How to Decolonise Your Classroom to Make It More Inclusive

Step 1

1

Consider your power and privilege. Everyone has some power and some privilege. Some have a lot more of it than others. Also, there are often many different understandings of a given individual’s position and you might not agree with how you are read. You could do some self-exploration to understand your power and privilege in the context in which you are teaching. Ensure you get feedback from others on how you are perceived. This can be a difficult process but it is well worth the effort. This may or may not be shared with students depending on their age and readiness. There are some simple, widely available exercises that you could start with, for example:

A privilege check aimed largely at the US but applicable with some tweaking elsewhere produced by the popular website Buzzfeed.

A diversity conversation toolkit also from the US context that can help facilitate discussions about a difference.

A list of prompts from scholars at the University of Cape Town in South Africa suggesting questions that can be asked before teaching begins.

Step 2

2

Seek to understand your students and colleagues in their own context. This is linked to the section above, but it asks us to go further. Often — not always, but often — students learn from people who have had very different life trajectories to their own. The more effort an educator makes to understand the context of both students and colleagues, the more likely educational initiatives are to stick. This might require almost no work, or it might require a lot, depending on where you are and what you are doing. It will almost certainly require a good deal of listening and observation, but the work pays off.

An example comes from a training workshop that was orchestrated by some very well-meaning people from the USA. The participants were mostly from different countries in Africa, including the one where the workshop was taking place. One of the activities assumed a working knowledge of a television game show that aired in the USA in the 1980s (in this case, Double Jeopardy). It has become part of US popular culture and those who were familiar with that knew what to do, but for many people, the exercise was completely lost in translation. Immediately, half the room stopped caring about the exercise and switched off mentally. Exasperated messages started flying on private social media channels, and in general, it was awkward and embarrassing when it could have been comfortable and unifying.