Decolonising Curriculum Knowledge: International Perspectives and Interdisciplinary Approaches

With the purpose of amplifying and disseminating the knowledge and perspectives of peoples that curriculum knowledge has silenced and marginalized, this book was devised with many aims in mind including:
•To share research that centres on youth/student imaginations, voices and activism.
•To advance notions of transformative critical multicultural education.
•To examine and critique Eurocentric influences on Global South developments in education, curriculum making

Research methods
A broad range of research methods and approaches to data collection framed by decolonial theory are applied across the chapters of this book. These include:
•Using arts-based methodologies with children and young people at the forefront of knowledge creation.
•Discourse analysis of social studies curricula and history curricula.
•Qualitative research including interviews with teachers, researchers, academic colleagues.
•Narrative reflective writing fused with theory in for advanced meaning making.

Disrupting epistemic power
The internationality of the research work given by the chapters of this book have produced a multitude of themes for critical analysis, in deepening an understanding on how European colonialism and imperialism as an epistemic power continues to permeate societies and influence the lives of cultural groups across the world. The research and theoretical analysis in this book make evident how formal curriculum knowledge is used as a power to perpetuate cultural reproduction in the relationship between the state and its people. Furthermore, how formal curriculum knowledge and the uncritical teaching and learning of this can reproduce a dominant national self-image embedded in discursive structures of National exceptionalism. What this means is that decolonizing work in education faces the ongoing challenge of tackling the plagues of inequality including: racism, classism, patriarchism and sexism, all of which continue to dominate education and curriculum knowledge, international research and development in education. This indeed is a huge challenge. Some approaches given to this emanating from the research work and theoretical analysis in the chapters of this book include:
•Disrupting and dismantling the discursive structures of National exceptionalism.
•Fore fronting in education and curriculum a greater value of existing epistemic currency stemming from the heritage and lived experiences of students and learners.
•Focusing on education and curriculum knowledge through the indigeneity of knowledges and approaches as providing epistemic power and leadership delivering new knowledge
•Raising the value of epistemic currency already held by young people as curriculum knowledge.