Birgul’s approach supports inclusive and decolonial teaching by validating multiple knowledge sources, encouraging co-creation, reducing barriers to participation and fostering a strong sense of belonging. Students become more engaged, more confident in expressing their ideas and more able to think critically about complex global issues in context.

Teaching area

Decolonisation of the curriculum

Course

Education, Peacebuilding and Conflict is an optional Level 5 module open to students across the Faculty of Social Science. This module usually attracts up to 30 students from diverse disciplinary and ethnic backgrounds.

Description

My teaching practices are designed to value the diversity of the students and promote inclusive participation. I always use diverse locations and case studies. Every week, we look at two or three case studies from various places so that the students are exposed to different realities. The reading materials offer a variety of perspectives rather than binary Global North or Global South approaches to represent the different dynamics within and between geographies.

Co-creation

I foster student co-creation. I think that it’s important to recognise that we do not know all the available sources. I ask the students to reflect on their own context and bring their own experiences to the table by contributing articles or news sources that they find. This broadens the resources for the module, especially if they are reading articles in languages other than English. They translate the materials and describe the content to the group. I add their recommended resources in English to the reading list the following year.

I undertake a mid-term and end-of-term informal reflection with my students alongside the official survey at the end of the term to check if the content is relevant, if it is meeting expectations and how I can improve it. This feedback is particularly important for students who may not always feel confident raising concerns through formal systems. Using this feedback, I adapt examples, readings and activities during the term and make more substantial revisions for the following year.

Today, for example, we were doing activities about peace education – what it is and different approaches to it. I invited my students to engage and talk about their own experiences. In the last part of the class, I introduced a case study about the implementation of peace in Sierra Leone. I asked, ‘Who has been to Sierra Leone? Does anyone know about Sierra Leone?’ None of them knew anything about the country, so I asked them to do some quick research to find out where it is and start talking about it. I then provided some historical background before introducing a discussion about peace education in Sierra Leone. This activity helps students move away from abstract or universalised understandings of peace education and instead engage with it as a context‑specific, political and historically situated practice. It also challenges assumptions that knowledge is generated only in familiar or Western contexts.

Visual resources

To bring the topic to life and help the students to help them to visualise the place, I showed some videos and photos of Sierra Leone, including photos of a school, so they could see how peace education is applied in context and note the challenges. I showed them that the school coexists with a mining operation next door and asked them to think about the intersection of human suffering and education. I asked, ‘How can we think about peace education here?’ We’ve been talking about peace education in general, but when you apply it in context, you see the complexities and the challenges. Peace education has become a global policy, but they should look at what’s happening at a local level. What alternatives could there be?

The students quickly became critical and started to interrogate some of the normative assumptions of the processes and the policies that we talk about. The case-study approach with videos is concrete and memorable, allowing students to engage more deeply. Visual resources are particularly effective for students who may not be familiar with the geographical or historical context and for those who benefit from multimodal learning. They also support emotionally engaged, critical discussion rather than abstract comparison.

Engagement

I say right at the beginning that this is a learning space for everyone, and we’ve all got to contribute. I want them all to read the required reading and I explain that this is important, not just for them, but also for the people that they’re going to share the table with. I always encourage different students to feed back from the discussion on their table so the responsibility is shared.

I provide plenty of opportunities for students to engage in the class, using a variety of individual, pairwork and groupwork activities. They start to sit in groups from the beginning of the module and then tend to stick with the same people. By Week 5, I get them to move around to different groups to mix them up. Although students are initially reluctant to change groups, this practice helps break down comfort zones and cliques, exposes students to different perspectives and prevents marginalised students from becoming isolated in discussions. It also supports cross‑cultural and cross disciplinary dialogue, particularly in diverse student cohorts.

I use a ‘World Café’ approach, where students discuss different questions at tables for short periods and then rotate to a new table. Each table focuses on a specific theme or question, and one student remains as host to summarise previous discussions for the new group. This structure ensures that all students contribute, ideas circulate widely and quieter students have multiple opportunities to engage.

In discussions, I always positively acknowledge a student’s contribution when they express themselves, saying, ‘Brilliant, excellent point!’ It’s quite exaggerated, but they love it. A shy person will then start talking because they realise that diverse opinions are allowed and that what they say is valued. This intentional validation helps create a learning environment where less confident students feel safe to contribute.

Outcomes

Decolonisation of the curriculum and anti-racist pedagogy

Over the past two years, I have continuously reviewed and updated the module materials to ensure that they reflect a diverse range of perspectives and experiences.

Co-creation of the curriculum

I add resources students recommend to the reading list, which ensures that the curriculum remains dynamic, relevant and representative of diverse epistemologies. It also signals to students that their knowledge and lived experiences are valued and have a lasting impact on the module beyond their own cohort.

Student engagement and fostering sense of belonging

• During the module, I see the class dynamic changing, from no one talking to everyone talking.
• In feedback, students have said that this is the first time they have ever felt that they wanted to talk in class. They are finding their voice and starting to express themselves.
• I have noticed that many students who take my first-year classes subsequently choose to enrol in my second-year modules, which may suggest that they value the inclusive and participatory learning environment.