**2.2 The impact of colonialism and post-colonialism on international students**

Coloniality refers to the ongoing practices and ways of being, doing, and knowing in various contexts, including education, which does not only favor Eurocentric or Western frameworks as better or more valuable than the indigenous, Asian, South American, African (and the list may go on) ontologies and epistemologies but may even recognize the Eurocentric framework as the only legitimate one. Higher education has been recognized as one of the spaces and places that not only serve as terrain for colonial practices but have also been created based on the dominance of Eurocentric epistemologies [21]. This chapter attempts to acknowledge and challenge the coloniality within higher education. Postcolonial theory problematizes the positioning of the colonized and the colonizer and sheds light on the inherent power dynamics that affect the said colonized and colonizer and various contexts.

Kubota [22] discusses the critiques of postcolonialism as well as theories that are aimed at disrupting colonial discourses and power dynamics, including hybridity [23] or multiplicity and plurality [24]. However, these theories, in turn, may still tend to "turn our gaze away" from the issues that still persist. For example, in Canadian education (and arguably other educational contexts), the phrase "international students" and the phrase "domestic students" are taken up as if they are neutral, taken up with little consideration of the ideologies behind them [25, 26]. So, there has been little focus on how educators construct the perception of the said other (international student as opposed to [domestic] student) in the context of higher education. The focus is largely on the students and whether or not they "fit" in the educational context. The critique of post-colonialism is based on the fact that it does little to challenge and shift the power dynamics and the status quo. Arguably, it creates power dynamics by ascribing the identities of the colonized and the colonizer, essentializing them, and almost stabilizing the dominance of one over the other.

Decoloniality [27, 28] is the theory and praxis to challenge coloniality. It is called to challenge the Western views as the legitimate or standard framework and, frankly,

## *A New Theoretical Approach to Enacting Transformative Leadership with International Students DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109355*

as the only framework. Our "Pra-perspective," outlined below, is our theoretical decolonial response, offering a perspective that educational administrators can employ as part of their transformative leadership efforts. The framework of decoloniality places the issue of international students as othered within these settings as a colonial practice. International students are othered and forced to learn about the context because it does not recognize them in one essentialist knowledge system. We would argue that the ongoing othering of international students and framing differences as a deficit [29] stem from the internalized belief in the centrality and legitimacy of Western epistemology.

There is extensive research on the identity construction of international students and international identity with primacy placed on an individual's construction and positioning in context [30–32]. While it is recognized that students are socioculturally positioned, there is this narrative in how students are being perceived, whether contextually or individually, as the "other" (i.e., internationally rather than domestic, non-native rather than native) linguistically, culturally, or racially. When these students are perceived in these ways, they are then positioned as being "less than" in many respects, particularly linguistically and epistemically. So, there has been little focus on how educators construct the perception of the said "other" in the context of higher education. The focus is largely on the students and whether or not they "fit" in the educational context; with that focus, students are often essentialized [33]. Thus, as much as we champion cultural diversity, we still lump individuals under superficial essentialist umbrellas of what are usually outer characteristics that hide or even obviate inner uniqueness and diversity. As Biesta [34] maintains, we offer students the "common discourse" of their provisional membership in the "rational community"; however, he argues that we "... at the very same time de-legitimize other ways of speaking" (p. 312). The rational community, especially in its educational contexts, demands its voice. Fuchs [35], like Bauman [36], Biesta [34], and Lingis [37], draws our attention to the categorizing and labeling tendencies of reason.

This point is important for international students in educational contexts because educational leaders and instructors often ignore the focus on their identities and identity construction when they are positioned as international. Biesta [34], in citing the earlier work of Zygmunt Bauman [36] on postmodern ethics, argues for a "genuine emancipatory chance" based, not in any postcolonial sense of valorizing tribalism, but rather in "the question as to what it means to be a subject" (p. 315). While our postcolonial efforts to recognize the cultural traditions and heritage of the students are laudatory, they often utterly fail to recognize the inherent humanity of such students or the possibility of what Freire [8] repeatedly refers to as "becoming more fully human" (p. 44), a task recognized by transformative leaders as central to education.

Hongyu Wang [38] refers to a "third space," a space, in contrast to the confines of essentialism, in which "... people can live together expressing their own uniqueness without doing violence to one another," a space which arises out of "... two original moments in cultural translation and its hybridity supports the emergence of new positions, structures, and activities" (p. 9). It is a space that can be cultural, psychic, intersubjective, gendered, regional, national, global, or even cosmic; it is a space of dynamic, unfolding possibility. We wish to offer a theoretical framing that offers the possibility of such a third space for these students, thus contributing to the emancipatory work envisioned by transformative leadership.
