Teachers creating anti-colonial futures: Exploring curriculum conversations with teachers through autobiographical reflection

Abstract

Teachers’ understanding of their personal histories is beneficial to their understanding and conceptualisation of their roles as teacher professionals. Insights from such understanding in post-colonial societies help to shape teachers’ consciousness about how they can run their own course (curriculum) to create liberating experiences for themselves and those they teach. This paper draws on the autobiographical method of currere to deconstruct stories of four in-service teachers about their teaching and learning experiences as students in Jamaican classrooms and how these experiences intertwine with their current professional practice. Findings derived from the teachers’ written reflections revealed that perceptions about types of schools and the associated consequences remain the largest area of complexity and representation of coloniality for teachers. Linked to this is the skills teachers themselves demonstrate and the positive and negative emotions those skills evoke for students. The teachers also expressed their responsibility towards advocating for self and their students as opportunities to create change and resist coloniality. The paper therefore offers recommendations for teachers and teachers of teachers (teacher educators) on how to build anti-colonial futures through curriculum conversations with their students.