Chapter 19: Teaching Out of Bounds: Decolonizing Curricula in Higher Education

There has been a longstanding call for more culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogical practices in higher education, but the recent outcry spurred by the global COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement has triggered a heightened sensitivity to this need. The system of postsecondary education, like other American pillars of society, is embedded with traditional, western, and eurocentric values, beliefs, and norms, which inherently subjugate anyone who exists outside of those characteristics. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) are measured against a white measuring stick and their lived experiences are often left out or erased, particularly in educational spaces. BIPOC students must navigate college and university campuses that were not built for them, are not prepared to serve them, and continue to impose white supremacist norms upon them. Brayboy (2006) purported that if these structural issues are to be addressed, we must investigate and uproot not only issues of race, but of power and sovereignty—in another word, colonization. Decolonizing higher education requires both deconstructing existing structures, and rebuilding systems that serve everyone (Massey-Jones, 2019). Disestablishing the hegemonic structures that disempower and oppress, decolonizing postsecondary education allows us to make room for equitable, inclusive, and transformational ways of being and knowing.