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This article calls for educational leaders to reexamine Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) frameworks through decolonial leadership lens, during and post-COVID-19. “Based on our individual journeys, our collective voice is grounded on a bond that spans the decades …Our voice here is the enactment of our decision to listen to the oral traditions and connection to spirit of our ancestors…as mentors and collaborators in this work…[t]he validity of their voices…is unquestionable” (Sullivan TwoTrees and Pinto, p. 197). In this article, I intentionally center Mother Africa/Earth and incorporate indigenized expressions from narratives, dialogues, and interviews from assorted studies and sources. In the article Rekindling the Sacred: Toward A Decolonizing Pedagogy in Higher Education, Shahjahan et al. (2009) use a “tapestry of dialogical insights into… theorizing of how spirituality may be incorporated into teaching in higher education” (p. 1). So, with respect to K-12 education, anchoring decolonizing educational leadership to Mother Africa and practices and attitudes which support students who are behaviorally racialized and marginalized in our schools is integral. All through the chapter, I interweave my story with the narratives and dialogues of other voices to make the case for decolonization leadership approaches in our schools. Joining my voice are voices taken from a previous study focused on Special Education Workers who foster relationship and work directly with Students Labeled as Behavioral (will be defined later in this chapter) (Mitchell, 2020). In section one I locate myself in relationship to Mother Africa which informs this anthology chapter. Section two focuses on defining colonization and the theoretical framework and themes discussed in the anthology chapter. Section three examines the role educational leaders may play in creating school spaces for socially just relationship building, nimble student and teacher dissent, and opportunities for personal and community transformation. Section four provides a contextual analysis of educational leadership's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, namely how they impacted schools, classrooms, students, and teachers. Lastly, Section five introduces “ROCK”, a forward-looking conceptualization of a decolonizing leadership practice aimed at reclaiming one's indigeneity through nurturing connections to Mother Africa.

Decolonizing the curriculum is an important topic in education but what does it really mean to decolonize the curriculum? In this self-study, I reflected, with the help of a critical friend, on what decolonizing the curriculum could mean in the context of my biology education classroom using the Pedagogical Content Knowledge model by Davidowitz and Rollnick (2011) as the guiding framework. From these reflections, I came to the conclusion that decolonizing the curriculum is not about erasing the known facts and principles of science but rather, it is about contextualizing it by replacing the Eurocentric stories, texts, and examples among other things, with our own Afrocentric ones. Contextualizing our curriculum is, however, fraught with challenges which include underdeveloped indigenous languages available to be used as languages of instruction, lack of locally produced teaching and learning resources including textbooks, and lack of documented indigenous knowledge that curriculum implementers can use in their teaching in order to make it contextually relevant. In this chapter, I share insights from my reflections.

The New Zealand Teaching Council recently published Tapasā, a touchstone document to support non-Pasifika teachers in considering how their practices might be more culturally sustaining for Pasifika students, signaling continued national recognition of the need for teachers to inquire into their teaching practices as culturally informed and situated. In this chapter, we see this call as an invitation to look critically at the content of our initial teacher education literacy classes, and also to look critically at the methods of instruction and assessment. In our framing and analysis, we draw on several aspects of Tierney's (2018) framework for global meaning making, including “interrupting existing frames.” Despite Aotearoa New Zealand's official foundation in biculturalism, Indigenous ways of knowing have been historically marginalized in official schooling spaces, so there is a continuing need for rigorous interrogation of curriculum and practices that continue to privilege settler colonial perspectives and values. Using diffractive text analysis and talanoa vā, we explore the processes and first wave of insights to arise through a collaborative effort to decolonize some aspects of literacy teacher education curriculum.

In this chapter, we contribute to ongoing discussions surrounding decolonising research and teaching in higher education by considering the place of language and linguistic diversity within this decolonising turn. The question we explore is how academic researchers and lecturers can recognise and respect that a move to decolonise will involve engaging with epistemologies expressed in different languages and expressed from diverse worldviews. We take inspiration from the work of linguistic citizenship researchers who make explicit the links between knowledge systems, languages and issues of equality/inequality. In linguistic citizenship, research connections are made between the everyday practice of translanguaging, moving between different linguistic repertoires by multilingual speakers, and transknowledging or the fluid movement between differing systems of knowing. To explore the potential of using the concepts of translanguaging and transknowledging as tools in the task of decolonising higher education research and practice, we discuss in depth two published research studies for critical reflection.

