Decolonising the classroom

Credibility-based strategies for inclusive classrooms

Louise Autar

TVGN ２０ (３): ３０５–３２０

DOI: １０.５１１７/TVGN２０１７.３.AUTA

Abstract
Taking the concept of credibility as a focal point, this article explores inclusive
and decolonised classroom dynamics in the Dutch universities. Though much
has been written on diversity and decolonisation in higher education, from
curricula to epistemology to recruitment, there is a dearth in the discourse
when it comes to decolonisation of classrooms. Drawing on Sally Haslanger’s
conceptualisation of ‘credibility’ in classroom dynamics (2014), I focus on the
intricate ways of classroom interaction which can usher those present in
retracting from participating and engaging in class due to micro-aggres-
sions, intimidation, or oppression in any form. As class participation and
engagement are pivotal to success in the current format of academia that
values individual participation and visibility, especially so in the Humanities,
special attention to credibility addresses how classrooms can be trans-
formed into inclusive teaching environments for all. The main question of
this paper is: how are inclusive classrooms, in which every attendee feels
credible as a knowledge producer, created and sustained? Classroom
dynamics are complicated when both visibly and invisibly ‘marked’ atten-
dees join the classroom, as power dynamics, inherent biases, and (micro-)
aggressions can become hurdles in the learning process. It is the coloniality
(Quijano & Ennis, 2000) of the classroom and the overrepresentation of Man
(McKittrick, 2014) which I first analyse to demonstrate the need for decolo-
nisation of the classroom. Then, I show the innovative investigative lens that
the concept of credibility can offer in analysing classrooms through an
illustration. Based on this exploration of classroom credibility, tools to
evaluate the coloniality of classrooms and strategies to decolonise the
classroom may be formulated.

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Keywords: higher education, classroom dynamics, decolonisation, diversity, epistemic

trust, credibility

Introduction

Different students experience classrooms in different ways and thus do not

always feel as welcome as they should. Studies have shown that a sense of
belonging in classrooms is pivotal for the overall wellbeing of students
(Hagerty & Patusky, 1995; Wolters, 2004). Laura Rendón’s theory of valida-
tion (1994) argues that the likeliness of success in higher education de-
pends on students feeling empowered and capable as learners inside and
outside the class. In their reading of Rendón’s theory, Hurtado et al. point
out that validation involves practices of recognition, respect, and apprecia-
tion for students by faculty and staff (2015, p. 63).
My interest is especially what happens in those places where students
are obliged to be present: classrooms. While students may evade student
organisations, networking events, and other ‘traditional’ social occasions
that are part of the normative idea of student life, the classroom is the one
place where their presence is demanded to get accredited and successfully
finish their courses. Thus, classrooms are primary places to connect to
other people, to establish a sense of feeling at home, and train your aca-
demic capabilities. Not being able to do so not only affects your study
success, but also your professional and personal development (Patrick
et al., 2011, p. 367).
The university is both an academic space of learning and teaching, and
an institute that gives legitimacy to the societal stature of students. To have
a university degree gives you access, and in Sara Ahmed’s vocabulary, gives
you the power to be extended by the spaces you inhabit (2007, p. 163).
Whilst wanting to feel at home, there is also a pressure to succeed and
survive this institution by conforming to the norm. This, then, potentially
produces a tension between surviving for your long-term wellbeing and
your current wellbeing whilst you enter an institution in which you are,
at best, a guest, and at worst, a space invader (Puwar, 2004, p.150). Thus,
while those traditionally excluded from the university may now have ac-
cess, they still potentially stand out because they do not ‘fit into’ the in-
stitution built by and for the privileged (Rendón, 1994, p. 2). To feel negated
in such spaces, Ahmed writes, is to experience your body as a restriction in
what you can do (2007, p. 161). The consequences are numerous, such as
(self-induced) exclusion, evasion, and poor wellbeing.

