Curriculum decolonisation in countries with hegemonic cultures

Author : Julio Cesar Tovar-Galvez, Cristina Fernandez-Aragon, Coral Gonzalez-García

Abstract : School and university curricula, in countries with hegemonic culture, may exclude local knowledge and from other cultures. Thus, the objective is to present cases that illustrate three of the ways in which teachers can decolonise the curriculum in countries with hegemonic cultures. Curriculum decolonisation is a set of processes that seek to recognise local epistemologies or those of other cultures marginalised from the official curriculum. There are multiple ways of decolonising the university and school curriculum in culturally hegemonic countries. In addition, the epistemological bridge is a didactic framework to guide teachers to decolonise the curriculum through intercultural processes. Methodologically, this is a qualitative study of the way in which university professors designed a module on intercultural science teaching. Likewise, this study analyses the proposals for intercultural science teaching formulated by the pre-service teachers who participated in the module. The results illustrate three ways of decolonizing the curriculum in Spain, a country with a hegemonic culture. Thus, the first case shows the decolonisation of the university curriculum through the didactic change of professors who promote the inclusion of epistemologies from other cultures in science teaching. The second case illustrates the decolonisation of the school curriculum through the proposals of the pre-service teachers that include epistemologies from cultures other than the Spanish. The third case depicts the decolonisation of the school curriculum when pre service teachers include in their teaching plans local-rural-agricultural Spanish epistemologies that have been marginalised from the science curriculum.

Keywords : Curriculum Decolonisation; Intercultural Education; Local Knowledge; Teacher Education

Conference Name : International Conference on Trends and Future Directions in Curriculum Innovation (ICTFDCI - 26)

Conference Place : Leipzig, Germany

Conference Date : 21st Sep 2026