Decolonizing University Education - Evaluation of Engagement and Success

Many UK universities promote “Decolonizing the University”, with principles and example case studies. We wanted to evaluate engagement and success beyond these examples. We applied the CRISP-DM Cross Industry Standard Process for Data Mining to measure the level of engagement and success in decolonization of learning and teaching provision across the University of Leeds. The research literature lacks an agreed measurable definition or metric for “decolonized education”. A concrete, measurable indicator of the taught content of a module is its Reading List, specifying core and recommended texts for the taught module, available via the University Library. So, one approach to measuring the effect of decolonizing initiatives on teaching provision could be to measure what proportion of the taught module reading lists have been decolonized, by comparing their current reading lists with past reading lists, and analyzing any differences. However, we found that the online Reading Lists system does not provide data on past reading lists; hence, the LIBRARY READING LISTS SYSTEM PROVIDES NO EVIDENCE OF DECOLONIZING READING LISTS. We also tried to analyze Quality Assurance end-of-module review forms, but found that QUALITY ASSURANCE MODULE REVIEWS PROVIDE NO EVIDENCE OF DECOLONIZING READING LISTS. We concluded: APPROXIMATELY 0% OF TAUGHT MODULE READING LISTS HAVE BEEN DECOLONISED. Our research indicates that the majority of individual teaching staff have little or no engagement with the framework for decolonizing the university, and hence the framework has not proven to be successful.