The BERA Guide to Decolonising the Curriculum: Equity and Inclusion in Educational Research and Practice

Decolonising the curriculum has been increasingly discussed in education, particularly following the Black Lives Matter anti-racism protests in 2020. This chapter presents how teachers in UK primary schools are approaching curriculum-making through decolonial lenses. With a focus on teaching and learning about race, cultural diversity, and British history in primary school education, the authors refer to key examples of teacher education research which has argued over the years for decolonising and diversifying curriculum knowledge. The authors relate these arguments to evaluate data from online learning modules on this topic created by the Chartered College of Teaching. Findings show that when provided with robust continuous professional development (CPD), teachers grow in confidence in seeing and challenging the limitations of knowledge centred by the Eurocentric discourses of the primary national curriculum. Adopting decolonial lenses for critical curriculum thinking enables teachers to plan and implement approaches to pedagogies framed by a diversification of knowledge in curriculum-making.

Religious education (RE) in Northern Ireland (NI) is taught according to the Core Syllabus produced by representatives of the region’s four main Christian churches and, at primary level, is exclusively Christian in content. In this chapter, the authors apply the lens of epistemic injustice to examine the implications of this given an increasingly diverse society and pupil population. Drawing on a recent study of educational experiences among minority ethnic and migrant groups, the authors suggest that the primary RE curriculum may perpetuate epistemic injustice in three ways: (1) by impeding children from minority faith traditions from sharing their experiences in a way meaningful to their peers; (2) by reducing the resources available to children to make sense of encounters with other religious traditions; and (3) through a lack of appropriate alternative arrangements for pupils whose parents withdraw their children from RE. The authors conclude with recommendations to increase epistemic justice within the primary RE curriculum.

In this chapter, we share our reflections on decolonising early childhood education in our respective contexts of England and Scotland and the implications for early childhood practitioners. The foundations of early childhood education have traditionally been shaped by white, male, Global North perspectives that position young children as ‘innocent’ and unknowledgeable, as defined by developmental discourses and milestones, and as sites of economic investment within neoliberal politics. We challenge the relevance of these ideas in diverse and evolving contexts. We provide some suggestions on how early childhood practitioners can work towards decolonising early childhood education by unlearning prejudiced assumptions, and by relearning new perspectives in disrupting hegemonic whiteness, and advocating for structural and institutional change.

This work takes a decolonial and, specifically, an antiracist approach to thinking about teaching and learning in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) within the settler-colonial Canadian context, a context in which Euro-centric developmentalist narratives predominate. To address this situation, a team of academics, along with the College of Early Childhood Educators and the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, carried out antiracist professional learning with the early childhood sector in Ontario, Canada. Four two-hour sequential on-line sessions were offered. Three hundred professionals participated. This knowledge transfer initiative focused on sharing information and providing a platform for educators to ask questions, learn, and unpack their own positionalities in challenging race and racism in early learning pedagogies and curriculum. Pre- and post-session surveys were distributed, the results of which are discussed in this chapter. Strengths and weaknesses of this initiative are considered, along with impact and next steps.

This chapter draws on the author’s pedagogical intervention with graduates who observed that, while studying on their early childhood degree courses, they learnt the value of establishing relationships with families; however, they found in the modules of teaching and learning limited practical strategies for work with families categorised within the Black Asian Minority Ethnic (BAME) context in the UK. Their concerns are with seeking to understand the root causes of social-economic challenges impacting upon families from ethnically diverse minority groups, cultures different to their own majority ethnic group backgrounds, and how they can provide support through their teaching and learning approaches. This chapter discusses how the inclusion of module activities provides students with opportunities to deconstruct anti-discriminatory practices within the BAME parent–practitioner relationship.

Black university student protests calling for decolonising the curriculum in South Africa in 2015 and the Black Lives Matter movement sweeping across the UK in 2020 have brought attention to the need for anti-racist and decolonial education and practice in schools. Drawing on critical pedagogy and decolonial discourse, this research analyses conceptualisations of decolonising the curriculum and anti-racist pedagogy through Black learner and educator understandings from a London primary school and educator perspectives in Johannesburg. Empirical data collected from a learner focus group, field journal, and educator interviews showed key themes for informing best practice as belonging, identity and community knowledge, cultural relevance, critical thinking, and consciousness raising. Findings from this research suggested shared educator understandings of ‘decolonising the curriculum’ and evidence of decolonial practice. While Black learners’ critique raised considerations for progression of ‘soft reform’ to more ‘radical’ transformation.

