We are pleased to have hosted our first webinar on Decolonizing Your Curriculum as part of our Teaching the SDGs Community of Practice. The webinar featured an engaging discussion from experts who shared approaches to decolonizing the curriculum in universities and colleges across Canada. The conversation explored decolonization from both an Indigenous perspective in Canada as well as an international colonial perspective. Both are especially important in the context of imperialism, colonialism and power, and to consider the structure of Canada’s educational institutions and their roles within society.

The webinar featured expertise from:

  • Madison Hill, Educational Developer, Indigenous Knowledges Centre for Teaching Excellence, University of Waterloo
  • Ezgi Ozyonum, public scholar and Ph. D candidate, Concordia University.  
  • Lowine Hill, Ph. D candidate School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability, University of Waterloo

View the webinar below. Here are five insights from the discussion:

  • Decolonizing the curriculum entails challenging colonial engagement and systems that are represented in our schools. It aims to unpack and disrupt structures of systemic operations in educational materials and decentralizing dominating paradigms and pluralizing voices who have been traditionally marginalized.  Particularly in the Canadian context, the focus is on indigenizing the curriculum. It requires a collective effort in pluralizing other voices.
  • And in pluralizing other voices, listening to others, unpacking language used, understanding that course content may contain bias, and deconstructing these biases are good starting points. 
  • Decolonizing means contextualizing knowledge – where did the knowledge come from? What is the historical context that surrounds that knowledge?
  • Decolonization involves breaking down entrenched power structures and to effectively do this, it is important to start with oneself, have self-reflection, understand who we are and what we have done to either perpetuate or challenge these structures and what can we do more to effect change.
  • It is important for post-secondary institutions to make decolonization a priority and this transformation must be done across all levels of these institutions, not just at the top.

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This webinar was part of SDSN Canada's Teaching the SDGs Community of Practice, a community bringing faculty from across SDSN Canada together to share innovations, resources, and insights on teaching the Sustainable Development Goals.

View on YouTube