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Review

From Access to Epistemology: A Critical Review of Decolonising STEM Education Through Equity and Inclusion Practices

by
Kelum A. A. Gamage
1,*,
Shyama C. P. Dehideniya
2 and
Shan Jayasinghe
3
1
Centre for Educational Development and Innovation, James Watt School of Engineering, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
2
Department of Education, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya 20400, Sri Lanka
3
Department of Business and Law, Southampton Solent University, Southampton SO14 0YN, UK
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Educ. Sci. 2026, 16(4), 559; https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci16040559
Submission received: 7 March 2026 / Revised: 25 March 2026 / Accepted: 25 March 2026 / Published: 2 April 2026
(This article belongs to the Section STEM Education)
Versions Notes

Abstract

This critical review interrogates how contemporary diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) reforms in STEM education engage the deeper project of epistemic decolonisation. Framed by critical race theory, feminist science studies, and decolonial scholarship, it asks whether inclusion agendas move beyond representational expansion to disrupt Eurocentric hierarchies of legitimacy; which pedagogical and curricular innovations enact pluriversal STEM; and what institutional conditions constrain transformation. A multi-stage search of Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, Google Scholar, and grey literature (2010–2025) yielded 152 records; PRISMA-informed screening produced 80 sources for interpretive thematic synthesis. Findings show that DEI initiatives have increased access and participation, yet typically preserve assumptions of scientific neutrality and universalism, leaving epistemic injustice largely intact. In contrast, decolonial innovations, such as two-eyed seeing, culturally sustaining and place-based pedagogies, history, philosophy, and sociology of science integration, and project-based learning grounded in indigenous knowledge systems, reposition learners and communities as co-producers of knowledge and reframe science as situated and relational. However, these practices remain peripheral due to assessment regimes, accreditation pressures, funding and tenure incentives, disciplinary gatekeeping, and limited educator preparation. The review argues that meaningful reform requires structural reconfiguration of curricula, evaluation, and institutional reward systems to recognise multiple epistemologies, cultivate ethical relationality, and enable sustained community partnership.

1. Introduction

From groundbreaking discoveries to transformative technologies, the STEM fields science, technology, engineering, and mathematics have profoundly shaped the modern world. They are widely recognised as central to national development, driving innovation, advancing economic growth, and deepening humanity’s understanding of complex global challenges (OECD, 2019; Takeuchi & Marin, 2022). Through project-based and problem-oriented learning, STEM education equips learners with the skills needed to navigate an increasingly competitive and technologically driven world (Shamonia & Semenikhina, 2025). However, STEM curricula and practices are often detached from the cultures, contexts, and communities in which learners live (O’Neill et al., 2023), remaining rooted in Western academic paradigms that treat knowledge as universal and culture-free (Yanez et al., 2019).
Beneath these achievements lies growing recognition of persistent inequities within STEM. Access to meaningful learning opportunities remains unequal across racial, socioeconomic, and geographic contexts (Anthony-Stevens & Matsaw, 2019). Traditional conceptions of STEM as objective and value-free obscure its social, cultural, and political dimensions, perpetuating exclusionary hierarchies that determine what knowledge counts, who participates, and whose epistemologies are legitimised (Ramiah et al., 2022).
Many scholars argue that Western scientific paradigms have historically shaped global knowledge production, treating science as inherently neutral, universal, and culture-free while marginalising Indigenous and non-Western epistemologies (Gandolfi, 2021; Kayumova & Dou, 2022; Solomons, 2025). This dominance has produced curricula that privilege Eurocentric perspectives while rendering alternative systems invisible or inferior (Gumbo et al., 2021). In response, a global movement to decolonise education has emerged, seeking to redress historical inequities and reimagine knowledge as contextually embedded rather than value-neutral (Gandolfi, 2021).
While diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives have broadened participation, they often overlook coloniality’s epistemic legacies (Kayumova & Dou, 2022; Gichuru, 2024). True transformation demands epistemic justice: the equitable recognition of diverse knowledge systems. This principle draws on Critical Race Theory (CRT) to expose racism in educational structures (Mejia & Martin, 2023), Feminist Science Studies to critique gendered/racialised objectivity (Akin-Silva & Prosdocimi, 2024), and Decolonial Theory to advocate pluriversality multiple, interdependent ways of knowing (Kayumova & Dou, 2022).
Practical strategies for decolonising STEM are interdisciplinary (Anthony-Stevens & Matsaw, 2019). They include integrating the history, philosophy, and sociology of science into curricula to reveal how knowledge evolves through cultural interaction and power dynamics (Khalid & Ting, 2025; Gandolfi, 2021). Educators are encouraged to amplify diverse voices, challenge systemic inequities such as racism and sexism (Akinbosede, 2020), and adopt alternative problem-solving methods rooted in local epistemologies such as indigenous measurement systems or Japanese mathematical models (Xu & Ball, 2024). Integrating Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) including ecological stewardship, ethnobotany, and oral traditions redefines science as relational and adaptive rather than static or universal (Govender & Mudzamiri, 2022; Gordon et al., 2022). These approaches diversify the epistemic foundations of STEM, foster sustainability and social justice, and bridge the divide between natural and social sciences (Bayaga, 2022; Solomons, 2025).
Nevertheless, substantial institutional barriers persist. Disciplinary gatekeeping, funding biases favouring positivist metrics, and tenure pressures prioritizing Western canons resist epistemic reform (Govender & Mudzamiri, 2022). Overcoming these demands sustained structural change and reflexive dialogue among educators, learners, and communities (O’Neill et al., 2023).
Ultimately, decolonising STEM is not about rejecting Western science but about rebalancing the global epistemic landscape (Andreotti et al., 2015). Recognising science as a collective human endeavour, it restores visibility to marginalised contributors, validates indigenous and local knowledge systems, and cultivates epistemic humility. In doing so, decolonised STEM education aspires to build a more equitable, inclusive, and innovative scientific future transforming not only who participates in science but also how science itself is conceived, taught, and practiced in the twenty-first century.
Building on these discussions, this critical review examines how contemporary efforts to promote equity and inclusion in STEM education engage with the deeper challenge of epistemic transformation. Specifically, it explores the extent to which decolonising initiatives move beyond representational diversity to interrogate and reconstruct the epistemological foundations of STEM, guided by three research questions.
  • To what extent do current equity and inclusion practices in STEM education contribute to genuine epistemic decolonisation?
  • What emerging pedagogical and curricular innovations effectively challenge established hierarchies of knowledge?
  • What structural and institutional barriers inhibit such transformative change?

