Considering the role of social media: #BlackLivesMatter as a pedagogical intervention to decolonise curriculum

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a drastic transformation to schooling for students throughout the world. During this period, a number of issues arose in our local, national and global communities, including the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests and rallies organised by #BlackLivesMatter. Living through and witnessing many social issues, coupled with the new and enduring pandemic, furthered our understandings of how young people were engaging with these topics without the structures of schools to support them. This article presents the results of a case study where youth aged 15–17 years shared their experiences and understandings about many social justice issues they were observing. The most significant learning around these issues for youth occurred informally through social media as opposed to in the classroom, reinforcing that schools are not ethical spaces from which to challenge institutional, structural and systemic barriers to justice. As such, this article discusses the potential for formal education to be transformed into an ethical and decolonising space to learn about and challenge injustice.

Creating Spaces of Engagement: Exploring High School Youth’s Voices in Reshaping the Social Justice Curriculum

“…Around the same time, there were also ongoing Wet'suwet'en protests calling for Indigenous sovereignty in what is currently Canada. These sociopolitical issues generated wide discussions in informal spaces, such as within peer and family conversations and social media platforms (Pillay et al, 2022). However, learning discourses in formal educational spaces, such as traditional K-12 classrooms, did not appear to engage with these prolific injustices, thus preventing meaningful dialogue and learning from occurring, as youth participants reported in our previous study (Pillay et al, 2022).…”

“…Adzhalie-Mensah and Dunne (2019), Dei (2008), and Harber (2004) have uncovered that formal education can have two faces. It can become a site of transformation and healing for individuals, but also perpetuate various social and epistemic injustices (Fricker, 2017;Pillay et al, 2022). Recently, schools have been critiqued for failing to address critical issues tied to the stark inequities, injustices and learning gaps that have been particularly exacerbated by COVID-19 (Allen et al, 2020).…”

“…As students develop an awareness of racial injustices, violence, economic injustice, and police brutality, teachers who choose to use their classrooms as spaces for teaching about social justice increasingly come under scrutiny, due to school governance and policy restrictions (Cumberbatch & Trujillo-Pagán, 2016;Dover, 2015;Esposito & Swain, 2009). As a result, alternative spaces such as social media platforms, have provided transformative sites for youth to engage in social-justice issues (Pillay et al, 2022). Globally, many youth have been purposely seeking these spaces outside of the school walls to explore social justice and equityrelated issues in relation to Black, Indigenous, Asian, and other racialized peoples.…”

“…These sociopolitical issues generated wide discussions in informal spaces, such as within peer and family conversations and social media platforms (Pillay et al, 2022). However, learning discourses in formal educational spaces, such as traditional K-12 classrooms, did not appear to engage with these prolific injustices, thus preventing meaningful dialogue and learning from occurring, as youth participants reported in our previous study (Pillay et al, 2022). A multitude of reasons can be given for this absence, such as expectations of school curricula and teachers' own reservations (Dover, 2015).…”

Decolonising the school curriculum: a special feature

“…In their study located in the Canadian school system, Pillay et al (2022) consider the impact of social media on students' engagement with social justice issues during the lockdown imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In their analysis of students' social media interactions, the authors report finding that, unlike formal classroom spaces (where they argue that educators can fail to provide ethical spaces for decolonising discourse, interaction and learning), social media spaces offer informal occasions for significant learning about social justice issues.…”