How diversifying curriculum improves educational outcomes in English
Written by: Laura Parkes and Priya Christie
8 min read
LAURA PARKES
PRIYA CHRISTIE
Introduction
We are living in a time of flux where previously self-evident ‘truths’ about the value of the literary canon are being scrutinised for their resonance in the modern world (Mason cited in Anderson, 2019). Following the Black Lives Matter movement, our students are more vocal about what their schools should explore through the curriculum. One student expressed that putting posters up for Black History Month without deeper exploration no longer satisfies. As teachers, we need to combine intellectually rigorous, creative approaches to pedagogy with meaningful explorations of identity and culture; mere nods to tokenism risk undermining both halves of this enterprise. Far from passively thinking of curriculum as something static or inherited, educators should move towards actively 'building a curriculum that embraces, celebrates, highlights and foregrounds diversity [as] an act of equity and allyship' (Kara cited in Macfarlane, 2023). This allo
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Module 4: Approaches to decolonising and diversifying the curriculum
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