Formative assessment is of critical concern within higher education, particularly as ‘feedback’ remains a recurring source of student dissatisfaction. In contemporary times, the need to decolonise higher education emerged first in post-colonial contexts of the global south, before becoming a more general debate in contexts which historically were at the heart of empire. Literatures on formative assessment and decolonisation have, however, remained discrete and disconnected. This chapter first makes the connection between decolonisation and assessment, highlighting the need to question dominant (modern) understandings of assessment as ‘objective’ measurement. It then suggests potentially helpful strands in assessment and wider literature to re-imagine formative assessment practices that might support decolonisation agendas, discussing this with reference to the authors' previous research. It closes by suggesting some modest ways forward that more openly acknowledge the problematics of assessment as a social practice, as well as the need for further research.

Demographic shifts and increasing diversity have increased calls for more Black women in higher education teaching and leadership in Canada. This chapter examines how I navigate my practical and theoretical journey in academe through my ontological experiences as a Black female immigrant in large university in Southern Ontario Canada. Drawing on critical race theory (CRT) as a theoretical frame, I explore and theorize my resistance to racial microaggressions through what I describe as “navigational moves.” These “navigational moves” include decolonizing education, spirituality, self-care, and developing a supportive network. These “navigational moves” are grounded in my history and experiences. The chapter explores notions of resistance, empowerment, and sustenance as important factors in challenging racial microaggressions in academe.

This chapter provides a critical and comprehensive review of the internationalisation literature. It starts with a brief discussion of the main factors and features that need to be considered when internationalising the educational administration and leadership field. This is followed by a critique of the internationalisation of education and the many challenges that hinder the achievement of proper internationalisation. The third section provides an overview of the internationalisation models and practices in different disciplines such as psychology, sociology and political science, which is followed by a discussion on the internationalisation of education organisations in different countries with some examples from Arab and non-Western countries. The final section presents a critical review of literature on internationalising the curriculum and how culture competency and knowledge acquisition are key factors in achieving effective internationalisation. The chapter concludes with an overview of the book collection and the main ideas and concepts discussed in each chapter.

This paper describes the curriculum design of an architectural studio course aimed at making concepts of sustainability accessible, understandable and practicable to second-year undergraduate students. Architectural education and design pedagogy is shaped and interrogated in the Global North or Western Europe and North America and influences various pedagogical approaches in the Global South. By including exemplars, voices and practices from global, historical, vernacular and contemporary contexts, understanding of sustainability is enriched.

The approach to course design included decolonising the curriculum and making it relevant for globally diverse future professionals. The studio theme of “memory and history” was framed as responsiveness to context and experiencing the site. Students were required to define place, and articulate form and space with sensitivity towards social, cultural, environmental and ecological aspects. The lectures, exercises and interactive activities emphasised design process, in-progress work, and experimentation through sketching, diagramming, drawing, and making study models which scaffolded student learning under the guidance of tutors.

The findings show that to make the process of learning to design in an environmentally responsive manner explicit for students, approaches to curriculum design must have a global and inclusive curriculum, engage students in experiential learning through doing/making to develop critical thinking skills, encourage students to synthesise and transfer learning to and from other settings and contexts, and interpret knowledge-power relationships and co-construction processes embedded in studio-based teaching and learning.

The original contribution of the course is that it creates an inclusive, experimental and decolonised space for co-construction of knowledge about designing sustainable environments.

