DECUS invites secondary school teachers to question, unlearn and reimagine educational futures and engage in a process of transformation.
The goal is not to replace one story with another, but to expand teachers and learners awareness of colonial legacies and support them with tools to analyse and understand today’s interconnected world.
This glossary offers a small selection of concepts drawn from the different axes of coloniality, with the aim of supporting a clearer understanding as you navigate readings on the decolonization of curriculum. Each entry is accompanied by multimedia resources today help you explore the ideas in ways that go beyond the reductionism of definitions alone. This is by no means an exhaustive glossary, but rather a starting point, one we hope will spark curiosity, deepen your engagement, and give you a sense of the terrain we will explore together in the upcoming trainings.
| Term | Definition | Supporting Material |
|---|---|---|
Accountability/Performativity  |
In education, “accountability” (Power, 1997; Strathern, 2000) refers to audit-style regimes of targets, rankings, inspections and metrics that define what counts as good teaching/learning; “performativity” Ball (2003) is the pressure on teachers and schools to produce those measurable outputs and to perform to external indicators, often reshaping practice and even professional identity. In a decolonial frame, these regimes can privilege Eurocentric standards of “quality,” narrow the curriculum toward what is auditable, and marginalize community-grounded knowledges and relational aims of education. Practical signals include teaching to the test, data dashboards driving pedagogy, and staff appraisal tied to standardized indicators; decolonial responses include co-defining success criteria with learners/communities and combining quantitative indicators with qualitative, narrative evidence of learning. | Read Article |
| Assessment gatekeeping | Use of exams, grading norms, and credentialing checkpoints to control access to courses, tracks, credentials, or resources often privileging dominant cultural/linguistic norms and reproducing existing hierarchies. In practice this looks like high-stakes, standardized tests (or language/proficiency thresholds) functioning as “educational gatekeepers” that sort students and can disadvantage marginalized groups. The gatekeeping functions of assessment have been linked to coloniality in numerous studies, which show how tests, metrics, and English-language standards reproduce colonial hierarchies, and which can only be challenged by developing decolonial approaches to assessment design (Crossouard, 2022; Dooley, 2023; Godsell, 2021; Ndhlovu, 2019; Schissel, 2024). These decolonial responses reframe assessment as evidence of learning gathered in multiple, culturally responsive ways (e.g., portfolios, performances, community-anchored tasks) and emphasize formative uses that widen participation rather than filter it. | Decolonizing Assessment Decolonizing education Testing like you teach Falling Through the Cracks of Education |
| Assimilationism | Assimilationism in schooling has long been theorized as a policy and mindset that expects minoritized students to adapt to the dominant group’s language, culture, and norms in order to be deemed ‘successful,’ rather than schools adapting to students (Gordon, 1964; Freire, 1970). In practice, this shows up as curricula centered on a single national or civilizational story, suppression of home languages and community knowledges, and ‘fix-the-child’ remediation framed against a dominant standard (Valenzuela, 1999; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 1986). Decolonial and culturally sustaining approaches explicitly reject this: they seek to sustain students’ languages and cultures, redesign assessment and participation norms, and broaden what counts as knowledge so schools change, not children (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2017; Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). |
Unspoken [Documentary] The Dawes Act and Residential Boarding Schools [TEDxTCCD] |
| Canon Formation | How institutions decide which texts, thinkers, and topics count as “core” or “standard” for study (e.g., via curricula, reading lists, exams, prizes, and publishing), thereby concentrating visibility and value in a selective set of works. Decolonial critiques show that this process has historically privileged Euro-Atlantic traditions and excluded other epistemologies; “decolonising” asks educators to question the canon, make selection criteria explicit, and rebalance reading lists toward plural, contextually relevant voices (Smith, 1999; Mignolo, 2000; Paris & Alim, 2017). | Unmasking the Western canon Decolonizing the Canon [Video] |
| Curricular governance | In the framework of decoloniality of power, curricular governance refers to the systems and power relations that decide what knowledge is taught, valued, and assessed, and who has the authority to make these decisions. Shaped by colonial legacies, it has often privileged Eurocentric perspectives, colonial languages, and Western cultural norms while marginalizing Indigenous and local knowledge (Apple, 1993; Bernstein, 2000; Mignolo, 2000; Quijano, 2000; Smith, 1999). For example, national history curricula in many formerly colonized countries still emphasize European narratives while minimizing local histories and resistance movements. A decolonial approach to curricular governance seeks to redistribute epistemic authority, embrace multiple ways of knowing, and involve educators, learners, and communities in co-creating curricula that reflect diverse realities and knowledge systems. | Decoloniality, governance and development |
| Eurocentrism | Eurocentrism, coined by Samir Amin (1988) is the worldview that positions European history, culture, language, and knowledge systems as the universal standard against which all other societies are measured. It assumes the superiority of Western ways of knowing and often portrays non-European histories, philosophies, and cultures as peripheral, underdeveloped, or in need of “civilizing.” This perspective emerged from the colonial era, where European powers not only dominated politically and economically but also imposed their epistemologies through education, religion, and cultural narratives. In the curriculum, Eurocentrism manifests when school content prioritizes European achievements, literature, and historical events, such as emphasizing the Renaissance or Enlightenment, while omitting or downplaying equally significant developments from Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Indigenous peoples. For example, a history textbook might dedicate chapters to European explorers but give minimal attention to the civilizations they encountered, framing them only in terms of how they interacted with Europe. From a decolonial standpoint, addressing Eurocentrism involves recognizing it as a product of the coloniality of power, questioning its claim to universality, and restructuring curricula to reflect epistemic plurality, ensuring that multiple cultural and historical perspectives are valued equally. |
The Impact of a Eurocentric Curriculum on Students from the Global South and North Eurocentrism: a many-layered thing [TED Talk] |
| Funding Formulas & Resource Allocation | From a decoloniality of power perspective, these processes are not neutral—they can perpetuate historical inequalities when they are based on systems designed during or after colonial rule, which often favored urban, elite, or historically dominant communities while underfunding rural, Indigenous, or marginalized populations (Quijano, 2000; Tikly, 2011). For example, in many postcolonial countries, urban schools with colonial-language instruction receive greater funding and better facilities, while rural schools serving Indigenous students remain under-resourced. A decolonial approach to funding and resource allocation would involve rethinking formulas to prioritize historically underserved communities, ensuring equitable access to quality education, and recognizing the diverse needs of different cultural and linguistic groups. |
Equal Is Not Good Enough What does decolonizing education mean to young people in praxis? |
| Language-of-Instruction Policy | Language-of-instruction policy refers to official decisions about which language(s) are used to teach and assess students in schools. From a decoloniality of power perspective, such policies often reflect colonial legacies, privileging colonial languages (e.g., English, French, Spanish) as the medium of instruction while sidelining Indigenous and local languages (Phillipson, 1992). This can create barriers to learning, reinforce social inequalities, and position certain cultures and epistemologies as more legitimate than others. For example, in many African countries, primary and secondary education is delivered primarily in former colonial languages, disadvantaging children whose first language is Indigenous. A decolonial approach would promote multilingual policies that value and integrate local languages alongside global ones, fostering both cultural continuity and equitable access to education. | Decolonizing Language Education |
| Policy Borrowing & Global Benchmarking | Policy borrowing and global benchmarking refer to the practice of adopting education policies, models, or standards from other countries often those deemed “high-performing” in international rankings like PISA and using these benchmarks to guide reforms (Hughson, 2022). From a decoloniality of power perspective, this can reproduce colonial hierarchies when policies from the Global North are treated as universally applicable while local contexts, histories, and knowledge systems are overlooked. For example, a ministry of education might adopt a European STEM curriculum framework because it aligns with OECD benchmarks, even if it marginalizes Indigenous knowledge or local priorities. A decolonial approach would critically assess imported policies, adapt them to local realities, and ensure that benchmarking values diverse measures of success rather than imposing a single global standard. |
Beyond the Western Horizon Toward a postcolonial comparative and international education |
| Racial Capitalism | In education, and particularly in curriculum, racial capitalism appears when schooling prepares students to fit into economic systems that benefit from and perpetuate racial inequalities such as underfunding schools in marginalized communities, commodifying cultural knowledge without community benefit, or steering racialized students toward lower-paying vocational tracks (Gerrard, Sriprakash, & Rudolph, 2021). For example, colonial-era education systems often trained Indigenous or African students for manual labor while reserving administrative and leadership roles for colonizers, a pattern that can persist in modern forms. From a decoloniality of power perspective, addressing racial capitalism in education means dismantling the ways schooling reproduces exploitative economic structures and centering economic justice alongside epistemic and cultural justice. |
