Towards epistemic justice in curriculum design: A critical review of empirical research on curricular justice and decolonization of curriculum

• In Event: Reframing Peace in Education: Social Justice, Voice, and Epistemic Equity

Proposal

The calls to “curricular justice” have emerged in the contexts of increased inequality and diversity globally (Vertovec, 2007 ), with “decolonization of curriculum” being a core component of social justice education in settler-colonial countries, like Canada, - both representing commitment to counteracting epistemic violence and centering marginalized knowledges. While holding an immense transformative potential, the increasing institutional adoption of decolonization discourse poses the risks of reducing it to a metaphor, an ambiguous concept, or a performative act with no economical or political consequences (Omodan et al., 2023; Zembylas, 2025). This critical review addresses the potential gap between the emancipatory efforts of decolonial curriculum reforms and its pedagogical realities in the classroom, guided by an overarching question: What do scholars and practitioners mean by curriculum decolonization, and what do they practically do to achieve it?

The analysis is empirically shaped by the findings of two federally-funded research projects (SSHRC 2022-2025; Mitacs 2020-2024). This prior work identified a fundamental mismatch between the curriculum orientations of immigrant parents with post-Soviet background and those of their Canadian teachers - a disconnect that could lead to epistemic injustice in the classroom where the knowledge systems and cultural capitals of students remain invisible and not validated. These findings were corroborated through the creation of 17 comparative curricula maps, juxtaposing the Ontario curriculum with those of the refugee-sending countries, providing empirical evidence of the systemic exclusion of global knowledge and epistemologies.

To approach this critical literature review systematically and inspired by the critical social justice theory (Fraser, 2005) and curriculum orientations conceptual approach (Eisner & Vallance, 1974), we developed and applied a 5D analytical lens - a framework for categorizing and critical assessment of decolonial work in five dimensions:
Definition. How is decolonization defined: does it offer additive (including linguistically and culturally diverse texts within mostly white canon), subtractive (removing content/authors), or reconstructive foundations of knowledge (rethinking knowledge production and dissemination)?
Depth. Does decolonial work operate at the surface/recognitive level of content (changing of what is taught/read), distributive level of pedagogy and relations (changing how we teach/learn), or the deep/representative level of structure and epistemology (changing why we teach/what counts as knowledge)?
Direction. Is the process bottom-up (through classroom work by teachers, students, and communities), top-down (through official policy document), outside-in (through collaboration with researchers or educators), or inside-out (through Indigenous scholars and community work)?
Domain. Is the focus of decolonizing on the canon (lists of authors, historical or scientific accounts or facts), the classroom (power relations between teacher and students), the institution (policies and funding, hiring and admission practices, physical space), or scholarly discussion?
Danger of performativity. Does the work risk tokenism (deep change is presented through a single event/author), appropriation (extracting knowledge without reciprocity), burdening (marginalized individuals do all the work), or commodification (turning decolonization into a marketable brand)?

Applying this framework to the critical review of peer-reviewed empirical and theoretical articles allows to view curricular justice and decolonization of curriculum on a continuum from performative justice (Jamal & Hales, 2016) to epistemic justice (Fricker, 2007). Preliminary findings reveal a predominance of surface-level, additive approaches - ones that diversify reading lists but leave the underlying colonial knowledge production unchanged. This paper argues that overcoming performativity requires a fundamental rethinking of curriculum design methodologies. In response to the gaps identified through the analysis, we propose participatory counter-mapping as a critical methodological approach for achieving epistemic justice in education. Counter-mapping is not merely an analytical approach to curriculum design but a transformative methodology involving teachers, students, parents, and communities in the creation of “counter-maps” that helps visualize differences and similarities between the curricula of the host-country and immigrant-sending countries - with an immense potential to enrich education with the diverse ways of knowledge foundation and production and overcome epistemic injustices (Fricker, 2007). This counter-mapping methodology informs our next research project, which will employ participatory action research to co-design such maps and develop counter-mapping curriculum design principles, a set of practical guidelines for socially just curriculum design.

Authors

• Marina Antony-Newman, University College London, Institute of Education

• Emmanuelle Le Pichon, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education OISE, University of Toronto