Insufficient and inadequate democracy? Exploring coloniality and possibilities for the teaching of slavery in Europe

Abstract

In the context of calls to decolonise education in European contexts, this paper draws on coloniality-based critiques of Eurocentric modernity to take up the links between democracy, slavery, and colonialism in education. Starting from the position that modernity requires epistemological support to sustain racism and white supremacy in European democracies, we read coloniality-based critiques of democracy with empirical literature about the teaching of slavery. We consider possibilities for revised critical engagements with democracy and with the history of European colonialism and slavery. The paper builds on and contributes to recent decolonial critiques of democracy in education by explicitly engaging a tension raised around the possibility of disentangling democracy from its colonial roots.

Keywords:

• Coloniality
• democratic education
• history teaching
• slavery teaching

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Introduction

Despite public education’s role as a cornerstone of modern democracy, schooling has been proven to run alongside and even contribute to racial inequalities (e.g. Araújo & Maeso, 2012). In England, democracy is included as a ‘fundamental British value’ in Education policy (Department for Education (DfE), 2014), which research has found to be complicit with sustaining racism in education (Farrell, 2021). And, in the context of a so-called ‘historical amnesia’ regarding Britain’s participation in the transatlantic slave trade (White, 2021), we are reminded of Abdi and Richardson’s (2008) argument that education can be ‘viewed as overwhelming counter-democratic’ when schools become ‘the main agents in the reproduction of the dominant perspectives and practices of life,’ creating and sustaining ‘social hierarchies’ (p. 4). Thus, because education does not simply require but ‘deserves’ deconstructive and reconstructive analyses and interventions (Abdi & Richardson, 2008, p. 4), we must reflect on, rather than assume, the democratic character of education. Given wider calls to decolonise education across European countries who colonised lands and participated in slavery (see e.g. Bhambra et al., 2018), what can linking theoretical work unrooting racism and coloniality with empirical research on teaching about slavery contribute to on-going discussions about the transformative role of education in democracies?

We are three educators and education researchers who have been grappling with issues around racism and education from different positionalities. One is of Portuguese origin (a slavery-complicit state) teaching about social justice in education and researching decolonial possibilities in European education contexts. Another is Black British of Jamaican heritage and a history education specialist, researching the teaching of slavery in England and Jamaica from a postcolonial perspective. The third author is a white settler-Canadian living in England looking to bridge educational efforts in Canada towards reconciliation with First Nations, Metis, and Inuit populations with calls to decolonise education in Europe. In this paper, we attempt to bring together our concerns in response to this Special Issue’s call for papers to unpack assumptions and take up complexities inherent to democracy and education. Through a lens of coloniality, we explore and synthesise several critiques of democracy and education alongside empirical research emerging about the teaching of slavery in history in England which we nuance by also drawing on scholarship from the Netherlands and Portugal.¹

Unpacking taken-for-granted assumptions about democracy and education

Democracy (from the Greek ‘rule’ by ‘the people’) has been defined and re-defined by many theorists (Rockhill, 2017), leading to a wide range of approaches to democratic education (Sant, 2019). Hytten and Stemhagen (2021, p. 179) qualify these conversations in the field of democratic education as a spectrum of responses to dissatisfactions with democracy from ‘revision to more radical disruption’. Those promoting revision and re-envisioning see problematic practices as ‘aberrations’ that can be learned from and fixed. Important here is the work that theorising and defining democracy does in sustaining a particularly (Western) epistemological position. Despite a consistent concern that conceptions and practice of democracy are inadequate, the theoretical work on education and democracy tends to emerge from within the same onto-epistemology from which democracy became an organising framework (Mbembe, 2021; Mignolo, 2021), and therefore remains ‘limited to one single story or half the story’ (Mignolo, 2021, p. 222). Hytten and Stemhagen (2021) note they have historically been complicit with this mainstream approach, acknowledging it is insufficient to address racism. They argue democratic theorists continue to evade race, ‘writing instead in universal terms about democracy while ignoring the ways in which ostensibly democratic societies reproduce white supremacy socially, politically, economically, and educationally’ (p. 178). Thus, we begin this discussion with the premise that much more work needs to be done to account for racism and white supremacy in the history and present of democracy and its relationship to education. Contributing to emerging literature in the field of democratic education that has reflected on the entanglements between democracy and white supremacy (Hytten & Stemhagen, 2021) and democracy and colonialism (da Costa, 2023; Zembylas, 2022), we aim to continue working through the question of what possibilities are opened when we position democracy as also part of our current problems (e.g. sexism, racism, biodiversity collapse, socioeconomic inequalities) rather than just the solution; focusing specifically on possible shifts that might happen in conversations about present challenges when we engage the history of democracy in its intimate entanglement with the history of slavery. To do so, we frame the discussion from a coloniality-based critique, focusing on education contexts from European colonial nations.

