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Why is this topic so important for equity?
~Dr. Wilson

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I found this short film so helpful!
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Decolonising the Curriculum | Melz Owusu | TEDxUniversityofLeeds

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Decolonization is something I have been reading about for some time, I am reminded of .....
~Dr. Wilson

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I agree that ..., and I think....
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Charles, E. (2019). Decolonizing the curriculum. Insights, 32, 24.

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Kishimoto, K. (2018). Anti-racist pedagogy: From faculty’s self-reflection to organizing within and beyond the classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21, 540-554.

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Ash, A. N., Hill, R., Risdon, S., & Jun, A. (2020). Anti-Racism in Higher Education: A Model for Change. Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice, 4, 2.

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KEELE'S MANIFESTO FOR DECOLONISING THE CURRICULUM

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Decolonization involves identifying colonial systems, structures and relationships, and working to challenge those systems. It is not "integration" or simply the token inclusion of the intellectual achievements of non-white cultures. Rather, it involves a paradigm shift from a culture of exclusion and denial to the making of space for other political philosophies and knowledge systems. It's a culture shift to think more widely about why common knowledge is what it is, and in so doing adjusting cultural perceptions and power relations in real and significant ways.

One of the most significant problems relating to gaps in the curriculum in higher education is the lack of representation of black and minority ethnic groups. This is commonly referred to as the colonisation of the curriculum. The content of the curriculum in our universities continues to reflect and maintain a colonial legacy through the presentation of a white, western intellectual tradition as not only superior to other forms of knowledge but as universal. Since the end of the colonial period, epistemologies and knowledge systems at our universities have not changed considerably; they remain rooted in colonial and Western-centric worldviews. The curriculum remains largely Eurocentric and continues to reinforce white and Western dominance and privilege, while at the same time being full of stereotypes, prejudices and patronising views about non-white people and cultures. The academic space has been one of the key platforms that remind us of the legacy of the colonial past. Practically all academic disciplines have been influenced by a history of colonial thinking where western attitudes have dominated academic narratives and practices. For too long, teaching in universities has encouraged a 'traditional' and 'canonical' approach that privileges the work of selected authors. If we mainly cite white men in our work, we recreate a world where only knowledge produced by them is considered important, having the effect of marginalising the knowledge produced by others. Even where the curriculum includes the intellectual work of people racialized as other-than-white, it can still operate as a white curriculum. Those non-white writers are often presented as offering a response to 'mainstream' (i.e. white) thought, rather than as thinkers who themselves demand response. The white curricula not only compromises the quality of education, it also asserts irrational and unjust practices and has detrimental effects on both staff and students. Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) students are the first to feel the effects of a white curriculum. They find themselves under-represented and under-stimulated by the content of their curricula, with their histories, narratives and experiences omitted from mainstream discourse. The white curriculum feeds into the feeling of isolation, marginalisation, alienation, and exclusion which is internalised as these students live under the burden of the negative stereotypes regarding their communities and do not wish to reinforce them. As a consequence BME students may not feel confident to speak up or to call this out, as much like their white counterparts, they have been socialised to see the institution as the gatekeeper of worthwhile knowledge. Our curriculum, like other university curricula in the UK, is centred on the 'pale, male and stale', and does not benefit nor capture the interest of a diverse staff and student body. Decolonisation has become particularly important since the recent managerial turn in university systems (auditing, benchmarking, ranking through REF and TEF, and non-stop complete strategic planning) has narrowed, not enriched, the domain of knowledge increasing pressure to teach and research for short-term profit.

The university curricula will not decolonise itself. It will not happen through the bureaucratised curriculum design reviews. Major curriculum reform cannot be achieved without greater democratisation of the university as an institution, and its relation to wider society. It is not something that happens overnight, it requires a sustained and serious commitment as well as ownership by all members of the university - staff and students, white and non-white.

What would it mean to decolonise the University curriculum?

1. Decolonising the curriculum means, first of all, acknowledging that knowledge is not owned by anyone. It is a cumulative and shared resource that is available to all. Knowledge (and culture) is collectively produced and human beings of all races, ethnicities, classes , genders, sexual orientations, and disabilities have as much right as elite white men to understand what our roles and contributions have been in shaping intellectual achievements and shifting culture and progress.

2. Decolonising the curriculum is to recognise that knowledge is inevitably marked by power relations. Our universities exist in a global economy of knowledge, with a definite hegemonic centre, reflecting hierarchies of race, class and gender. At the top of this hierarchy sit the knowledge institutions of the global North, databanks and research centres supported by the wealth of European and North American powers. This hegemonic position is not just a matter of the wealth of the global North. Our world is still shaped by a long colonial history in which white upper class men are at the top of social hierarchy, most disciplines give disproportionate significance to the experiences, histories and achievements of this one group.

