Deconstructing the Master Narrative: Active Learning through Decolonial Pedagogy

Abstract

For most undergraduate students, history prior to college has been dominated by learning through a settler colonialism lens. Settler colonialism embodies the typical United States, master, or traditional narrative. It erases marginalized perspectives, histories, culture, and identity in favor of the white settler perspective. By overlooking the histories of minoritized individuals in the United States, students are losing out on learning important facets of history. For minority students, this also indirectly tells them that their history is not valued. This paper is structured in three sections: first, I describe settler colonialism and how it is deeply embedded in the teaching of U.S. history; second, I discuss the process of decolonizing history, teaching and learning; and lastly, the third section describes how instructors can use active learning as a decolonial pedagogy and provides recommendations for practice.