Starting from a coloniality-based critique means to start from the position that the inadequacy of modern democracies is a consequence of its entanglement in colonial logics and legacies. Processes of European colonisation involved establishing colonial rule of other territories. Coloniality refers to the underpinning and enduring systems of oppression (e.g. exploitation of people and the planet, dispossession, and genocide) that were established (and then disavowed) by the political project of Western modernity – a shiny narrative of salvation and progress, achieved via conversion to Christianity, civilisation, capitalism, technological advancements, and democracy (Mignolo, 2021). Western modernity/coloniality requires the support of an epistemology that legitimises this project, whilst simultaneously obfuscating its violence (Mignolo, 2021). This epistemology is largely based on the invention of concepts and mechanisms of knowledge production that construct hierarchical forms of otherness (e.g. Mignolo, 2021; Wynter, 2003). From this framing, we seek to consider the links between work that challenges taken-for-granted assumptions in democracy and education and research on the teaching of slavery.

Unpacking assumptions about the role of education in democracy

The ever-growing field of democratic education offers a wide range of very different definitions and approaches to democracy (Sant, 2019). Despite enunciating from distinct positions and offering different understandings of what democracy is and how it should be approached, there is general agreement that democracy is desirable and must be promoted (Hytten & Stemhagen, 2021; Sant, 2019). Education research is marked by questions around for and by whom democracy is desirable (Hytten & Stemhagen, 2021) and to what extent it is enabling the very same issues it is meant to be solving (da Costa, 2023; Zembylas, 2022). Hytten and Stemhagen (2021) suggest critiques of democracy in education research tend to evade issues of race and instead feed into the projection of a universal narrative that sustains white supremacy. It is not surprising, then, that ‘growing numbers of social justice-oriented scholars, especially scholars of colour, are deeply suspicious of democracy’ (p. 177). Zembylas (2022, drawing on Güven, 2015) identifies a colonial logic in democratic education scholarship whereby democracy is positioned as the only conceptual tool with which to think about present problems and future responses, keeping educators from interrogating whether democracy is causing and/or perpetuating the logic and practices of colonialism.

Responding to critiques of democracy in education, Hytten and Stemhagen (2021) outline three approaches for democratic education to address racism: decolonial democracy – centring marginalised voices and learning from them what are the restrictions and affordances of democracy; abolitionist democracy – emphasising the need for systemic and institutional changes; and Black pragmatist democracy – challenging old habits and narratives in a way that provides hope for the future. Despite their critique of democracy and concern about an inadequate treatment of white supremacy, Hytten and Stemhagen (2021) insist critically reflexive work holds transformative potential. They are

hopeful about the possibilities of disentangling democracy from its racist roots and reimagining and recreating it in its most idealistic (yet impactful) fashion: as a way of life that maximizes individual freedom and flourishing while supporting common goods in society where all people see their fates as shared. (p. 180)

Their work raises and sustains a key dynamic tension between the importance of a deep and explicit critical reflexivity of the roots of exclusion within democracy and the argument for ‘dismissing democracy outright’ (p. 180). In this paper, we seek to attempt a discussion that unpacks the roots of racism in democracy and consider research on the teaching of slavery to explore possibilities for emancipatory and transformative approaches.