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In this paper, I investigate the concept of credibility in relation to stu-

dent wellbeing in classrooms. Credibility focuses on the intrapersonal re-
lationships between the different people in classrooms and the inequalities
that are fostered, sustained, or destroyed during regular classroom prac-
tices (Haslanger, 2014). Key to understanding the creation of credibility in
classroom dynamics is attention to both visible and invisible markers of
difference to create an inclusive classroom in which the good classroom
dynamics make every person feel welcome to participate and excel. The
point of departure of this paper is that oftentimes there is a normative
understanding of those who ‘naturally’ belong in university (male, white,
middle-class, straight, able-bodied, and so on). Those privileged by this
normative understanding are the ones on and to whom classroom dy-
namics are based and directed (Rendón, 1994, p. 2). An obstacle in the
literature I have come across is that differences are emphasised when
talking about the people who do not adhere to the norm without seriously
considering the situatedness (Haraway, 1988), and indeed, the coloniality
of the norm (Quijano & Ennis, 2000; Mignolo, 2011; Grosfoguel, 2008). The
university is, after all, not a neutral place of education, but an institution
rooted in a history in which modernity and coloniality go hand in hand
(Quijano & Ennis, 2000). Taking as a point of departure that the improve-
ment of classroom dynamics will benefit the personal and professional
development of students, this essay seeks to answer the following question:
how are inclusive classrooms, in which every attendee feels credible as a
knowledge producer, created and sustained?
To construct my argument, I first sketch a theoretical framework on the
hegemony of normative and normalising modes of being by looking at the
processes of making human, gaining recognition, and becoming strangers.
Then, I analyse how coloniality works in the classroom, and thus the need
for decolonisation. Next, I explain what credibility is and show how it
could be used as a lens through which to investigate classroom dynamics
through one illustration. This illustration is an anonymous account of a
woman of colour I met during a diversity event, who consented to this use.
I conclude this essay by answering the main question and reviewing cred-
ibility as a helpful lens through which to investigate classroom dynamics. It
is the aim of this paper to offer an intersectional perspective on how cred-
ibility can be used as a tool towards inclusive classrooms.
Two critical notes must be made before proceeding. Firstly, it must be
noted that during the research that much of this paper has been based on, I
focused especially on the wellbeing, validation, and credibility of students,
and this focus comes through in this essay as well. As a second-year re-

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search master’s student in Gender and Ethnicity at Utrecht University in

the first semester of 2016-2017, I conducted an internship research project
for the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences on why students do or do not
feel at home in their classroom. A motivation for this research was the
recognition that my own experience of feeling alienated in the classroom
was more common than I imagined. I realised this during the first diversity
meetings led by the U-council at Utrecht University in January 2016. Com-
ing to Utrecht University as a student of colour from a lower socio-econom-
ic background, living in Rotterdam, it became clear early on that the re-
spective lived experiences and frameworks in which my peers and I found
ourselves differed. During my first years, I felt a general inadequacy on the
part of all parties involved to bridge that difference. It is this adequacy and
the skills needed as students and teachers alike that I investigated through
the concept of credibility.
While students are not the only attendees of the classroom who are
subject to gaining or losing credibility, I have not gathered enough input
yet to make claims beyond the general about the credibility of teachers.
Therefore, the scope of this article is limited to the credibility of the stu-
dent. Yet, it should be noted that both students and teachers need to gain
credibility. Not fitting the norm on the part of both student and teacher
amounts to more efforts that need to be made to gain credibility. Attention
to the credibility dynamics of teachers would allow for a more comprehen-
sive understanding of classroom dynamics.
Secondly, I want to emphasise that while this paper speaks about norms
and normalised subjects with an emphasis on race, I follow Sara Ahmed
and Nirmal Puwar in stating that whiteness does not necessarily point to
material and embodied racial identities (Puwar, 2004, p. 150; Ahmed, 2007,
p. 159). The concepts and illustration in this essay foreground struggles
faced by people of colour１ in part due to accessibility and consent, and in
part because they illustrate the argument well. Nevertheless, similar dy-
namics to the ones described in this paper can be recognised in the strug-
gles of other marginalised and traditionally excluded groups. The argu-
ment I make about the usefulness of credibility extends beyond race.

Humanity reduced to a monologue?

