Congratulations to Shona Galloway (University of Edinburgh) who is the recipient of the HPGRG UG Dissertation Award for 2023. Shona’s brilliant dissertation is titled Decolonising the Scottish Higher Geography Curriculum Colonial Narratives and Key Barriers to Change. She describes her project as follows:
Decolonisation is a rapidly growing imperative in geography for academics and school educators alike. Whilst a wealth of recent work has focused on decolonising geography in English schools, limited attention has been paid to decolonising school geography teaching in Scotland. My dissertation examined the Higher Geography curriculum, identifying key colonial narratives that endure, and assessing some of the existing barriers to decolonisation. The findings are based on a textual analysis of a Higher Geography textbook, as well as a series of interviews with secondary school geography teachers in Scotland. In my dissertation, I argue that colonial histories are scarcely referenced in Higher Geography content, limiting students’ awareness or understanding of imperialism’s role in contemporary global inequalities. Rather, problematic development narratives are presented uncritically, dividing pupils’ worlds along colonial lines, summating in a curriculum that negatively portrays other countries and fosters prejudiced and potentially racist attitudes among students. Meanwhile, the key barriers to decolonisation, as identified by geography teachers, rest principally with an examination-heavy assessment system, an unresponsive examination authority requiring stronger feedback mechanisms, and feelings of guilt and discomfort among students and teachers that limit classroom engagement with colonial histories.
The study concludes that the current Higher Geography curriculum is not fit to educate students about colonial geographies and perpetuates outdated colonial narratives. Decolonisation efforts are hindered by teachers’ heavy workloads, a performance-oriented examination system, a non-collaborative Scottish Qualifications Authority, and the lack of support for teachers to navigate the challenging emotional learning journeys that can arise from confronting coloniality in the classroom. This study argues for a critical, collaborative, subject-specialist approach, centring the voices and experiences of people of colour, teachers and geography experts in future curriculum design.