The intimate entanglements between democracy and slavery

Looking at the entanglements between democracy and slavery would be essential to engage in, rather than avoid, the tension raised by Hytten and Stemhagen (2021). The work of Achilles Mbembe (2021) provides a starting premise. He contends that ‘democracy, the plantation, and the colonial empire are objectively all part of the same historical matrix’, arguing that ‘this originary and structuring fact lies at the heart of every historical understanding of the violence of the contemporary global order’ (p. 23). And Sylvia Wynter’s (e.g. Wynter, 2001, 2003) genealogy of the invention and then over-representation of Man, as the universal descriptive statement for the human, offers a key theoretical framework to trace the entanglements identified by Mbembe. Wynter unpacks how ‘the human’ and ‘humanity’ were constructed as Euro-western concepts that then served to justify the epistemic basis for their creation and universal projection. She argues the rise of democracy in ancient Greece was already compromised and complicit in this colonial logic (Wynter, in Scott, 2000). The ‘people’ of the polis (i.e. the men that owned property) were constructed against the enslaved people who performed not only a logistical role that allowed ‘citizens’ to participate in assembly and ‘rule’, but also a symbolic one – that of the non-free person, non-citizen and, therefore, non-human. Wynter (2003) shows how this original and binary logic reemerged in the Renaissance period when the human/citizen was constructed as the Christian European in contrast to the ‘irrational’ and ‘sinful’ peoples of the colonies (i.e. Indigenous and enslaved). The Enlightenment built on this logic by describing the human as the selected (white property-owning male citizen), against the dysselected (poor people and people of colour). We notice through Wynter’s work that as the state (Renaissance) and the nation (Enlightenment) are invented as the ground for liberal democratic structures so is a particular notion of the citizen/human (white, European, middle-class man).

Mbembe (2021) expands on the ‘pro-slavery’ nature of modern democracies. He argues violence has always been constitutive of democracy with the colonial and slavery systems forming its ‘bitter sediment’ (p. 20). Since most modern democracies were expanded (from Europe) or established (in settler colonial contexts), they operated through a bifurcation of those who belong and those who do not, a distinction made largely on the grounds of race (Mbembe, 2021). These exclusions are already built into the fabric of modern democracies and their capitalist economies. For example, while colonisers granted rights to indigenous and enslaved people (so long as they converted to Christianity), colonisers were also given the right to wage war if conversion to Christianity was resisted (Mignolo, 2021). Mignolo (2021) points to how in the Declarations of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, Kant developed the racialised conception of the nation, a term that described only the ‘pure’ blood (white) societies (i.e. England, France, and Germany). Importantly, coloniality-based critiques do not stop at highlighting the cruelty of the roots of racism but also counter the belief of Black (cultural) inferiority. McKittrick (2021), referencing Wynter’s exploration of attempts to negate black humanity, notes a strong(er) counter-narrative of Black cultural resistance in the midst of the degradation of the lived experience on the plantation, highlighting ‘marronages, mutinies, funerals, carnivals, dramas, visual arts, fictions, poems, fights, dances, music-making and-listening, revolts […]and the ongoing creation of culture […] re-invent[ing] (black) humanity and life’ (p. 157).

Building from Wynter, scholars in the field of curriculum studies have taken up the role of education in sustaining coloniality. They argue that engaging with Wynter helps shift approaches to history and education because it targets the epistemic frames of the curriculum rather than just its content. Their research starts from the hierarchies, denials, exclusions and absences central to the construction of our episteme (e.g. Henderson, 2019; Snaza & Tarc, 2019) and is weary of alternatives that do not address that epistemic level (Rose, 2019). Indeed, beyond this literature applying Wynter in curriculum discussions, there are wide ranging responses to calls to decolonise education and to take up coloniality which are outside of the scope of this paper, and further work could connect these discussions with the existing scholarship developing critical race theory and black joy in education (e.g. Johnson, 2015; Ladson-Billings, 2023). We particularly highlight important pedagogical work in the Caribbean (e.g. Bristol, 2012; Lavia, 2012). Yet, in this paper, we look at conversations related to teaching the history of slavery in England and two other European states complicit with colonialism: the Netherlands and Portugal. In the next section, we consider how current issues in the teaching of slavery in history education contribute to more practice-oriented concerns and possibilities.

History classroom and entanglements with the history of slavery

The teaching of history in liberal democracies has reflected the wider contestations around the purposes of schooling (Biesta, 2009). On the one hand, teaching history is connected to its subject discipline. The professional discourse of the UK history education academy, for example, has predominantly emphasised developing students’ disciplinary subject knowledge, skills and understanding, and their knowledge of ‘history’ and its nature as a ‘construct’ (Counsell, 2011; Lee, 1991). On the other hand, history teaching is highlighted for its capacity to be transformative: to contribute to students’ development as liberal and democratic citizens, to students’ moral education and to their understanding of the present (Barton & Levstick, 2004). Significance is attributed to history’s role in developing students’ notion of nationhood, belonging, and social cohesion and in developing students’ sense of both a national and a personal identity (Barton, 2009). Further, critical history education educates for a wider citizenry able to understand and respond to issues of global scope with local ramifications (Santisteban et al., 2018). However, given it is conducted within state-oriented curricula, a significant tension inherent to the civic purposes of this subject is the extent to which history education reinforces or critically reflects on the construction of the nation through its relation to coloniality.

