What is Decolonial Pedagogy?
In this short video, FCIP Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy Specialist Justin D. Wright provides a brief introduction to Decolonial Pedagogy.
Decolonization/Decolonial Pedagogy can best be defined as a framework which seeks to challenge, critique, and even in some cases dismantle, the underlying models of Eurocentrism and Colonialism derived forms of prejudice, inequality, and invalidation which are interwoven into the framework of the Western education system (the dominant educational system in the world today). This does not mean the pedagogical framework calls for an outright abolition of the traditional Western Education system per say, but rather a confrontation of the aspects within in it which ultimately serve to reinforce the cultural worldviews of a society that engaged heavily in colonialism, the development and expansion of racism (in the modern sense), and repression and invalidation of non-European peoples and their own cultural worldviews at a time when modern Western higher education was taking shape. One of the most effective ways this can be done is acknowledging and validating the cultural worldviews of non-Western peoples or those not traditionally eminent in Western society and incorporating them into the higher education framework within the terms of the people who hold these cultural beliefs and worldviews. Finally, it’s worth noting that to confront colonialist traces in any system merits confronting the systemic inequalities that permeate throughout a country’s history. Such efforts will surely lead to uncomfortable confrontations, yet it’s important to remember that these efforts are meant first and foremost to target systems, not any specific individuals or groups unless the latter is an explicit requirement for the former.
How do we understand Decolonial Pedagogy in the Ignatian context at LUC?
Loyola University Chicago, like everywhere else in the United States, resides on land whose native inhabitants were either killed or forcibly removed to accommodate settlements and colonization by white European settlers. LUC’s Lakeshore Campus is, according to the university’s official Land Acknowledgement Statement, located “on the ancestral homelands of the Council of the Three Fires (the Ojibwa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi tribes) and a place of trade with other tribes, including the Ho-Chunk, Miami, Menominee, Sauk, and Meskwaki,” (LUC, 2024). Additionally, Loyola’s parent organization, the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) played a proactive role in the expansion and solidification of colonial rule throughout what is today the United States and Canada. LUC has not only benefited from colonialism as the university is in fact derived from an organization which actively partook in colonialist efforts, like many religious organizations within the United States. Specific to our contemporary localization, LUC’s Lakeshore Campus lies within Rogers Park, which has been a culturally and racially diverse community. Many equity-deserving groups who deal with the consequences of Euro-supremacist systems live and work in and around the campus. It should also be noted that Loyola University Chicago is both historically and contemporarily a Predominantly White Institution (PWI) and it can be argued that not implementing a decolonial framework into our pedagogy would be a failure on our part as an agency that works to improve the overall LUC community experience. We at the FCIP owe it to our LUC community, as well as all those who live and work in and around the university in Roger’s Park to confront these deeply-rooted notions of Western, Euro-centric, and White supremacy within the context of secondary education, and to recognize and validate the experiences and viewpoints of those who are still actively harmed by them to this day.
What are the key tenets of Decolonial Pedagogy?
- To establish/define the spaces of indigenous and colonized peoples within the realm of higher education where they can prioritize their own knowledge and counter standard didactic western pedagogical practices.
- Pedagogy as expanding beyond the classroom and knowledge concerns to accommodate embodied affective, social, and cultural learning that draws from and transforms environmental and geopolitical spaces.
- Pedagogy as a 'praxis', involving the reflexivity of action, reflection, and relearning, thus challenging the condescending view of 'practice' as secondary to research, policy, and scholarship.
- The employment of indigenous epistemologies that seek to threaten, replace and reimagine colonial thinking and practice by both pupils and educators.
- Consider the relationship between decolonization and “ethnic” studies.
- Effective culturally responsive pedagogies require teachers to:
- Undertake a critical deconstruction of Self in relation to and with the Other.
- To consider how power affects the socio-political, cultural and historical contexts in which the education relation takes place.
- Thoughtful engagement with decolonization and aspects of social justice projects makes a substantial, albeit sometimes unsettling, contribution to critical studies in education.
- Challenge the androcentric, colonial and ethnocentric perspectives which are eminent in almost all areas of focus/study in the ultimately European derived academic/scholastic system.
