Decolonial and anti‐racist perspectives in teacher training and education curricula in England and Wales

Abstract

First paragraph: In recent times, several schools and higher education systems have started to engage with decolonial and anti-racist perspectives in their curricula in an attempt to critically explore both the subject stories and the voices that their curricula make visible and invisible (Gandolfi, 2021; Leibowitz, 2017; Manathunga, 2018; Moncrieffe et al., 2020). In the field of Curriculum Studies, for instance, João Paraskeva raised important arguments in 2016 around the suppression and elimination of diverse epistemologies, disciplines, theories, concepts and experiences from curricula across the world by Western (neo)colonial projects. Based on the seminal works of the decolonial thinker Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2018), Paraskeva (2016) framed these processes of curriculum making as ‘curriculum epistemicides’. This kind of work that challenges ‘curriculum epistemicides’ and, more generally, that brings decolonial and anti-racist perspectives into disciplines, school subjects and general educational practices is not, however, without difficulty both at higher education and school levels, as argued by colleagues in the field (e.g. Le Grange, 2020; Moncrieffe et al., 2020).