Perspectives of Distance Learning Students on How to Transform Their Computing Curriculum: “Is There Anything to Be Decolonised?”
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Theory and Literature Review
- (a)
- Beginning in 2020, a prestigious UK university initiated a university wide project of Decolonising the Curriculum through re-framing established values in their module review and update process. By 2022, the focus moved to college-level discussions on a broad range of topics including diversity, EDI and decolonising, with the aim to raise an awareness of what decolonising is about via workshops and enabling inclusive behaviours. These activities have been further developed through an incubator approach with outputs such as a ‘decolonising STEM’ blog with four case studies for module leaders. In the summer of 2023, the cross-university team presented a re-imagined tool kit on their experiences over this four-year period ‘Encompassing and decolonising STEM in our learning and research’
- (b)
- A post-92 university (former polytechnic) has been supporting curricula decolonisation through signposting to external podcasts, videos, articles and resource lists. Internally there are also discipline-specific resource lists including lists from the School of Science and Technology. Critical questions support the process of curricula decolonisation and the library is running a ‘Hidden Voices’ campaign to find voices who have not been previously heard.
- (c)
- A university in the US has developed a module called Critical CS1 that teaches Computer Science through feminist and critical race theory. The module includes critiques of power and of algorithmic decision-making … ‘highlighting how diverse ways of knowing are supported or resisted through epistemologies of computer science, and by introducing racial and gendered marginalization to students as both a political and epistemological problem’ [35] (p. 301).
3. Methods
- a large-scale survey of undergraduate students;
- a series of online workshops with some of the students who had answered the survey.
4. Findings
- Positive responses: “to rethink and revise the curriculum so that it takes a broader view rather than just the European or Euro-centric”.“Not focusing on white people white men as the only way”.
- Neutral responses: “I have no idea, too many fancy words going on.”“Honestly, before now, I had never heard of the word.”
- Negative responses: “Nothing, this is a computing course not critical race theory”.“‘Decolonisation’ is part of the insane woke ideology, which [has] no place in academia, least of all in a STEM subject such as computing or IT.”
4.1. Student Engagement in Decolonising the Curriculum
- Explain—communicate, examples, fiction readings, new curriculum examples, new learning materials.
- Engage—consult, co-create, include, inclusive perspective, involve. Possible methods suggested for this include: focus groups, surveys, workshops, newsletters, debate, forums, emails, included in development, co-creation, online discussions, previous and currents students, industry, social media, student panels, questionnaire, webinar, working groups.
- Extraneous—these responses expressed either do not know, not needed or irrelevant.
4.2. Challenges to Student Engagement
- Engagement of marginalised students: These responses were concerned both with how it was possible to engage marginalised students, partly due to the smaller numbers of such students, but also pressures on their time and energy, and also with whether it was ethically appropriate to ask marginalised students to do such work. Example responses included the following:
- The challenge I foresee is how to promote the participation of the marginalised participants.
- Because this is a mostly UK based university, getting diverse input from students might be difficult.
- But also marginalised people should not be forced to educate their peers on this topic when they have come to an environment to learn and be treated as an equal.
- Fears of a backlash: A number of respondents were concerned about how others may respond in terms of its effects on the university, and whether participating students may receive more hostility. These were not framed as hostile comments in themselves, rather as concern for others’ hostility. Example responses included the following:
- bigoted students being unwilling to participate, creating a hostile environment for others participating.
- This will cause protest, and anger, and cost the students.
- I think some individuals may feel like diversity is a forced thing. Or woke culture. I think it’s important to recognise the issue, but others may feel attacked.
- Additionally forcing students to engage in these activities could result in bigoted harassment or comments that might not be properly handled by staff.
- Lack of time/resource: By contrast with concerns for the time of marginalised students, these respondents were concerned about the availability of time or resources for decolonising the curriculum, for both students and staff:
- Students are busy. Many of us work alongside our courses and are likely to have very little time to spend on this.
- Already hard-pressed staff having the time and support available.
- Questioning competence: Some respondents doubted the ability of students to engage and educators to respond appropriately. In some cases, this was a judgement on competence, in others it was seen as arising from a lack of knowledge and/or awareness which prevented effective engagement. Examples included the following:
- Issues like these are difficult to address, and as such, students may not know how they would address these issues, so their input may be haphazard, politically motivated, or ineffective. Educators may struggle to distil concrete proposals from suggestions that are able to be implemented.
