JSSE - Journal of Social Science Education

Postcolonial social science education: Time to draw decolonial conclusions

Katarina Blennow — 2024-12-16

Moral and political dimensions of critical-democratic citizenship education: Enhancing social justice, a global orientation, and equity in schools and society

Gina Chianese — 2024-12-16

Wiel Veugelers
Leiden: Brill, 2023, pp. 257, ISBN: 978-90-04-68544-4 (e-book), 978-90-04-68543-7 (Hardback Publication), 978-90-04-68542-0 (Paperback Publication)

Toward a decolonial shift in citizenship education: Empirical insights into German classrooms

Malte Kleinschmidt — 2024-12-16

Highlights:

– Empirical insights into students’ ideas on globalisation in Germany.

– Colonial and decolonial ideas in their ambivalences as the starting point for decolonial education processes.

– (De-)coloniality is not only about the past but also about the present and the future.

– (De-)coloniality is already in the classrooms but is rarely conceptualised in educational processes.

Purpose: This paper highlights some insights into the results of the study on decolonial citizenship education (Kleinschmidt, 2021) to contribute to the decolonisation of citizenship education in Germany.

Design/methodology/approach: The research is built on a sample of 44 interviews with students from the 9th grade in German schools, Hauptschule and Gymnasium. The interviews are interpreted using qualitative content analysis.

Findings: In the students’ concepts of globalisation, migration, and culture, several different and entangled colonial and decolonial patterns were found.

Research limitations/implications: The study is a solid starting point for discussions of citizenship education and provides fruitful insights. Nonetheless, at least in Germany, the research on this topic is at a very early stage.

Practical implications: The findings are a starting point for discussing decolonial approaches to citizenship education, aiming for both a radical re-invention of the concept of the disciplinary field of citizenship education and contributing to the conceptualisation of citizenship educational practices advocating for a more just and less colonial world.

What’s disturbing about power? Reflections on teaching US-Arab encounters in the Middle East

Khadija Fritsch-El Alaoui — 2024-12-16

Highlights:

– Culturally relevant pedagogy can be an effective tool for decolonising educational practices.

– The experiences of learners and teachers in the classroom are defined by the outside world.

– The case study method is a valuable tool for understanding classroom dynamics.

Purpose: The paper aims to illustrate some of the challenges and outcomes of teaching courses addressing the politics, culture, and history of the US in the Middle East. In doing so, it contextualises an application of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and describes its implementation.

Methodology: A case study method is applied to qualitative records to illustrate the experiences of both the learners and the teacher, as narrated by the latter.

Findings: Narratives suggest that a curriculum of US import, taught in a context that bears the new and old scars of colonialism, makes US-Middle East encounters capable of deepening students’ understanding of their condition in a world still dominated by ‘others’.

Implications: The findings of the current study bring to the surface the need for decolonising educational practices that allow for imagination of life in dignity and pluriversity.

Delearning capitalism: Is degrowth a decolonial perspective in social science education?

Mariona Massip Sabater — 2024-12-16

Highlights:

– Capitalism is part of the colonial system, and growth is one of its ideological principles.

– Critical views on growth and capitalism are related to more critical PBL projects.

– Supporters of Degrowth are closer to decolonial perspectives in education.

Purpose: We aim to locate degrowth approaches within decolonial social science education and to establish relationships between economic beliefs in the social representations of future teachers and their educational projections.

Design/methodology/approach: Theoretical approaches are developed to pinpoint the topic and focus on teachers’ imaginaries concerning economic notions such as growth and degrowth. The social representations of teachers in training are analysed to explore their epistemological, formal, and decision-making implications.

Findings: Critical views on growth and capitalism are related to acknowledging alternative economic paradigms and to a more critical, complex, action-oriented and justice-oriented projection of educational PBL. Supporters of degrowth are closer to decolonial perspectives in education.

Practical implications: We should revise teacher training programmes to better train future teachers in decolonial perspectives. More emphasis on colonial and structural cause-effect complex dynamics of capitalism in socioenvironmental problems is required. The hegemony of neoliberal collective imaginaries should be questioned through social, historical and economic narratives.

Decolonizing social sciences education at the limits of the archive: A response concerning “postcolonial” social science

Su-Ming Khoo — 2024-12-16

Highlights:

– Differentiates ‘postcolonial’ from ‘decolonial’ social science.

– Defines decolonial strategies of double translation, reverse tutelage, double and decolonial repair.

– Theorizes using South Africa as a theoretical limit and political test case.

– Provides examples of a taught Masters curriculum in Social Theory and a global open educational resource.

– Critiques the limitations of performative decolonization and gestures towards alternatives.

Purpose: This article responds to the topic of ‘postcolonial social science education’ by exploring strategies for decolonizing the social science ‘archive’.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper takes a decolonial-critical social science approach to explore the limit and test cases for decolonizing social science education, using two examples: a Social Theory course in Ireland and a global open educational project, Connected Sociologies.

Findings: It explores three decolonial strategies for social science education: double translation, reverse tutelage, and double repair. It theorizes beyond these by thinking with a more expansive, speculative South African project of decolonial repair.

Research limitations/implications: While the practical strategies for decolonizing social theory and broader, speculative ambitions for decolonial repair are not directly comparable, the contrasting loci enable critical, but hopeful reflection on possibilities for decolonizing social science education more broadly, responding to the limit case imposed by neoliberal academic restructuring.

Decolonising education for sustainable development (ESD): The case of the German conceptual framework for secondary schools

Subin Nijhawan — 2024-12-16

Highlights:

– A progressive reading of ESD offers opportunities to decolonise SSE.

– SDG4, highlighting quality in education, should define the centre of gravity of the SDGs because it has a global and decolonial DNA.

– ESD, in its genuine form, should be interpreted as a revolutionary paradigm change for rethinking schools as whole institutions and consequently for decolonising teaching.

– Attempts in Germany to reform schools are in jeopardy due to the priority for comparative approaches to education, e.g., PISA.

– To facilitate ESD within given system constraints, global justice offers an appropriate leitmotif to expand and globalise horizons and decolonise teaching practices in SSE.

Purpose: The article offers a progressive reading of ESD with a teaching example to decolonise SSE despite constraints set by the school system.

Design/methodology/approach: The article presents ESD’s idea of thought within ‘the big picture’ of global education. After that, a description of an expert group is given, tasked with developing a conceptual framework for SSE, commissioned by the school administration in Germany and critically reflected on amidst system constraints.

Findings: Full-fledged reforms to rethink schools in the 21st century from scratch to efficiently decolonise and integrate ESD are required.

Research limitations/implications: The last part of the article is limited in its description and critical reflection of the federal German example.

Practical implications: It is recommended that the big picture in terms of promoting global and decolonial dimensions of ESD and facilitating a sustainable transition of schools for achieving the SDGs is kept in sight.