In her seminal work ‘Validating culturally diverse students’, Laura Rendón

describes that while universities are now accessible to a more diverse
variety of people, the university experience is still catering to the tradition-

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 DECOLONISING THE CLASSROOM

ally privileged (Rendón, 1994, pp. 1-2). Ranging from curricula to activities
and pedagogies, she shows that the traditional norms on which universi-
ties are based can make traditionally excluded students feel alienated and
intimidated. She captures this experience well by stating that such stu-
dents become ‘strangers in a learning paradise’, pointing at once to the
wealth of new experiences and insights and the performativity necessary
to fit in (Rendón, 1994, p. 2). Rendón’s notion of the privileged directs them
to a normative presence to whom we must strive to resemble to gain the
fruits of academia. To be able to fit in ‘naturally’, to be ‘normal’, requires a
level of performance to bridge the ‘gap’ between yourself and the norm.
Here, Ahmed’s take on comfort is of help. Ahmed states that to be at
home in a world is a position whose comfort we only recognise when we
lose that comfort. To be comfortable is to inhabit spaces that extend your
shape, so that you become invisible. In short: you belonging in that space
becomes self-evident. The other side is then to stick out, to stand out, and
to become a body out of place – to be a body that demands attention
because of its hypervisibility in a sea of normalcy (2007, pp. 157-159). A
useful notion in this context is that of cultural cloning. I follow Philomena
Essed and Theo Goldberg in arguing that universities are and have always
been fertile grounds for cultural cloning. With this term, Essed and Gold-
berg refer to the systematic reproduction of sameness in racial, gendered,
and class contexts (2002, p. 1067). Cloning entails at once ‘more of the same
at the same time’ in addition to ‘more of the same across time’ (p. 1077).
This echoes Rendón’s concern that universities have been built for and by
the privileged, a fact that solidifies the image of the privileged as the norm
in academia. Though cloning involves copies of a normalised original, it
leaves little space for variations on that original while never unsettling its
normativity (Essed, 2004, p. 121). It is the other side of this systematic
reproduction of sameness that produces, and indeed reproduces, bodies
that stick out.

The coloniality of the classroom

The binary oppositions between invisible/hypervisible, normal/sticking

out, and privileged/excluded can perhaps better be understood if we con-
sider the colonial/modern malleability of what it means to (not) be
human, a subject well-elaborated on in decolonial theories. To be human
is not a self-evident or neutral fact (Wynter, 2003; Mignolo, 2011). Departing
from the colonisation of the Americas and the Caribbean, the classification

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of human and not-human as originated by and for the benefit of the Wes-
tern man is to condemn the colonised (Lugones, 2010, p. 743).
The subjugation of those not deemed human is well-documented in a
history Walter Mignolo has deemed Modernity/Coloniality, an under-
standing through which Maria Lugones has contributed through the colo-
niality of gender (Mignolo, 2002; Lugones, 2007, 2010). Mignolo explains
that while modernity places the accent on Europe, coloniality is the other
side of modernity which is constitutive to modernity itself (2002, p. 60). If
modernity holds what it means to be (considered) human, its co-constitu-
tive coloniality entails what is means not to be (considered) human. It is
thus important to see the norms we encounter not only as historically
produced by a modern history, but also by a colonial history which has
excluded many from being recognised as human to legitimise oppressive
colonial structures (Mignolo, 2014, p. 108). Lugones explains that gender is
such a colonial mechanism through whose imposition one is either recog-
nised as human or non-human. Those deemed non-human are not differ-
entiated by sexual difference (2010, p. 751).
We ought to recognise that these norms are not positioned as one mode
of being amongst many. Instead, the norm is universalised and presented
as a self-evident, neutral mode of being to which everyone should aspire as
anyone could inhabit it. This process is well-described by Walter Mignolo:

Human and Humanity were created as the enunciated that projects and propels
to universality the local image of the enunciator. The enunciator assumes, and
this postulates, that this concept of Human and Humanity is valid for every
human being on the planet. (2014, p. 109)

This universalising of a local image upon the world is a process Sylvia

Wynter also points to when she speaks of the Overrepresentation of Man
(2003). When Wynter speaks of Man, she refers to a specific mode of being
modelled after a Western ideal of the Bourgeois (white, able-bodied) man
constructed since the Renaissance (modernity) and Columbus’s voyage to
the Americas (coloniality). In its Overrepresentation lies the hegemonic
normativity of Man as that to which all should aspire while those who
inhabit the norm best are presented as ‘naturally’ the best in what they
do (Da Silva Ferreira, 2014, p. 94). Or, as Richard Dyer formulated: ‘White
people set standards of humanity by which they are bound to succeed and
others bound to fail’ (1997, p. 9).
My argument is, much in line with Laura Rendón (1994), that this over-
represented yet naturalised norm continues to be the norm to which stu-

