Cross-disciplinary, collaborative and student-led: developing a change process for diversifying reading lists

Increasingly across many UK higher education institutions staff and students are questioning and challenging systemic inequalities that affect racially minoritised groups in their learning and sense of belonging within the curriculum. Students are calling for inclusion of diverse sources of knowledge and perspectives, especially from scholars of colour and from the Global South, to enrich what is currently perceived to be a Eurocentric canon. One way to promote more culturally aligned pedagogy is through diversifying reading lists. This article presents findings from two pilot studies that explored the reading lists in one department in social sciences and one in the humanities at the University of Kent, UK. Applying critical race theory as a guiding framework, the first part of the article examines the ways in which a diverse curriculum must include the voices of the marginalised. It then describes the methods: a desk-based review of the reading lists, interviews with academics to inform the work, disseminate the findings, instigate further action and identify future needs, and student focus groups. Crucially, the project resulted from the collaboration between students and staff, and across departments and disciplines. We found that reading lists in both departments overwhelmingly comprised items by White male authors. Students and staff both reflected on the importance of not only curriculum diversification but also barriers to diversification and decolonisation. The article discusses the impact of this project, which has led to a Diversity Mark process, and the Diversity Mark Toolkit, which can be used in any discipline when putting together reading lists to create a more culturally competent curriculum. It concludes by considering other systemic changes needed, with particular attention to changes needed in library services and collections.

Rapid reviews as an emerging approach to evidence synthesis in education

Rapid reviews using abbreviated systematic review methods are of increasing importance for evidence-informed decision-making in education, although there is little guidance about the most suitable approach. Three recently completed rapid review reports are compared to inform discussions on the utility of this type of review in education and to highlight appropriate methods for producing evidence syntheses in a limited time frame. Rapid review methods need to be chosen to fit the needs of the review, which involves: thinking broadly about different kinds of team experience and expertise; estimating the size and nature of the literature to be reviewed; considering the review purpose and nature of the topic; choosing an appropriate synthesis method for the review purpose, evidence base and reviewers’ expertise; fully describing the review approach, and discussing the potential limitations of chosen methods; and understanding the anticipated audiences and tailoring outputs accordingly. Rapid reviews to address urgent and high-priority questions provide the benefits of timeliness and reduced resource requirements. However, it is crucial to understand caveats and limitations to the rapid conduct of evidence syntheses for decision-making purposes. This article offers guidance to support researchers, postgraduate students and commissioners who wish to conduct rapid reviews in a transparent and systematic way, addressing complex questions of relevance to evidence-informed decision-making in education.

Educating on democracy in a time of environmental disasters

The recent diffusion of democracy across the globe has led to an increase in the curiosity of scholars, policymakers and the public alike about the main principles and characteristics of democracy. Equally important are concerns over outcomes of democracy, especially responsiveness of democracy to environmental and citizens’ protection in times of disasters. This article aims to answer several questions about the understanding of principles and outcomes of democracy, and the complexity and variability of democracy across countries, which are still unanswered in the literature. Specifically, it adds to the scholarly debates on democracy and environmental disasters in three ways. First, it presents theoretical and empirical debates on definitions and principles of democracy and its progress worldwide. Second, it discusses the effect of democracy on environmental sustainability. Third, it focuses on the pre-eminence of responsiveness of democratic in comparison to non-democratic governments to environmental disasters, and the best pathways to education on democracy in a time of environmental disasters. The article concludes by highlighting the advantage of mechanisms and solutions of democracy in contrast to non-democracy to challenges in times of environmental disasters and to teaching about responses to environmental disasters.

Children’s narratives on migrant refugees: a practice of global citizenship

Globalisation has brought about great social and economic impact, as well as great challenges. Major developments have taken place in the mobility of capital and, to a lesser extent, of goods; not so in the mobility of people seeking asylum due to persecution and war. This article approaches the phenomenon of migration, particularly of refugees, as learning content for early childhood. The research is presented from a qualitative approach based on the results of a project on this topic implemented in a rural school in Spain. The results of the data analysis reveal that children attribute external reasons, of survival, to the refugees’ forced departure from their country of origin. The children’s imaginary reproduces the social construction of adults on the status and situation of refugees, and they also show a critical attitude towards the violation of human rights and the abuse of fellow children. Finally, respect, cultural empathy and social commitment in the face of injustice are presented as fundamental values for education in global citizenship from the earliest stages of schooling.

