Decolonising the school curriculum: a special feature

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The 120th anniversary of IOE: critical engagement with educational and social thought, practice and development

Starkey

Wei

2023

The Worlds of UCL: teaching, learning and institutional histories

Brewis

Hannan²

2023

This article discusses an undergraduate module which introduces students to the study of the history of education through the lens of our own institutions – UCL (University College London, UK), founded in 1826, and the IOE (Institute of Education, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society), founded in 1902. The module critically examines the close, but often hidden, connections between British education and empire, asking what impact these imperial legacies have today. After outlining the module’s origins and relationship with the history of UCL and the IOE, the article sets its creation in the wider context of initiatives that seek to critique and reimagine institutional histories within higher education for a variety of purposes. The article also explores the developing role of the IOE Archives team in teaching, and explores how academics and archivists work together to teach institutional histories, and how this work can prompt change.

The psychosocial costs of racism to White staff members of an ethnically diverse, post-92 university

Miller,

Brown,

Essex

2023

Research examining institutional racism in higher education institutions is invariably based on Black, Asian and minority ethnic people’s perspectives, thus overlooking the significance of the experiences and viewpoints of people who are not from Black, Asian or minority ethnic backgrounds. To address this gap in the literature, the researchers utilised Kivel’s psychosocial costs of racism to White people framework as a means to investigate and understand the issue of institutionalised racism in an ethnically diverse, post-92 university in the UK. Data were collected from White university employees, via semi-structured individual interviews, and were examined using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings revealed how participants were aware of incidences of institutional racism within their higher education institution and understood the privileges that came with the colour of their skin (that were not afforded to their Black, Asian and minority ethnic colleagues). As a result, they invariably experienced significant psychosocial costs, including anxiety, anger, embarrassment and fear. This is the first study to examine the problem of institutional racism as viewed through the lens of White university employees. The findings of the study present an opportunity for strategic development linked to the 2015 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and Goals 2 and 8 more particularly. Goal 2 focuses on promoting good health and well-being, and Goal 8 on promoting decent work and economic growth.