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dents must adhere in academia. To an extent, abiding this norm is neces-

sary to be recognised and to survive in this institutional setting. Yet, by
abiding this norm, it is perpetuated, solidified, and justified. This norm is
challenged when ‘space invaders’ enter the classroom, especially when
they fail to assimilate enough to uphold the norm. Furthermore, it is a
question whether these space invaders are recognised to be ‘fully human’,
in the sense that they risk not being recognised as being as intelligent or
capable as their peers. It is this sort of recognition that the concepts of
credibility and epistemic trustworthiness critically investigate.
Naturally, legacies of Eurocentrism, European ethnocentrism, and the
global imposition of the colonial/modern and other totalising systems
have not dissolved after physical decolonisation. Rather, coloniality per-
sists (Grosfoguel, 2008). Though closely related, colonialism and coloniality
are not synonymous. Nelson Maldonado-Torres explains colonialism to be
the historical process in which political and economic sovereignty of one
nation is in the hands of another nation (2007, p. 243). In turn, coloniality
signifies historical power systems produced by colonialism through which
control on various dimensions, including knowledge production, is exer-
cised (Lugones, 2007, p. 192; Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243). Coloniality
has survived colonialism and affects us constantly and continuously as
‘modern subjects’ (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243).
In discussing the coloniality of the classroom, I particularly follow Ro-
lando Vázquez in reading coloniality as ‘a functional mechanism to perpe-
tuate the hegemony of modernity and the disavowal of other forms of
understanding’ (2012, p. 5). And as Nirmal Puwar points out: ‘the represen-
tatives of modernity are unracialised people’ (2004, p. 149): those who are
allowed to be individuals despite the identity markers they perform.
What is being taught is soaked in coloniality in the way knowledge is
presented, produced, and reproduced. Thus, it is catered to and centred
around those who are not racialised – those who fit into the naturalised
norm that presents itself as a universal subject (Mignolo, 2014, pp. 108-109).
Ahmed recognises the consequence of racialisation as ‘sticking out’, where-
in a racialised subject becomes hyper-visible due to the stark difference in
a classroom of non-racialised subjects (2007, p. 159). The persistence of the
norm in classrooms is still present, whether it comes to whom we refer to
as ‘we’ and ‘our’, whom we read as canon, and how education is arranged
to be taught. The presumption is a student ‘who knows’, who can relate to
the canon and who fits into the organisation of teaching (Rendón, 1994,
p. 2). Furthermore, going past axes of difference like gender and ethnicity,
those who enter the classroom are assumed to be secular, able-bodied, cis-

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gendered, middle-class/have a certain solvency. Again, this mode of being

is the norm, standard, and focus of what happens in classrooms. This norm
then arrests classroom dynamics by centring the accommodation to this
norm above the wellbeing of Other students. As Ahmed explains, when
being human is equalised with being white, then not being white leads to
inhabiting the negative. Some bodies are more recognised as strangers
than others (Ahmed, 2007, pp. 161-162). Put differently, some belong more
than others.
All these processes about making human, gaining recognition, and be-
coming strangers point towards (conscious) processes in which some are
included and some excluded. Furthermore, the inclusion and legitimisa-
tion of that inclusion is often based on and co-constitutive to the exclusion
of others. Though differences exist prior to these processes, they gain sig-
nificance through the construction of such hierarchies (Quijano & Ennis,
2000, p. 534). This significance-making then also underwrites its make-
ability as something that we can work towards changing once we have
recognised it. It is towards this aim then that this paper works: by recog-
nising the malleability of the normative image of classroom attendees and
the classroom attendees who ‘are not’ (Ahmed, 2007, p. 161) we get to
transform our classrooms as spaces in which the norm is decentred to
make space for all to be credible producers of knowledge. In my next
section, I specifically focus on this task by considering credibility as a
useful lens through which to analyse the coloniality of the class.

On credibility and epistemic trust

The concept of credibility has particularly been elaborated upon in Sally

Haslanger’s essay ‘Studying while black’ (2014). Haslanger focuses on how
education creates or reproduces race and racial structures. Set in the Uni-
ted States of America, Haslanger’s research focuses specifically on how
education creates, or perpetuates, race as a response to racial differences
in the classroom. Race herein is identified as ‘a complex and hierarchical
set of social relations that are both imposed and enacted’ (p. 2). Haslanger
identifies schools, and in a broader context, educational spaces, as sites of
intense socialisation in which students are prepared and even designed for
certain statuses. Thus, certain positionalities are perpetuated: some stu-
dents are perceived as more credible or less credible, depending on the
mentality we are socialised in and the ability to fit into the hegemonic
norm of ‘student’ (pp. 2-3).

