Decolonising the Curriculum: Teaching and Learning about Race Equality

Welcome to Issue 2 of the University of Brighton’s journal offering a wide variety of articles with teaching and learning approaches and critical theoretical provocations for decolonising the curriculum.

We begin by celebrating the university achieving a Bronze Award from Advance HE’s highly regarded Race Equality Charter. Momtaz Rahman explains how the award will strengthen a commitment by the university to actively raise the professional profiles of BAME staff and improve the BAME student experiences in our community.

Naomi Salaman and Jo Hall each discuss their implementation of innovative decolonising practices through concepts and processes led by their students, increasing their engagement with studies, and raising their attainment and outcomes.

Arianne Shahvisi and Rishen Catteree each focus on teaching to instil an awareness in their students of the considerable social power they will have as future doctors. They argue that decolonising education and the curriculum must involve helping students to understand where they are coming from with regard to their unconscious racial frameworks.

Annie Richardson and Nadia Edmond provide reflections on research and theory in each of their articles, speaking to decolonising the curriculum in intercultural primary school teacher-training, and in early years education.

In each of their articles Marina Trowell and Eleftherios Zenerian see decolonising the curriculum at the university as a route to greater inclusion for creating a firmer sense of connection and belonging for students who feel marginalised by dominant discourses in what they are being asked to learn.

Natasha Gohlan and Ashna Mahtani each share an article from the perspective of alumni. They reflect on the supremacy of "whiteness" in the curriculum that they experienced in their studies. They call on the need for future teaching content and practice to be decolonised and transformed particularly through student voices and their relatable experiences.

Helen Johnson rounds off this collection of articles with a provocative poem. In this we are able to step into the mindset of a character: one who moves from conscious denial; to conscious realisation of their embedded racism.