2. Literature Review

2.1. The Rise of Equity and Inclusion in STEM Education

STEM educational spaces have historically been dominated by White, Eurocentric, cisheteronormative, and able-bodied cultural norms, systematically limiting responsiveness to the needs of racialized, queer, disabled, and other marginalized learners (Gyamerah et al., 2025). In this context, Eurocentric knowledge structures refer to the privileging of Western epistemologies, methodologies, and standards as universal benchmarks for scientific validity. Over the past two to three decades, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in STEM education have expanded considerably, driven by growing recognition of systemic barriers that restrict participation among women (Whitehead & Dipieri, 2025), racialized minorities, and students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Palid et al., 2023; National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics [NCSES], 2021). These initiatives emerged against the backdrop of Westernised STEM’s dual legacy, namely, significant contributions to global scientific and technological advancement alongside perpetuation of inequities through hegemonic structures that marginalize Indigenous and vulnerable communities (Khalid & Ting, 2025).
Early DEI efforts in the 2000s focused primarily on increasing access through targeted interventions such as scholarship programs, mentorship schemes, and recruitment drives aimed at underrepresented groups, particularly in engineering and physical sciences (Pedersen et al., 2025; National Science Foundation, 2012; Ong et al., 2011). Gender equity became a central focus following seminal reports documenting women’s persistent underrepresentation in STEM careers despite comparable academic performance to men (Whitehead & Dipieri, 2025; Hill et al., 2010). Concurrently, attention turned to racial and ethnic disparities, with studies revealing that Black, Hispanic, and indigenous students faced structural inequities in K-12 education, limited access to resources, and discriminatory institutional cultures that hindered their STEM progression (Museus et al., 2011; Palid et al., 2023).
The global demand for STEM professionals has risen sharply over the past two decades, with projections indicating sustained occupational growth and urgent need to recruit beyond traditional demographics This expansion has renewed focus on enduring inequities that constrain STEM’s intellectual and cultural diversity (Pedersen et al., 2025). Australia exemplifies these challenges because despite broad community diversity across culture, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and caring responsibilities, the STEM workforce and university departments remain poorly representative (Department of Industry, Science, and Resources, 2024). Women, people with disabilities, and non-Western cultural backgrounds continue facing barriers to entry and advancement, costing the sector innovation and excellence (Fisher et al., 2020; Dancy et al., 2020; Ramiah et al., 2022; Whitehead & Dipieri, 2025).
During the 2010s, DEI became institutionalized through national and international policy frameworks. Organizations like the U.S. National Science Foundation and UK Royal Academy of Engineering promoted “broadening participation” agendas linking diversity to competitiveness (National Science Foundation, 2016; Royal Academy of Engineering, 2018), while UNESCO’s (2015) Science Report and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 4 and 5) positioned STEM inclusion as essential for social and economic development. The post-2020 era marked by COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter intensified intersectional approaches (Ramiah et al., 2022; Takeuchi & Marin, 2022). Yet many interventions remain individual-level, emphasizing recruitment, retention, and support without addressing deeper structural and epistemic conditions (Makonye & Dlamini, 2020). In particular, these initiatives often do not explicitly challenge the dominance of Eurocentric frameworks that shape what is taught and how knowledge is validated.
Reforms often treat exclusion symptoms while ignoring ontological and cultural assumptions underpinning STEM education. Racial, linguistic, and cultural disparities endure in dominant pedagogies, hindering non-dominant students’ scientific contributions (Kayumova & Dou, 2022). Gamez and Parker (2018) demonstrate how classroom micro-interactions shaped by language, gender, and class hierarchies reinforce broader stratifications. Ultimately, inclusion initiatives improved participation rates but left epistemological inequities largely intact (Slaton, 2015; Joseph et al., 2016; Govender & Mudzamiri, 2022). This indicates a persistent limitation of DEI approaches, which tend to prioritise access and representation without sufficiently addressing underlying knowledge hierarchies.
While DEI initiatives successfully broadened access and representation, they rarely interrogated the knowledge hierarchies embedding Eurocentric dominance within STEM curricula and practices. As a result, questions concerning whose knowledge is legitimised, and how alternative epistemologies are integrated, remain insufficiently explored in prior review literature. This representational focus created space for decolonization’s emergence a deeper epistemic critique demanding transformation of what counts as legitimate knowledge.

