An institutional decolonising pilot: reflections on the journey

Safadi, Sami

Abstract

In 2023/24, I have been leading an institutional pilot at University of Salford around decolonising academic practice for staff. Also, as part of the pilot I developed and delivered a 4-part seminar series for students around decolonising education and student experience.

The project is an extension of a piece of work that started in Salford Business School around the need to decolonise our practice which ties to ensuring more inclusive pedagogies, epistemological liberation, and addressing manifest outcomes of inequity and injustice - e.g. the ethnicity award gap.

I developed an e-course on Decolonising through Reflexive Practice which has 5 workbooks and uses interactive approaches so as click through infographics, student generated art, voiceovers and podcast chats, and animated overlay. This was the core material for the pilot.

The pilot use the e-course and tailored academic development workshops for staff. For students, the pilot was 4 seminars starting with introducing students to decolonising and moving to unpacking the student voice and their agency in determining their own learning.

The presentation will seek to outline the background, what the pilot is and why, the challenges faced and how we/others may overcome them, and how we will be evaluating the pilot in terms of engagement, impact, and perception. The presentation will also include some of my reflections having led on decolonising work in my space for a few years and considering whether we truly seek to intervene in the world as is the spirit of decolonising.

Citation

Safadi, S. (2024, November). An institutional decolonising pilot: reflections on the journey. Presented at Reimagining higher education: Journeys of decolonising conference 2024, London UCL IoE

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Reimagining higher education: Journeys of decolonising conference 2024
• Conference Location: London UCL IoE
• Start Date: Nov 8, 2024
• End Date: Nov 8, 2024
• Deposit Date: Nov 11, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 11, 2024
• Publisher URL: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/events/2024/nov/reimagining-higher-education-journeys-decolonising-conference-2024