What are some resources?
Texts/Manuscripts
Culturally Responsive Pedagogy: Working Towards Decolonization, Indigeneity and Interculturalism, Fatima Pirbhai-Illich, Shauneen Pete, and Fran Martin
- This book convincingly argues that effective culturally responsive pedagogies require teachers to firstly undertake a critical deconstruction of Self in relation to and with the Other; and secondly, to consider how power affects the socio-political, cultural and historical contexts in which the education relation takes place. The contributing authors are from a range of diaspora, indigenous, and white mainstream communities, and are united in their desire to challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric education and to create new educational spaces that are more socially and environmentally just.
Decolonization as Pedagogy: a praxis of ‘Becoming' in ELT, Suresh Canagarajah
Decolonization as Pedagogy: a praxis of ‘Becoming' in ELT, Suresh Canagarajah
- This introduction to the special issue on 'Decolonizing ELT' defines pedagogy as expanding beyond the classroom and knowledge concerns to accommodate embodied affective, social, and cultural learning that draws from and transforms environmental and geopolitical spaces. It defines pedagogy as a 'praxis', involving the reflexivity of action, reflection, and relearning, thus challenging the condescending view of 'practice' as secondary to research, policy, and scholarship. This perspective enhances the political stakes in pedagogy by contesting the micro/macro binary that relegates pedagogic resistance to ineffectual local changes. Reviewing constructs from Southern epistemologies, such as non-duality, relationality, becoming, coexistence, ethical values, and non-representational dispositions, this introduction outlines a decolonial ELT
Decolonizing European Sociology: Transdisciplinary Approaches, Encarnacion Gutierrez Rodriguez, Manuela Boatcă, Sérgio Costa, Professor Robert Holton, and Professor Robert Holton
- Decolonizing European Sociology builds on the work challenging the androcentric, colonial and ethnocentric perspectives eminent in mainstream European sociology by identifying and describing the processes at work in its current critical transformation. Divided into sections organized around themes like modernity, border epistemology, migration and 'the South', this book considers the self-definition and basic concepts of social sciences through an assessment of the new theoretical developments, such as postcolonial theory and subaltern studies, and whether they can be described as the decolonization of the discipline. With contributions from a truly international team of leading social scientists, this volume constitutes a unique and tightly focused exploration of the challenges presented by the decolonization of the discipline of sociology.
Epistemic Decolonization of public policy Pedagogy and Scholarship, Sanjay K. Pandey, Yuan Cheng, and Jeremy L. Hall
- The authors discuss academic structuring of public policy pedagogy and scholarship and the implications for disciplinary decolonizing. Topics include observations about public policy pedagogy and public policy scholarship, structuring of public policy scholarship, and disciplinary decolonization of public policy pedagogy and scholarship (Abstract).
Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance: Alternatives to Colonial Thinking and Practice, George J. Sefa Dei and Cristina Jaimungal
- 2019 SPE Outstanding Book Award Honorable Mention. To be able to promote effective anti-colonial and decolonial education, it is imperative that educators employ indigenous epistemologies that seek to threaten, replace and reimagine colonial thinking and practice. Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance hopes to contribute to the search for a more radical decolonial education and practice that allows for the coexistence of, and conversation among, "multiple epistemes."
Raza Struggle and the Movement for Ethnic Studies: Decolonial Pedagogies, Literacies, and Methodologies, Miguel Zavala
- Raza Struggle and the Movement for Ethnic Studies: Decolonial Pedagogies, Literacies, and Methodologies presents an investigation of decolonization in the context of education and what this means for ethnic studies projects. It accomplishes this exploration by looking at the history of Raza communities, defined broadly as the Indigenous and mestizo working class peoples from Latin America, with a focus on the complex yet unifying Chicanx-Mexican experience in the Southwest United States. This book bridges the fields of history, pedagogy, and decolonization through a creative and interweaving methodology that includes critical historiography, dialogue, autoethnography, and qualitative inquiry.
Sharing Breath: Embodied Learning and Decolonization, Sheila Batacharya and Yuk-Lin Renita Wong
- The contributors to this collection suggest developing embodied ways of teaching, learning, and knowing through embodied experiences. Their thoughtful engagement with decolonization and aspects of social justice projects makes a substantial, and sometimes unsettling, contribution to critical studies in education.
