Decolonising the curriculum: common sense, threshold concepts, and epistemic injustice

In On the Affective Threshold of Power and Privilege (2023), Julie Rattray reflects on the impact of decolonising the curriculum (DtC) on threshold concept (TC) theory. In this paper, I focus on student troublesomeness in the context of DtC—troublesomeness being a key dimension in TC. I argue that such difficulty requires a bespoke analysis as it involves complex entanglements of politics, existential experiences, and epistemic difficulties. The result is twofold. First, these difficulties cannot be overcome using standard epistemic and pedagogical methods precisely because they arise out of tensions between decolonial, material, and hegemonic culture and pedagogical practices. Indeed, even where conceptual material is involved, students’ difficulty with that material cannot be properly characterised in terms of “acquisition”—the dominant model in educational theory, and TC specifically. Second, I argue that hegemonic student troublesomeness is necessary, desirable, and ongoing in these contexts. Again, this puts pressure on pedagogical commitments in TC. I mobilise my analysis through my teaching of Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí’s decolonial gender theory. I then draw upon Wittgenstein and Gramsci to elaborate the existential and political vectors of the problematics of students’ difficulty. I then draw specifically on Kristie Dotson’s work to think through these dynamics in the context of epistemic injustice. The paper concludes with practical strategies for educators to manage and embrace student troublesomeness, advocating for an approach that prioritises cultural understanding and existential reflection over traditional epistemic methods.