In this study, I explore the coloniality of Norwegian citizenship education, emphasizing knowledge production and discourses in primary school classrooms. The methodological approach is based on colonial discourse analysis (Andreotti, 2011), and the empirical material consists of small-scale ethnographic fieldwork in schools, interviews with students and teachers, and teaching interventions. Although there is scholarship shedding light on colonial legacy in the Nordics (Fjellheim, 2020; Keskinen et al., 2019; Loftsdottir & Jensen, 2012), the implications for education are little explored. The aim of this study is to contribute knowledge that can enable antiracist, decolonizing, and critical citizenship education practice. The study contributes knowledge on a topic that is little explored in the Norwegian context yet holds potentially serious consequences for citizenship education in terms of social justice and critical thinking.

Through the study, I investigate the social justice of knowledge production and explore possibilities, complexities, and risks of critical interruptions to hegemonic epistemological frameworks. The emphasis on coloniality engages analyses of how historical colonialism installed epistemological and material structures that continue to inform our current ways of thinking and being. As Quijano (2000) described, colonialism did not end with historical colonialism based on territorial occupation; rather, enduring power and knowledge structures were installed. Coloniality is thus “a full dependence of the models of thinking, making, and interpreting the world based on the norms created and imposed by/in Western modernity” (Tlostanova et al., 2019, p. 290). Coloniality encompass a system where the white majority represents the invisible norm, acting as the bearer of the alleged universal rationality. The significance of coloniality for citizenship education is related both to locating the possible limitations posed by colonial frameworks of knowledge to the potential for fostering critical thinking, and the reproduction of racialization and othering through educational discourses.

Coloniality was empirically detected in the research material through reproduction of a dominant national self-image embedded in National exceptionalism (Loftsdóttir & Jensen, 2012). The concept National exceptionalism points to discursive structures that uphold the reproduction of coloniality through particular ways of imagining the nation-state and its ideal citizens. Exceptionalism concerns the idea of the state being innocent or outside of global power-relations, as innocent of colonialism, and as inherently good. This is not something that is particular only for Norway, but rather part of how modernity works to exalt the nation-state, which have their localized and particularized expressions in different national contexts. I analyze how National exceptionalism enabled the construction and articulation of national identity and the Norwegian democracy in ways that disassociated Norway from historical and systemic injustice. This particularly concerned the ignorance of Norway’s colonial history and especially colonialism and racism towards the indigenous Sámi and national minorities; It was also related to the refusal of race, racism, and whiteness as relevant concepts for understanding Norwegian society today, and thirdly, the construction of Norway as an international savior in terms of sustainability and aid. The results implicate the need for a decolonizing citizenship education that emphasizes critique of dominant epistemologies, as well as engaging the ontological baseline of modern education (Andreotti et al., 2015).

The approach of the study is grounded in the Sociology of absences (Santos, 2018), and particularly concerned with uncovering how the invisibility of non-European perspectives and epistemic violence is actively produced in education through colonial discourses (Teasley & Butler, 2020). Thus, the methodological orientation is concerned with mobilizing knowledge to challenge and interrupt current modes of thinking, rather than offering a universal representation of citizenship education in Norway. The methodological tools are derived from colonial discourse analysis (Andreotti, 2011a; Loomba, 2005). Colonial discourse analysis places the focus on knowledge production and power structures and is especially concerned with identifying hegemonic, Eurocentric institutionalized discourses. This particular approach to discourse is indebted to the legacy of Said (1995). In Orientalism, Said (1995) articulated the production of ignorance in disciplinary and popular representations of others under colonial relations through an analysis of how the Orient is created as an other to the West, where European identity is constructed as superior. Colonial discourse studies seek to “offer in-depth analyses of colonial epistemologies, and also connect them to the history of colonial institutions” and to see how “power works through language, literature, culture and the institutions which regulate our daily lives” (Loomba, 2005, p. 45, 51). Schools have been pointed out as key sites for sustaining ideological hegemony and reproducing cultural and economic domination (Gramsci, 1971). The central role of schools in the production of power/knowledge is closely connected to the formation of citizenry and national subjects. As colonial discourse analysis makes it possible to trace “the connections between the visible and the hidden, the dominant and the marginalized” (Loomba, 2005, p. 45), it is a fitting tool when engaging in a Sociology of absences. I apply a combination of methods allowing me to explore discourses from different modalities of discursive practice, hereunder textbooks, classroom conversations, and students’ and teachers´ meaning making. The first modality is accessed through critical discourse analysis of textbooks (N=8), and the other modalities are approached through ethnography. including participant observation of classroom interactions and conversations, semi-structured interviews with students (N=19) and teachers (N=21), and teaching interventions (N=11). The study was conducted in line with The Norwegian National Research Ethics Committees on Research Ethics in the Social Sciences, Humanities, Law and Theology, and reported to the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD) as required in the Norwegian context.

Overall, the results reveal that the imaginary of national exceptionalism and the affective equilibrium of whiteness are deeply embedded within educational discourses, manifested in the production of knowledge, and national and social identities and subjectivities in the classrooms. Coloniality, as it appears in and through primary school citizenship education in this study, thus serves to (re)produce social and racial inequality and epistemic injustice, despite good intentions. This injustice particularly manifests in discursive practices that construct whiteness as an unmarked norm constituted upon the racialized others, upholding white hegemony (Eriksen, 2020; Eriksen & Stein, 2021). The analysis illustrates how coloniality may absolve educational institutions of their ethical and pedagogical responsibilities to disrupt unjust and unsustainable social relations and obstruct critical conversations about processes that systemically reproduce discursive and political inequalities. The results implicate the need for a decolonizing citizenship education that emphasizes critique of dominant epistemologies, as well as engaging the ontological baseline of modern education (Andreotti et al., 2015). Thus, the results implicate the need for a decolonizing citizenship education that includes the following: Pluralizing curriculum and teaching materials; engaging with epistemology and fostering knowledge about the politics and historicity of knowledge production; explicitly engaging colonial history, and positioning racialized and indigenous groups as the protagonists of these narratives; including and experimenting with post-abyssal pedagogies, such as affective approaches and practicing conversation and listening; engaging a critical self-reflexivity that is relational; explicitly deconstructing and dismantling national exceptionalism and whiteness; reconceptualizing racism and culture, and engaging in prefigurative practices toward desirable futures.

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