Racial Capitalist Schooling From Reconstruction to Jim Crow Learning to labor |
| Racialization | Racialization is the social process of assigning racial identities and meanings to individuals, groups, or communities often based on physical appearance, language, culture, or place of origin and attaching social, political, and economic implications to those identities. It is not a neutral classification but a mechanism of power that historically emerged from colonialism to justify hierarchies, exploitation, and exclusion. In Anglophone sociology the term is widely attributed to Miles (1989), while in Francophone theory Guillaumin (1972) developed racialisation/racisation earlier. In education, racialization can shape whose knowledge is valued, how students are perceived, and what opportunities they receive. For example, racialized students may face lower expectations from teachers, underrepresentation in advanced courses, or stereotypes in curricular content. From a decoloniality of power perspective, racialization in schooling is part of the broader colonial matrix that orders human value and knowledge production along racial lines (Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018). Challenging it requires critically examining policies, curricula, and classroom practices to dismantle racial hierarchies and affirm diverse identities and epistemologies. |
Nordic state education in between racialization and the possibilities of anti-racist strategy Anti-Racist Educator Reads Podcast |
| Tracking/Streaming & Selection | Tracking/streaming and selection rules refer to the practices of grouping students into different educational pathways, programs, or ability levels often based on standardized test scores, academic performance, or teacher recommendations. While intended to tailor instruction, these systems frequently reproduce social inequalities (Oakes, 1985; Gamoran & Mare, 1989; Domina et al., 2017). From a decoloniality of power perspective, tracking can reinforce colonial hierarchies when students from marginalized, Indigenous, or racialized communities are disproportionately placed in lower academic streams or vocational tracks, limiting their future opportunities. For example, in some postcolonial countries, students who speak the colonial language at home are more likely to be placed in higher academic tracks, while others are funneled into less prestigious programs. Selection rules such as entrance exams or language requirements can similarly act as gatekeeping mechanisms that privilege dominant groups’ cultural capital. A decolonial approach would critically review these practices, address biases in assessment, and create flexible, inclusive pathways that value diverse forms of knowledge and potential. | How Streaming (Tracking) in Eighth Grade Mathematics Reinforces Racialized Social Class Inequalities in Aotearoa New Zealand |
| Term | Definition | Supporting Material |
|---|---|---|
| Border Thinking | Walter D. Mignolo developed the decolonial concept of border thinking in Local Histories/Global Designs (2000), drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera (1987). It’s an epistemic stance that speaks from the colonial border, the geo- and body-political exteriority produced by modernity/coloniality delinking from Eurocentric rules of method and validity and authorizing subaltern knowledges as theory. As a response to the coloniality of knowledge, it provincializes the supposedly “neutral” center and advances pluriversality through careful translation across worlds without collapsing difference. In curriculum, it materializes as canon rebalancing and border pairings (a canonical text read alongside a border-anchored work), brief locus-of-enunciation statements attached to assignments, rubrics that treat Indigenous/community methods and ethics as rigorous evidence, and design tasks that require translating key concepts across traditions while keeping their non-equivalence explicit. |
Phonyeconomy Podcast Oxford Podcast PDF Resource |
| Colonial-aphasia | “Colonial aphasia, introduced by Ann Laura Stoler (2011) and further developed in Duress (Stoler, 2016), is a political-epistemic condition in which colonial pasts are not “forgotten” but rendered unsayable through patterned occlusions, lexical misfitting, and failures to grasp the ongoing relevance of what is already known—a difficulty linking the right words and concepts to the right things. It sustains the coloniality of knowledge by severing the vocabularies and frames needed to connect present problems to colonial histories, thereby protecting Eurocentric canons as “neutral.” In curriculum, colonial-aphasia shows up when syllabi frame empire as a closed chapter, when euphemisms (e.g., “civilizing mission,” “discovery,” “pacification”) replace precise terms (e.g., conquest, dispossession), and when students lack concepts like settler colonialism or extractivism to analyze current cases; counter-designs name the histories explicitly, build shared glossaries, and assign audits that reconnect course topics to colonial lineages. |
Read Article PDF Resource |
| Countermapping | Countermapping is widely credited to Nancy Lee Peluso, who introduced the term in her 1995 Antipode article ‘Whose Woods Are These? Counter-Mapping Forest Territories in Kalimantan, Indonesia’ that describes community-led maps that contest state mappings. It is a decolonial cartographic practice that maps from the border of power, producing spatial knowledge from community/Indigenous standpoints to contest state/colonial maps and the ontologies they normalize (land-as-property, people-as-populations, nature-as-resource); as a response to the coloniality of knowledge, it treats maps as world-making and centers consent, data sovereignty, and suppressed geographies (toponyms, kinship territories, seasonal uses). Teacher-led collaborative changes include: initiating syllabus and wall-map audits for erasures; co-creating an ethics/consent protocol for mapping; guiding students to build layered counter-maps (digital or print) that restore local names and relations; redesigning legends/projections to surface power; integrating oral histories and place-based observations as valid evidence; leading comparative critiques of textbook vs. community maps; structuring participatory GIS/story-map tasks; and revising rubrics to credit community validation, data provenance, and locus-of-enunciation reflections. |
SHIFTING METHOD PDF Counterstory Mapping PDF |
| Delinking | The term delinking originates with Samir Amin (1982/1985; 1990), and Walter D. Mignolo later rearticulated it as epistemic delinking (2007; 2009). It is the decolonial move of stepping outside modernity/coloniality’s default rules of method, evidence, and value and rooting inquiry in a different locus of enunciation. It does not shun dialogue with Western traditions; it refuses their monopoly on what counts as knowledge. In curriculum, delinking shifts the benchmark so that Indigenous, local, and diasporic traditions co-originate questions, methods, and validity rather than “supplement” a universal canon. Teachers enact it by redesigning aims and assessments so oral histories, land-based observation, and community expertise are evaluated as theory; by treating translanguaging as a scholarly resource; by co-writing rubrics that include reciprocity, relevance, and care; and by requiring positionality notes that name where claims come from. In short, delinking moves a course from “adding voices” to changing the terms by which voices become knowledge. | DeLinking PDF |
| Digital-epidermalization | Digital-epidermalization, a term introduced by Simone Browne (2010; see also 2015) names how digital systems (biometrics, computer vision, proctoring, risk-scoring) re-inscribe race onto bodies turning skin into data and reproducing colonial hierarchies of legibility, suspicion, and control; drawing on Fanon’s “epidermalization,” it shows the coloniality of being (who counts as fully human) and the coloniality of knowledge (whose data/standards define “normal”) persisting through code, datasets, and interfaces. In curriculum, teacher-led changes include auditing and refusing high-surveillance edtech; redesigning assessment to avoid facial tracking and always-on cameras; accepting alternative identity verification (oral defenses, portfolio signatures, community attestation); building privacy-by-design tasks (camera-off participation, audio/text options); teaching critical data practices (model cards, datasheets for datasets, bias testing) as method; co-writing classroom data charters that limit collection and guarantee opt-outs; and weighting rubrics to credit analysis of technological harm, refusal where warranted, and ethically sound tool choice. |
Biometric Surveillance PDF Facial Recognition PDF |
| Epistemic Disobedience | Mignolo (2009) elaborates epistemic disobedience as an insurgent practice that deliberately breaches the academy’s modern/colonial rules governing what counts as a problem, method, evidence, and citation. Unlike delinking (a structural move of stepping outside the frame), epistemic disobedience is the day-to-day rule-breaking and rule-making that operationalizes that step—rewording questions, recoding validity, and re-canonizing knowledges from other loci of enunciation. In curriculum, it looks like teachers rewriting unit questions from non-Western starting points; grading oral, land-based, and embodied testimony as theory on its own criteria; requiring short method notes that name and justify departures from Eurocentric protocols; permitting plurilingual writing without forced translation; and redesigning rubrics so community validation, reciprocity, and data sovereignty count alongside conventional citation. | Ugly Democracy PDF |
| Epistemic Justice | The concept of epistemic injustice was introduced by Miranda Fricker (2007) to describe testimonial and hermeneutical harms, and has since been expanded in decolonial scholarship as epistemic justice (Santos, 2014; Mignolo, 2009; Walsh, 2012), emphasizing the repair of colonial hierarchies of knowledge. Epistemic justice is the condition in which persons and knowledge traditions are granted fair standing as knowers and as sources of meaning, repairing credibility and intelligibility harms entrenched by the coloniality of knowledge. In curriculum, it asks teachers to recalibrate who counts and what counts: rework reading lists and citation practices to center marginalized scholars and community expertise; authorize multiple forms of evidence (oral histories, land-based observation, embodied practice) and languages; co-create shared glossaries so students gain the concepts to name their worlds; adopt discussion/feedback protocols that correct credibility deficits and interruption patterns; and revise rubrics to reward standpoint disclosure, reciprocity, and community validation alongside accuracy, rigor, and argumentation. |