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Haslanger differentiates between moral and epistemic credibility. Key to

understanding how credibility works is the notion of epistemic trust.
Nancy Daukas explains that though we all function as epistemic agents in
all dimensions of our lives, we are not always considered worthy of epis-
temic trust, which can be an impediment to epistemic cooperation (2006,
p. 109). Put differently, we are less prone to work with other people if we do
not trust their epistemic competencies. Daukas recognises the problem of
what she refers to as ‘epistemic exclusion of the basis of social location’:

Since attitudes about individuals’ epistemic competencies, in part, determine

who is granted full membership in an epistemic community, and who is mar-
ginalized or excluded, second-order epistemic attitudes link individual episte-
mic agency to broader social practices, and to social problems such as sexism,
racism, ageism, and so on. (2006, p. 109)

Epistemic trust is as fundamental to credibility as it is pivotal for becoming

a ‘socially situated self’ (Haslanger, 2014, p. 19). To be ‘epistemically trust-
worthy’, Haslanger finds that ‘one must be a good judge of both his or her
own cognitive capacities and the cognitive capacities of others’ (2014, p. 6).
Epistemic trust entails the confidence we (perceive to) have in someone’s
intellectual capability and therefore the likelihood that we allow certain
people to become a member of a socially constructed group (Daukas, 2006,
p. 109).
Alternatively, what does it take for some people to be(come) untrust-
worthy? In this respect, I differentiate between being and becoming since
epistemic trustworthiness can be based on either presumptions and per-
ception or actions. As such, sexist, racist, or other discriminatory presump-
tions influence the notion of who we perceive to have epistemic compe-
tencies, and thus who we trust in epistemic cooperation. On the other
hand, becoming untrustworthy could lean on actions which lessen our
trust in their competencies. To stay within the same frame of thought: a
derogatory expression from someone whom one considered to be ‘one of
us’ in dimensions including the epistemic group of trust could lessen our
trust and our perception of the socially constructed group.
Another layer of complexity is added when we consider that power
relationships between the individuals in a classroom are not equal. The
contrast and visibility of these power relations depend on the teaching
pedagogy the teacher adopts. Haslanger notes that the teacher has some
‘kind of knowledge’ that the student lacks. Furthermore, the teacher holds
grading power over the student, which tilts this power balance even

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further. To have an even ground to start a course from, then, epistemic

conditions are necessary. These epistemic conditions are held by each
party, often overlapping, which must be met to establish classroom dy-
namics in which everyone takes part in reciprocal teaching and learning
(2014, p. 5). It is only within a perceived sense of safety that an ‘acceptable’
breaching of these conditions (i.e. waiting for someone to finish speaking
and then speaking without a raised hand) can come about. Without this
perception of safety, the breaching of these terms can come off as rude or
annoying, which tilts the epistemic trust with both students and teachers.

Methodological considerations

To clarify the concept and its use, I chose one illustration. As aforemen-
tioned, this article is the result of a research project I conducted at Utrecht
University as part of an internship. I gained data through questionnaires,
observations, and interviews with students, teachers, and policymakers at
Utrecht University. I narrowed my research down to 52 students taking
first-year bachelor courses in the Humanities of the Language and Culture
Studies programme and focused on four courses specifically through these
methods. These courses all held one lecture, one seminar, and one session
on research skills per week; the former two of which I attended in the first
four weeks. I would sit down in a corner of the class and observe how the
teachers and students interacted. These observations served as points of
departure for the following stages of the research.
It should be noted that my own experiences as well as the research are
rooted in the Humanities departments of Dutch universities. This influ-
ences the teaching pedagogies I base this article on, in which dialogue,
discussion, and individual participation are at the centre. My research is
specifically rooted in the Dutch context. As Gloria Wekker has formulated
well in her recent book White Innocence (2016), the dominant discourse
holds on tightly to the notion that the Netherlands ‘is and always has been
colour-blind and anti-racist, a place of extraordinary hospitality and toler-
ance towards the racialized/ethnicized other’ (2016, p. 1). This self-congra-
tulating self-image, she states, is rooted in a white innocence that is en-
abled by privilege, entitlement, and a strong denial of the function of race
(pp. 18-21).
Dutch racism is characterised by the denial of its existence in present-
day Netherlands, while its existence persists in actions, claims, and lan-
guage. As Essed and Hoving point out, Dutch racism is hard to study due to

