The recent curriculum reform in Norway brought critical thinking about power relations to the fore, establishing this as a «core element» in social studies education (The Norwegian directorate of Education and Training, 2020). Previous analyses have argued that Norwegian social studies curriculum promote a «selected critical thinking» (Børhaug, 2014), that may contribute to obscuring the reproduction of racist and nationally exceptionalist archives of knowledge (Eriksen, 2021; Jore, 2022). Of particular significance is the absence of Norway`s colonial history related to the colonization of Sápmi (Eriksen, 2018). Furthermore, this is interrelated with how race, racism and whiteness are currently dismissed as relevant analytical concepts for understanding Norwegian society today, manifested in educational discourses (Fylkesnes, 2018). 

The aim of this paper is to explore how the ignorance in imaginaries concerning Norwegian history and society inform and shape the options for critical thinking in social studies. How can the acknowledgement of Norways colonial legacy contribute towards better understandings of power relations in todays` society? Can this strategic exploration of the “dark sides” of history and sociability be done without depriving any sense of hope for the future with the students? The analytical framework for this paper is based on post- and decolonial perspectives, making possible analyses of coloniality. As Quijano (2000) describes, colonialism did not end with historical colonialism based on territorial occupation. It installed enduring power and knowledge structures known as coloniality. 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. Our research question is thus: How can post- and decolonial perspectives help analyze and inform critical thinking in social studies?  

We apply empirical examples, described as “telling cases” (Andreotti, 2011), to discuss central theoretical and didactical insights. The empirical base for the article is four such cases, derived from two doctoral studies investigating social studies education at level 5-10 (Eriksen, 2021; Jore, 2022). The analysis of these cases reveal that critical thinking is displayed and present in the classrooms, not least in the students` abilities to ask critical and creative questions. At the same time, we argue that many opportunities for critical thinking remain lost related to the lack of acknowledgement of coloniality. 

A variety of scholarships shed light on how the significance of colonial legacy is made invisible in the Nordics (Lóftsdottir & Jensen, 2012), but implications for education are little explored. This article's objective is to explore what post- and decolonial perspectives may contribute to curriculum and educational practices, particularly concerning critical thinking. As projects for critical thinking, post- and decolonial are indebted to Saidian critiques of power and knowledge (1995). The approaches highlight systematical absences and sanctioned ignorances in narratives about history and society (Spivak, 1988), ambivalences, and dismissal of western modernity as an alleged universal epistemological and political project (Santos, 2018). Post- and decolonial analyses share the contestation of the colonial world and knowledge production established with and through European colonialism and an emphasis on understanding the emergence of modernity in the historical contexts of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery. However, the theoretical traditions also hold distinctions. It has been suggested as a difference that postcolonial critiques focus more on agents of colonial cultures, while the world-system critiques of the modernity/coloniality school emphasize structures of capital accumulation and injustice (Bhambra, 2014).  In this paper, we acknowledge the differences and internal theoretical debates, we apply tools from both strands of theory that we see as particularly relevant for analyzing and informing educational discourses and practices. Hence, we apply the concept “analyses of coloniality” throughout the article.

This article engages in post- and decolonial critiques, which imply a seeing and reading “against the grain.” A central tool is engaging the sociology of absences (Santos, 2018), entailing uncovering, and exploring knowledge that is hidden, tacit, and taken for granted. This type of reading can be described as critical hermeneutics, where researchers “inject critical social theory into the hermeneutical circle to facilitate an understanding of the hidden structures and tacit cultural dynamics that insidiously inscribe social meanings and values” (Kincheloe & Maclaren, 2003, p. 447). The methodological approach in this article was further informed by the «telling case», in which validity is related to the explanatory power of the case to make obscure theoretical relationships apparent (Andreotti, 2011). From this point of view, it is more interesting to focus on telling cases that can work to illuminating analytical insights, rather than typical cases aggregated across a material. We applied this methodology in combination with colonial discourse analysis (Said, 1995). The basis for selecting a telling case is its explanatory power that is, the extent to which it articulates a “[…] connection between the production of knowledge about the self and Other, and their implications in terms of the reproduction of unequal relations of power and possibilities for more ethical social relations” (Andreotti, 2011, p. 91) The four empirical cases analyzed in this article, are derived from two exploratory doctoral studies conducted in Norway in the period 2018-2022. Following critical ethnographical perspectives (Elliott & Culhane, 2017; Kincheloe et al., 2018), the material was established using several different methods, including small-scale fieldwork and observations of lectures, semi-structured interviews with students, teachers and teacher students, and analysis of national curriculums, textbooks, and teaching materials. Eriksen (2021) explored the significance of coloniality in knowledge production in citizenship education at level 5-7, in Eastern Norway, applying decolonial perspectives. Eriksens` fieldwork was conducted in 2017-2018, and included observations of lectures, interviews with teachers (21) and students (19), and teaching interventions. Jore (2022) examined constructions of Norwegianness and Western-ness in social studies education at junior high school level 8-9, in Western Norway, using a postcolonial lens. Her fieldwork lasted from April through October 2016. Jore followed three classes on level 8 and 9, observing 44 hours of teaching. After the observations, Jore conducted interviews with students (36).

The analyzed cases reveal how valuable opportunities for critical thinking about society are lost through the lack of acknowledgement of coloniality. The analysis of the telling cases illustrates that the imaginary of national exceptionalism and the hegemony of modern-western epistemologies are deeply embedded within educational discourses. We thus argue that the invisibilities of coloniality serve to (re)produce social and racial inequality and epistemic monocultures and injustice in curriculum and teaching practices, despite good intentions. When unacknowledged, 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. Based on insights from post- and decolonial theories, we suggest that the results implicate the need for a critical thinking about curriculum and practice that includes the following: Critical thinking with, rather than simply about, coloniality; critical thinking about episteme (cf. Foucault, 2006), and how knowledge is produced; acknowledging knowledge as political and situated; border thinking (Mignolo, 2012) and emphasizing ambivalence and ambiguity; creative and imaginative thinking, inspired by the decolonial “otherwise” (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018), that allow for a greater epistemological diversity.

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