If history education is to contribute to a critical ‘democratic education’ via decolonial, abolitionist, and pragmatic approaches as called for by Hytten and Stemhagen (2021), coloniality will need to be taken up explicitly. An ongoing debate exists around purposes of and approaches to teaching and learning about Empire in European colonising nations. For example, important tensions were particularly evident in debates around the revision of the history curriculum in England between 2010 and 2014, the period of the so-called history wars when Michael Gove was Secretary of State for Education (Watson, 2020). On one side of the debate Gove and his supporters on the Conservative Right, together with historians such as Niall Ferguson and David Starkey, advocated for the teaching of the history of the British Empire and colonialism in school as a ‘positive’ ‘single’ narrative, celebrating a ‘national’ story of ‘our island’ and its ‘Imperial heroes’ and their achievements. This perspective was reflected in the controversial and first draft of the proposed new National Curriculum for History in 2013 (Ferguson, 2013).

On the other side of the argument, many history education professionals favoured a more critical, varied, and nuanced approach to teaching about Empire and colonialism through global and multiple perspectives. This approach would aid students’ understanding of the world they live in and their place within it without avoiding the controversies of Empire, and while simultaneously recognising key sensitivities (i.e. issues of race and racism, social injustices, and inequalities, that are inevitably a part of this history) (Burns, 2014; Evans, 2011; Haydn, 2014). Since the ‘history wars’, there are now wider discussions about decolonising the curriculum and specifically the history curriculum in England that build from these priorities (Harris, 2020; Moncrieffe et al., 2020). These debates marked by angst within history education about the teaching of Empire in England seem to be replicated across countries in Europe grappling with their colonising pasts and presents (Mycock, 2018).

The limited research about teaching the history of slavery in England shows that it is often narrow in focus (emphasising mostly a positive narrative about British abolition), lacks historical perspective and perspectives, and is limited in the range of voices presented. Slavery is often seen solely through the prism of the ‘Black peoples of America’ and the American mainland with little, if any, reference to the British Caribbean or British mainland (Burns, 2016, Donington et al., 2016). Similarly, in the Netherlands, Lin et al. (2018) and Savenije et al. (2014b) indicated that the topic is often approached ‘transnationally’, without sufficient context, and with few links to Dutch colonialism. Speaking more broadly about the teaching of slavery in ‘post-colonising’ European states, Mycock (2018) argues this (dis)placement of what happened elsewhere, means ‘culpability is more ambiguous’ (p. 26). It is then unsurprising that research in these countries has also found students are left with a limited understanding and struggle to link present and recent historical events to slavery and imperialism, avoiding links to issues of racism (Burns, 2016), or remain unaware that their country has a slavery past (Savenije et al., 2014a). Stepping over issues of racism when teaching about slavery can also leave Black students feeling marginalised (Doharty, 2019) and alienated (Traille, 2006). Thus, the teaching of slavery tends to reflect rather than address the concern about a lack of democratic response to white supremacy as indicated by Hytten and Stemhagen (2021).

Writing from Portugal, Araújo and Maeso (2012) specifically engage with the question of teaching about slavery from a perspective of coloniality and further illustrate the wider constraints holding inadequate democratic education in place. They identify how the history of European colonialism and slavery is often downplayed, absent, marginalised, or neglected in Portuguese textbooks and in academic and pedagogical debates about European history and its teaching. They identify a tendency to favour a more benign portrayal of European history, modernity, heritage, and identity, focusing on values such as human rights and democracy. They also note a reluctance by historians and history educators to make explicit and specifically explore the links and connections between European transatlantic slavery, colonialism, race, racial ideology, and racism, both in the past and their continued legacies in the present. Reflecting the tracing of the roots of racism in democracy contributed by scholars such as Wynter and Mbembe, Araújo and Maeso (2012) see this reluctance as a form of Eurocentrism,

a historical phenomenon rooted in…the global ‘colonial/modern capitalism’ inaugurated with the colonisation of ‘America’: in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and marked by two interrelated processes: the construction of the idea of ‘race’ and the establishment of a diversified structure of control of labour-including slavery. (pp. 152–153)