‘Pillars of the colonial institution are like a knowledge prison’: the significance of decolonizing knowledge and pedagogical practice for Pacific early career academics in Higher Education, Marcia Leenen-Young, Sereana Naepi, Patrick Saulmatino Thomsen, David Taufui, Mikato Fa’avae, Moeata Keil and
- For Pacific Early Career Academics (PECA) in Aotearoa (The Māori name for New Zealand), there is a tension between the Indigenous knowledges inherited from our Pacific ancestors and those we have been taught within the western education system. As Pacific educators teaching an increasingly Pacific student-body, we have sought to define our own spaces within the lecture theatre where we can prioritize our own knowledge and counter standard didactic western pedagogical practices.
What are other universities doing?
Columbia University – Decolonial Theories in Comparative Education
Columbia University – Decolonial Theories in Comparative Education
- Highlights Professor Regina Cortina’s Decolonial Theory in Comparative Education class. Engage with three of Professor Cortina’s students to understand what makes this class unique, engaging, and impactful.
CUNY – Decolonizing Pedagogy
- As the decolonial paradigm gains traction in the world of education, we pause to consider what that means in CUNY, how it is connected to larger discourses and practices by educators and scholars, and the ways we can conceptualize of a teaching practice that is aligned with goals and principles that are decolonizing. This session will first offer space and resources for discussion on decolonizing research and teaching methodologies in academia, both imagining the possibilities and problematizing our positionalities of a decolonial practice in the classroom.
- Learning Objectives:
- Reflect on our individual attachments and commitments to the college pedagogical space.
- Consider the limitations and affordances of decolonial pedagogy in higher education institutions.
- Connect decolonial theory and pedagogical commitments to issues of developing, structuring, and teaching courses in the CUNY context.
Durham University - Archives and Decolonial Pedagogy Workshop (29/2-1/3/2024).
Durham University - Archives and Decolonial Pedagogy Workshop (29/2-1/3/2024).
- While calls to ‘decolonize the curriculum’ have been mainstreamed in many universities, they are often framed as a discipline-specific exercise in changing reading lists to better acknowledge:
- How a discipline might be historically connected to colonialism
- The range of authors and content that might have been neglected.
Portland Community College – ES 260, Decolonizing Education Course Content and Outcomes Guide
Washington State University – Decolonial Pedagogies
Washington State University – Decolonial Pedagogies
- Decolonial education, according to Walter Mignolo, is an expression of the changing geopolitics of knowledge whereby the modern epistemological framework for knowing and understanding the world is no longer interpreted as universal and unbound by geohistorical and bio-graphical contexts. “I think therefore I am” becomes “I am where I think” in the body and geo-politics of the modern world system (Adapted from Baker, “Decolonial Education: Meanings, Contexts, and Possibilities”).
Decolonization/Decolonial Pedagogy can best be defined as a framework which seeks to challenge, critique, and even in some cases dismantle, the underlying models of Eurocentrism and Colonialism derived forms of prejudice, inequality, and invalidation which are interwoven into the framework of the Western education system (the dominant educational system in the world today). This does not mean the pedagogical framework calls for an outright abolition of the traditional Western Education system per say, but rather a confrontation of the aspects within in it which ultimately serve to reinforce the cultural worldviews of a society that engaged heavily in colonialism, the development and expansion of racism (in the modern sense), and repression and invalidation of non-European peoples and their own cultural worldviews at a time when modern Western higher education was taking shape. One of the most effective ways this can be done is acknowledging and validating the cultural worldviews of non-Western peoples or those not traditionally eminent in Western society and incorporating them into the higher education framework within the terms of the people who hold these cultural beliefs and worldviews. Finally, it’s worth noting that to confront colonialist traces in any system merits confronting the systemic inequalities that permeate throughout a country’s history. Such efforts will surely lead to uncomfortable confrontations, yet it’s important to remember that these efforts are meant first and foremost to target systems, not any specific individuals or groups unless the latter is an explicit requirement for the former.