Unveiling Epistemic Injustice PDF Epistemic Injustices PDF YouTube Video |
| Epistemicide | Epistemicide, coined by Boaventura de Sousa Santos (1998), is the systematic destruction, silencing, or forced assimilation of whole knowledge traditions and of the conditions that reproduce them (languages, archives, practitioners, institutions) through conquest, missionary schooling, racial capitalism, and the universalizing claims of “objective” science; as a mechanism of the coloniality of knowledge, it collapses epistemic plurality into a single canon while relegating other knowledges to folklore or superstition. In curriculum, teachers counter epistemicide by rebalancing canons and citation to recognize suppressed scholars and community expertise; legitimating oral, land-based, and embodied evidence as theory; protecting linguistic diversity via translanguaging and mother-tongue sources; practicing ethical attribution, reciprocity, and benefit-sharing when drawing on community knowledge; co-teaching with knowledge holders and building counter-archives; and revising rubrics so relevance, data sovereignty, and community validation stand alongside accuracy and argument. | YouTube Video |
| Geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge | Introduced by Mignolo and Tlostanova (2006), geo- and Body-Politics of Knowledge names the insight that every claim to “truth” speaks from a place (geo-politics) and from a body (body-politics) that is, from a situated locus of enunciation while modern/colonial reason masks its own European location and normalized body as “universal.” Exposing this locus is a decolonial move against the coloniality of knowledge: it dislodges neutrality, repositions authority, and opens the door to pluriversal standards of method and validity. In curriculum, teachers enact it by requiring brief positionality/locus notes on assignments; auditing and rebalancing reading lists by region, language, and embodiment; legitimating translanguaging and land-based/embodied methods as evidence; pairing concepts with analyses from different locales and standpoints; co-writing rubrics that include standpoint accountability, reciprocity, and community relevance; and adopting citation practices that name the geo- and body-locations of the knowledge they use. | Theorizing from the Borders PDF |
| Hidden Curriculum | Philip W. Jackson (1968) defines the hidden curriculum as the set of unspoken rules students learn from routines, space, and assessment, not the syllabus; about who counts as a “good” knower and what counts as “real” knowledge. Through a decolonial lens, these rules often center Euro-Atlantic norms (English-only, text-first evidence, a single canon) and make other knowledges look secondary. To change it, name those rules and redesign readings and rubrics so multiple traditions co-originate the course, e.g., allow translanguaging, accept oral/land-based/embodied evidence, and credit community validation and reciprocity alongside analysis and citation. |
YouTube Video The Hidden Curriculum PDF |
| Pedagogies of Refusal (Consent-Based Learning) | Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2014) theorize and popularize pedagogies of refusal in qualitative research, building on earlier Indigenous scholarship on refusal (e.g., Simpson, 2007). Pedagogies of Refusal (Consent-Based Learning) center the ethical right to withhold, limit, or condition participation and knowledge-sharing, treating refusal not as disengagement but as boundary-setting that protects sovereignty, opacity, and care in classrooms shaped by extractive, modern/colonial norms. As a counter to the coloniality of knowledge and being, refusal interrupts routines that demand confession, cultural display, or data extraction for credit, and it relocates authority over disclosure with learners and communities. In curriculum, teachers operationalize refusal by co-writing consent protocols and “right-to-say-no” clauses for tasks; offering equivalent assessment pathways that do not require self-exposure or revealing restricted cultural knowledge; building opt-in/opt-out choices for recording, translation, and data retention; honoring community protocols (what can/can’t be taught, how it may circulate); and grading for learning goals (analysis, rigor, relation) rather than for compliance with unwanted sharing. | Pedagogies of Refusal PDF |
| Pluriversality | Pluriversality, as used in decolonial theory by Mignolo (2007, 2018), names the decolonial claim that reality is composed of many coexisting, coeval worlds of knowledge, none entitled to be the universal yardstick, and thus counters the coloniality of knowledge by replacing a single center with negotiated multiplicity. In curriculum, it means teachers redesign aims, content, and assessment so different traditions co-originate inquiry: rebalancing canons and cases; pairing core concepts with Indigenous, local, and diasporic theories; legitimating oral, land-based, and embodied evidence and plurilingual writing; using intercultural translation rather than assimilation; co-setting rubrics with criteria like reciprocity, relevance, and community validation; and sharing instructional authority with community knowledge holders so students learn to move across worlds without collapsing their differences. | Read Article |
| Restorying / Counter-Storytelling | Restorying (Smith, 1999; Archibald, 2008) and counter-storytelling (Delgado, 1989; Solórzano & Yosso, 2002) are decolonial narrative practices that rewrite dominant plots from marginalized standpoints, restoring voice, agency, and explanatory power where the coloniality of knowledge and being have silenced or miscast people; they do not “add a perspective,” they reframe causality, characters, and stakes so different worlds can speak as theory, not anecdote. In curriculum, teachers lead change by redesigning prompts to elicit counter-stories grounded in community evidence; pairing canonical accounts with required counter-narratives and assessing what each reveals/erases; legitimating oral, land-based, and multimodal storytelling as rigorous scholarship; building micro-glossaries so students can name harm and repair; revising rubrics to credit standpoint, ethical protocol, and community validation alongside analysis; and instituting discussion routines that correct credibility gaps (who is believed, who is interrupted) so counter-stories function as knowledge, not merely “experience.” |
Storying and Re-storying PDF Counter-Narrative PDF YouTube Video |
| Term | Definition | Supporting Material |
|---|---|---|
| Carcerality | Carcerality names the creep of prison logics into schooling surveillance, suspicion, containment, and punitive time so that learners, especially those racialized or otherwise marginalized, are positioned as risks to be managed rather than subjects to be taught; as an expression of the coloniality of being, it normalizes hypervisibility for some bodies, invisibility for their needs, and disposability through exclusionary discipline (Maldonado-Torres, 2007; Losen, 2020; Skiba et al., 2014). In curriculum, carcerality narrows what “counts” as learning to compliance and control. Teacher-led changes include replacing zero-tolerance with restorative routines; redesigning assessments to work without proctoring or constant camera use (open-resource tasks, oral defenses, portfolios); co-writing class agreements and due-process steps for harm and repair; decriminalizing language, dress, and embodiment in participation criteria; ending behavior-points/merit–demerit grading and shifting feedback to narrative conferences; allowing flexible, humane time to counter punitive lateness policies; teaching citation as care (not policing) and using anonymized or contract grading; and establishing classroom “sanctuary” protocols that limit data collection and protect students from policing in learning spaces. |
Justice in America:School to Prison Pipeline What is the anti-racist classroom? Police-Free Schools Toolkit Lost Opportunities The Pedagogy of Pathologization |
| Chrononormativity | Chrononormativity is the disciplining of bodies through “proper” time—standard clocks, fixed pacing, age-graded pathways, and productivity rhythms—that sorts who is deemed reliable, intelligent, or “college-ready.” As an expression of the coloniality of being, it privileges Euro-capitalist temporalities (speed, synchronicity, uninterrupted availability) and punishes those whose lives follow different rhythms (care work, migration, religious observance, disability, seasonal labor) (Pasley & Jaramillo-Aristizabal, 2024). In curriculum, teacher-led change means designing for temporal equity: flexible deadlines with revision cycles; multiple pacing options to reach mastery without penalty; assessments that value depth over speed (open-resource, untimed, oral/portfolio defenses); class routines that include planned pauses and rest; scheduling sensitive to community calendars; and grading policies that reward sustained learning and collaboration rather than mere on-time compliance. | 📄 Colonialities of Chrononormativity (Pasley & Jaramillo-Aristizabal, 2023) 🌐 Blog: Getting Personal with Flexible Pacing |
| Dehumanization | Dehumanization is the reduction of people to less-than persons—objects, risk scores, labor units—denying voice, dignity, grief, joy, and futurity; as a core mechanism of the coloniality of being (Haslam, 2006; Bandura, 1999), it naturalizes extraction, punishment, and disposability along racialized, gendered, and classed lines. In curriculum and school practice, it appears when students are treated as data to manage, when surveillance and zero-tolerance replace relation, when names/pronouns and histories are ignored, and when only “neutral” language and bodies are deemed professional. Teacher-led change centers personhood: use names/pronouns and community protocols consistently; swap policing for restorative, consent-based participation; design tasks that invite voice (oral, land-based, embodied) and contextualize performance; build positionality and reflection into assessment; allow flexible, humane time; and weight rubrics for care, reciprocity, and collaboration alongside analytic rigor so learners are addressed as subjects, not problems to control. | 📺 Lecture: Dehumanization in Education 🎧 Podcast Episode: Dehumanization 📄 Case Study: Jorgensen & Maura (2022) |
