CURRICULAR DECOLONIZATION FROM THE EPISTEMOLOGIES OF DIVERSITY

María Francisca Lohaus-Reyes

Master (c) in Education, with mention in Curriculum and School Community
Faculty of Social Sciences, Universidad de Chile.
mlohaus@ug.uchile.cl

Keywords: curriculum, decolonization, epistemology, diversity.

Abstract

This work addresses epistemological pluralism as decolonizing axis for Chilean

curriculum by making available the wealth of knowledge that has been gathered from diverse
epistemologies (disabilities and other marginalized identities) to democratize the curricular
design from their lived learning experience in the classroom level, project it to the meso and
macro currículum levels and benefit the whole society in this task. The theme developed in
the text refers to how the epistemologies of diversity can and should contribute to curriculum
design to change the colonizing paradigm present in Chilean curriculum. For this, the paper
deals with the epistemological basis proposed by Latin American authors of the
decolonization and Deaf studies.

Curriculum, although it has an intrinsically value-based background, has been widely

thought of as an artifact, reducing it to a technical status. Its discussion and dialogue is
constrained, making it into a monologue where it is intended to impose an epistemological
monism, manifested in the configuration process of its contents. Instrumental conceptions of
curriculum were originated and through accountability, linked them with the economy
through objectives and standards, instead of worrying about its content and relevance with
respect to the local context, nullifying its particular characteristics and the plural composition
of the countries. This epistemological monism reproduces discourses and colonizing models
through curriculum that do not carry out a dialogue between knowledges, but the
maintenance of power relations that reduce sociocultural diversity, denying its value.
Curricular design, thought by the hearing society, does not listen to what the survivors of the
epistemic genocide have to say about their ways of reaching knowledge. Although
intercultural and inclusive visions have gradually become part of the curriculum, colonialist
dynamics are still legitimized. Therefore, the curricular conversation must be a dialogue of
diversities that recognize and legitimize between themselves, in equal conditions.

In this sense, this paper proposes for curriculum the necessity to move towards inclusion
and equity from the perspective of learning for the enrichment and transformation of the
trajectories of students' lives. Epistemologies of diversity are capable of making available
their lived curriculum in order to decolonize and redefine the assumptions that are
transmitted as hegemonic knowledge, to generate new points of view with which the whole
society can benefit and diversify. It is necessary to change the homogenizing and
segregating curricular paradigm to a social and diverse one that articulates the universal
right that every human being possesses to a full education and development, regardless of
their condition or difference.

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