Journal of Occupational Science

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Deepening our collective understanding of

decolonising education: A commentary on
Simaan’s learning activity based on a Global South
community

Chontel Gibson & Lisette Farias

To cite this article: Chontel Gibson & Lisette Farias (2020) Deepening our collective
understanding of decolonising education: A commentary on Simaan’s learning activity
based on a Global South community, Journal of Occupational Science, 27:3, 445-448, DOI:
10.1080/14427591.2020.1790408

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2020.1790408

Published online: 22 Jul 2020.

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JOURNAL OF OCCUPATIONAL SCIENCE
2020, VOL. 27, NO. 3, 445–448
https://doi.org/10.1080/14427591.2020.1790408

COMMENTARY

Deepening our collective understanding of decolonising

education: A commentary on Simaan’s learning activity based on
a Global South community
a b
Chontel Gibson & Lisette Farias
a
School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Queensland, St Lucia, Australia, and National Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander Occupational Therapy Network, Sydney, Australia; bDivision of Occupational Therapy,
Department of Neurobiology Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This invited commentary responds to Simaan’s (2020) article, which Accepted 27 June 2020
highlights a decolonising learning activity centred on a study from a
Global South community. It extends the theoretical discussion in KEYWORDS
Occupational science;
Simaan’s article, highlighting how Santos’ intercultural translation and Decolonisation;
Paulo Freire’s work can deepen a decolonised approach to Conscientization; Cognitive
occupations and teaching occupations. This commentary raises injustice; Intercultural
concerns that teaching decolonised pedagogies in a predominately translation; Racism
Western curriculum and discipline can be risky for both teachers and
students. Furthermore, it is argued that decolonising pedagogies
should include anti-racist strategies embedded in curricula that are
decolonised.

We (the authors) are engaged in decolonising
work and are pleased to have the opportunity
to discuss Simaan’s (2020) article presenting
learning activities that deepen our collective
understandings of decolonising educational pro-
cesses. Our intent is to build on Simaan’s reflec-
tions, drawing on the decolonising work
developed by Indigenous scholars and Southern
theorists. In this commentary, we discuss some
of the theoretical ideas forwarded in the article
and highlight some risks that may emerge
when enacting such approaches to learning
and knowing occupation. By highlighting the
risks, it is not our intention to discourage col-
leagues from engaging with decolonisation prac-
tices, but to raise awareness and support critical
reflective discussion and affirmative action.
To contextualize our discussion, we note that
we understand decolonisation of teaching
practices as more than presenting (new) con-
cepts, or examples of ways of doing, being, and
connecting to learners. This teaching should
entail the core values of decolonising knowledge
by acknowledging, challenging, and unlearning
the dominance of Western ways of knowing
about occupation (Dudgeon & Walker, 2015;
Gibson, 2020). This may be an uncomfortable
process because it seeks to dismantle a demo-
graphic hegemony that privileges Western,
middle class, white, heterosexual, and able-bod-
ied women’s ways of understanding occupation
that generally fit occupational science education.
Specifically, decolonising occupational science
education requires unsettling white privilege
thinking, whereby it is assumed that everyone
experiences the world, including occupations,
as universal; as if they occur naturally and
unquestionably (Di Angelo, 2018). As such,

