St Mary's University, Twickenham. Transforming interpretations of the national curriculum aims and contents for developing teaching and learning about race-equality

Description

Abstract
The objective of this lecture is to empower trainee-teachers to enact the aims and contents of the national curriculum through transformative interpretations which can facilitate their teaching and children’s learning about diversity and race-equality. This lecture will therefore arrest examples of Euro-centric discourses within the aims and contents of the national curriculum by exposing race-inequalities through the critical theoretical lenses of Whiteness and White Privilege. It will be shown how these lenses provide a clear view in illustrating how Euro-centric forms of epistemic violence are manifested by the aims and contents of the national curriculum, reinforced by uncritical approaches to teaching and learning. This will be argued as serving political ideologies which seek to validate and impose exclusive and potentially divisive monocultural discourses on young learners. Critical Multicultural Education is introduced for reconceptualising the aims and contents of the national curriculum through inclusive interpretations. Practical examples of transformative approaches to teaching and learning through the aims and contents of the national curriculum including the impact of these on trainee-teachers’ thinking are offered and presented through juxtaposed accounts of British history. This will demonstrate how trainee-teachers’ critical reflection on their own life-history experiences can through innovation and creativity apply the rich currency of pluralism to facilitate transformative interpretations of the aims and contents of the national curriculum leading potentially to inclusive teaching and children’s learning about diversity and race-equality for developing and advancing broader subject knowledge and understanding.

Period	27 Feb 2019
Held at	St Mary's University, Twickenham, United Kingdom
Degree of Recognition	Local