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institutionalised ignorance (2014, pp. 11-13). Due to this toxic combination

of ignorance, white innocence, and the denial of racism, discrimination is
not always identified as such by those involved. To bring this up then is to
bring up difference, which brings about a vulnerable position in an envir-
onment prone to deny or disavow its discrimination. It is this constant self-
censoring in order to fit in that is harmful and must be tackled to improve
not only classroom dynamics, but also the individual and professional
wellbeing of classroom inhabitants. This context of the particular character
of Dutch racism is important, because I argue that credibility-based strate-
gies are especially productive in a society in which racism is not overt, but
subtle, ‘funny’, and covert. Though the dominant self-image may express a
strong rejection of discrimination of any sort, it still seeps through in
actions and formulations.
I found the concept of credibility particularly helpful in analysing class-
room dynamics as they shift the focus from identity politics２ to what
happens in classrooms that causes comfort or discomfort with students. I
have been using this scope as a tool in various activities related to diversi-
fying and decolonising higher education. This has been particularly helpful
in speaking to other students in different contexts to help them recognise
why they felt admonished, negated, or ignored. In what follows, I show
how credibility works as a tool in a situation that had long-term effects on
how this student acted in their classroom. I learned of this situation
through informal conversations with a female student of colour in her
early twenties after my internship project at a student-organised sympo-
sium on diversity in the beginning of 2017. I chose this story because the
student made explicit references to the fact that her teachers and/or peers
underestimated her intelligence and abilities. Though she did not mention
credibility, she was aware of the shifts I name in credibility and epistemic
trustworthiness. Though I analyse the situation, her narrative already
shows her respective analysis, and thus a consciousness of what happens
in the classroom. I did not have the opportunity to collect multiple ac-
counts of these experiences. Yet, albeit from a limited perspective, this
narrative does show how attention to credibility affects the students’ per-
spectives of their classroom, themselves, their peers, and their teachers and
how those influence their actions.

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Working towards inclusive classrooms through using

credibility-based lenses?

I gathered this story through informal conversations with student A. The

situation took place in a seminar discussion. Student A was doing a second-
year bachelor course in Social Studies at a university in Zuid-Holland. Stu-
dent A was born in the Dutch Caribbean islands and came to the Nether-
lands as a teenager with her working-class parents. Though she likes her
overall programme, she is not content with every course, or every classroom
for that matter. Due to being one of the few with a darker skin colour, she
stood out. Her migration from the Caribbean to the Netherlands made for a
different framework and skillset than her peers, whom she described as
generally white, female, and of a higher socio-economic background.
Student of colour A described that she observed a difference in teacher
responses to students of colour and white students. Whilst in a general
discussion in a seminar group, student A noted that when white students
would talk, the teachers would listen attentively and ask questions. How-
ever, when a student of colour did so, the teachers would be busy on their
phones or with something else. Student A wondered if this was a coinci-
dence or if there was a conscious bias at work in her classroom. From a
credibility perspective, I read this situation as there being a perceived
inequality in epistemic trustworthiness. The white students appear to be
epistemically trustworthy: the attentive listening and responding point
towards the perception that the white students must have fruitful contribu-
tions to the conversation. Disengagement from the discussion entails miss-
ing these contributions. Thus, appealed by the preconception the teacher
had about the white student, the teacher, consciously or unconsciously,
decided that the white student had sufficient epistemic competencies to
warrant attention.
A second layer of analysis then becomes what this observation does to
student A in the classroom. As student A explained, this demeanour of the
teacher made her feel weird and unwelcome. This attitude of the teacher
did not make her feel like her epistemic competencies were good enough
to contribute to the discussion. Therefore, the student in question became
silent and stopped participating vocally. Though she listened, and at times
disagreed with the speakers, she did not feel as though her saying anything
would make a difference so she let it be. A short-term consequence of the
teacher’s demeanour thus is that the student retracted from active partici-
pation. This not only negatively affected the student in question, but also
her peers, who missed out on potential lessons.