3. Decolonising is about rethinking, reframing and reconstructing the current curriculum in order to make it better, and more inclusive. It is about expanding our notions of good literature so it doesn't always elevate one voice, one experience, and one way of being in the world. It is about considering how different frameworks, traditions and knowledge projects can inform each other, how multiple voices can be heard, and how new perspectives emerge from mutual learning.

4. Decolonising is not just about bringing in minority ethnic writers and texts, but also how we read 'traditional mainstream' texts. Decolonising is far more nuanced than just replacing authors, and it is more than just the topics covered in a course. It concerns not only what is taught and how it is critiqued, but how it is taught, which gives rise to an understanding of decolonisation that addresses how academic literacies are experienced.

5. Decolonising means identifying ways in which the university structurally reproduces colonial hierarchies; confronting, challenging and rejecting the status quo; and reimagining them and putting alternatives into practice for the benefit of our academic integrity and our social viability.

6. Decolonising the curriculum means creating spaces and resources for a dialogue among all members of the university on how to imagine and envision all cultures and knowledge systems in the curriculum, and with respect to what is being taught and how it frames the world.

7. Decolonisation is not a project over which one group can claim sole custodianship. Non-white and white academics and students are in this together. This will involve conscious, deliberate, non-hypocritical and diligent interest by both non-white and white members of the university in all knowledge systems, cultures, peoples and languages.

8. Decolonising requires sustained collaboration, discussion and experimentation among groups of teachers and students, who themselves have power to make things happen on the ground and think about what might be done differently. The change will take different forms in different universities and disciplines. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

9. Decolonising is thinking about how students experience the university differently. Race, gender, disability and class all demonstrably impact student attainment and experiences of exclusion from the university environment. These are linked to the university's historic identity and mission, as well as wider structural inequalities within society.

10. Decolonising requires the courage to admit that any knowledge could and should be open to challenge and question; regardless of its original power relations. This is the only way to avoid the mere 'displacement' of one curriculum coloniser by another.

11. Decolonising is about how we can ensure a system where all those who engage with the university to make their living, or to study, can do so under conditions of dignity, respect and security.

Discipline Working Groups
Call for membership and Terms of Reference
In June 2018, Keele SU, the KPA and Keele UCU launched a joint Manifesto for Decolonising the Curriculum. At the launch meeting on June 7th it was agreed that this activity would be best developed via working groups, involving both staff and students, in each discipline areas.
Terms of reference

1. To drive forward the Decolonise Keele project at each discipline level

2. Analyse the current structure and content of your programmes and make recommendations for change, i.e. how to decolonise your programmes. Specifically to gather evidence, ideas and suggestions around the following questions:

1. In what ways does the structure/content of your programme(s)/course(s) reflect colonial/ imperialist/Eurocentric bias?

2. What are the key texts/authors that have been written out of your discipline/programme(s)/course(s)?

3. What would a decolonised module/course look like in your discipline?

4. To report progress to the Decolonise Keele Network Steering Group.

5. To present/showcase your progress and ideas to the Decolonise Keele Network programme of workshops and/or future teach-ins

Constitution

At least one student - ideally three, one UG, PGT and one PhD

At least one member of staff, ideally two, one BME member and one non-BME.

To be student led

Frequency of meetings
Monthly or more frequently if appropriate. The first joint meeting of the groups will be on Wednesday, 12 December 2018, 1-3 pm.
Raewyn Connell's thoughts on Decolonising the Curriculum Trunette R Joseph's: Decolonsing the Curriculum; Transforming the University: A Discursive Perspective
Decolonising the Curriculum in Theory and Practice (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge, seminar series 2016-17 with links to talks and blogs)
Decolonising the Academy, Responsibilities, Representation and Progress: University of Birmingham School of History and Cultures: second year student invites us to ask searching & sometimes difficult questions University of Sussex, Module details: "Decolonsing the Curriculum Literature and Theory of the Global South"Decolonising Higher Education - An Interview with Professor Paul Gilroy Blog from the London School of Economics: Contesting Coloniality in International Relations Reading
National Student Stories: Cambridge takes steps to Decolonise the Curriculum

Bheki R. Mngomezulu & Sakhile Hadebe (2018) What Would the Decolonisation of a Political Science Curriculum Entail? Lessons to be Learnt From the East African Experience at the Federal University of East Africa, Politikon, 45:1, 66-80, DOI: 10.1080/02589346.2018.1418205
https://www.nusconnect.org.uk/articles/why-is-my-curriculum-white-decolonising-the-academy https://www.leicesterunion.com/liberated https://soasunion.org/education/educationalpriorities/https://allinbritain.org/decolonising-the-curriculum-whose-knowledge-is-it-anyway/https://rmfoxford.wordpress.com/

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Keele decolonising the curriculum network

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Decolonization involves identifying colonial systems, structures and relationships, and working to challenge those systems. It is not "integration" or simply the token inclusion of the intellectual achievements of non-white cultures.