Building from this scholarship in Portugal pointing to the Eurocentric framings and superficial treatment of the teaching of slavery, research emerging from the Netherlands and England also shows that teachers tend to distance themselves from the history of slavery (Klein, 2017), or miss/ignore opportunities to make explicit links between this history and racism today (Doharty, 2019). Klein’s (2017) Dutch study found that despite all teachers stating the commitment to the importance of this content, out of four teacher participants (three of White Dutch heritage and one of Caribbean Surinamese heritage), only the teacher of Surinamese heritage was committed to making strong links between the history of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery and the present day. This finding reinforces the need to take collective responsibility for addressing the links between slavery and racism today. Additionally, Traille (2006) highlights the importance of supporting teachers to do so. Her study in England (2006) raised concerns about perceived teacher attitudes and insensitivities leading to students’ feelings of ‘shame’ instead of ‘pride’ for ‘their’ history (p. 64). Similarly, Doharty’s (2019) research, using critical race analysis, also in England, offers evidence of Black students’ distress in lessons about slavery, reporting feelings of hurt, upset, and sometimes anger. Teachers demonstrated insensibilities in their use of language (e.g. when speaking about enslaved Africans) and in their choice and management of particular pedagogies (e.g. re-enactments/role-play activities depicting slavery). Doharty’s studies indicate a lack of awareness among teachers of the emotional impact of their choices on students of African or Caribbean heritage. These student experiences are most likely complicated and compounded further by a persistent lack of Black history and of diverse history in English secondary schools (Arday, 2020), which often starts and ends with slavery (Traille, 2006). The Historical Association (2007) has recognised teaching about slavery as a challenge teachers face, noting that

teaching the subject, whether in mixed-race or all- white classes, raises challenging issues for history teachers about how to convey the inhumanity of the slave trade and how to deal with pupils’ anger, racism, blame, guilt or indifference. (p. 11)

Interestingly, Savenije et al.’s (2014a, 2014b) Dutch studies raise another perspective. Together the studies examined students’ attribution of historical significance to and their perceptions of ‘heritage of slavery’, prior/during/after learning about slavery in two multicultural junior high schools. Savenije et al. (2014b) explicitly explored the relationship between students’ learning of the history of slavery and their understanding of Dutch heritage from a range of perspectives. Overwhelmingly, students attributed significance to the history of slavery and its ‘historical remnants’. From a list of 11 reasons given, all students saw learning about slavery to address current issues around ‘equality and inequalities’ and ‘for the descendants of slavery’ as the most important. It seems that lessons which included critical reflection of historical perspectives of both the enslaved and the enslavers, and a museum visit where explicit links, albeit briefly, were made between past and present, supported a better understanding of the colonial legacies still sustaining inequalities in the present. Thus, pupils came to see slavery as an example of inequality in the past and seemed to make their own leap from this to discussions about inequalities in the present.

Recently British academic interest in this history has seen an attempt to put ‘slavery’ back into British history. This includes a move to teaching beyond celebrating ‘abolition’ and towards redressing a national collective ‘forgetting’. There are calls to highlight a collective memory that is contested terrain. This means being explicit about the links between Britain’s mainland, the metropole, and slavery in the Caribbean and its former colonies (Donington et al., 2016). Emerging studies indicate professional and pedagogical work have sought to address the acknowledged limitations of the teaching of this history in school, including practice that foregrounds the British Caribbean (Davies, 2020). This work is complementary to the work of researchers in the Netherlands and Portugal and signals a need to link and support critical democratic approaches to the teaching of slavery in European states with responsibility for colonisation and slavery.

Discussion

Learning from the research on teaching about slavery in England, alongside the Netherlands and Portugal, reinforces for us the need to tell the histories of democracy, colonialism, and slavery together. And so, we return to Hytten and Stemhagen’s (2021) work for the level of depth they have offered in thinking these processes. Understanding the complexity of entanglements between democracy and white supremacy, they articulate three approaches to democracy (decolonial, abolitionist and Black pragmatist) that might disentangle it from its colonial roots. We have attempted in this paper to take these up via an engagement with democracy and slavery teaching in education through Wynter’s (2003) genealogy of the construction of Man as if it was the human, and Mbembe’s (2021) conception of democracy as colonial and complicity with slavery. We, nevertheless, retain the position of the ‘certain scholars who think democracy is an inherently colonial project’ referred to by Hytten and Stemhagen (2021, p. 191).

