Decolonising the Curriculum in Higher Education
Calls to decolonize higher-education curricula have recently gained momentum worldwide, and are visible – for example – in the movements “Rhodes Must Fall” and “Why is my curriculum white?” The potential of decoloniality and decolonizing the curriculum in the context of Swedish higher education has however not been explored to the same extent.
Which implications does decolonizing have with regards to curriculum design, pedagogic practices and so-called equal participation? Which choices have to be made and what sort of contextualization and historicization does it take? What can be learned from decolonial theory, and from the experiences of those in decolonizing movements? And how do we avoid tokenistic involvement and turning decolonizing into a catch-all category?
The purpose of the seminar is to discuss the potential and implications of decolonial and postcolonial perspectives in higher education, both in terms of themes and didactics. We would like to look at our own educational practices, as well as how we educate students to address structures of domination in the interest of social transformation. The seminar will examine race and systematic racism in higher education, and as well as critically discussing the concept of diversity in educational contexts in Sweden.
Our intention is to bring scholars and educators of different disciplines into conversation around these critical issues. The seminar is organized as a roundtable discussion with a subsequent plenary session where participants are invited to reflect on what decolonizing the curriculum would mean in their specific discipline, and which changes to educational practices this would require.
Speakers:
Rebecca Duncan (Dep of Languages), Charlotte Silander (Dep of Education and Teachers Practice), Åsa Söderqvist Forkby (Dep of Social Work), Birgit Tremml Werner (Dep of Cultural Sciences) and Åsa Trulsson (Dep of Cultural Sciences), Linnaeus University
Recommended readings:
Bhambra G., Gebrial, D. & Nişancıoğlu, K. (2018) Decolonising the University, Pluto Press. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25936
Moosavi, L (2020) The decolonial bandwagon and the dangers of intellectual decolonisation,
International Review of Sociology, DOI: 10.1080/03906701.2020.1776919.
The seminar organized in collaboration between LnuC Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies, the Department of Education and Teachers' Practice, the Department of Social Work and the project Teacher Education as an Agent for Democracy, at Linnaeus University.
If you want to participate in the seminar via Zoom, please contact Åse Magnusson.