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Decolonising the Mind - Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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Decolonizing the mind with Ngugi wa Thiong'o

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Identifying and Reducing Racial Threat in Face-to-Face Encounters

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Howard C. Stevenson is the Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education, Professor of Africana Studies, and former chair of the Applied Psychology and Human Development Division in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a nationally recognized clinical psychologist and researcher in independent and public K-12 schools as well as community mental health centers, and teaches how children can develop healthy racial identities through racial stress management. The PLAAY (Preventing Longterm Anger and Aggression in Youth) Project uses basketball and racial socialization to help youth and parents cope with stress from violence, racial, and social rejection. With Penn professors Loretta and John Jemmott, and Christopher Coleman, Stevenson co-leads the SHAPE-UP: Barbers Building Better Brothers Project, which trains Black barbers to be health educators and teach retaliation violence and unsafe sexual risk reduction and negotiation skills to Black 18-24 year old males while they are cutting hair.
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His most recent education bestseller book, Promoting Racial Literacy in Schools (Teachers College Press), shifts a focus on race relations away from "colorblind-ness" and avoidance and toward racial literacy, which involves engaging and managing racial stress by actively reading, reducing, and resolving racially stressful encounters when they happen.

View Ed-Talk Factsheet here.

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Howard C. Stevenson is the Constance Clayton Professor of Urban Education, Professor of Africana Studies, and former chair of the Applied Psychology and Human Development Division in the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania.

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The Tenents of Critical Race Theory

Critical Race scholarship is unified by two tenets;

The first is to understand how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America, and, in particular, to examine the relationship between that social structure and professed ideals such as "the rule of law" and "equal protection." The second is a desire not merely to understand the vexed bond between law and racial power but to change it." (Crenshaw et al., 1995)

Daniel G. Solorzano and Tara J. Yosso (2000), rooted in the field of education, state, "at least five elements that form its basic perspectives, research methods, and pedagogy." They are; (1) the centrality and intersectionality of race and racism; (2) challenge to the dominant ideology; (3) the commitment to social justice ; (4) the importance of experiential knowledge; and (5) the use of interdisciplinary perspectives." CRT also developed subgroups such as Latino/a/x-critical (LatCrit) which will be discussed in other pages.

Five Tenants of Critical Race Theory - Sources

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Library Guides: Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Guide: The Tenets of CRT

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Critical Race scholarship is unified by two tenets; The first is to understand how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America, and, in particular, to examine the relationship between that social structure and professed ideals such as "the rule of law" and "equal protection."

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Summary and Stages of Racial Identity Development

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Summary and Stages of Racial Identity Development

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Education Colleges for Justice & Equity: A Framework for Assessment and Transformation

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Education Colleges for Justice & Equity: A Framework for Assessment and Transformation

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EDJE Framework

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Harney & Moten - Full text here

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paperson - Full text here

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A Third University Is Possible | Manifold @uminnpress

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A Third University is Possible_ unravels the intimate relationship between the more than 200 US land grant institutions, American settler colonialism, and contemporary university expansion. Author la paperson cracks open uncanny connections between Indian boarding schools, Black education, and missionary schools in Kenya; and between the Department of Homeland Security and the University of California.

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Linder, C. (2015). Navigating guilt, shame, and fear of appearing racist: A conceptual model of antiracist White feminist identity development. Journal of College Student Development, 56, 535-550.

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"Decolonization involves identifying colonial systems, structures and relationships, and working to challenge those systems. It is not “integration” or simply the token inclusion of the intellectual achievements of non-white cultures. Rather, it involves a paradigm shift from a culture of exclusion and denial to the making of space for other political philosophies and knowledge systems. It’s a culture shift to think more widely about why common knowledge is what it is, and in so doing adjusting cultural perceptions and power relations in real and significant ways."
-Keele Manifesto

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Drawing on Dei’s (1996) anti-racism definition, Phillips et al. (2019, p. 3) explain that the term “anti-racist” is an action-oriented strategy for institutional systemic change that addresses racism and other interlocking systems of social oppression. Anti-racism explicitly names the issues of race and social difference as issues of power and equity, rather than as matters of cultural and ethnic variety (p. 252).