CONTACT Lisette Farias lisette.farias.vera@ki.se

© 2020 The Journal of Occupational Science Incorporated
446 C. GIBSON AND L. FARIAS
decolonising education implies acknowledging
how this privilege is perpetuated by practices
such as placing teaching about culturally sensi-
tive approaches or anti-race praxis for ‘those’
who interact with diverse groups, reinforcing
disengagement with colonisation issues within
occupational science (Gibson et al.,
forthcoming).
Theoretical Alignment and Missing
Points
In congruence with decolonising practices,
employing the work of theorists from non-
anglophone contexts, such as Boaventura de
Sousa Santos (Portugal) and Paulo Freire
(Brazil), is an important strength in Simaan’s
work. Bringing concepts such as cognitive justice
(Santos, 2014) and conscientização, translated to
English as conscientization or critical conscious-
ness (Freire, 1996), adds to the repertoire of
notions that can help articulate how excluding
other-than-Western types of knowledge within
education also implies neglecting people’s
efforts and resistance against colonialism.
These concepts support an understanding of
occupation as resistance, social movement, or
ways to keep connected with land that has
been taken away from groups, which without
these terms are invisible and neglected. In this
context, discussing the occupations of olive
farmers in Palestine (Simaan, 2017, 2018) as
examples of occupational justice and resistance
is relevant, to move beyond individual-centred
understandings of occupation.
Specifically, Simaan’s learning activity helps
students contrast the practical wisdom of olive
farmers in Palestine to practices and concepts
learned in their occupational education in a Brit-
ish university. His use of Santos’ (2014) intercul-
tural translations as a conceptual frame
facilitates this comparison and exchange of
ideas and practices. This use of Santos’ intercul-
tural translation could be further strengthened
by extending discussion of the differences and
similarities of Global South and white privilege
in Western-dominant curriculum. Santos
described these intercultural translations as a
means to search for underlying assumptions
among cultures and develop new hybrid forms
of cultural understanding. In this way, Santos
posited intercultural translation as a way of not
only building awareness about differences but
transforming normative and neglectful ways of
understanding these concepts or practices.
As such, it is expected that a learning
activity based on this concept would bring
attention to occupations from ‘marginalised
communities’, in order to reveal the differences
between the Global North and South realities.
Moreover, it should facilitate problematization
of the conditions that shape these realities
and critical reflection about ‘why’ these occu-
pations are missing in the dominant edu-
cational curriculum and research. Simaan’s
activity focused more on the students’ own
experiences rather than on critiquing the sys-
tems, structures, and processes that shape
farmers’ experiences of oppression and connec-
tion to/belonginess to their land. By placing
reflection on oneself, there is risk that partici-
pants misunderstand the marginalized or
silenced knowledge of Palestine farmers by
analyzing olive farming through their Western
values and expectations (e.g., what is desirable
for a marginalized group), producing what
Santos (2014) called a ‘sociology of absence’.
This means that participants may risk impos-
ing their own worldview and experiences
onto other groups’ experiences, trying to con-
nect these to their experiences, which neglects
critiquing privilege and colonisation (e.g., acti-
vism versus occupational apartheid).
Simaan asserts that students’ reflections
demonstrate how they positioned themselves in
relation to the community studied and the con-
cepts it created. Yet, this positioning reveals a
partial adoption of Freire’s concept of conscien-
tization, which seeks to link theory with practice;
understanding social, political, and economic
factors, and acting against oppression. For
instance, participants in Simaan’s activity seem
to have overlooked an essential part of conscien-
tization that promotes problematization of
oppression and how this oppression can be nat-
uralized and internalized by the oppressed as the
legitimate way of doing, being, and knowing, or
what Freire refers as ‘culture of silence’. This
aspect is problematic since it may naturalize
negative and false stereotypes of marginalized
communities, as in the case of Indigenous people
described by one student as having “turned to

