Deconstructing Whiteness in Higher Education: Epistemological Imperialism in Japanese International Baccalaureate Teacher Training Programs

A myriad of higher education (HE) initiatives donning ‘international’ and ‘global’ branding remain unwittingly soaked in epistemologies of whiteness. The emergence of International Baccalaureate Educator Certificate (IBEC) programs strengthens this trend. Reviewing newly published findings that linguistically and pedagogically evidence this force at work inside Japanese universities, I suggest pathways for HE to better decloak, and subsequently deconstruct unwanted vestiges of whiteness.