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A long-term consequence, however, is that this student has lost trust in the
epistemic trustworthiness of the teacher. This loss of the teacher’s episte-
mic trustworthiness caused retraction by the student, which in turn also
made this student lose credibility with her peers. After all, her disengage-
ment could be perceived as a general disinterest and a lack of epistemic
competencies. This, then, is the third layer of analysis: the loss and retrieval
of credibility between students. This layer is especially important, because
the peers continue to follow courses with one another, while teachers
change with each course.

Conclusion

At the beginning of the introduction, I asked how inclusive classrooms, in

which every attendee feels credible as a knowledge producer, can be cre-
ated and sustained. Through the application of credibility to the brief
illustration presented here, I found that credibility opens the possibility
of looking at individual interactions to understand the more structural
imbalances in classrooms. The teachers of student A are probably not
even aware of their behaviour, yet their actions have considerable conse-
quences for students like student A, who did not feel validated or re-
spected. In reaction, she retracted from active participation as she did not
foresee any behavioural change on the side of the teachers. I focused on
student A’s perception, but it should be noted that this perception was yet
another experience of feeling like she ‘stuck out’ because of the difference
in ethnicity, her speech, and socio-economic class. This experience accu-
mulated with prior perceptions of sticking out. Student A did not find
ground to regain her epistemic trust in her teachers.
This essay served to contribute to a vocabulary through which the ef-
fects of the coloniality of the classroom can be discussed: what is going well
that needs to be fostered, and what needs to be changed or improved. This
could entail in-class conversations with students to see how certain ac-
tions, rules, or assignments affect them. In adopting this vocabulary, ab-
stract discussions of how inclusive classrooms can be fostered could gain
focus by looking concretely at how you could design a classroom in which
all students feel credible. Credibility lends a specific lens through which
you can focus on the concrete effect it has on students.
In a larger context, this essay aimed to unsettle the meritocratic pre-
supposition that underlies our understanding of what happens in class-
rooms when those who do not show likeness to the norm enter the class-

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TIJDSCHRIFT VOOR GENDERSTUDIES

room. Perceptions of students do not rest on what we know and assume of

them as individuals, but are based on how they are recognised within the
colonial/modern system we inherit and possibly perpetuate. It is the latter
process which this essay aims to disrupt. More specifically, credibility as a
tool for the decolonisation of the classroom aims to decentre normative
and normalised student representations. Instead, what becomes the focus
are practices and pedagogical strategies which (re)affirm the position and
development of all students as knowledge producers.
Though many university policies focus on the recruitment of ‘diverse’
students, I want to emphasise that educational institutions also need to
sustain good classroom dynamics to make them stay without compromis-
ing their personal or professional development. Herein, the difference be-
tween the use of diversity and decolonisation of the university comes in. In
diversifying the university, ‘others’ are added without decentring the norm.
Decolonisation aims to decentre the norms that have racialised those tra-
ditionally excluded to be the negation of the norm. This racialisation is an
imposition from a hegemonic power structure which remains unques-
tioned when we speak of diversifying the university. This hegemonic
power does not remain at the top level of the university, but trickles
down to all facets of the university. Therefore, decolonisation is needed
on every level as well. This research contributes to this undertaking by
focusing on how certain actions, attitudes, and ideas sustain, perpetuate,
and reproduce a classroom coloniality in which some inhabitants of the
classroom, those who traditionally fit in, are deemed more credible, more
intelligent, and more important than others. As I have shown, this hierar-
chy of credibility reflects colonial binaries in which some are deemed more
valuable than others. Decolonising the classroom entails the development
of a space in which all inhabitants feel credible and comfortable enough to
participate. In transmitting this vocabulary to speak of what happens in
classrooms, I suggest: let’s start decolonising the classroom.

Notes
1. ‘People of colour’ in this article refers to what in Dutch used to be referred to as non-
Western allochthones. Someone whose grandparents were born in a non-Western
country would, until 2016, qualify as an allochthone.
2. Identity politics is a term to refer to ‘organizing around the specific experience or
perspective’ (Whittier, 2017, p. 2).

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About the author

Louise Autar is in the final stages of her research master’s, Gender and
Ethnicity, at Utrecht University. For the past two years, she has engaged
especially in activities and projects on the decolonisation of higher educa-
tion, recently resulting in a research internship under Prof Dr Berteke
Waaldijk and Dr Olga Panteleeva.

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