Decolonizing Pedagogy

During my undergraduate education, I had a professor who permanently altered my worldview when she introduced our class to postcolonial theory. Having grown up on old TV shows about the "wild west" and non-profit ads sporting a strong white man surrounded by hungry African children, my adolescent view of the world was largely one of saviors and the saved. It was in that undergraduate class that I learned to question such notions and seek out different viewpoints. While I tried to challenge the mainstream in my teaching, it wasn't until this master's program that I was exposed to decolonization as a pedagogy and an active movement.

The decolonial perspective, according to Garcia et. al. (2021) is one that "challenges the universal logic and matrix of power produced by colonialism" (p. 3). It requires a recognition of how colonialism persists in society, a reality that Dominguez (2019) suggests is perpetuated by the normalization of Whiteness and Western culture (p. 52). Dominguez describes decoloniality as a worldview that embraces a pluralistic understanding of knowledge and studies the ways colonialism rejects plurality in favor of Western "mimicry" (p. 52). In practice, Dominguez calls for the consideration of lived experiences and viewpoints regarding liberation and power that "emerge from the global south and historically marginalized communities" without forcing these views through a White perspective (p. 52). 

While the above explanation of decolonization is global, Tuck and Yang (2012) declare that "decolonization is not a metaphor" that can be interchanged with other social justice causes and terms (p. 2). Indeed, Tuck and Yang propose that calls to "decolonize our schools" (p. 2) often ignore Indigenous Peoples and attempt to make comfortable the inherently unsettling "repatriation of land" and recognition of differently enacted relations to land (p. 7). The authors assert that discourses of decolonization cannot ignore the continuing reality of settler colonialism in which the colonizer has come to stay (p.5). Prete and Lange (2021), however, cite Tuck and Yang's (2012) article and suggest that Indigenous People use Indigenous knowledge as a form of repatriation (p. 306). Further, Prete and Lang propose that descendants of settlers and colonizers: recognize their origins and continued relations with Indigenous People, listen to truth telling to understand how colonialism has erased history and sustainable ways of living, unlearn assumptions and mindsets of exclusion and singularity, and reeducate themselves without demanding that Indigenous People teach them colonial history (p. 307). 

After reading the differing views on the use of the term "decolonize," I changed the main title of my project from "Decolonizing the Advanced Literature Classroom" to "Reshaping the Advanced Literature Classroom." I have maintained the extended title "a teacher's journey toward a culturally relevant, decolonizing curriculum" in recognition that, though a truly decolonized reality would require a larger upending of structures that curricula alone cannot provide, a curriculum that critically examines sovereignty, centers Indigenous movements, and fosters social activism prepares the rising generation for true decolonizing progress. Thus, in this project I continuously return to decolonizing theory as I attempt to reeducate myself and write curricula that helps facilitate questioning, relearning, and action.