2.2. Decolonisation as an Expanding Agenda in Education

The search for innovative STEM pedagogies has intensified as traditional methods prove inadequate for increasingly diverse cultural, linguistic, and cognitive learner profiles amid rapid technological advancement (Oladejo et al., 2025). Educators have developed strategies aligned with DEI efforts, yet these often fall short of addressing knowledge production’s fundamental inequities. Specifically, they seldom engage directly with the structural dominance of Eurocentric knowledge systems discussed earlier. Within this landscape, decolonization has expanded from its political origins dismantling colonial governance and identity structures to encompass cultural, intellectual, and epistemological dimensions that reimagine how knowledge is produced, valued, and transmitted in classrooms (Andreotti et al., 2015; Anthony-Stevens & Matsaw, 2019).
In education, decolonization now demands transformation of knowledge systems shaping teaching, learning, and research. This shift involves critical questioning: Whose knowledge is privileged? How do curricula reflect power relations? In what ways do dominant epistemologies sustain colonial hierarchies? Rather than tokenistic addition of diverse perspectives, decolonization unsettles Eurocentric foundations, restoring legitimacy to Indigenous, African, and non-Western ways of knowing while challenging Western knowledge’s assumed universality (Lazem et al., 2022; Smith, 2012). This represents profound epistemological reorientation toward pluralistic learning and inquiry.
Global social movements catalyzed this transformation. Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall (beginning at University of Cape Town in 2015) reignited debates on structural racism, epistemic exclusion, and universities’ colonial foundations (Bhambra et al., 2018; Lalujan & Pranjol, 2024). Rhodes Must Fall evolved from symbolic decolonization (removing colonial statues) to comprehensive demands for curriculum, research, and institutional reform. It expanded into Fees Must Fall, South Africa’s significant post-apartheid student movement linking economic access to epistemic justice. These initiatives exposed how higher education reproduces colonial logics positioning Western knowledge as universal while relegating others as “local” or supplementary.
In response, postcolonial and Indigenous scholars developed epistemic justice frameworks advocating diverse knowledge traditions’ recognition in curriculum design (Mignolo & Walsh, 2018; Battiste, 2013). Shahjahan et al. (2022) identify three overlapping decolonization dimensions in curriculum and pedagogy: (1) acknowledging dominant systems’ limitations, (2) disrupting colonial power structures, and (3) creating space for alternative epistemologies. These emphasize decolonization’s non-symbolic nature, requiring institutions to rethink knowledge definition, evaluation, and legitimation (Held, 2023; Lalujan & Pranjol, 2024).
Decolonizing STEM has gained global prominence, entailing critical examination of colonial legacies shaping scientific curricula, pedagogies, and epistemologies (Gunawan & Indrawan, 2025). At its core, it challenges science’s long-held status as purely objective, universal, and value-neutral (Akin-Silva & Prosdocimi, 2024; Lalujan & Pranjol, 2024). Such assumptions historically legitimized Western knowledge production dominance while marginalizing or erasing Indigenous, African, Asian, and other non-Western epistemologies (Bhambra et al., 2018). Decolonizing STEM thus demands an epistemic shift recognizing scientific knowledge’s situated, contextual, and relational nature democratizing validity and legitimate knowers.
This fundamental distinction between DEI’s focus on participatory expansion and decolonization’s demand for epistemological reorientation represents the core tension at the heart of contemporary STEM reform. While equity initiatives have successfully broadened access and representation, they frequently preserve entrenched Eurocentric knowledge hierarchies that marginalize diverse epistemologies and ways of knowing. However, existing review literature has not sufficiently synthesised how this tension manifests across empirical studies or how far current practices move beyond representational inclusion toward epistemic transformation. The following methodology details the systematic analysis of standard academic sources (2010–2025) that illuminates this gap, examining the extent to which current practices achieve genuine epistemic transformation, the pedagogical innovations challenging dominant hierarchies, and the structural barriers impeding progress.