| Overrepresentation vs Underrepresentation | Overrepresentation (Wynter, 2003) is when one group’s worldview, language, and methods present themselves as the universal benchmark for “the human” and for valid knowledge regardless of headcount (e.g., Euro-Atlantic theory defines what “theory” is). Underrepresentation is the numeric and positional scarcity of other groups/traditions present as tokens, electives, or side-notes with little assessment weight (Ahmed, 2012). They interact but aren’t the same: you can fix numbers (add authors) and still leave the benchmark untouched. In curriculum, overrepresentation shows up as core concepts defined only by Euro-American texts, standard English as default academic voice, and text-only evidence; underrepresentation appears as single “diversity weeks,” optional readings, or ungraded extras. Teacher-led changes target both: recanonize the core so multiple traditions define key terms; give assessment parity (equal marks/criteria) to non-Western/Indigenous sources; co-audit reading orders and citations (who opens, who is footnoted); authorize plurilingual writing and oral/land-based evidence; and revise rubrics so reciprocity, relevance, and community validation count alongside accuracy, shifting from “add more authors” to change who sets the standard. | 📄 Over- and Under-Representation of Minority Students 📄 Decolonial Approaches to School Curriculum for Black Students |
| Pathologization | Pathologization refers to the practice of construing non-dominant languages, accents, bodies, emotions, and lifeways as deficiencies that need to be “fixed,” thereby locating the “problem” in the learner rather than in colonial or Eurocentric norms. In education, this manifests when curricula and rubrics equate “professionalism” with prestige accents and standardized registers, when tempo, attention, or communication differences are diagnosed as disorders, or when Indigenous and community knowledges are dismissed as unscientific. Such deficit framings reproduce what Nair, Brea-Spahn, and Yu (2025) describe as the colonial pathologization of linguistic difference in speech-language pathology, leading to the misclassification of variation as impairment. Ball and Bernhardt (2008) similarly show how First Nations English dialects in Canada have been mistaken for speech disorders due to their divergence from “standard” English. Likewise, Tupas (2022) demonstrates how “native-speakerism” continues to racialize and devalue non-European Englishes, positioning localized varieties and accents as deficient. Decolonial curricular countermoves include shifting assessment from “native-like pronunciation” to intelligibility, separating content from delivery in grading, legitimizing translanguaging and embodied forms of evidence, incorporating diverse accents in course materials, and auditing referrals and outcomes for accent and language bias. | 📄 First Nations English Dialects (Ball & Bernhardt, 2008) 📄 The Coloniality of Native Speakerism 📄 Decolonizing Speech-Language Pathology |
| Survivance | Survivance goes beyond “survival” or “resistance”; it is an active presence that asserts not victimry but survivorship, sustaining stories, languages, and lifeways with pride, creativity, and continuity. As articulated by Vizenor (2008), survivance is a Native aesthetic and ethical practice, marked by narrative, irony, and imagination that refuse colonial erasure. Patel (2016) extends the concept to pedagogy, framing learning as an act of marronage—a fugitive practice of freedom rooted in the historical flight of enslaved peoples from plantations. In this sense, learning itself becomes a form of survivance: a disruptive, unruly departure from the stratifying logics of schooling under racial capitalism. In curriculum, centering survivance means refusing deficit framings that reduce communities to trauma alone. Instead, teachers may: pair lessons on past harms with projects documenting living practices and futures; co-create knowledge with communities through consent; recognize multiple languages and expressive media (e.g., audio, video, craft) as valid scholarship; prohibit assignments that mine pain for grades; and assess student work not only for analysis and citation but also for its contributions to community ties, knowledge transfer, and collective flourishing. | 🎥 Video: Survivance Overview (Vizenor & Patel) 📄 Pedagogies of Resistance and Survivance: Learning as Marronage 📄 Aesthetics of Survivance (Vizenor, 2008) |
| Term | Definition | Supporting Material |
|---|---|---|
| Ungendering | Ungendering was first theorized by Hortense Spillers (1987) to name how slavery violently stripped African subjects of socially recognized gender, placing them outside Western norms of personhood. In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, ungendering refers to dismantling the colonial imposition of rigid, binary, and Eurocentric notions of gender within education and knowledge production. Colonialism not only enforced political and economic control but also exported patriarchal and heteronormative frameworks that erased or delegitimized diverse gender systems present in many pre-colonial societies. Ungendering challenges the colonial gender binary, interrogates patriarchal power embedded in curricula, and restores silenced gender knowledges, including Indigenous, feminist, queer, and trans perspectives from the Global South. It resists Eurocentric “universalism” by fostering pluriversal understandings of gender, creating space for multiple, contextually grounded ways of knowing and being that disrupt the dominance of colonial gender norms in education. | 📄 Gender Lesson Plan (Secondary) |
| Heteropatriarchy | The term Heteropatriarchy emerged in the 1990s within women-of-color feminist and queer activist scholarship, and was solidified as a decolonial analytic by Andrea Smith (2005/2006), building on Rich’s (1980) critique of compulsory heterosexuality and Anzaldúa and Moraga’s (1981/1987) Chicana feminist theorizing. In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, heteropatriarchy refers to the intertwined systems of heterosexual dominance and patriarchal power that structure knowledge, teaching practices, and institutional cultures. It reflects the colonial export of male-centered authority and compulsory heterosexuality, which erased or subordinated alternative gender identities, sexualities, and social roles present in many pre-colonial societies. In curricula, heteropatriarchy appears in the privileging of male authors, leaders, and historical figures; the framing of family and relationships exclusively in heterosexual terms; the omission or marginalization of women’s, queer, and trans contributions; and the treatment of gender and sexuality as biological “facts” rather than socially and culturally situated. For example, literature syllabi may center works by cisgender male authors from the Global North, science textbooks may present reproduction solely through a binary male/female lens, and history courses may overlook feminist, LGBTQ+, and non-Western gender movements. Decolonizing education requires challenging these curricular biases and integrating diverse, intersectional, and contextually grounded perspectives that disrupt heteropatriarchal norms. | 🎥 Video: Heteropatriarchy Overview 📄 Gender, Sex, and Heteronormativity (Parise, 2021) 📄 Hidden in Plain Sight: Gender Bias and Heteronormativity in Dutch Textbooks 📄 Analysis of Heteronormativity and Gender Roles |
| Cisnormativity | The term cisnormativity, coined by Bauer et al. (2009), refers to the assumption that all individuals are, or should be, cisgender, thereby positioning cis identities as natural and normative. This assumption is not neutral but historically rooted in colonial impositions of rigid gender binaries, which enforced a singular understanding of sex and gender and erased precolonial gender diversity. Within educational contexts, cisnormativity manifests in multiple ways. For instance, biology curricula often define sex and gender exclusively in binary and biological terms, while literature and media studies frequently omit the works and perspectives of trans and non-binary creators. Classroom practices may also reinforce cisnormativity when discussions of pronouns and identity presume that all students are cisgender. Beyond the classroom, institutional policies such as gendered uniforms, segregated activities, and health education programs that exclude trans experiences further reproduce this marginalization. Decolonizing education therefore requires more than simply adding representation; it involves critically interrogating and revising curricular content, teaching practices, and policies to affirm gender diversity and resist the colonial enforcement of cisgender normativity. | 🎥 Video: Cisnormativity Overview 📄 Teaching Pride Forward: Building LGBTQ+ Allyship in English Language Teaching |
| Reproductive Justice | The concept of reproductive justice was first articulated in 1994 by the Women of African Descent for Reproductive Justice, a collective of Black women activists in Chicago, who sought to broaden the dominant discourse on reproductive rights beyond the narrow framework of individual “choice” (Freedom Center, 2023). Developed primarily by Black women and other women of color in the United States, reproductive justice integrates reproductive rights with social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. It affirms not only the right to have children or not have children, but also the right to raise children in safe, healthy, and supportive environments. Within the context of decolonizing the curriculum, reproductive justice provides a critical framework for examining how structural inequalities shape reproductive freedoms and for reimagining education in ways that foreground intersectionality, equity, and lived experiences. Colonialism, heteropatriarchy, and racism have historically restricted reproductive autonomy through forced sterilizations, population control policies, and the imposition of Eurocentric family models that undermined Indigenous, African, and other non-Western reproductive practices. In curricula, reproductive justice is often absent or reduced to debates on abortion, omitting intersectional perspectives that connect reproduction to systemic inequalities, migration, environmental justice, and historical abuses. For example, history courses may overlook state-imposed sterilization programs targeting Indigenous women, health education may focus solely on heterosexual reproduction, and sociology courses may ignore how structural racism affects access to maternal healthcare. Decolonizing education requires integrating reproductive justice into teaching, centering marginalized voices, and linking personal bodily autonomy to broader struggles for social and collective liberation. | 🎥 Video: No Más Bebés 🌐 Quipu Project – Critical Development Politics 📄 3Rs: What Are My Reproductive Rights? |
