Possibilities and Complexities of Decolonising Higher Education

Critical Perspectives on Praxis

Aneta Hayes, Kathy Luckett, Greg William Misiaszek, Aneta Hayes, Kathy Luckett, Greg William Misiaszek

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781032447629
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000860306
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The chapters in this book highlight the possibilities and complexities of putting decolonial theory to work in higher education in Northern and Southern contexts across the globe. This book looks at decolonial work as praxis involving transformation at a range of levels from theoretical development, national policy, institutional policy and culture, academic discipline, programme, course, classroom, student and the self. Our authors argue that praxis in their contexts includes working at institutional level to undo the historical power of 'coloniality' in universities in the metropoles, introducing Indigenous knowledges into curricula and undoing the effects of 'coloniality' in embodiment, temporality and whiteness. We, as editors, argue for the need for transformation of the self as well as structures, and highlight qualities such as reflexivity on our own entanglements with coloniality, and why they occur, in this undoing. The approach offered in this book emphasises the connection between significant personal change as a pre-condition and an epistemological process to connect critical decolonial theory and our teaching practice. The book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Teaching in Higher Education.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Struggling for the anti-racist university: learning from an institution-wide response to curriculum decolonisation
• 3 From silence to ‘strategic advancement’: institutional responses to ‘decolonising’ in higher education in England
• 4 Approaching global education development with a decolonial lens: teachers’ reflections
• 5 Refusal as affective and pedagogical practice in higher education decolonization: a modest proposal
• 6 Understanding the challenges entailed in decolonising a Higher Education institution: an organisational case study of a research-intensive South African university
• 7 ‘Pillars of the colonial institution are like a knowledge prison’: the significance of decolonizing knowledge and pedagogical practice for Pacific early career academics in higher education
• 8 Epistemic decolonisation in reconstituting higher education pedagogy in South Africa: the student perspective
• 9 Disrupting curricula and pedagogies in Latin American universities: six criteria for decolonising the university
• 10 Indigenizing Engineering education in Canada: critically considered
• 11 Holding space for an Aboriginal approach towards Curriculum Reconciliation in an Australian university
• 12 A Calle decolonial hack: Afro-Latin theorizing of Philadelphia’s spaces of learning and resistance
• 13 Distilling pedagogies of critical water studies
• 14 Decolonising while white: confronting race in a South African classroom
• 15 Navigating student resistance towards decolonizing curriculum and pedagogy (DCP): a temporal proposal
• 16 Four ‘moments’ of intercultural encountering
• Index