This chapter provides a context for other case-study chapters in this volume that explore in more depth steps taken to provide a decolonised perspective in the history curriculum. The chapter first provides a brief overview of developments in recent years towards diversifying the history curriculum. It then focuses specifically on two surveys conducted by the Historical Association in 2019 and 2021, examining how history teachers have responded to more recent calls both to diversify and (from some) to decolonise the curriculum. As the surveys only provide self-reported data about any changes made (rather than allowing direct observation of teachers’ practice), it is not possible to determine whether a genuinely decolonised approach is being adopted. There are, nonetheless, clear indications that small but significant steps are being taken in many school contexts to diversify curriculum content, seeking to address both an overwhelming Anglo-centric bias and a narrow conception of what constitutes ‘British history’.

Although there have been many attempts over the last 30 years to diversify the history curriculum in schools, decolonisation is a relatively recent phenomenon. This article will initially explore the seminal influences that enabled teachers at Park View School to develop a curriculum that challenges the dominant narratives and provides students with alternative pathways to understand how history has been constructed and how this can be widened. It will showcase two schemes of work that re-centre voices that have been historically and colonially underserved: The Tape Letters unit draws on an oral history archive about the experiences of the British-Pakistani community and invites students to conduct their own oral history interviews; the LGBTQ+ unit enables students to navigate the subjectivity of archives and to explore, through material culture, the changing position of the LGBTQ+ communities in Britain and ultimately construct their own digital archive.

The TIDE Beacon Fellowship was a professional development programme supporting a small group of history and english teachers in their teaching of the British Empire, Migration, and Belonging. The Fellowship took place over three months with three full-day workshops. This chapter seeks to assess how a sustained form of professional development could support the teaching of a complex topic like the history of the British Empire. The authors will present a single case study as a basis of hypotheses testing, arguing that teachers are best supported with professional development that draws on both academic scholarship from the relevant subject disciplines and empirical evidence from classrooms; accounts for teachers’ personal beliefs; and takes place within supportive forums that facilitate dialogue.

Biology is broadly speaking a colonised subject and as such exemplification of the material to a non-white non-western centric narrative can elicit deep thought, debate, and analysis of the subject. Recent curriculum changes in England (post 2015) present little time for non-curricular content and staff can struggle to engage students in meaningful debate, analysis, and social-scientific thinking. Staff at City and Islington College took radical and long-term change to exemplify biology within a decolonisation narrative, using various methods to ensure that critical topics were covered while looking at the colonisation and colonialism of the subject. The staff ensured that decolonisation was a key agenda item in curriculum development to maintain an interwoven approach to the subject. Structured student interviews provided student feedback and student voice. Early discussion with students suggests the use of context has allowed students to be more confident in expressing their views and analysing unfamiliar contexts.

Language teaching has traditionally offered a space for the development of cultural knowledge and intercultural understanding as well as language learning. Furthermore, language teachers have recently become more critically race aware in their roles. In this research, we found a shift towards the decolonisation of the language curriculum within a more general trend towards increasing diversity and inclusion in school and university curricula. This research was aimed at exploring those developments in a collaborative team project that included both lecturers and post-graduate certificate in education (PGCE) students who, following training, undertook classroom research. Data analysis delivered insights regarding personal understanding of decolonisation and teachers’ implementations. Despite constructive work evident in Modern Foreign Language (MFL) teaching and resources, there was considerable insecurity about the process and student voice was lacking. However, the arts-based approach enabled creative and positive representation of perspectives and the student researchers expressed a transformation of their mindset into one of activism.

This chapter examines the role that guided collaborative reflection can play in teachers’ development of decolonial thinking. Following research undertaken with teachers in England, Finland, and Sweden, this chapter uses data collected from preservice history teachers in England to investigate how HEADSUP resources can be applied in aid of encouraging preservice teachers to start to undertake the task of developing and interrogating their ways of knowing, to begin the process of decolonising their practices. Our research shows how HEADSUP can be applied to stimulate collaborative reflection among practitioners as a key starting point for the work of decolonising curricula and practices, in a bid to try and avoid issues of performative decolonisation.

