"But They Don't Even Know 'the Basics'": Tensions in Inclusive Curriculum Reform

• In Event: 68.061 - Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: 68.061-15 - Research on Black Girls, Black Males, and Black Youth in Contested Places

Abstract

This paper develops a critical settler colonial theoretical analysis of settler privilege in the perspectives of student-teachers. It argues that current curricular reforms to include Indigenous perspectives gloss the degree to which settler colonial ideologies delimit possibilities for decentering hegemonic perspectives. A settler colonial theoretical lens is used to examine and challenge how Western rationalism and settler colonial privilege are able to operate as neutral, unbiased and apolitical perspectives through an analysis of a university classroom teaching narrative in which students raised concerns over the priority given to the inclusion of Indigenous content when students “don’t even know the basics”.

Author

• Kate Dubensky, University of Victoria