| Care Extractivism | Care Extractivism was coined by sociologist Christa Wichterich (2019) to describe the systemic exploitation and commodification of care labor under global inequalities. In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, care extractivism refers to the exploitation and undervaluing of care work such as childcare, eldercare, domestic labor, and community care that sustains societies but is often performed by women, migrants, and racialized groups under precarious or invisible conditions. Rooted in colonial and capitalist systems, care extractivism treats emotional and physical labor as a resource to be extracted for economic productivity while denying proper recognition, rights, or compensation. This extraction often relies on global inequalities, where care responsibilities are shifted from wealthier to poorer regions through transnational labor chains (e.g., migrant domestic workers). In curricula, care extractivism is rarely addressed or is framed through gendered stereotypes, such as depicting caregiving as a “natural” role for women or excluding care economies from economics and history education. For example, economic textbooks may ignore unpaid domestic labor in GDP calculations, literature syllabi may present caregiving solely as a moral duty of female characters, and civic education may fail to examine the racialized dynamics of migrant care labor. Decolonizing education involves critically integrating care economies into teaching, challenging gendered and racialized divisions of labor, and recognizing care as a political, economic, and social cornerstone rather than an invisible resource. | 📄 Women on the Frontlines: Resistance and Extractivism |
| Male-Default | The concept of male-default has feminist roots in de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949), which framed man as the “absolute” and woman as the “Other,” and was later popularized by Criado Perez (2019) to describe maleness as the assumed human norm in science, medicine, and data. In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, male-default refers to the assumption that the male body, male experience, and male perspective represent the universal human standard, while all other genders are treated as deviations or exceptions. This norm, reinforced by colonial, patriarchal, and Eurocentric knowledge systems, erases or marginalizes women, trans, and non-binary perspectives from what is considered authoritative knowledge. In curricula, the male-default appears when historical narratives focus primarily on male leaders and actors, science and medicine use male bodies as the “neutral” template for research and teaching (e.g., clinical trials historically excluding women), or literature syllabi center male authors as the canonical voices. Even seemingly neutral terms like “man” to mean “human” reflect this bias. For example, history courses may frame wars and nation-building primarily through male political figures, biology lessons may illustrate anatomy using male bodies as the baseline, and philosophy curricula may present the works of male thinkers as foundational while treating women philosophers as peripheral. Decolonizing education requires challenging the male-default by diversifying representation, reframing “universal” knowledge to include multiple gendered perspectives, and dismantling the idea that maleness is the neutral norm. | 🎥 Video: Male-Default Overview 📄 Sexist Textbooks |
| Hegemonic Masculinity | The term hegemonic masculinity was coined by R. W. Connell (1987, 1995). In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, hegemonic masculinity refers to the culturally dominant ideal of manhood that legitimizes male power and reinforces gender hierarchies, often intersecting with race, class, sexuality, and colonial histories. It promotes traits such as authority, physical strength, emotional restraint, and heterosexuality as the standard for masculinity, while subordinating or devaluing other masculinities (e.g., queer masculinities, Indigenous masculinities) and femininities. Colonialism reinforced hegemonic masculinity by elevating Eurocentric, patriarchal male norms as markers of civilization and leadership, erasing diverse gender expressions in colonized societies. In curricula, hegemonic masculinity is reproduced when literature celebrates aggressive or stoic male heroes, history courses center male political and military figures as the drivers of progress, and physical education valorizes competitive, strength-based sports over cooperative or non-gendered activities. Science and health education may also frame emotional expression as “unmanly” or depict male dominance in reproduction and biology as natural. Decolonizing education involves interrogating these portrayals, integrating diverse and non-dominant masculinities, and challenging the idea that one model of manhood is natural, universal, or superior. | 📄 Boys and Bullying in Primary School: Young Masculinities and the Negotiation of Power 📄 “Boys’ Role in Life Is To…” |
| Gender Performativity | In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, gender performativity, a concept popularized by philosopher Judith Butler (1990), refers to the idea that gender is not an innate, fixed identity but is continuously produced and reinforced through repeated behaviors, language, and social norms. Rather than being something one “is,” gender is something one “does” shaped by cultural, historical, and political contexts. Colonialism enforced Eurocentric gender performances, such as rigid binary dress codes, speech patterns, and roles, while suppressing or erasing Indigenous and non-Western expressions of gender fluidity. In curricula, gender performativity is often obscured by presenting gender roles as natural or biologically determined; for example, literature classes may portray women as inherently nurturing and men as inherently strong, history courses may depict leadership as a masculine trait, and school rules may enforce gendered uniforms or behaviors. Decolonizing education involves revealing the constructed nature of gender, introducing examples of diverse cultural performances of gender across time and place, and encouraging critical reflection on how everyday practices reproduce or challenge gender norms. | |
| Intersectionality | In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, intersectionality is an analytical framework developed by Kimberlé Crenshawn (1989), that examines how different systems of oppression such as racism, sexism, classism, ableism, homophobia, and colonialism intersect to shape people’s lived experiences and access to power. It challenges single-axis approaches that treat forms of discrimination in isolation, instead showing how they operate together to produce compounded inequalities. Colonial systems often entrenched intersecting hierarchies, where gender oppression was inseparable from racial, economic, and cultural domination. In curricula, the absence of intersectionality can result in oversimplified narratives; for example, teaching women’s history through white, middle-class perspectives while ignoring the struggles of women of color, or addressing racism without considering its gendered dimensions. Literature courses may center feminist texts that overlook race and class, health education may ignore how reproductive rights are affected differently across socioeconomic and racial groups, and history lessons may present LGBTQ+ rights as a uniform struggle without acknowledging the specific challenges faced by queer migrants or Indigenous people. Decolonizing education through an intersectional lens means integrating multiple, overlapping perspectives into teaching, ensuring that diverse voices are not only included but understood in relation to the intersecting systems that shape their realities. | 📄 Intersectionality Resource Guide and Toolkit 📄 Velásquez Atehortúa FINAL |
| Two-Spirit Recognition | In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, Two-Spirit recognition involves acknowledging, respecting, and restoring the histories, identities, and roles of Two-Spirit people. The term Two-Spirit, used by some Indigenous peoples in North America, refers to individuals who embody both masculine and feminine spirits, or who hold gender identities and roles outside of the Western binary. Two-Spirit traditions, which varied across nations, were often deeply respected and integral to community life before being suppressed by colonial violence, Christian missionary efforts, and the imposition of Eurocentric gender norms. In curricula, the absence of Two-Spirit recognition erases Indigenous gender diversity, framing gender solely through Western binaries and omitting Indigenous epistemologies from discussions of gender and sexuality. For example, history and social studies courses may teach about Indigenous cultures without mentioning Two-Spirit people, literature syllabi may exclude works by Two-Spirit authors, and health education may ignore culturally specific understandings of identity and wellbeing. Decolonizing education requires integrating Two-Spirit perspectives into teaching, not as an “add-on” but as an essential part of Indigenous histories, knowledges, and living traditions, thereby challenging the colonial erasure of gender diversity. | 📄 Two-Spirit Peoples and Reconciliation Learning Module 🎥 Video: Two-Spirit Recognition Overview 📄 Safe and Caring Schools for Two-Spirited Youth |
| Gender-Inclusive Language | Advocacy for gender-inclusive language has deep roots in feminist linguistics (Lakoff, 1975; Spender, 1980; Cameron, 1992) and is reinforced by queer and trans scholarship (Butler, 1990; Stryker, 2008). In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, gender-inclusive language refers to the intentional use of words and expressions that avoid reinforcing binary, sexist, or exclusionary assumptions about gender, and that respect the diversity of gender identities and expressions. It challenges the colonial and patriarchal legacy of treating masculine forms as the universal default (e.g., using “he” or “mankind” to mean all people) and aims to make communication equitable, accurate, and reflective of plural realities. In curricula, the absence of gender-inclusive language can normalize gender bias — for example, textbooks that consistently use “he” for generic subjects, classroom materials that assume heterosexual couples and nuclear family models, or instructions that address only “boys and girls” without acknowledging non-binary students. Decolonizing education through gender-inclusive language involves using neutral terms such as “they,” “students,” or “humankind,” integrating gender-neutral job titles like “firefighter” or “chairperson,” and ensuring translations and multilingual materials preserve inclusivity. This practice not only affirms all learners but also disrupts the linguistic structures that sustain colonial gender hierarchies. | 🎥 Video: Gender-Inclusive Language Overview 🎥 Video: Gender-Fair Language Practices 📄 STEM Teaching Tool: Gender-Inclusive Science (Middle-High) 📄 NCTE Statement on Gender-Fair Use of Language 📄 Gender-Inclusive Language Guidance for SFUSD Educators |
