By Nicola Sparkes (Learning Technologist – Curriculum Development)
The History programmes at Derby were revalidated just a few months before the 2020 global pandemic began. As part of this, several drivers relating to decolonisation, inclusion and sustainability were identified.
Alongside initiatives across the world to decolonise the curriculum and to include the study of sustainable development goals, the Royal Society of History in 2018, also published a race and ethnicity report which produced several recommendations as to what history departments could do to decolonise the curriculum to increase diversity and inclusion in history teaching.
This led to the programme team introducing more global history and global perspectives into the curriculum from level 4 onwards with modules on Empires, Migrants of Mobility, Derby and the World and a global module on the Cold War. East-West divide in the 2nd year and modules on China and India in the 3rd year.
This recording from the Festival of Learning 2021 includes the perspectives of students from across all four years of the History programme in which they critically reflect on their experiences. The student roundtable explored what benefits students see in decolonisation, equity and inclusion, what challenges they face when engaging with these themes, and what pedagogic tools (from curriculum design to decolonisation of reading lists) they perceive as useful (and which ones they don’t).
The full recording is available to view on Panopto (click link to view in a new tab).