The growing interest to reduce power imbalances and inequalities in the world today is critically associated with rethinking education. Paradoxically, an increasing number of multilingual and cosmopolitan students in the world is still being served Northern normativity in what is understood to be a pluriversal universe, further exacerbating multiple forms of social injustice and tensions. That northern epistemes have fully occupied the knowledge highway has led to erasures of other forms of knowledges and has kept learners across contexts in constant struggle to socialise in ways of knowing that delinks them from their originality and being. The need for decolonising the curriculum is premised on the argument that other forms and ways of knowing with potentially horizontal effects across contexts exist but are yet to characterise the present-day education industry. This presentation interrogates power relations and hierarchies in the curriculum and attempts reflections on the necessity for decolonising the curriculum and ways through which this can reduce inequalities, improve quality education, and foster social justice in the world. I begin the presentation by drawing insights from the theory and history of curriculum, link these with policies and practices across contexts to demonstrate how power dynamics in higher education curriculum mediate equity and diversity. I move on to draw illustrations from a few local and ‘international’ education contexts to examine possible strategies for decolonising the higher education curriculum. Finally, I reflect on the strategies to complicate the link between decolonising the curriculum and neoliberalism.

Bio

Eric Ekembe holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon and is senior lecturer at the Higher Teacher Training College, Yaounde. He runs CAMELTA Research Group and is the Outreach Coordinator of the IATEFL Research Special Interest Group (ReSIG). He is English language and teacher education consultant and has presented at many international conferences and delivered webinars for the British Council Professional Development Webinar series. His research interest includes, amongst others, postcolonial discourse in English language education and decoloniality in Applied Linguistics. He has published research articles in international journals and is co-editor of Interdisciplinarity in the 21st Century Global Dispensation: Research in Language, Literature, & Education in Africa (Nova Pub, USA) and lead editor of Interface between English Language Education Policies and Practice: Examples from Various Contexts (Palgrave Mcmillan UK).

Speaker: Eric Ekembe

Facilitator: Dr Helen Donaghue