How decolonised is my curriculum? There’s an app for that

Imperial creates tool to analyse geographic distribution of authors on reading lists and socio-economic status of their country

Published on
May 13, 2021
Last updated
May 13, 2021
Anna McKie
Smiling robot illustrating a digital tool that can tell academics how decolonised their curricula are
Source: Getty
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Staff diversity: socio-economic background
Teaching and learning
Educational technology

POSTSCRIPT:

Print headline: Computer says: too Eurocentric

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Reader's comments (8)

#1 Submitted by m.... on May 13, 2021 - 1:22pm
A somewhat meaningless metric. You can only add to your reading list things that have actually been written, so if authors in the global south/from poorer nations don't write about your subject - or indeed if authors of the appropriate heritage have gone to work in the global north - you'll appear less 'decolonised' than you actually are. It also leaves no scope for academic excellence - do you really want to select what you recommend to your students based on ethnicity or global origin? Of course not, you want them to access the best writings in your domain!
#2 Submitted by msl_csp on May 13, 2021 - 1:24pm
Totally agree. This was being written as I composed my comment below.
#3 Submitted by rprice4 on May 13, 2021 - 1:40pm
Author response - This method is not intended, and indeed cannot tell you the global output of publications in your field or the 'academic excellence' of them. There are already many bibliographic databases that provide those things. Our study has produced data indicating the geographic distribution of authors chosen for inclusion on curricula. This is of interest to some course leaders and students who otherwise have no reasonable method to access this data aggregated at a module or course level, and can use it as an evidence-based insight to encourage discussions and reflection.
#4 Submitted by msl_csp on May 13, 2021 - 1:23pm
In STEM, it is inevitable that most of the resources exist in the most developed countries. Ditto the discoveries of the past. Such problems may (or may not) bedevil the Arts and Humanities but the same is not true of all subjects.
#5 Submitted by philip.... on May 13, 2021 - 7:22pm
This is not the first such too, as claimed in the article. https://jlsumner.shinyapps.io/syllabustool/ https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517002074
#6 Submitted by rprice4 on May 14, 2021 - 9:35am
The preprint cites the Gender Balance Assessment Tool, which performs a different analysis (name-based gender and ethnicity prediction) to that of our study (distribution of declared author country and country GNI per capita).
#7 Submitted by sian.woolcock on May 14, 2021 - 7:03am
Not sure how it would work in somewhere like Australia which is heavily colonized but in southern hemisphere.
#8 Submitted by rprice4 on May 14, 2021 - 10:06am
Thank you this is an important point. The preprint acknowledges that the data can only have meaning if interpreted within the historical and demographic context of the institution and country so it would be really interesting to apply to a reading list from an Australian institution.

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