Decolonising Philosophy Curriculum Toolkit

‘Decolonising the Philosophy Curriculum’ is part of the global and predominantly student-led movement, Decolonising the Curriculum (DtC). DtC refers to a range of critical pedagogical initiatives that focus on identifying, acknowledging, challenging, and overcoming the ways in which racism, imperialism, and colonialism have jointly impacted upon (and continue to impact on) knowledge production and learning in general. 

Since DtC is widely recognised across the HE sector as vital for developing and maintaining inclusive teaching and learning environments, DtC is indispensable for sustaining healthy, robust, and engaging knowledge production contexts. In this section, we articulate an argument for why decolonising the philosophy curricula is required. 

If decolonisation is to be more than a metaphor within educational institutions, it is not enough to restrict transformation to the curriculum. The practice and principles of teaching and learning must also change. As Ana Mendes and Lisa Lau argue, “[d]ecolonising the curriculum is about how we learn and whom and where we learn from, as much as what we learn” (Mendes and Lau 2022: 224). 

In this section, we provide a practical guide, to aid the delivery of decolonised pedagogy, one that centres the student experience as a crucial concern.

There is good reason to contend that western colonial ideology also manifests itself in the traditional types of formative activities, and, perhaps more significantly, the traditional types of summative assessment philosophy students tend to encounter at UK universities. After all, as David Boud and Trina Jorre de St Jorre contend, “[a]ssessment is a socially constructed practice, that is interwoven with relations of power … [and] is largely informed by long-standing disciplinary norms, and what educators have themselves experienced. 

As such, it is designed and constructed in accordance with the social and cultural backgrounds of academics, whose experience of higher education may differ considerably from how it is experienced by contemporary students, or those from other sociocultural backgrounds” (Jorre de St Jorre & Boud 2023: 143-44). In this section, we provide some recommendations for decolonising summative assessment in philosophy modules. 

Having conducted extensive research into current UK HE philosophy module design, we decided to focus the final thematic section on traditional vs. decolonial design of an epistemology module. Epistemology has long been dominated by perspectives that are predominantly male, pale, and stale. 

This intellectual hegemony reflects the great extent to which colonisation and masculinisation are central to academic philosophy. We believe that a decolonial epistemology module is far more than just including Global South philosophers in the reading list. For, resting content with carving some space for Global South thinkers perpetuates the idea that the benchmark of legitimate philosophy is Western Europe-mediated. A decolonial epistemology module should reflect the world’s ways of knowing.