alcohol and destructive occupations to try and
overcome the pain of separation from that
which sustains them and gives life meaning,
that is the earth” (p. 7). This type of ‘naturaliz-
ation’ promotes racism and downplays colonisa-
tion by individualizing social problems (i.e.,
alcoholism) and reducing them to private
experiences that can be used to place blame on
individuals instead of focusing on the power
relations that maintain oppression. Further-
more, it is worth noting that although Australian
media and other sources portray Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander people as having alcohol
issues, and do so in a demoralizing way, the stat-
istics show that Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander people are less likely to consume alco-
hol when compared to their non-Indigenous
counterparts in Australia. However when they
do drink, they drink at levels that are more
harmful (Lee et al., 2019).
Neglecting this naturalization of stereotypes
can also limit participants’ potential to question
how racism and stereotypes have come to be
constructed, by whom/which groups, and how
they are perpetuated. Thus, it is crucial to also
problematize students’ reflections and under-
standings in decolonisation practices, in order
to enhance conscientization and avoid promot-
ing ‘sociology of absence’ (e.g., what is desirable
for a marginalized group) and stereotypes
attached to communities that have been histori-
cally marginalized. This is particularly important
when exploring occupation of groups in which
trauma, discrimination, and colonisation may
increase the risk of mental health issues and
behaviours that society condemns as risky or
unhealthy (e.g., drug and alcohol consumption),
since these may constitute a less significant risk
to their health compared to other more pressing
concerns and/or traumatic experiences (Farias,
2020).
Moreover, students’ reflections neither
acknowledged the effects of oppression on
people’s occupations (i.e., olive farming) or
recognized that their comparisons between
road building or tree saving activism are not
equal or comparable to the systemic process of
colonisation. In this case, critical reflectivity
potential to move beyond individual experience
to identify the conditions that sustain differences
related to colonisation was missed, since
JOURNAL OF OCCUPATIONAL SCIENCE 447
participants kept the focus on themselves. For
instance, the students’ quotes reflect their
attempt to connect/compare colonisation to
their experiences of privilege, without disman-
tling or problematising the power relations,
including race relations, underlying their
comparisons.
Possibilities for Further Work or to
Continue this Work
Although decolonising work and other forms of
consciousness (Gibson, 2020; Ramugondo, 2015;
Whittington-Emery & Te Maro, 2018) are gain-
ing more attention in occupational science, the
curricula remain embedded in Western ideol-
ogies. Consequently, Simaan and other teachers
who use decolonising pedagogies run the risk
of being ostracised and/or burdened with carry-
ing the discomfort, emotional burden, and more,
that decolonisation brings to the curricula (and
university more broadly) (Phillips et al., 2005).
It is for this reason that the curricula and univer-
sities need to create safe places for teachers to
challenge students, so that the curricula and
key stakeholders of curricula can be nurtured
through a journey that not only pushes them
outside their comfort zone, but to a place
where they can understand and take affirmative
action on all forms of oppression, including
racism (McDermott et al., 2019). More impor-
tantly, curricula need to provide anti-racist strat-
egies and other forms of oppression-busting
strategies to equip students with the practical
knowledge to address social imbalances and
injustices. These strategies should not only be
used with agencies that we work with, but within
the structures, processes, and organisations that
we work within. Not using a decolonised peda-
gogy and not teaching these practical skills is,
in our belief, not only a failure to occupational
science, but a failure to society.
Furthermore, given that a decolonising
approach is being promoted, if not implemented
in many nations, the issue that remains is how
occupational scientists and practitioners who
harness occupation to promote change will
learn and practice decolonisation, so that they
can support learning experiences for students
and decolonising professional practices. For
those who are registered health professionals,
448 C. GIBSON AND L. FARIAS
at least, broader professional skills can be man-
dated in professional competency standards
and registration processes. Implementing
strength-based frameworks, which include
developing governance structures that allow
people from the ‘global south’ to sit at the table
and make decisions, is imperative within any
discipline that focuses on occupations. For
example, the Occupational Therapy New Zeal-
and Whakaora Ngangahau Aotearoa’s govern-
ance structure includes Māori occupational
therapy leaders and, therefore, supports Māori
occupational therapists to lead and influence
the development of the profession that is not
centred in Western ideologies (Occupational
Therapy New Zealand Whakaora Ngangahau
Aotearoa, 2014).
Conclusion
Simaan’s work and approach shines a light on an
important approach to learning and knowing
occupation. The theoretical narrative and anti-
oppressive strategies in this commentary extend
Simaan’s work and call for a systemic change to
implement decolonising practices in teaching.
ORCID
Chontel Gibson
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9783-1489
Lisette Farias
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4238-3049
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