Engaging the Struggle for Decolonial Approaches to Teaching Community Psychology.

Abstract

Community psychology’s history has traditionally been described within the context of U.S. history, silencing contributions from people of color from the Americas, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and Africa. In a MA/ PhD specialization in Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, Indigenous Psychologies, and Ecopsychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, we are attempting to steer into critical dialogues about modernity, coloniality, and decoloniality, closely examining our curriculum and pedagogy, including our approaches to fieldwork and research. Turning to Indigenous psychologists, decolonial and critical race theorists, and cultural workers within the U.S. and from the Global South, we are attempting to challenge coloniality in the social sciences, community psychology, and in our own thinking and teaching to unmask hegemonic assumptions and open space for decolonial theory and practice. In this paper, we explore ways in which we are working with our graduate students and faculty to co-construct a decolonial curriculum that integrates decoloniality so that knowledges from historically silenced locations, as well as anti-racist and other decolonial praxes can co-exist and thrive.