Publication

Abstract : In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and subsequent anti-racism protests, calls to decolonise the school curriculum have gained traction around the world. Internationally, there are attempts to pivot educational systems towards decolonising national school curriculums, for example in Australia (Harvey and Russell-Mundine, 2019), Bolivia (Lopes Cardozo, 2012), Canada (Munroe et al., 2013) and the USA (Ladson-Billings, 2014). In the UK, such discussions have intensified following protests from the Black Lives Matter movement, both in the UK and elsewhere. A sharper focus on the causes of these global protests has resulted in growing pressure on governments to resolve discriminations embedded within school curriculums, and thus to decolonise and diversify education. Hundreds of thousands have signed petitions saying that schools should not only teach the links between the slave trade and imperialism, but also acknowledge the contributions and achievements of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic people (Arday et al., 2020). This movement aspires to transform inaccurate syllabuses and exclusionary pedagogical practices, and to eradicate the biased knowledge that school curriculums can produce and communicate. Scholars have argued that schools, like universities, can be important sites of intervention and disruption in challenging colonialist legacies in the curriculum and other structures, and in rehumanising these institutions (Dawson, 2020; Gleason and Franklin-Phipps, 2019). Others have warned of the dangers of relativism in the curriculum that may even entrench racial thinking (Williams, 2017). This London Review of Education special feature showcases high-quality and intellectually provocative papers that theoretically and empirically interrogate why or if the school curriculum needs to be decolonised.