Integrating Diverse Ways of Knowing and Challenging Epistemic Injustice: An Example of Emancipatory Curricula in Canadian Nursing Education.

Abstract

PurposeColonial frameworks remain embedded within nursing education, mandating a critical and ethical response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action to integrate diverse knowledge systems into curricula and pedagogical practices. This paper aims to provide settler educators with a structured framework to decolonize educational practices and fostering culturally safe and reciprocal learning environments.MethodsThis framework integrates decolonial approaches from scholars and collectives, adapting them to local Indigenous contexts and institutional initiatives. The framework's five-phase process - (1) Grounding, (2) Interrogation, (3) New Learning, (4) Commitment, and (5) Rebuilding- was used to guide the critical examination and transformation of curriculum and pedagogy.Major Findings: Called to deepen their colonial consciousness, the authors engaged in learning and unlearning through intentional relationships with local Indigenous communities, being gifted knowledges from Elders and Indigenous scholars. The authors critically reflected on how nursing is taught and evaluated, focusing thier transformative change on their Health in a Global Context and Enacting Social Justice nursing courses. This process revealed the epistemic injustice and pervasive white-centring embedded in course design, assessments, and pedagogical approaches. Engaging in the decolonizing framework led to course redesign that prioritizes diverse ways of knowing in content, assessment, and pedagogy.ConclusionThis study highlights how engaging in a minor reform, can become a catalyst for broader decolonization efforts, but true transformation requires sustained commitment, critical self-reflection, and institutional accountability. Decolonizing nursing education is a collective responsibility, that involves dismantling colonial frameworks and actively prioritizing Indigenous knowledges within nursing pedagogy and practice.