Decolonising and indigenising the psychology curriculum: Co-creating and co-implementing...
Channel: AusPLAT Conferences and Roundtables
Date: 2022-04-12

The social and health inequalities between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous people in Australia are the largest in the world (WHO, 2008) and are increasing at alarming rates (AHMAC, 2017; Bond & Singh 2020; Dudgeon et al., 2014) due to historical and continued colonialization and imposing Western mainstream services (Came & Griffith, 2017; Dudgeon et al., 2014). Simultaneously, it is increasingly recognised that Indigenous worldviews, knowledges and practices are a key to our survival and that turning around the existential crisis we are facing requires a paradigm shift from Western to Indigenous ways of being-knowing-doing (Buergelt et al., 2017; Griffith, 2006, 2014; Kingsley, 2019; Yunkaporta, 2018). Addressing the inequalities and ensuring our survival necessitates decolonising and Indigenising education, specifically the psychology curriculum. As discipline we are in the fortunate situation that the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project (AIPEP) developed a framework for Indigenising the Psychology Curriculum. However, there is scarce knowledge regarding how to implement decolonising and Indigenising. We are offering insights into how our discipline, together with Indigenous academics, jointly co-created and committed to a holistic, long-term and iterative journey map for authentically Indigenising our psychology curriculum using both Indigenous and critical Western pedagogies. We will provide insight into how the following aspects lie at the heart of our Indigenising process: strategically creating an Indigenising team comprising Indigenous and Western academics and education designers; using a governance processes based on ecological principles (sociocracy/deep democracy); co-creating Indigenising principles; co-creating and co-implementing an Indigenising audit of our curriculum that also harnessed feedback regarding ideas, challenges, needs and resources; and reciprocally working together with relevant groups within and beyond the university. We will also share the multi-pronged pathways we created for building the capacity and confidence of our team to Indigenise and to empower our Indigenous students.