- Students may not know what is decolonisation of a curriculum and why is it important. Not being able to understand this may prevent them from giving their opinion on the subject.
- Performativity: These respondents felt that, while there might be plenty of rhetoric in favour of decolonising the curriculum, in practice this manifested as empty gestures and there was little chance of actual change. As one respondent commented with the following:
- [Students] do not feel that what they say will actually be actioned. Too often the Government has asked for input and then ignored it and done what it wants to while citing that they ‘engaged with the group affected’.
- Nothing to be decolonised: There were also several responses that reiterated the positions already identified in other questions, e.g., ridicule, insults, denial there is an issue, the irrelevance of decolonisation to computing, or just simply unsure/do not know. These were summed up in the response from which this article takes its title:
- The major challenge here is how you’d do it in the first place since there isn’t anything there to be decolonised!
- 7.
- Encouraging the university: There was a feeling among a number of respondents that the university might struggle to rise to the challenge of decolonising, but that the institution needed to be encouraged to do so:
- This will cause protest, and anger, and cost the students. But, that does *not* mean it is the wrong thing to do—far from it, in fact. The university has an opportunity to be a leader in equality, diversity, inclusion, and decolonisation—all of which are, I would say, at the heart of what it stands for. It’s important not to let the vocal majority who are losing their privilege stop them doing the right thing.
- 8.
- Staff resistance or apathy: Some respondents perceived that the challenge of decolonising the university and/or its computing curriculum arose from issues around staff unwillingness to change more generally:
- how could this be implemented when the tutors only mark assignments.
- There is no appetite in the module teams to change material or accept responsibility for what they present
- 9.
- The university will be ostracised: This extended the concerns in the earlier set of responses around a backlash. Some respondents also feared that there could be a significant impact upon the university as a whole, in terms of its standing with the current government:
- Another challenge is that the university may be cancelled by UK structures of power if they promote a more equitable and less biased view on current world issues that relate to computing and IT.
- Right wing political parties will call this indoctrination and attempt to cut funding.
- 10.
- It is too difficult: The final challenge was around the complexity of the process, and whether it would prove too difficult in conceptual and academic terms, notwithstanding other issues:
- I think there will be a lot of varying inputs, a lot of disagreements and restructuring of the curriculum of course is not an easy task, it also may be hard to come to a consensus that is equal and fair to everyone. If certain material also needs restructured this could prove difficult while still holding to the truth while lending less bias. Providing more opportunities for minority professors and less discrimination is also a difficult task as well as for students in the curriculum. In the end there is many difficulties to face, too many to list here.
4.3. Amplifying the Voices of Black and Minoritised Female Students
5. Discussion
- (a)
- ‘student resistance,
- (b)
- context (institutional type and culture and/or disciplinary context),
- (c)
- systematic/structural barriers (policies, lack of leadership support),
- (d)
- lack of access to resources (knowledge, funding, and staff), and
- (e)
- finally, a major challenge was the recognition that there was no pure local or Indigenous knowledge and that all knowledges were entangled with each other, particularly in postcolonial and White settler contexts.’
- (a)
- Student resistance: “finding something to decolonise”;“history is written by those who won. No matter how hard you try you won’t please everyone so please don’t try”.
- (b)
- Context (culture): “the language in this sector is so ingrained and habitual. The vast majority will see no harm and therefore find it difficult to justify the time to change”.
- (c)
- Structural barriers: “red tape”;“how to engage the proper people. As a subject we have a small number of passionately involved people but also a large number who may be indifferent. Finding a proper balance will be difficult”.
- (d)
- Lack of access to resources (knowledge): “misunderstanding of what the goal is” (there was minimal comment by respondents on funding and staff).
- (e)
- No Indigenous knowledge: “acceptance that colonisation exists amongst the student base”;“identifying issues that actually represent a colonial mindset”;“I’m not sure it is a good idea, all knowledge has a bias somewhere, would be difficult to reference specific aspects of study without having a reference”.
6. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Likert-Scale Questions (Choice of Five Options, from ‘Strongly Agree’ to ‘Strongly Disagree’) |
---|
1. The curriculum raises critical questions about power and/or privilege that are usually taken for granted |
2. The curriculum encourages students to challenge existing power structures in society |
3. The curriculum encourages students to critique unearned privilege |
4. The curriculum encourages students to connect learning to social, political or environmental concerns |
5. The curriculum encourages students to take actions that fight inequity or promote equity |
6. The curriculum features people from diverse backgrounds |
7. People of diverse ethnicities are represented as researchers or professionals not just as participants in research, clients, consumers, customers, etc. |
8. The curriculum respects that different cultures may have different understandings, skills and/or philosophies |
9. The curriculum addresses problems that are of concern to marginalized people/communities |
10. Do you see yourself reflected in the module materials? |
11. How well do the materials value/appreciate difference? |
12. Does the module allow your lived experience to be drawn upon? |
Free-text questions |
13. What does decolonising mean to you? |
14. What do you think it means to decolonise the computing curriculum? |
15. How do you think we can start to decolonise computing at the OU? |
16. It is important to engage students as partners in decolonising activities—how best could this be done? |
17. What challenges do you foresee? |
18. Any other comments? |
Position | Code |
---|---|
Positive | Accurate history |
Global perspective | |
Inclusive perspectives | |
Independence | |
New ways of thinking | |
Removing privilege/bias | |
Undoing colonisation | |
Neutral | IDK (I don’t know) |
No response | |
Negative | Irrelevant to Computing |
Not needed | |
Rewriting history | |
Woke Marxism |
Question No. | Question Summary | % Strongly/Agree | Statistical Significance | Details of Difference |
---|---|---|---|---|
6 | People from diverse backgrounds | 52.1 | Gender: t(114.269) = 2.389, p = 0.019 | Males (M = 2.40, SD = 0.890) agreed more than Females (M = 2.71, SD = 1.104) |
4 | Social/political/environmental concerns | 50.5 | None | - |
7 | Diverse ethnicities shown as professionals | 46.9 | Gender: t(119.732) = 2.446, p = 0.016 | Males (M = 2.45, SD = 0.923) agreed more than Females (M = 2.76, SD = 1.060) |
12 | Own lived experience | 46.5 | None | - |
8 | Different cultural understandings | 46.4 | None | - |
10 | Self reflected in module materials | 41.0 | None | - |
11 | Materials value difference | 35.8 | Gender: t(123.744) = 2.255, p = 0.026 | Males (M = 2.67, SD = 0.866) agreed more than Females (M = 2.86, SD = 0.866) |
9 | Problems concern marginalized people | 29.5 | None | - |
1 | Critical questions regarding power/privilege | 24.1 | Ethnicity: t(374) = 2.184, p = 0.030 | Non-white respondents (M = 2.87, SD = 1.191) agreed more than white respondents (M = 3.22, SD = 1.001) |
2 | Challenges existing power structures | 20.5 | None | - |
5 | Encourages actions to promote equity | 19.2 | Ethnicity: t(374) = 2.088, p = 0.038 | Non-white respondents (M = 2.98, SD = 1.170) agreed more than white respondents (M = 3.31, SD = 0.994) |
3 | Encourages students to critique privilege | 17.2 | Ethnicity: t(374) = 2.231, p = 0.026 | Non-white respondents (M = 3.02, SD = 1.225) agreed more than white respondents (M = 3.37, SD = 0.980) |
No. | Question | Responses | Positive | Neutral | Negative |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
13 | What does decolonising mean to you? | 267 | 65.9% | 16.1% | 18.0% |
14 | What do you think it means to decolonise the computing curriculum? | 251 | 57.8% | 18.7% | 23.5% |
15 | How do you think we can start to decolonise computing at the OU? | 243 | 46.1% | 22.6% | 31.3% |
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Tompkins, Z.; Herman, C.; Ramage, M. Perspectives of Distance Learning Students on How to Transform Their Computing Curriculum: “Is There Anything to Be Decolonised?”. Educ. Sci. 2024, 14, 149. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14020149
Tompkins Z, Herman C, Ramage M. Perspectives of Distance Learning Students on How to Transform Their Computing Curriculum: “Is There Anything to Be Decolonised?”. Education Sciences. 2024; 14(2):149. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14020149
Chicago/Turabian StyleTompkins, Zoe, Clem Herman, and Magnus Ramage. 2024. "Perspectives of Distance Learning Students on How to Transform Their Computing Curriculum: “Is There Anything to Be Decolonised?”" Education Sciences 14, no. 2: 149. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci14020149