Toward a Decolonial Pedagogy for the Global South: Reflections from a Caribbean Perspective

Educators in the global South are being overwhelmed by perspectives of decolonized pedagogy from the Global North (Dei, 2022 ). A global systematic review of decolonized pedagogy has found disproportionately little representation from the global South and none from the Caribbean (Shahjahan et al., 2022), despite them being strong producers of postcolonial knowledge, discourse and theory. This is threatening to reproduce the marginality, subjugation and epistemological violence from colonization that countries in the global South have and continue to experience. Given the relevance of decolonized pedagogy to the development of the global South, this raises critical questions about whose knowledge counts, and what are the implications for the development of the subaltern, marginalized and excluded. In response, this paper highlights how geographies constitute and are constituted by decolonial praxis. Further, grounded in an an autobiographical account of my educational experiences and drawing on the Caribbean’s history and political geography, I propose strategies toward a decolonial global South pedagogy centered around: (a) resisting subalternity and domination; (b) amplifying local knowledge and relevance to local context, (c) the pursuit of global justice and development; (d) an emphasis on relationality, humanity, unity and love. Finally, I evaluate the possibilities and challenges of reimagining higher education for development and transformative outcomes in the global South. I also offer suggestions and questions for advancing a vision for a decolonial global South educational futurity.