Over the past five months, as a doctoral student at the University of Oxford, I have had the privilege of speaking to a range of teachers from varied disciplines and educational settings across England about what it means to teach in an antiracist or decolonial way. What I have found perhaps most fascinating, is the myriad ways decoloniality and antiracism appear in practice, despite shared core principles and fundamental beliefs.
In the summer of 2020, significant events like the murder of George Floyd, the toppling of Colston’s statue in Bristol, and the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign, alongside the pandemic, motivated many teachers to initiate curriculum reforms, marking a pivotal moment in educational discourse. In the words of the great Stuart Hall, we had arrived at a conjuncture:
…a moment of danger and one of opportunity; it was something to intervene in, a configuration whose components were to be rearranged through practice. It was a call to action—intellectual, social, cultural, political.[1]
The 2021 Historical Association (HA) Survey of secondary school history in England showed that teachers were increasingly including diverse topics in their curricula; 73% of schools taught about migration to Britain, 82% about ‘some aspect of the British Empire’ and 86% taught a series on the Transatlantic Slave Trade.[2]
It was around this time that the seeds for my doctoral study began to be sown in my mind. I was interested in exploring what motivations lay behind these figures and how particular framings shaped practice. I wondered about the terms such as decolonisation, decoloniality, antiracism, diversity, and inclusion, that were being used contemporaneously. What did a decolonised or decolonial classroom look like as opposed to an antiracist classroom? Were there differences between diversity and inclusion? How are each of these concepts linked, if at all? These were some of the questions that I looked to find out about during my doctorate.
Navigating the terminology
The evolution of the term decolonisation across a range of geographical and temporal locations, makes it quite a tricky concept to pin down. There is no specific blueprint for what a decolonial classroom should look like in a UK context. Thinking through how both the content and form of what we teach is suffused with coloniality is important but, if it is to result in change, this must be accompanied with practical action. Mignolo and Walsh argue that decolonising is best understood as:
…a praxis—as a walking, asking, reflecting, analysing, theorising, and actioning—in continuous movement, contention, relation, and formation.[3]
Decoloniality, which could be understood as decolonisation in action, is a critical framework that challenges the enduring impacts of colonialism and envisions alternative futures rooted in justice, diversity, and equality. Thus, for my research to be both meaningful and useful to teachers and their students, I had to find out how educators from a range of backgrounds were interpreting and enacting antiracism and decoloniality, and find out their questions, concerns and experiences. I also wanted to honour the long history of antiracist education in the UK, which has taken place in both within mainstream schools, and outside of it in places such as black supplementary schools. My research, then, seeks to co-construct with educators what decoloniality and antiracism might mean.
Antiracism and decoloniality in practice: Insights from varied educational contexts
As any educator will know, classrooms are living, breathing sites, shaped by the interconnected knowledges and experiences of students, staff and wider communities. It makes sense, then, that these unique ecosystems, with distinctive needs and priorities, would therefore present differing manifestations of antiracism and decoloniality. More broadly, given the uneven legacies of coloniality, we would expect its afterlives to play out in a variety of ways. My research to date has illuminated the dexterity of educators in navigating this ever-shifting terrain to work in meaningful and relevant antiracist and decolonial ways.
I have learnt that antiracism and decoloniality can lie in the macro and micro decisions, in the day-to-day or in longitudinal plans, or in interactions within and between students and staff.
For some, it involves emphasising belonging for all in a multi-ethnic, multi-racial classroom which allows students to see themselves and one another reflected in their learning. As one research participant, Alexandra Brown, an RE teacher, reflected:
I think at the very core it means redefining rearticulating and almost having a reexperiencing, if that’s even a word, of what it means to be human.
And I think I actively seek to go to the very, very core.
Because colonialism and slavery and settler colonialism robbed us of our humanity, robbed both the coloniser and the colonised of their humanity… And I think trying to create lessons and spaces and conversations in which one’s humanity can just be enjoyed, even if it’s just for a moment. It’s precious.
Elsewhere, in places that appear to be more ethnically homogeneous, staff have chosen to focus on local stories as a way in, before illuminating stories of solidarity across class and racial lines. A primary school teacher facilitated a pen pal programme for her students to connect with children in a county made up of a different racial demographic. In a diverse school that sits within a town grappling with prickly racial divisions, the emphasis, at least as a starting point, is on celebrating diversity to counteract the possibility of identity being hijacked by polarising forces. In a seemingly remote island school, its sandy beaches offer up rich material evidence from shipwrecks and other ocean debris, illuminating to pupils forgotten stories of migration and global interconnectedness. Objects have also been used to offer a way into navigating the unavoidable and difficult emotions that arise when teaching and learning about topics such as the British Empire or the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Decoloniality can also involve staff recognising and learning from the pre-existing local, cultural, and racial literacy of students to help them meaningfully and harmoniously engage with the student body. Fred Oxby, a history teacher based in Leeds, emphasised:
Kids in London learn how to be in a multicultural society because they grew up in a multicultural society and I would argue that many teenagers, white teenagers in Wembley, many not all, they’re much more racially literate than most of their teachers in the sense that that is their life. The ideologies of race, they learn in school, and they dismantle them in the playground.
Equally important decolonial and antiracist work is happening as teachers are educating other staff members, sharing the knowledge that has helped their own personal transformation. It is important to acknowledge how burdensome this work can be, and I will report on this in a further blog.
I hope this post offers some reassurance as well as ideas for wherever you currently find yourself in relation to decoloniality and antiracism. There are no perfect starting points, ending points, or perfect paths to follow. I think it’s most useful to see decolonisation and antiracism as a process or a journey, making decisions with an overall trajectory towards greater educational justice. How this happens at any time will be determined by your unique and dynamic set of circumstances. We’re eager to hear from you about your setting, and the exciting, creative and hopeful ways you’re approaching this work.
With thanks to all my research participants whose insights have helped to co-construct this piece:
Alexa Cox, Alexander Benger, Alexandra Brown, Dan Lyndon-Cohen, David Manning, Fred Oxby, George Buchanan, Haroon Mansoor, Mary Sibson, Melanie Rowntree, Nadia Talukder, Natty Mark Samuels, Paige Richardson, Rachel Lewin, Sabah Choudrey, Sarah Jackson-Buckley, Dr Victoria de Rijke
NOTES
[1] Stuart Hall quoted in T. Bennett, (2016) ‘The Stuart Hall Conjuncture’, Cultural Studies Review, 22(1) (2016): 284. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v22i1.4917.
[2] K. Burn and R. Harris, Historical Association Survey of History in Secondary Schools in England 2021 (Historical Association, 2021): 1. Available at: https://www.history.org.uk/secondary/categories/409/news/4014/historical-association-secondary-survey-2021 (Accessed 20 March 2023).
[3] W. D. Mignolo C. E. Walsh, On Decoloniality: Concepts, Analytics, Praxis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018): 19.