This special issue of the Curriculum Journal will bring together papers which individually and collectively explore decolonial and anti-racist perspectives in teacher training and education curricula in the UK (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales). In so doing, the issue will seek to provide a space for those working in and across schools and higher education in a Global North context to explore the challenges and opportunities encountered when trainee teachers, mentors, experienced teachers, and teacher educators seek to engage with anti-racist and decolonial approaches to their curricula and practices.

In recent times, schools and universities have started to engage with decolonial and anti-racist perspectives in their curricula in an attempt to critically explore both the subject stories and the voices that their curricula make visible and invisible. The work of bringing anti-racist and decolonial perspectives into disciplines, school subjects, and general educational practices is not, however, without difficulty or challenge; and curriculum-making in the context of teacher education has a particular opportunity to support teachers in sharing best practices and ways of working and thinking, especially when in partnership between universities and schools, as outlined by recent experiences in the Global North and in the Global South.

A fuller discussion by the guest editors of the context and objectives of this special issue can be downloaded below: please read this in full before submitting your abstract.

Timeline and publication process

• Abstracts received by: 17 January 2022
• Abstract authors notified of decisions by: 1 February 2022
• First draft of full papers submitted: by 19 April 2022
• Reviewing complete, authors notified of revisions: 1 September 2022
• Revised papers received: 15 November 2022
• Publication: March 2023

Initial abstract proposals should be 250–500 words in length and be submitted, by the deadline of 17 January 2022, directly to the guest editors of this special issue: Dr Haira Gandolfi (University of Cambridge, heg38@cam.ac.uk) and Dr Elizabeth Rushton (King’s College London, Elizabeth.rushton@kcl.ac.uk).

The guest editors will then invite authors of selected abstracts to submit their full papers for double-blind peer-review by 19 April 2022. These full papers should normally be between 6,000 and 8,000 words, excluding tables, references, captions, footnotes and endnotes. Further guidelines on the production and submission of complete manuscripts can be found here.

All full papers submitted to this call should follow the Curriculum Journal’s general guidelines for authors, and will be subjected to double-blind peer-review following the journal’s usual procedure. Between eight and ten full papers submitted to this call which best fit this special issue will be selected for publication.