| Hidden Gender Curriculum | The concept of the hidden curriculum, first coined by Philip Wesley Jackson (1968) and later developed by critical and feminist scholars such as Michael W. Apple (1979) and Madeleine Arnot (1983), has been extended to gender to describe the implicit messages and practices through which schools reproduce patriarchal norms and gender hierarchies. In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, the hidden gender curriculum refers to the implicit messages, values, and expectations about gender that are conveyed through school practices, interactions, and institutional structures, rather than through the formal, written curriculum. Rooted in colonial and patriarchal traditions, it socializes students into gendered roles and hierarchies by normalizing certain behaviors, appearances, and aspirations as appropriate for one gender and not the other. Examples include teachers praising girls more for neatness and boys for assertiveness, assigning leadership roles to male students, enforcing gendered dress codes, or structuring sports and extracurricular activities along binary lines. Even classroom materials can reproduce hidden gender messages — for instance, storybooks that depict men as decision-makers and women as caregivers, or science examples that consistently reference male inventors. Decolonizing education requires making the hidden gender curriculum visible, critically examining how everyday school practices reinforce gender inequities, and intentionally fostering learning environments that challenge rather than reproduce these norms. | 📄 Uncovering White Settler Colonialism |
| Queer-of-Color Critique | In the context of decolonizing the curriculum, queer-of-color critique is an analytical framework that examines how race, gender, sexuality, and class are intertwined within systems of power, highlighting how mainstream queer theory and activism often overlook the lived realities of queer people of color. Emerging from the work of scholars such as Roderick Ferguson (2004), it critiques the whiteness, class privilege, and Western-centric perspectives that dominate queer discourse, while foregrounding the ways colonialism, capitalism, and racial hierarchies shape queer experiences globally. In curricula, the absence of queer-of-color critique can result in LGBTQ+ content that centers white, cisgender, middle-class narratives, while marginalizing the histories, literatures, and political struggles of queer communities from the Global South, migrant backgrounds, or Indigenous nations. For example, literature courses may feature queer representation solely from Euro-American authors, history lessons may ignore the role of queer people of color in liberation movements, and sociology classes may treat racism and homophobia as separate issues rather than intersecting forms of oppression. Decolonizing education through a queer-of-color critique means integrating scholarship, art, and activism from queer people of color, and teaching sexuality, race, and gender as inseparable dimensions of power and resistance. | 📄 I’ve Seen Literacies Move Mountains: Queer-of-Color Critique |
| Term | Definition | Supporting Material |
|---|---|---|
| Agroecology | Agroecology was firstly used by Basil Bensin, a Russian agronomist, in 1928. It’s a decolonial approach to food and land that treats farming as an ecosystem and social relation, not an extractive industry, centering Indigenous/local knowledge, biodiversity, seed sovereignty, and food justice over yield-at-all-costs. In curriculum, teachers translate this by redesigning science and social studies units so local ecologies and communities co-originate questions and methods: build a school garden as a living lab for polycultures and soil care; use seasonal calendars instead of generic timetables; practice seed saving and composting; compare agroecological plots to monoculture in inquiry tasks; invite farmers, elders, or gardeners as co-teachers; map supply chains for labor and environmental fairness; allow oral and land-based evidence alongside texts; and grade for reciprocity (giving back to partners), ecological understanding, and community relevance, not just content recall. | 🎥 Video: Agroecology Introduction 🎥 Video: Agroecology in Practice 📄 Popular Education, Youth and Peasant Agroecology in Brazil 📄 Transformative Agroecology Learning in Europe |
| Climate-Apartheid | Climate-apartheid was first coined in 2007 by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to raise alarm about uneven patterns of climate change adaptation. It names the unequal split of climate harms and protections along lines of wealth, race, and colonial history: those with resources buy safety (cooling, insurance, relocation, green amenities) while others are left in sacrifice zones of heat, flood, and toxicity. As a facet of the decoloniality of nature, it shows how colonial extraction and “neutral” policy still decide whose lives are shielded and whose are exposed and whose knowledge counts in solutions. In curriculum, teachers reframe from “humanity vs. climate” to justice-first learning: guide students to map neighborhood heat/flood risk against income and race; audit who gets trees, shade, cooling, and insurance; compare adaptation budgets and benefits; center Global South and Indigenous cases as theory, not add-ons; design projects that propose equitable, community-validated fixes (shade plans, cooling protocols, flood routes) with oral/land-based evidence allowed; and grade for equity impact, reciprocity, and accountability to affected communities alongside scientific accuracy. | 📄 Rethinking Climate Change in Education 📄 Climate Justice and Curriculum Justice: Young People’s Accounts of Schools 🎥 Video: Climate-Apartheid Explained |
| Enclosure | The concept of enclosure has traditionally been used in agrarian history (Thompson, 1963), but more recently scholars have extended it into colonial contexts. Allan Greer (2012, 2018) traced how settler property regimes enclosed Indigenous commons in North America, while C. J. Griffin (2023) showed how English enclosures were justified through colonial categories such as terra nullius. Although not the first to associate enclosure with coloniality—feminist and postcolonial scholars like Vandana Shiva (1997) and Silvia Federici (2004) had already highlighted the ‘new enclosures’ of biodiversity, women’s bodies, and knowledge. In our context, enclosure is the colonial process of turning commons, land, water, forests, seeds, and even data/knowledge into exclusive property through fences, laws, and institutions, severing communities from stewardship and converting living relations into commodities; it underpins the decoloniality of nature and the coloniality of knowledge alike (e.g., park expulsions, seed patents, paywalled science). In curriculum, teacher-led shifts include auditing lessons for “empty land”/“unused resources” narratives, comparing commons vs. privatization models, introducing commoning as practice (shared stewardship and rules), examining conservation and zoning rules for consent and exclusion, analyzing IP/seed laws and data licenses, and revising rubrics to reward stewardship, reciprocity, and shared governance not just individual output. | 📄 Constituting Common Subjects Toward an Enclosure Critique 📄 Enclosure as Internal Colonisation: Terra Nullius & the Subaltern Commoner |
Food-Sovereignty & Seed-Sovereignty |
Food sovereignty was coined by the international peasants’ movement La Vía Campesina at the 1996 World Food Summit in Rome, and it stands for the right of peoples and communities to decide how food is grown, shared, and eaten; prioritizing cultural fit, healthy ecosystems, fair work, and democratic control over markets or yield-only metrics. As a decolonial stance, it shifts authority from agribusiness and “neutral” expertise to local growers, eaters, and land relations. In curriculum, teachers reframe units so community agroecology, labor justice, and procurement choices co-shape inquiry; bring growers/organizers as co-teachers; use seasonal/local calendars, food mapping, and supply-chain tracing; accept oral histories and land-based observation as evidence; and grade for community relevance, reciprocity, and ecological understanding not just content recall. Seed sovereignty was popularized by Vandana Shiva in the 1990s through the Navdanya movement in India, as a response to the corporate patenting of seeds and the erosion of agrobiodiversity. While rooted in Gandhian notions of Swaraj (self-rule), seed sovereignty has since been taken up by global peasant and Indigenous movements as a cornerstone of food sovereignty, asserting farmers collective right to save, exchange, replant, and steward diverse seeds free from corporate enclosure and patents protecting biodiversity, Indigenous custodianship, and place-based knowledge. It counters the colonial capture of life as property and the narrowing of crops to uniform varieties. In curriculum, teachers anchor learning in seed stewardship: establishing class seed gardens and a school seed library; practicing seed saving and germination trials; studying seed laws and farmers’ rights alongside science; inviting knowledge holders to guide protocols; recognizing oral/embodied techniques as scholarly; and assessing for care, traceability, and contribution to shared seed commons as well as scientific accuracy. | 📄 Food Security & Sovereignty Resources 📄 Pedagogies for Seed Sovereignty in Colombia |