We agree with Hytten and Stemhagen (2021) that there is work to do to consider how research and practice in education can address racism. Particularly, how can formal education target the colonial structures of oppression currently marginalising and excluding participation (decolonial critique); challenge the dominance of western liberalism in legislation and distribution of resources, sustaining white privilege (abolitionist critique); and change habits, practices, and sensibilities so that systems and structures can be changed (Black pragmatism) (Hytten & Stemhagen, 2021)? We also press for further attention to the question of the possibility for disentangling democracy from its colonial roots. And we respond to the enunciative position of their critique, developing a different, albeit closely aligned, outcome for thinking about democracy in education. We are concerned that centring marginalised and excluded voices must align with systemic change in education. Thus, as education scholars we must start by addressing the epistemic framework that has made white supremacy possible. This concern resonates with Araújo and Maeso’s (2012) critique of the teaching of slavery. They argue for a move beyond conversations that consider exclusion/inclusion of ‘the other’/‘others’/‘other voices’ to more explicitly target the ‘the construction of the core idea of national or European or Western “we” around which the “other” was organised’ (p. 157). This can be enabled by addressing the place of enunciation – the epistemic frame – from where these constructions emerge. Particularly, Araújo and Maeso (2012) call for a dismantling of the ‘master [Eurocentric] interpretation of modernity’ that ‘disconnects colonialism from liberalism, and “race”/racism from the construction of the democratic regimes’, and ‘the so-called “industrial revolution” from slavery’ (Araújo & Maeso, 2012, pp. 158–159). With Araújo and Maeso, we would argue that retaining a commitment to ‘democracy’s ideal’, ‘disentangled’ from its colonial and racist roots, would sustain this modern/colonial logic, and that it might be more productive to instead make these entanglements explicit and take them up as we have inherited them.

It is not easy to decolonise education by trying to take up the entangled histories of democracy and slavery. There is not one ‘best practice’ that will enable a ‘better’ approach, especially when we are aware of the insufficiencies and inadequacies of a democratic framework that retains an important place in the way we relate to justice and fairness in England. Looking back at the history of slavery and the resistance movements that accompanied it as well as the thriving of Black and Indigenous populations despite the oppressions they experienced and through self-identified and collective definitions outside of the system of white supremacy (Henderson, 2019), there are possibilities to promote more transformative pedagogies. These seem to require telling the history of slavery in context and linking together past and present, through multiple perspectives, centring joy and resistance (Johnson, 2015). Further research in local contexts might identify how to support and resource teachers to do so in ways that are context-relevant and in critical relation to wider modern/colonial structures (such as democracy).

In addition to supporting more concrete linking and mobilising work across contexts in Europe with responsibility for coloniality we see promising directions as we have identified in this paper (e.g. England, the Netherlands, Portugal). Research supports countering deficit narratives and affirming Black joy and justice (e.g. Johnson, 2015); engaging with movements in for example, Indigenous Knowledge Systems and ethical relationality in education (e.g. in Canada: Coulthard & Simpson, 2016; Donald, 2009; in Norway: Eriksen & Stein, 2022); and, appreciating pedagogical innovations in Caribbean contexts linking personal and community memory and professional advocacy towards incomplete but socially transformative decolonisation of public education (e.g. Bristol, 2012; McCarthy & Sealey-Ruiz, 2010). These initiatives share a targeting of the epistemological framing of coloniality and suggest educators and education researchers work beyond a reconstitution of some sort of ‘pure’ democracy through education in favour of multiple, localised, approaches taking democracy’s inadequacy as a starting point for exploring transformative and emancipatory possibilities.

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Notes on contributors

Marta da Costa

Marta da Costa is a lecturer in Education, in the School of Education, at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on post and decolonial approaches to Global Citizenship Education, in European education contexts.

Yvonne Sinclair

Yvonne Sinclair is a History Education specialist, formerly a Principal Lecturer in Secondary Teacher Education and Lead on Secondary programmes, at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is currently a Visiting Teaching Fellow in the university’s School of Education and engaged in PhD research on teaching and learning about the history of British slavery in the post-colonial contexts of England and Jamaica.

Karen Pashby

Karen Pashby is Professor of Global Citizenship Education, Lead for Research in Education at Manchester Metropolitan University, and President of the Comparative International Education Society of Canada (2023-2025). Her widely published theoretical and empirical research explores how to engage productive pedagogical tensions in reflexive approaches to ethical global issues in ‘global North’ contexts.

Notes

1 England was our starting point, but we thought it was important to learn from scholarship emerging from other European contexts. Limited to literature written in English, we found research exploring teaching about slavery and its links with ethnicity and race from The Netherlands and Portugal. As such, we draw on literature from these two countries to offer a broader, albeit restricted, overview teaching about slavery in (some) European contexts.