Vol. 17 No. 2 (2026)
Special Issue: SI_TGEO

Liberal Humanism, Decolonising the Curriculum and the Im-portance of Epistemic Boundaries

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  • Alex Standish
Alex Standish
University College London, UK
DOI: https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.a.sta.17.2.189.199
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Published 2026-05-16

Keywords

  • liberal humanism,
  • decolonising,
  • curriculum,
  • epistemic boundaries

How to Cite

Standish, Alex. 2026. “Liberal Humanism, Decolonising the Curriculum and the Im-Portance of Epistemic Boundaries”. European Journal of Geography 17 (2):S.189-S.199. https://doi.org/10.48088/ejg.a.sta.17.2.189.199.

Copyright (c) 2026 Alex Standish

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Received 2026-02-03
Accepted 2026-05-03
Published 2026-05-16

Abstract

Boundaries are how we construct meaning for concepts, language and social institutions, including the educational space of schools and content of the curriculum. Decolonial curriculum approaches have their own boundaries based on political identities and social hierarchies, while challenging the contemporary boundaries that give meaning to the school curriculum, academic knowledge and Western culture. In this theoretical paper, I examine how the liberal humanist tradition in education fosters boundaries between educational spaces and the public realm of politics; between academic knowledge and everyday knowledge; between the past and the present; between knowledge and knowers; and between curriculum and pedagogy. Such boundaries are neither set in stone nor always obvious, but they are the responsibility of professionals to maintain. It is only through these epistemic boundaries that we create an educational space for young people to explore the meaning of truth, beauty and social justice through powerful disciplinary knowledge, as they mature and grow as individuals.

Highlights:

  • How contemporary epistemic boundaries used in education are the product of liberal humanist traditions in Europe and other cultures.
  • Where and why do epistemic boundaries matter for the education of students.
  • Boundaries are not always obvious, nor fixed and there are times when they can be transcended for good reason. However, they are the responsibility of teachers and scholars to maintain, but also depend on the wider cultivation of scholastic and democratic values in societies.

Contribution to the Special Issue Topics: This article contributes to the special issue through engagement with the debate about powerful disciplinary knowledge in geography and its critique by decolonial curriculum theorists. In so doing, I explore the contested and socially constructed nature of knowledge, as well as the specialised qualities of disciplinary knowledge and the procedures and values that underpin its foundations. The discussion centres on boundaries, both cultural and epistemological, nurtured through liberal humanist traditions in democratic societies.

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