Unlearning and Relearning: Decolonising an Individual Differences Course Through a Student–Staff Partnership
Leyla De Amicis, Hannah Thompson, Hsin Cheng Chang, Sijia Wen & Michele Vincent
The psychological investigation of ’Individual Differences’ has historically excluded knowledge originating from the Global South and marginalised and/or discriminated groups (Readsura Decolonial Editorial Collective, 2022). A decolonial perspective responds to the needs of our students to feel included and represented, and ultimately, to become psychologists who work meaningfully with cultural humility and integrity, with diverse populations worldwide (Phiri, Sajid, and Delanerolle, 2023).
Starting in July 2025, our Student-Staff Partnership Scheme Fund (SSPS)’s team—comprising of three former students of the course (Hannah, Hsin Cheng, and Sijia), the course convenor (Leyla), and a colleague from a different School with expertise in decolonisation (Michele)— brought together diverse perspectives to co-create the course. Current Individual Differences students also contributed, fostering transformative change in this psychology course traditionally shaped by colonial frameworks. Drawing on decolonial literature (e.g., Roberts, 2024), our personal and professional experiences, interviews with ten former students, and conversations with current students about decolonisation, we collaboratively redesigned many aspects of the course.
This project allowed us to reflect on what can be more readily changed and what challenges may arise in the process of decolonising a course like Individual Differences. It also highlighted the importance of student-staff partnerships in this work, helping us identify what we found easy or difficult in our collaboration and in the broader experience of decolonising the course. In our words:
“The SSPS team has truly been a gift—sharing ideas, knowledge, and experiences to decolonise the ID course has deeply enriched me, although, this will be a long-term process. It was great to see our psychology students fascinated by Fanon’s ideas, and suggesting resources like The Islamic Freud’s book, The Queer Collective podcasts, and the movie Kim Ji- young, Born 1982. Co-creating learning activities has been exciting and reinforces the urgency of contributing to transformative change in the psychology curriculum at a national level. One step at a time—but we’re ready for it!” (Leyla)
“Questioning dominant frameworks felt challenging, especially when realising how much of the discipline is built upon them. In particular, engaging with literature that acknowledges how eugenics has shaped the history of psychology was difficult. Being part of a diverse team allowed us to think more critically together, and this collaboration between students and academics became a really rewarding aspect of the project for me. I felt most energised when we were collaborating closely and learning from one another. This experience showed me how diversity of thought not only enriches research but also reshapes how we approach knowledge itself.” (Hannah)
“As someone who spent 18 years in classrooms that prized memorisation, decolonising individual Differences felt like an adventure. The hardest part was learning to question Western-centred theories I once took for granted and asking whether they travel well across contexts. The most enjoyable part was interviewing classmates from different backgrounds; one conversation challenged terms like “Middle East” as Eurocentric, which really stretched my thinking. Most useful for me was practising how to hold multiple truths—reading, listening, and then revising my stance. This process gave me the courage to look beyond “one right answer”. (Sijia)
“Studying psychology has shown me how deeply the field is shaped by social and cultural contexts. Engaging with decolonizing perspectives challenged assumptions I had taken for granted and prompted me to reconsider whose voices are centered or marginalized in psychological knowledge. Although sometimes uncomfortable, discussions on culture and identity encouraged sustained reflection on how knowledge is formed. Through dialogue with peers, I came to view learning as a relational process grounded in humility, critical inquiry, and attention to context. This understanding now guides my commitment to pursue research and clinical practice with cultural attunement, openness to diverse perspectives, and ethical awareness of how power influences human experience.” (Hsin Cheng)
“As the sole partner who wasn’t a psychology specialist, I found this project both challenging and exciting. Although I sometimes felt out of my comfort zone, decolonising the curriculum is discipline-agnostic and this project is a great example of how students and colleagues from different fields should work together towards this common goal, and how much we can learn from our students. Working with students so passionately committed to decolonisation was genuinely inspiring and reminds us why students must be at the centre of decolonising efforts, and why co-creation should be a foundational principle in course design and pedagogy.” (Michele)
As we aimed to bring transformative change to a psychology course, we realised that the experience also transformed each of us—teaching us to unlearn, relearn, and embrace new approaches to learning and being. Every decolonising experience is different, but we hope you would like to know more about what we did, so please reach out! Here are our introductory videos for the transformed ID course.
References
Phiri, P., Sajid, S., & Delanerolle, G. (2023). Decolonising the psychology curriculum: A perspective. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1193241.