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(1) acknowledge the central and intersecting roles of racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of subordination in maintaining inequality in curricular structures, processes, and discourses; (2) challenge dominant social and cultural assumptions regarding culture and intelligence, language and capability, objectivity and meritocracy; (3) direct the formal curriculum toward goals of social justice and the hidden curriculum toward Freirean goals of critical consciousness; (4) develop counterdiscourses through storytelling, narratives, chronicles, family histories, scenarios, biographies, and parables that draw on the lived experiences students of color bring to the classroom; and (5) utilize interdisciplinary methods of historical and contemporary analysis to articulate the linkages between educational and societal inequality.
Yosso, T. J. (2002). Toward a critical race curriculum. Equity & Excellence in Education, 35, 93-107.

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What do we do if we turn over grading/class content to the students at a PWI and they direct those efforts in a circle, back to white-dominant morales?

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What do we do if we turn over grading/class content to the students at a PWI and they direct those efforts in a circle, back to white-dominant morales?

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Articulating to ourselves and to our students why we're making disruptive changes is helpful as we navigate our way through this.

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We talked about how a course with a lot of technical material, and little reference to scholars can still be supporting oppressive structures, but initially struggled with what could be done. We spent some time getting to know each other and discussing the demographics of our classes and departments. We ended with looking at the characteristics of white supremacy, which we all found very helpful for self evaluation.

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How to untangle the knot of colonization and white supremacy  within a stem field (physiology) or business (accounting) --very data driven courses?

Look at effects that policies have on the environment, society at large, etc.

Expose the narratives and the points of view of the narratives

How do we interact with our students? Is that the way to approach this?

Teaching about built environment and sustainability--huge issue at W&L.

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we all teach or work in very different areas and we spoke about how these issues can motivate us in thinking about and teaching in our specific types of classes, teaching methodologies

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One thing we discussed to consider are what is considered “canon” and who gets to decide what is canon in anthology text books or in courses that need to cover a particular period of time

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How is perfectionism in grammar linked to internalized notions of race and hierarchy?

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I am interested in grading, and how to make it better.  I enjoyed the discussion of self-assessment earlier!

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How do we deal with the canon of white male writing in any given discipline? - Jemma

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We talked some about departmental resistance to using new books/materials in courses.  Especially if the instructor is a visiting professor....

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We talked some about departmental resistance to using new books/materials in courses.  Especially if the instructor is a visiting professor....

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What if your entire field (writing, creative writing) seems grounded in the rules of white supremacy?

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I used the article below to get my students to begin questioning the canon in my discipline. Maybe similar articles exist in other areas?

"Canon, Pedagogy, Prospectus: Redesigning 'Restoration and Eighteenth- Century English Drama'," by Richard Bevis - in JStor at https://www.jstor.org/stable/41153851

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Full text here!

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Find ways to give students agency, regardless of limits of the type of course!

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Make intentional changes and be clear as to why you are making the change.

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Make intentional changes and be clear as to why you are making the change.

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How should I handle the fact that I wasn’t trained in these discourses and that I’m still learning alongside the students?

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How should I handle the fact that I wasn’t trained in these discourses and that I’m still learning alongside the students?

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How do you do this with a STEM-oriented course? What if you're team teaching? How to deal with colleagues who have power over you?

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How do you do this with a STEM-oriented course? What if you're team teaching? How to deal with colleagues who have power over you?

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How do you deal with larger structures that can’t be changed (or that are required by the administration) like grading?

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How do you deal with larger structures that can’t be changed (or that are required by the administration) like grading?

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Publisher: Haymarket
Format: Book
Binding: pb
Pages: 216
Released: January 19, 2021
ISBN-13: 9781642592672

A captivating mix of memoir and progressive teaching strategies, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom demonstrates how to be culturally attuned, twenty-first century educators.

The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop is a call to create healthy, sustainable, and empowering classroom communities. Award-winning educator Felicia Rose Chavez exposes the invisible politics of power and privilege that have silenced writers of color for far too long. It's more urgent than ever that we consciously work against traditions of dominance in the classroom, but what specific actions can we take to achieve authentically inclusive communities? Together, we will address how to:

· Deconstruct our biases to achieve a cultural shift in perspective.

· Design a democratic teaching model to create safe spaces for creative concentration.

· Recruit, nourish, and fortify students of color to best empower them to exercise voice.

· Embolden our students to self-advocate as responsible citizens in a globalized community.

Finally, a teaching model that protects and platforms students of color, because every writer deserves access to a public voice. For anyone looking to liberate their thinking from "the way it's always been done," The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop is a clear, compelling guidebook on a necessary step forward.

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A note: one of my students asked me if all the characteristics on this list were inherently bad. I was thankful for that questions because it helped me articulate something I rarely say out loud. My response was that none of these things are inherently bad as characteristics, but when we look at the ways they are used to impact a person's access to equity or agency, this is when we must disrupt it. When these characteristics are used as tools of power to subjugate or discriminate against others, and lessen the quality of their life experiences, that's when they become dangerous. I hope this was helpful. 

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VIsualizing Your Semester