Using integrated, constructivist and inquiry-based curricular experiences to expand student understanding of historical thinking and exposure to Native perspectives on Utah history, this paper aims to analyze the thinking and practice of teaching the Utah fourth grade social studies curriculum. As a team of researchers, teachers and administrators, the authors brought differing perspectives and experience to this shared project of curriculum design. The understanding was enhanced as the authors reflected on authors' own practitioner research and worked together as Native and non-Native community partners to revise the ways one group of fourth grade students experienced the curriculum, with plans to continue improving the thinking and implementation on an ongoing basis. While significant barriers to elementary social studies education exist in the current era of high-stakes testing, curriculum narrowing and continuing narratives of colonization in both the broad national context and our own localized context, the authors found that social studies curriculum can be a space for decolonization and growth for students and teachers alike when carefully planned, constructed and implemented.

This article represents an effort by a team of teachers, administrators and researchers: D, a councilman and historian dedicated to sharing the history of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation; S, an eleventh-year teacher, teaching fourth grade at Mary Bethune Elementary School (MBES); E, the director of experiential learning and technology at MBES; L, the MBES vice principal and EL, a faculty member in the adjacent college of education. Working in these complementary roles, each authors recognized an opportunity to build a more robust set of curricular experiences for teaching the state standards for fourth grade social studies, with particular attention to a more inclusive set of narratives of Utah's history at the authors' shared site, Mary Bethune Elementary School, a K-6 public charter school that operates in partnership with the College of Education in a growing college town (population 51,000) in the Intermountain west. The complexity of Utah history embedded within the landscape that surrounds MBES has not always been a fully developed part of our fourth grade curriculum. Recognizing this, the authors came together to develop a more robust age-appropriate curricular experience for students that highlights the complexity of the individual and cultural narratives. In addition to smaller segments of classroom instruction devoted to the Utah Core fourth grade standards (Utah Education Network, 2019) that focus particularly on the history of Utah, the authors focused the curriculum improvement efforts on four specific lengthy spans of instruction.

These fourth-grade students read, contextualized and interpreted the primary source documents they encountered as historians; they both appreciated and challenged the authors' perspectives. It is our belief that students are more likely to continue to think like historians as they operate as “critical consumers” (Moore and Clark, 2004, p. 22) of other historical narratives. This ability to think and act with attention to multiple viewpoints and perspectives, power and counter stories develops more empathetic humans. While the authors prize the ability of students to succeed in intellectually rigorous tasks and learn content material, in the end this trait is the most important goal for teaching students history.

The authors recognize operating within primarily non-Native spaces and discourses about social studies; with curricular efforts, there are a variety of ways the authors could do harm. Along the way, the authors recognized places for future improvement, critically examining the authors' work. As the authors look to future planning, there are several issues identified as the next spaces that the authors wish to focus on improving the Utah Studies curriculum experience of fourth graders at MBES. This is an area for further exploration.

This precise set of primary sources, field experiences and assessments will not be the right fit for other classrooms with differences in resources, space and time. The authors hope it will serve as an example of how teachers can create curriculum that addresses the failings of status quo social studies instruction with regard to Indigenous peoples. The students were not the only beneficiaries of change from this curriculum development and implementation; as a team the authors also benefited. The experience solidified our self-perception as decision makers for our classroom. The authors' ability to extend past the packaged curriculum of textbooks and worksheets made it easily available to engage students as historical inquirers into the multiple perspectives and complex contexts of decolonizing-counter narratives built the authors' confidence that such work can be successful across the curriculum.

The authors believe this is a more potent antidote to the colonizing-Eurocentric narratives of history that they will undoubtedly be exposed to in other spaces and times than simply teaching them a singular history from an Indigenous perspective; if students are able to contextualize, interpret, and question the accounts they encounter, they will be more likely to “challenge dominant historical and cultural narratives that are endemic in society” (Stoddard et al., 2014, p. 35). This too can make them more thoughtful consumers of today's news, whether that news is about Navajo voting rights in southeastern Utah or oil and gas development in South Dakota.

Working against the colonizing narratives present in media, textbooks and local folklore is necessary if the authors are to undermine the invisibility of Native experiences in most social studies curriculum (Journell, 2009) and the stereotyping and discrimination that Native American students experience as a result (Stowe, 2017, p. 243). This detailed look at how the authors developed and implemented standards-based curriculum with that intent adds to the “little research [that] exists on teacher-created curricula and discourse” (Masta and Rosa, p. 148).