A priority of UTSC’s 2020-25 Strategic Plan, Inspiring Inclusive Excellence, is to ensure that the campus’s commitment to inclusion, Indigeneity, and anti-racism is reflected across programs and embedded in our pedagogical approaches and supports. A working circle was established in the Fall of 2020 to lead a campus-wide curriculum review in order to assess our current standing against those goals and to inform a plan for action.
The review process honours multiple ways of knowing, with particular emphasis on Indigenous ways of knowing and knowledge systems, Black knowledges, and racialized perspectives, while also recognizing the importance of international and intercultural perspectives, and intersectionality (including gender, sexuality, and disability). For additional information, visit the Terms of Reference for the curriculum review and the membership of the working circle.
In engaging with these core areas, the curriculum review process uses a number of terms, including “equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI),” “decolonization,” “Indigenous ways of knowing and knowledge systems,” and “Black knowledges.” While these terms help to anchor our work, each one encompasses complex nuances and reflects diverse histories. They also have limitations, and critical debate about their usage, their effectiveness, and their scope is dynamic, ongoing, and sometimes fraught in both academic and community contexts. With this in mind, and recognizing also the importance of language and terminology, we have developed some suggested readings and multimedia to help unpack these areas, with particular emphasis on resources anchored within our local context.
We invite faculty and departments/units to join the members of the working circle in committing to further learning as well as necessary unlearning as a part of this review process. Suggestions for further resources can be added using the feedback form provided to contribute to a collective list.
Suggested Resources: Readings and Multimedia
Restoule, Jean-Paul. Aboriginal Worldviews and Education. Coursera class, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto
Simpson, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. “Land as Pedagogy: Nishnaabeg Intelligence and Rebellious Transformation.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 3.3 (2014), 1-25.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education, and Society 1.1 (2012), 1-40.
Vernon, Karina. “The Outside of the Inside: Blackness and the Remaking of Canadian Institutional Life.” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry 7 (2020), 258-65.
Walcott, Rinaldo. “Against Social Justice and the Limits of Diversity.” Toward What Justice? Describing Diverse Dreams of Justice in Education. Ed. Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. Routledge, 2018.
See more reading lists.