| Green-Colonialism | Green-colonialism emerged most visibly in Sámi activism in the 2000s–2010s, critiquing wind, hydro, and conservation projects imposed without Indigenous consent. Its roots lie in 1980s–1990s political ecology and decolonial research on “fortress conservation” and the coloniality of nature. It is used to refer to when climate and conservation efforts, national parks, carbon offsets, wind/solar farms, “eco-tourism” recreate colonial relations by taking or governing land without free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), exporting benefits to outsiders, and treating Western expertise as the sole arbiter while sidelining local/Indigenous knowledge. It extends the coloniality of nature and knowledge: the planet is “saved” by displacing the same communities. In curriculum, a teacher-led shift is to treat sustainability as political, not neutral, have students ask who decides, who pays, and who gains; teach FPIC and community governance alongside ecology; pair scientific models with Indigenous land relations as coequal theory; audit the school’s own “green” practices (energy, procurement, recycling) for externalized harms; and grade projects on consent, reciprocity, and distributional equity as well as scientific soundness. | 📄 Green-Colonialism Overview 📄 Green-Colonialism Analysis (Böll Foundation) 📄 Decolonizing Environmental Education: Resource Guide |
| Greenwashing | Greenwashing is a term coined by American ecologist Jay Westerveld in 1986, originally described the practice of promoting environmentally friendly rhetoric while continuing harmful ecological practices. In relation to decolonization, it refers to the superficial use of decolonial language, aesthetics, or symbolic gestures to project progressiveness while preserving underlying colonial power relations. Within curriculum reform, this manifests when institutions add token non-Western authors, cultural examples, or “inclusive” statements without altering the Eurocentric structures of knowledge production and validation. Similar to how environmental greenwashing masks ecological harm, decolonial greenwashing obscures the persistence of coloniality in education by reducing decolonization to symbolic adjustments rather than enacting systemic transformations that redistribute epistemic authority and challenge Eurocentric dominance. | 🎥 Video: Greenwashing Explained 📄 Greenwashing PDF |
| Hydrocolonialism | Hydrocolonialism was coined by Isabel Hofmeyr (2019) to describe how colonial power operates through water as a medium of empire, where oceans, rivers, ports, and hydraulic infrastructures become key sites of control. Maritime routes, docks, customs regimes, dams, and shipping thus functioned to sort and regulate knowledge, bodies, and goods, recentering water as an active agent of colonial power rather than a neutral backdrop. In educational contexts, this lens can reshape curriculum by shifting land-focused units to water-centered inquiry examining ports, shipping lanes, and watersheds; pairing oceanic histories and literatures with studies of customs, copyright, and censorship at the dock; analyzing hydropower and desalination through consent and justice; and auditing school maps and “blue economy” narratives for whose coasts and knowledges are protected or exposed. | 📄 Decolonial Water Pedagogies PDF 🎥 Video: Hydrocolonialism Overview |
| Terricide | The term Terricide was coined by the Movimiento de Mujeres Indígenas por el Buen Vivir (Indigenous Women’s Movement for Good Living) in Argentina. It refers to the killing of territory as a living web of relations. Not just wrecked land, but severed ties among people, waters, languages, animals, and futures through dams that drown valleys, mines that poison aquifers, plantations that erase commons, or “parks” that expel residents. In curriculum, name it as territory loss, not “impact,” and teach territory as relations to be kept, not space to be used. | 📄 Tackling Terricide PDF |
| Toxic-Geographies | Toxic-Geographies is the mapped pattern of where harm goes. Poisons and heat don’t land at random; zoning, logistics, and policy route them toward certain streets, coasts, and bodies producing heat islands, lead corridors, and “sacrifice zones.” In curriculum, read maps as evidence of decisions: who placed the hazard, who carries it, who is protected. The intellectual lineage of Toxic Geography draws from diverse tributaries, coalescing over decades as awareness grew regarding the spatial dimensions of environmental problems. Read more here. |
📄 Slow Violence and Toxic Geographies 📄 Environmental Justice is Geoscience 📄 Black Geographies and Black Ecologies |
| Waste-Colonialism | Waste-Colonialism was coined in 1989 during African resistance to toxic dumping and the Basel Convention debates. It refers to making other places bear your leftovers. Trash, e-waste, plastics, and hazardous by-products are exported or offloaded to marginalized neighborhoods while the benefits of consumption stay elsewhere, often under the feel-good label of “recycling.” In curriculum, follow one object from purchase to dump and ask: who profits, who absorbs the risk, and who gets to refuse. |
🎧 From Aristotle to Waste-Colonialism – Jesi Taylor Cruz |
| Term | Definition | Supporting Material |
|---|---|---|
| Allyship (critical, justice-centred) | An ongoing, accountable practice—not an identity—by which people with structural advantage act in solidarity with those most affected to challenge and change the systems that produce that advantage. Critical allyship requires recognizing one’s location in intersecting structures of power, following the leadership/priorities of affected communities, sharing risk and resources, and measuring success by material shifts (policies, practices, outcomes), not by intent or self-label (Nixon, 2019; Droogendyk, Wright, Lubensky, & Louis, 2016). Allyship differs from “helping” or performative support; it is collective action oriented and institution-facing (Subašić, Reynolds, & Turner, 2008), with clear responsibilities and accountability structures (Spanierman & Smith, 2017). In education, this means redesigning curriculum, discipline, assessment, and staffing with impacted communities to produce equity (Edwards, 2006). |
🌍 Guide to Allyship 📄 From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces 🏫 McGill Indigenous Ally Resources |
| Anti-racism & Anti-racist Pedagogy | Definition in the education literature frames anti-racism as “an action-oriented, educational and political strategy for institutional and systemic change” that targets racism and its interlocking oppressions (e.g., sexism, classism, heterosexism, ableism). It is explicitly counter-hegemonic, seeking to transform the values, structures, and routines that reproduce racial hierarchy in schools and beyond (Dei & Calliste, 2000). A decolonial framing deepens this mandate: anti-racism must confront coloniality, the enduring organization of power/knowledge/being formed by colonial rule (Maldonado-Torres, 2007) and, in settler contexts, attend to Indigenous sovereignty, because “decolonization is not a metaphor” but entails material relations to land and life (Tuck & Yang, 2012); otherwise, anti-racism risks erasing Indigenous presence (Lawrence & Dua, 2005). |
🌍 EU Anti-Racism Action Plan (2020–2025) 📄 Power, Knowledge, and Anti-Racism 📄 Tuck & Yang – “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” 📘 Race Equality in Education Toolkit 🏫 The Anti-Racist Educator ▶️ Video: Anti-Racism Explained ▶️ Video: How to Be Anti-Racist |
| Collective reflexivity | Collective reflexivity is the ongoing, dialogic group practice where educators, students, and partners jointly examine how their positionalities, power relations, and institutional conditions (the practice architectures of sayings–doings–relatings) shape what they notice, value, and decide and then translate insight into shared action. It moves reflexivity from private introspection to shared accountability, aligning with decolonial commitments to surface complicity, center marginalized knowledges, and enact transformative praxis. (Olmos-Vega et al., 2023; Kemmis, 2021; Liwanag et al., 2021; Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021; Naidu et al., 2024; Emke et al., 2024). |
📄 Collective Reflexivity – Key Concepts 📝 Collective Writing as a Reflective Tool 🧰 Local Trust PAR Toolkit |
| Colorblindness (or Color-Evasiveness) | Colorblindness (or Color-Evasiveness) is a racial ideology and institutional stance that treats race as irrelevant, discouraging naming race, collecting race-based data, or addressing racialized histories under the claim of “treating everyone the same.” Research shows such prescriptions obscure and sustain structural racism and white advantage, and can reduce minoritized students’ belonging and performance (Apfelbaum, Norton, & Sommers, 2012; Holoien & Shelton, 2012; Plaut, 2018; Bonilla-Silva, 2022). In education, color-evasiveness names how schools avoid race talk while reproducing inequity across curriculum, tracking, discipline, and language norms (Annamma, Jackson, & Morrison, 2017). |
🎥 Video on Color-Evasiveness 📄 Conceptualizing Color-Evasiveness – PDF 📄 De Leersnyder, Gundemir & Agirdag (2022) – PDF 🌐 Learning for Justice – Article |
| Cultural Humility | Cultural humility is a lifelong process of critical self-reflection and critique that actively challenges and redresses the power imbalances inherent in professional-client relationships and institutional structures (Tervalon & Murray-García, 1998). It rejects the colonial-era idea of "cultural competence" and emphasizes a continuous process of self-evaluation, addressing power imbalances, and partnering with communities as experts of their own experiences (Tervalon & Murray-García, 1998; Tascón & Gatwiri, 2020). |
📄 Cultural Humility Scale – PDF 📝 Self-Reflection Tool – PDF 📄 Cultural Safety Self-Assessment – PDF 🛠️ Cultural Humility Toolkit 2022 – PDF |
| Implicit Bias (or Unconscious Bias) | Implicit Bias refers to automatically activated associations and evaluations about social groups that influence perception, judgment, and behavior without deliberate intent or awareness (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2014). In education, it explains patterned differences in expectations, discipline, and recommendations, but structural change is needed alongside bias awareness to achieve meaningful equity (Okonofua & Eberhardt, 2015; Bonilla-Silva, 2022). |
📄 MIT Inclusive Classroom – Implicit Bias 📝 Test Yourself for Hidden Bias – Learning for Justice |
| Internalized Racism | Internalized racism, or internalized racial oppression, is the process by which individuals from racially marginalized groups unconsciously or consciously accept dominant society's racist ideologies, stereotypes, and value systems about their own group (Pyke, 2010). Rooted in colonial and white supremacist structures, it can manifest as self-alienation, rejection of one's own culture, colorism, or aspiration toward dominant norms (Fanon, 1952/1967). It is a predictable effect of systemic oppression, not personal failure. |
📄 Willis et al., 2021 – Internalized Racism Study 🎥 Video Explanation – YouTube |