The decolonial turn: reference lists in PhD theses as markers of theoretical shift/stasis in media and journalism studies at selected South African universities

The supervision and production of a PhD thesis often presents a potentially interesting tension between PhDs as conforming to disciplinary epistemologies and PhDs as breaking epistemological boundaries. No academic discipline has been left untouched by decolonial thinking in the South African university space since the eruption of radicalized student protest movements in 2015. The Rhodes Must Fall student protest movement, which quickly morphed into Fees Must Fall, precipitated a new urgency to decolonize the university curriculum in post-apartheid South Africa. A new interdisciplinary conversation in the humanities and social sciences began to emerge which challenged established orthodoxies in favour of de-Westernizing, decolonizing and re-mooring epistemological and pedagogic practices away from Eurocentrism. Whether and how that theoretical ferment filtered into postgraduate students’ theses, however, remains to be established. This article deploys a decolonial theoretical framework to explore the tension between epistemic conformity and boundary transgressing in journalism studies by analysing reference lists of PhD theses submitted at three South African Universities three years after the protest movement Rhodes Must Fall. With specific focus on media and journalism studies as a discipline, this article argues that the PhD process represents a site for potential epistemic disobedience and disciplinary border-jumping, and for challenging the canonical insularity of Western theory in journalism studies. The findings appear to disconfirm the thesis that decolonial rhetoric has had a material influence so far on the media studies curriculum, as reflected in reference lists of cited works in their dissertations.

In the face of sociopolitical and cultural challenges: Educational leaders’ strategic thinking skills

This article discusses the implications of sociopolitical and cultural challenges and complexity on educational leaders’ use of strategic thinking skills in divided societies, using the case of Israel, a deeply divided society with a hegemonic Jewish ethno-national state and Bedouins – a subculture of the minority Arabs. In the suggested model, we propose that, due to sociopolitical and cultural challenges, Bedouin school principals use ‘systems thinking’ skills as a holistic approach to coping with their complex environment. Jewish principals use the additional strategic skills of reflection and reframing. We provide the results of a preliminary empirical study, with 103 Bedouin and 67 Jewish principals, supporting our propositions. This article and its propositions open avenues for research into principals’ perceptions in deeply divided contexts and contribute to cognitive characteristics of leadership by explaining the implications of specific contexts for strategic thinking.

Decolonising globalised curriculum landscapes: The identity and agency of academics

This article explores how academics in a higher education institution (HEI) make sense of the challenges that they encounter in a neoliberal context typified by an increasingly globalised curriculum landscape. Two key questions are explored: What are the contours of the shifting boundaries which define the ‘global curriculum’ in HEI contexts? How do academics navigate and make sense of this fluidity in an uncertain and disputed landscape? Using reflections on practice emanating from the redesign of educational courses to respond to a rapidly changing student cohort, this inquiry takes an auto-ethnographic approach, offering the perspectives of five academic staff from a UK-based HEI through the lens of their lived experiences, and acknowledging the emerging shifts in identities that they experience and the need to confront tensions in this curriculum space. We conclude that our own scrutiny of, and critical reflections on, our identity and positionality as teachers and education practitioners represent a form of decoloniality, enabling us to find ways to share what we know without excluding knowledge outside it and to welcome contributions and possibilities beyond our own experiences. In terms of how we should act, we recognise that it must be through a dialectic that does not seek cultural supremacy or sovereignty.

Curriculum contexts, recontextualisation and attention for higher-order thinking

Tasks are crucial for gaining access to powerful knowledge in geography and for fostering higher-order thinking in lessons; therefore, they are key to subject-specific pedagogy. After analysing tasks in geography textbooks for upper secondary education, it was revealed that higher-order thinking barely occurs in textbooks in the Netherlands and is more frequent in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Subsequently, both curriculum contexts were systematically compared to determine factors that influence the use of tasks. The results show that evaluative rules play a crucial role. The assessment in North Rhine-Westphalia focuses on higher-order thinking and how this becomes visible in students’ work. Dutch assessment concentrates on students handling an outlined body of knowledge in defined settings. This raises questions of epistemic access, as students are less prepared for the skills expected at university level. Finally, we observed the importance of alignment between official institutions, the discipline of subject-specific pedagogy and support for teachers when it comes to fostering higher-order thinking in geography education.