Curriculum and Power

This page is for registration to attend in-person only. If you wish to attend online (with limited opportunities for group discussion), please email curric-stir@stir.ac.uk. We will then send you a link nearer to the date of the event.

Curriculum and Power – symposium, Thursday 4 Sept 2025, 10am – 3.30pm, Conference Suite, Iris Murdoch Building, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA

This full day seminar is split into two sections: the first part focuses on issues relating to decolonisation of the curriculum and social justice; the second part will feature discussions about how children and young people might become meaningfully involved in curriculum making. We have an excellent range of speakers. Including leading international scholars working in Scotland, England, Australia and New Zealand. The event will consist of short provocations, followed by opportunities to discuss the issues in small groups. It will conclude with a question panel session. The event is free to attend. Please register your intention to participate using the link on this page.

Session one: Decolonization and Social Justice

1. Recognizing a Black Scotland: Challenging the Epistemicidal Impulses of Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, João M. Paraskeva (University of Strathclyde)

Due to the current migratory flows, a diverse epistemological trend is piling up on the shores of Calais, fearlessly determined to cross the channel. This trend threatens to break with specific Eurocentric onto-epistemological stability in the country. This presentation dissects current Scottish curriculum policy and reform’s lack of social relevance, tainting its social justice aims due to its inability to address the vast cognitive diversity of the nation’s classrooms. Echoing scholars such as Biesta, Priestley and Humes, I shall unveil the epistemicidal and eugenic vein of Scotland’s current curriculum framework – which constitutes a lab of coloniality power matrix – and argue for the need to de-link from the current Eurocentric epistemological matrix and commit to an itinerant curriculum theory as a path towards social and cognitive justice.

1. A Decolonial critique: Investigating power, knowledge structures, and colonial legacies in the Australian Curriculum, Kevin Lowe, Claire Golledge and Phil Poulton (University of Sydney )

This presentation critically examines the interplay between curriculum, power, and colonialism through the lens of both curriculum and decolonial theory. Bernstein's framework elucidates how educational knowledge is produced, distributed, and evaluated through curricula, while reinforcing existing power (colonial structures and thinking) structures. By scrutinizing colonial legacies embedded in curricula, this case study focussing on the Australian national curriculum reveals the mechanisms through which dominant ideologies perpetuate social hierarchies and marginalise Indigenous knowledge. A critical critique of these dynamics highlights the urgent need for decolonising educational practices, promote equity, and allow diverse epistemologies that challenge hegemonic power relations and empower historically oppressed communities.

1. Teachers' decolonial and anti-racist curriculum-making for social justice, Haira Gandolfi (University of Cambridge) and Elizabeth Rushton (University of Stirling)

In this presentation, we will examine schoolteachers' work as a curriculum-makers for social justice under a decolonial, anti-racist and socio-politically informed framework. Drawing on our ongoing research and work as teacher educators across England and Scotland, and on collaborative projects with colleagues in Brazil, we will discuss the importance of positioning teachers as central actors in curriculum work against enduring colonial legacies, such as epistemicides, within our subject areas of science and geography.

Session two: Children as curriculum makers

1. Agency, Power, and the Governable Child: Rethinking the Need for ‘Child Agency’, Sophie Cathcart and Andrea Priestley (University of Stirling)
   The OECD’s Future of Education and Skills 2030 advocates for fostering agency, yet offers conflicting conceptualisations of the term, rendering it vital to turn to academia to generate greater clarity in how agency is understood. This presentation thus reflects critically on how child agency has been theorised within educational literature; specifically, in response to calls for separate theorisation of “child" agency (e.g. Prout, 2000), it questions—drawing on the ecological model of agency (Biesta & Tedder, 2006)—whether such theorisation is necessary. In a provocatory endeavour, it suggests that clinging to notions of “child agency” preserves “the child” as a governable category within neoliberal power structures.

1. Power sharing with students? Critical insights from New Zealand curricular experiences, Bronwyn Wood and Judith Loveridge (Victoria University, Wellington)

A desire to share more power with students was a feature of the New Zealand 2007 Curriculum which led to a plethora of initiatives in subsequent years promoting student-led and inquiry learning. In this presentation we report on two research studies in primary and secondary schools which sought to explore students’ informal learning and their agency. Our critical analyses challenged notions of students as isolated and autonomous learners. In different ways they led to fresh understandings about how students conceptualise learning and a suite of new strategies to enhance higher order thinking, students’ knowledge and to deepen engagement and authentic learning.

1. Designing Curriculum Together: Involving Children and Young People in the Development of Cross-Curricular Themes, Stephen Bullock (Education Scotland)

Scotland is undertaking a systematic review of its curriculum and has intentionally designed the process to align with the UNCRC’s emphasis on ensuring that children and young people are heard in decisions that affect them. Drawing on insights from the work to date, this presentation examines how participatory methods have been used to ensure learner voice informs the development of cross-curricular themes such as sustainability, social justice, and digital literacy. Moving beyond tokenistic consultation, this work demonstrates the potential of co-design to challenge traditional power dynamics in education and reposition young people as active contributors - not just recipients - of curriculum policy.