| Intersectionality | Intersectionality is an analytic framework and praxis that examines how multiple axes of power (race, gender, class, sexuality, (dis)ability, migration/nation) co-constitutively shape experiences and outcomes, producing effects not reducible to a single category. Originating in Black feminist legal scholarship (Crenshaw, 1989, 1991) and developed as critical social theory (Collins, 2019; Collins & Bilge, 2016), it attends to structural, political, and representational dimensions of inequality. In education, intersectionality guides disaggregated data, targeted supports, and curriculum/policy redesign to address compounded marginalization. |
📄 Infographic – U. Michigan 🎥 Video Explanation – YouTube 📄 Overview – Young Scot |
| JCRP: Justice-Centered Reflective Practice | Justice-Centered Reflective Practice (JCRP) is an ongoing, communal critical-reflective praxis pairing an outward analysis of schooling’s sociopolitical conditions with an inward examination of identity and positionality, aiming to redesign practices and structures toward justice. JCRP is purposeful, systematic, iterative, critically reflexive, agentive, done in community, and loving/hopeful (Rosen, Jacobs, Whitelaw, Mallikaarjun, & Rust, 2024). Viewed decolonially, it integrates racial-literacy work such as the “archaeology of self,” abolitionist teaching, and historically responsive literacy, ensuring reflection leads to material change in classrooms and programs (Sealey-Ruiz, 2022; Love, 2019; Muhammad, 2020). Unlike generic introspection, JCRP explicitly orients reflection toward justice goals and collective action in teacher education and school improvement (Gorski, 2020; Hosseini, 2024). | 📄 PDF – Full Text |
| Positionality | Positionality is the explicit account of how one’s social identities, institutional roles, and power relations (e.g., race, gender, class, language, nationality, (dis)ability) shape what one can know, notice, and do. It assumes knowledge is situated, not neutral, and asks educators/researchers to name their standpoint, responsibilities, and limits (Haraway, 1988; Holmes, 2020). In decolonial work, positionality further includes relations to coloniality, land, and sovereignty, and obligations to communities beyond self-description (Smith, 2021; Naidu, Gingell, & Zaidi, 2024). Reflexivity is the ongoing process; positionality is the stated location and accountability that guides decisions (Olmos-Vega, Stalmeijer, Varpio, & Dolmans, 2023). |
📄 Resource – Queen’s University 🌐 Article – SaskOER |
| Racialization | Racialization is the process by which societies assign racial meaning to perceived differences (appearance, language, religion, origin) and then organize expectations, status, and resources around those meanings. It works through history and institutions, not just individual bias, often without hostile intent, making “race” seem natural while shaping rules, surveillance, and opportunity. In education, racialization quietly structures labels, tracking, discipline, and curriculum before any explicit racist act occurs. Racialization explains how race is made; racism explains how those meanings enforce inequality (Omi & Winant, 2015, p. 111). |
📄 Resource – RSF Journal 🌐 Article – ACLRC 📄 PDF – Relational Racialization Lens |
| Radical Reflexivity | Radical reflexivity is the stance and practice that goes beyond personal introspection to interrogate the grounds of our own knowledge claims, representations, and institutional conditions, treating uncertainty, fallibility, and discomfort as productive, and redistributing interpretive authority (e.g., inviting those impacted to co-define problems, evidence, and action). It questions how we name, measure, and teach, surfacing the “forgotten choices” and limits that make some voices authoritative and others inaudible (Cunliffe, 2003; Pillow, 2003; Lather, 2007). A decolonial reading centers accountability to communities and coloniality’s ongoing effects, linking reflexive analysis to changes in method, relations, and outcomes (Braun, 2024; Moosavi, 2023; Thambinathan & Kinsella, 2021; Naidu, Gingell, & Zaidi, 2024). In education, it can take the form of co-analysis/co-authorship with students and communities; auditing categories (e.g., “ability,” “standard language”) and assessment rubrics for colonial/Eurocentric assumptions; making one’s positionality and decision trail public and revisable; and tying reflection to concrete redesigns of curriculum, policy, and relationships. |
📄 PDF – Epistemic Reflexivity 📄 PDF – Participatory Action Research Toolkit |
| Self-Reflexivity | Self-reflexivity is the ongoing practice of examining how your identities, assumptions, emotions, and interests shape what you notice, how you interpret evidence, and the decisions you make, situating yourself within power relations and coloniality, and making your decision-trail explicit and revisable (Finlay, 2002; Pillow, 2003; Olmos-Vega et al., 2023; Naidu et al., 2024; Smith, 2021). Unlike descriptive “reflection,” self-reflexivity is critical and methodological: it interrogates how you know and with what effects, and ties insight to concrete changes in practice (Cunliffe, 2003; Sealey-Ruiz, 2022; Berger, 2015). In education, it can be implemented by adding a positionality note to syllabi that changes texts/assessment; keeping reflexive memos that alter coding/interpretation; co-analysing data with students/communities; auditing “standard language” or “professionalism” rubrics for racial/colonial assumptions and revising them (Olmos-Vega et al., 2023; Smith, 2021). |
📄 Book Preview – Google Books 🌐 The Gifts of Failure – Decolonial Futures |
| Social Location | Social location is our position within interlocking systems of power (e.g., race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, age, migration/nationality, language, religion) that, because these dimensions interact rather than act separately, shapes how you are perceived and treated, our opportunities/constraints, and the standpoint from which we know and act (Collins, 2019; OECD, 2023). It is relational and context-dependent: emerging from histories and institutions, not just personal identity lists (Collins, 2019). In education, social location helps explain patterned differences in participation, tracking, discipline, and wellbeing once intersections are considered (OECD, 2023); recent work shows how social location structures people’s encounters with state systems more broadly (Beardall, Mueller, & Cheng, 2024). |
🌐 Social Identity Wheel – UMich 🌐 Social Location & Systems of Oppression – Sheridan College |
| Understanding Racism | Racism is a society-wide system that structures opportunity and assigns value based on “race” (the social interpretation of how people look), thereby unfairly disadvantaging some groups, unfairly advantaging others, and weakening society as a whole (Jones, 2000; Jones, 2003/2020). Scholars also describe racism succinctly as a “system of advantage based on race” (Tatum, 1992/2017). Structural racism refers to “the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems” (housing, education, employment, media, health care, criminal justice), patterns that also reinforce discriminatory beliefs and resource distributions (Bailey et al., 2017). Systemic racism names a society-wide, historically rooted system that permeates institutions and everyday practices—not merely individual prejudice—and reproduces racial hierarchy across domains (Feagin, 2006). In education, racism manifests in policies and practices (curriculum, tracking/streaming, assessment, discipline, resource allocation). Critical race scholarship shows racism is ordinary in schooling and often sustained by ostensibly “race-neutral” reforms (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Gillborn, 2005). |
🌐 UNESCO: Countering Racism through Education 🌐 Devon County: One-Minute Guide 📄 Racism in Education (PDF) 📄 Systemic and Structural Racism (PDF) 🎥 YouTube: Understanding Racism 🌐 EdTrust: Educator Influence on Racial Disparities |
| White Fragility | White fragility is a state in which even minimal racial stress becomes intolerable for many white people, triggering defensive emotions (e.g., anger, fear, guilt) and behaviors (e.g., argumentation, silence, withdrawal) that recenter white comfort and restore “white racial equilibrium” (DiAngelo, 2011). In education, white fragility surfaces when staff or students deflect feedback on racism, recenter feelings (“I feel attacked”), or shut down curricular change, responses that function pedagogically to protect existing racial orders (Applebaum, 2017; Leonardo & Zembylas, 2013). Read through a decolonial lens, these defenses sustain “white innocence” and shield the coloniality of power/knowledge from accountability (Wekker, 2016). |
🎥 YouTube: White Fragility 📄 White Fragility (PDF) 📄 NEA Guide: 10 Principles for Talking About Race 📄 Comforting Discomfort as Complicity (PDF) 📄 White Fragility PDF 📄 White Fragility Reading Guide 📄 Social Justice Cheat Sh |
| White Supremacy | White supremacy is a sociopolitical system in which whiteness holds structural advantage and institutional power, such that ideas of white entitlement are normalized and relations of white dominance/non-white subordination are reproduced across institutions—not only by extremist groups but through ordinary policies and practices (Mills, 2017; Colker, 2022; Leong, 2021; Johnson, 2024; Meier, 2024). Read through a decolonial lens, it is entwined with the colonial matrix of power that organizes knowledge, being, and labor (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018). In education, this appears when “race-neutral” routines (curriculum, tracking, assessment, discipline) sustain unequal outcomes and center white norms (Picower, 2021; Gillborn, Demack, Rollock, & Warmington, 2017). |
📄 Identifying and Addressing Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture 📄 Article: White Supremacy Culture (Okun) 📄 Confronting White Nationalism in Schools Toolkit (2nd Edition) |
| Whiteness (as norm) | An institutionalised normativity that positions white, Eurocentric, middle-class ways of knowing and being as the neutral and universal standard; it operates as an often invisible background orientation that organises rules, judgments of merit, and distributions of resources—even when race is unnamed (Ahmed, 2012; Lentin, 2020; Bhopal, 2018). In education, this norm sets the default against which “difference” is marked and managed, shaping who is read as objective, professional, or promising, and how curricula, language standards, and conduct codes are defined (Ahmed, 2012; Lentin, 2020). Practically, it appears in Eurocentric canons, “standard language” policies, and behaviour/professionalism codes that centre white norms while presenting them as common sense (Arday & Mirza, 2018; Baker-Bell, 2020; Bhopal, 2018). |
📄 LATISS 2016 |