Abstract:

Decolonising higher education curricular means it's necessary to make explicit the curriculum components that give rise to a dominant cultural perspective over others. It is particularly difficult to pinpoint these components that give precedence of one viewpoint over another. In order to make sure our bioscience courses such as biochemistry are inclusive and give every student the chance to be recognised and realise their full potential we sought to enrich our course by incorporating previously absent voices, viewpoints and activities

Having an inclusive, varied and decolonised curriculum will allow all students to have a better overall experience helping them to succeed academically. Decolonising helps students to develop critical thinking abilities particularly if students are involved as co-creators. Decolonising goes beyond incorporating different viewpoints, teaching methods and evaluations. It gives students and educators the chance to critically analyse and challenge our preconceptions and look at our world with new eyes.
In the UK higher education, there are concerns developing regarding the awarding/attainment gap between White and Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students reaching a ‘good’ degree. Pedagogical research is ongoing on the causes of this with focus on curricula being largely Eurocentric

Our study aims to explore what decolonising the curriculum means for our course in biochemistry. We have investigated how three modules in Biochemistry in levels 4, 5 and 6 vary in their diversity. We then aimed to incorporate improvements intended to embed inclusivity, diversity and decolonise the curriculum from deep-seated assumptions. Our thoughts would be that this changed and inclusive curriculum would help students to identify with their course better and lead to better outcomes. In addition, the increased diversity of the course would help attract a more diverse cohort of interested students.

Keywords:

Decolonisation, biochemistry, biosciences, diversity.