practice and Materiality: Too Long Ignored in Science Education (pp. 67-89) . New York: Springer.

Higgins, M. (2019). Pursuing response-ability in de/colonizing science education. In J. Bazzul & C. Siry (Eds.), Critical Voices in Science Education: Narratives of Hope and Struggle (pp. 223-233). New York: Springer.

Higgins, M., & Madden, B. (2019). Refiguring presences in Kichwa-Lamista territories: Storying with Indigenous place. In C. Taylor and A. Bayley (Eds.), Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research (pp. 293-312). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Higgins, M., Wallace, M., & Bazzul, J. (2019). Staying with the trouble in science education. In C. Taylor and A. Bayley (Eds.), Posthumanism and Higher Education: Reimagining Pedagogy, Practice and Research (pp. 155-164). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Higgins, M., & Madden, B. (2018). (Not idling at) the Flâneur in Indigenous Education: Towards being and becoming Community. In R. Irwin & L. Cutcher (Eds.), The Flâneur and Education Research: A Metaphor for Knowing, Being Ethical and New Data Production (pp. 1-28). New York: Palgrave Pivot.

Higgins, M. (2016). Decolonizing school science: Pedagogically enacting agential literacy and ecologies of relationships. In C. Taylor & C. Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman Research Practices (pp. 267-289). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Book Reviews

Higgins, M. (2020). Review of A World of Many Worlds by M.de la Cadena and M. Blaser, eds. Transmotion, 6(1), 297-302.

Kothe, E. L., Higgins, M., Stiegler, S., Madden, B., & Bérard, M.-F. (2015). A quick guide to speed-dating theorists through thinking with theory in qualitative research: Viewing data across multiple perspectives [Review of Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data Across Multiple Perspectives by A. Jackson & L. Mazzei]. The Canadian Journal for New Scholars in Education/ Revue canadienne des jeunes chercheures et chercheurs en éducation, 6(1), 68-78.

Research Reports

Freeman, S., Fraser, B., & Higgins, M. (2021). Examining the Alberta K-6 Draft Science Curriculum for Markers of Colonial Influence. ERA: Education and Research Archive.

Teaching

Courses Taught

EDU 100/300: Contexts of Education

EDEL 316: Communication through Mathematics

EDEL 415: Issues in Elementary Mathematics Education - Mathematics Education for Reconciliation

EDEL 415: Issues in Elementary Mathematics Education - Mathematics Education in a Minor Key

EDES 501: Possibilities for Reconciliation and Peaceful School Communities

EDPS 506 - Science Identity and Nature of Science: A Critical Curricular Dis/juncture

EDSE 451: Integrating Theory and Practice in the Advanced Professional Term (Secondary Science Education)

EDSE 455: Curriculum and Teaching for Secondary School Science Majors II

EDSE 502: An Inquiry into the Intersection of Teachers, Narrative, Emotion, and Depression

EDSE 502: Intersectional Approaches to Science Education

EDSE 504: Curriculum Inquiry

EDSE 511: Research Design in Secondary Education

EDSE 670: Postcolonial Perspectives, Theories, and Curriculum

EDSE 900: Research/Capping Excercise

EDEL 316 - Communication Through Mathematics Education

This course provides an introduction to the teaching and learning of mathematics in the elementary classroom. The focus will be on using curriculum, strategies, planning and resources to meet student needs. Prerequisite: EDU 100 and 210; pre/corequisite EDU 211. For students in the Elementary After Degree program: pre/corequisite EDU 210, 211, and 300. EDEL 316 is offered as part of Year 3 of the Elementary Program Route.

EDSE 503 - Curriculum Foundations

This course focuses on the bases of current curriculum theories and their relationship to current educational practices. May contain alternate delivery sections; refer to the Tuition and Fees page in the University Regulations section of the Calendar. EDSE 503 cannot be taken for credit if credit has already been received for EDSE405 or EDSE 505.

EDSE 505 - An Introduction to Curriculum Studies

This course is intended as an introduction to the major discourses and themes that define the field of curriculum studies. It is primarily focused on the Albertan and Canadian contexts. EDSE 505 cannot be taken for credit if credit has already been received for EDSE 405 or EDSE 503.

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