Contextualising the Curriculum in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Sheffield
Contextualising the curriculum is about explicitly considering the social and cultural/historical dimensions of science.
As members of a UK academic institution, a central theme of this project is confronting how European imperialism, colonialism, racism, and sexism have shaped the modern world.
By contextualising the curriculum, our goals are to understand and acknowledge how these processes shape the science we teach and the research we do - and to include a wide range of perspectives.
Our efforts contribute to ongoing work across the Higher Education sector to critically examine our syllabus and approaches to teaching and research (see Additional resources). However, we have consciously chosen to use the phrase "Contextualising the curriculum" instead of "Decolonising the curriculum" (and made this change in November 2021) as the former better reflects our work in this area.
Contextualising the curriculum involves:
Teaching the social and historical context behind scientific knowledge
Acknowledging that science cannot be completely objective
Recognising the way that our own perspectives affect the way we approach our science (e.g. in the framing of questions, interpretation of data or results, and dissemination of output)
Including a wider diversity of scientific voices
Listening to students to ensure our curriculum is inclusive
Contextualising the curriculum does not involve:
Removing scientists or their science from the curriculum
Passing judgement on who is a ‘good’ person or a ‘bad’ person
This website is intended to provide a guide on contextualising the curriculum for our own department and others focused on ecology, evolution, and the environment. Feel free to redistribute this guide and adapt it to your own area of study. We are always happy to collaborate with colleagues across the university and beyond.