This chapter presents findings from a global literature review (LR) into anti-racism in initial teacher education/training and a national survey for England which was constructed following the review to gain a contemporaneous picture of anti-racism work in initial teacher education/training (ITE/T) in England. Both the LR and survey revealed a pressing need for student teachers to become racially literate and for guidance for ITE/T providers in teaching student teachers about race, racism, and anti-racism. The findings from the LR and survey were then utilised to construct the anti-racism framework (ARF) for ITE/T for England, which was written to provide such guidance within a policy landscape which is argued as de-racialised. The chapter concludes with an imagined case study demonstrating how the framework could be used to support critical and informed reflections on the content of the current ITE/T curriculum to avoid damaging deficit assumptions about Black and global majority (BGM) pupils and their schooling.

This chapter reflects upon a distinct decolonisation journey taking place in Wales, and how a Welsh government organisation called diversity anti-racist practice and professional learning (DARPL) is contributing to changing the Welsh educational landscape through decolonial praxis. We describe how a research collective of Welsh Initial Teacher Educators worked on decolonising their professional practice, curricula, and their own minds. This research runs parallel to curriculum changes in Wales that are part of a broad suite of Welsh government policies and commitments based on anti-racist thinking and professional learning in education. DARPL, which is funded by the Welsh government and housed within Cardiff Metropolitan University (CMU), is a community of practice working with a wide range of partners and networks across Wales. DARPL operates via a ‘virtual campus’, delivering in-person and online training, delivered by staff with lived and professional experience of racism. It provides a national model of professional learning for those working across all tiers of education to develop an understanding of anti-racist practice and leadership.

There is no shortage of discussion on decolonising in higher education, but a lack of insight regarding the practical implications for staff who aim to embed decoloniality in their teaching practice. This chapter contributes towards addressing this gap. Informed by a decolonial lens, two scholars articulate three stages in their pedagogical approach, and the impact, in an internationalised classroom in a UK university. This systematic approach centres on ‘deconstruction’ of dominant knowledge constructs, ‘empowerment’ to enable knowledge co-construction, and ‘reflection’ on pedagogical experience as part of students’ educational journey. Hence, through observation, reflection, action, and refinements in our practice, we provide practical suggestions that legitimise diverse knowledge, create a sense of responsibility for own learning within a safe space for critical conversations, and reject the deficit-based approach for asset-based approach. The chapter, thus, contributes to discourses around decolonising curriculum with implications for pedagogy, practice, and policy development in higher education.

Efforts towards decolonising the higher education curriculum in Northern Ireland reflect the complex and often contradictory character of the structures, relations, and identities in place. The author draws on his experiences as a settler researcher and learner of Ojibwemowin (an Indigenous language in North America) to explore how these complexities intersect with language in one English language teaching (ELT) programme at a university in Northern Ireland. The author describes the tensions inherent in teaching ELT-related curriculum from a place where language policy has been uneven for many years. The author then explains how language reclamation research has informed teaching practices that de-centre English and draw on relationality. These practices are examined through decolonising and anticolonial lenses to highlight the value of relationships and place as an underexplored pathway in English language and language education curricula in higher education in Northern Ireland and elsewhere.

Based on classroom learnings from a course lesson on de/coloniality of African and Black diasporas in higher education at a small private historically, predominantly white university in the rural United States, this chapter is an invitation to critically and meaningfully engage with our own higher education institutions (HEIs) as ideal laboratories for individual, community, and institutional transformation. Engaging in a university scavenger hunt, co-designed by faculty and students, various meanings, and implications of ‘decoloniality’ and ‘decolonisation’ within contexts of higher education are interrogated and reimagined through individual and collective counternarratives in the shape of a Black feminist decolonial ‘archive’. This archive challenges and reimagines narratives in/visibilised in the university’s current archival records, which are characterised by anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, colonial innocence, and white supremacy. This chapter focuses on un/learning varying (de)colonial and decolonising worldviews of HEIs and academia through participatory narrative and archival reproduction.

Social work departments at Hope Africa University (HAU) (Burundi) and Oxford Brookes University (OBU) (UK) created an innovative buddying programme for their students. The project design and evaluation were based on the Burundian principle ‘Ikibiri’ (working together) and the African principle ‘Ubuntu’ (I am because we are). Although this project stemmed from the need to decolonise curricula in the UK, it was mutually beneficial: students from both institutions learned about social work from another culture and strengthened their communication skills. Evaluation of the project took a decolonial lens, attempting to examine the extent to which students experienced a sense of Ubuntu. This chapter will share lessons learned in attempting to decolonise teaching and research, and inspire others to do the same.