Darlaston-Jones, D. (2015). (De)Constructing paradigms: Creating a psychology curriculum for conscientisation education. The Australian Community Psychologist, 27(1), 38-48.
ABSTRACT

Critical psychology challenges the traditional assumptions of mainstream psychology by identifying the bases of power that maintain inequity and unjust social practices and working towards transformational change. Psychology has the capacity to be at the forefront of a social change agenda to remove the barriers that impede human functioning; the vanguard of such a social change agenda should be the educational settings in which psychology is taught and where psychologists are trained. To this end I propose a curriculum framework embedded in critical theory and critical pedagogy that allows the educational processes (pedagogy) and course content (knowledge) to be (de)constructed and the hidden unspoken discourses to emerge. In addition, in the context of Australia this includes a decolonisation agenda that analyses the ways in which power is used to maintain subordination of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and the ways in which education becomes a vehicle of contestation and substantive reconciliation. To this end, I articulate the philosophical and theoretical concepts that I utilised during my doctoral research and which have evolved over the past 10 years of teaching practice and which is now embedded into the Bachelor of Behavioural Science at the University of Notre Dame (Fremantle campus). Such an approach to psychology education has the capacity to increase the diversity of students attracted to the discipline, improve student satisfaction, contribute to the creation of a more inclusive society, as well as achieve the relevance and potential that has been suggested is currently lacking in psychology.