Readsura Decolonial Editorial Collective. (2022). Psychology as a site for decolonial analysis. Journal of Social Issues, 78(2), 255-277.
Roberts, C. (2024). Re-storying Education: Decolonizing your practice using a critical lens. Page Two.
Acknowledgements: we deeply thank the students who supported our decolonializing work in this ID course 2025/26, among them: Danyal Mackenzie, Yara Mahmoud Mohamed Hasaballa and Jia-Zhu Chu. We also thank immensely for our videos Alex Moss and Rachael Magennis and for more technical support William Farquharson and Shaun Bremnser-Hart.
Opening the Door to Demographic Literacy
Eva Kourova
A Festive Reflection on Inclusive Teaching, International Students, and New Beginnings
Behind today’s advent door is not chocolate, but something far sweeter to any educator: the moment when research, teaching, and lived experience fold into each other and open up new pathways for inclusion.
This year, I completed and submitted a paper that has now been accepted for publication—a piece that began with a simple question that has haunted much of my teaching: whose knowledge counts in higher education? Drawing on my positionality as an international student, a widening-access graduate, and a practitioner, I used conceptual analysis (inspired by Foucault and Esposito) and analytic auto-ethnography to examine how “population need” is imagined within widening-access programmes.
The publication felt like opening a tiny advent window and finding something unexpectedly joyful: that the questions I’d been sitting with mattered beyond my own classroom.
But as with all advent gifts, there was another surprise tucked behind it.
The Reviewer’s Gift: A Challenge Wrapped in Care
The reviewers praised the originality and urgency of the work, but they also offered an invaluable present: a challenge.
They asked how student voices might be systematically represented.
They wondered whether conceptual analysis alone was enough.
They invited me to consider empirical evidence that could support, enrich, or even challenge the initial claims.
Far from discouraging, their comments felt like the kind of nudge a good mentor gives at a winter seminar: gentle, purposeful, and full of possibility.
And so, like many of us around this time of year, I decided to act on it.
A Follow-Up Study: Students as Co-Researchers
Emerging from the paper, I am now developing a project that feels like a true continuation—a sequel door on the advent calendar.
The initiative will invite racialised, international, and widening-access students to become co-researchers, using Foucauldian content analysis to explore how demographic literacy is constructed in:
- curriculum materials,
- placement descriptions,
- assessment guidance, and
- student reflections.
Where the published paper used my positionality to illuminate exclusions, this project turns the lens outward, asking students themselves:
How do you experience demographic literacy in your learning?
Where do you see yourself represented—and where do you disappear?
What does “population need” mean to you?
This addresses the reviewers’ recommendations directly, transforming a conceptual analysis into a validated, student-informed evidence base. But more importantly, it turns students into authors of knowledge, not just subjects of it.
Why This Matters for Teaching & Learning
Inclusive teaching is not only about adding examples to slides or diversifying reading lists—though these matter. It is also about how we understand the populations in front of us and whether the curriculum makes space for their lived realities.
The forthcoming study allows students to vocalise these complexities, creating a “winter light” for illuminating the hidden corners of demographic literacy.
A More Democratic Christmas: Co-Creation as Pedagogical Practice
By involving students as co-researchers, the project becomes a festive embodiment of democratic pedagogy:
Learners move from consumers to producers of knowledge.
Racialised and international perspectives become central rather than peripheral.
Lived experience becomes a legitimate analytical tool.
Conceptual analysis gains empirical grounding and richness.
In essence, we move closer to what inclusive education promises but often struggles to deliver: shared inquiry, equitable epistemic standing, and a curriculum shaped by the many—not the few.
Looking Forward
As I prepare the funding application for this project, it feels fitting to reflect during Advent—a season of anticipation, illumination, and preparation.
The publication is not an endpoint but a beginning.
The student-co-researcher study is its natural continuation.
And the teaching that will emerge from it, I hope, will be warmer, fairer, and more attuned to the diverse populations our classrooms hold.
Behind advent door number 6, then, is an invitation:
To see demographic literacy not simply as reading population data, but as reading each other.
To build curricula that reflect the world our students live in.
And to move, together, toward a more just and joyful education.
Festive video
A collage of festive pictures
Because we couldn’t share everyone’s festive picture as the Advent window, we have combined them into a collage here. Thank you Leyla, Hannah, Hsin Cheng, Sijia and Michele for sharing your festive pictures!
Lead editor: Shaun Bremner-Hart
Editors: Louise Sheridan, Colin Mack & Edward Beggan