Beyond ‘Cosmetic Diversification’: An Exploratory Comparative Content Analysis of One School of Social Work’s Initial Effort to Decolonize Foundation Level Syllabi

Background and Purpose: In response to widespread calls for racial and social justice, decolonization processes are increasingly emphasized in academia. Settler colonialism has for shaped the entire United States education system, including higher education, for centuries. The process of decolonization, while varying by context, signifies “unhitching” from colonial thinking and to recognize Western epistemic hegemony. This study explores the response of one school of social work to decolonize foundation level curricula during the summer of 2020.

Decolonizing syllabi expands beyond the inclusion of diverse authorship, and requires critical reflection and discourse on epistemology, pedagogy, knowledge, and power. As such, this paper discusses considerable implications for continued development of decolonizing work, beyond “cosmetic diversification,” in social work research and higher education.

Methods: This study was an exploratory comparative content analysis of a secondary data set. The data set consisted of sixteen foundation level course syllabi (eight from before the “decolonization” process, eight following the process) and a set of deidentified qualitative process reflections completed by the faculty course leads who participated in “decolonizing” their course syllabi. The data was analyzed using an iterative, dialogic collaborative process using both inductive and deductive coding. Authors collaboratively constructing meaning through phases of dialog, as means of bolstering corroboration and confirmation, safeguarding against bias in data analysis, and ensuring study trustworthiness.

Results:

Changes to Syllabi: Four major themes were observed across changes to the syllabi: addition of BIPOC or international authorship in course materials, materials applicable for diverse learning styles, and assignments with an emphasis on social justice, and critical reflection and/or reflexivity.

Process Reflections: Four interrelated themes took root, such as challenges to the process around time constraints, success and difficulties with faculty collaboration, an end result of “modification” rather than a total curricular overhaul, and a desire or expressed need to continue the decolonization process in the future.

Conclusions and Implications:

This first attempt to decolonize syllabi with limited time in one school of social work highlights some pitfalls and necessities in the ongoing journey of decolonizing work. The analytic process employed in this study can also serve as a model for researching the multifarious decolonization processes schools of social work may engage in. This study further implicates the role of research, and its pedagogical use, in constructing and upholding colonial knowledge, and urges critical reflection, reflexivity, and transdisciplinary collaboration.