3. Methodology

This study employs a critical review methodology to systematically examine how contemporary equity and inclusion efforts in STEM education intersect with epistemic decolonisation processes. Unlike traditional systematic reviews that prioritize exhaustive coverage, this approach emphasizes interpretive depth, theoretical critique, and reflexive analysis of power dynamics within the literature (Grant & Booth, 2009). The review spans publications from 2010 to 2025, capturing intensified global decolonisation debates alongside expanding STEM diversity initiatives.
The central aim evaluates whether equity practices achieve epistemic transformation beyond representational reform. Specifically, the review addresses three guiding questions:
  • To what extent do equity and inclusion initiatives in STEM education engage with or lead to epistemic decolonisation?
  • What pedagogical and curricular innovations challenge Eurocentric knowledge hierarchies within STEM disciplines?
  • What structural, cultural, and institutional barriers hinder the integration of decolonial and epistemic justice frameworks globally?
A multi-stage search strategy was employed across major academic databases (Scopus, Web of Science, ERIC, and Google Scholar).
Stage 1: A comprehensive keyword search was conducted using predefined search strings to identify potentially relevant studies.
Stage 2: Retrieved records were exported and duplicates were removed. Titles and abstracts were then screened to exclude irrelevant studies.
Stage 3: Full-text articles were assessed against established inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Stage 4: A backward and forward citation search, along with grey literature exploration, was conducted to identify additional relevant sources.
Search terms combined:
  • Decolonisation concepts: “decolonis*” OR “decolonizing” OR “decolonial”
  • STEM-specific: “STEM” OR “science education” OR “science technology engineering mathematics”
  • Equity frameworks: “equity” OR “inclusion” OR “DEI” OR “diversity”
  • Epistemic focus: “epistemic justice” OR “Indigenous knowledge”
Boolean combinations retrieved 152 publications. Following PRISMA-inspired screening (title/abstract/full-text), 80 sources met inclusion criteria:
  • Inclusion: Explicit engagement with decolonisation, epistemic justice, or critical STEM perspectives; Global North/South representation.
  • Exclusion: Demographic representation only; lacking theoretical depth.
The analytical process involved iterative and interpretive reading of the selected texts to identify recurrent concepts, tensions, and silences across the literature. Rather than relying on coding software, analysis was conducted manually to preserve contextual sensitivity and allow deeper engagement with each text. The process began with close reading guided by the three research questions, followed by the identification of patterns related to epistemic exclusion, curricular reform, and institutional resistance. These patterns were then synthesised into broader thematic categories that reflected the intersections of theory, pedagogy, and policy.
A reflexive stance was maintained throughout the review process, explicitly acknowledging the researcher’s positionality within decolonial scholarship and the inherently interpretive nature of critical inquiry. This involved ongoing documentation of how personal commitments to epistemic justice shaped textual interpretations, balanced through peer debriefing, audit trails, and deliberate bracketing of preconceptions.
Rather than seeking statistical generalizability, the analysis aimed to surface dominant narratives, silences, and emerging trajectories within decolonial STEM discourse. By integrating diverse Global North and South voices, this approach critically interrogated the foundational assumptions underpinning STEM knowledge production, establishing a robust conceptual foundation for understanding how epistemic justice principles can guide transformative educational practices.
This rigorous methodology reveals equity initiatives’ representational successes alongside persistent epistemic limitations, setting the stage for the findings section that examines these tensions through thematic analysis of equity practices, pedagogical innovations, and structural barriers.

4. Findings

4.1. Equity and Inclusion in STEM: Progress and Limitations

Over the past decade, global diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in STEM education have evolved significantly from narrow, access-oriented initiatives toward more systemic approaches incorporating structural reform, belonging, and decolonisation of curricula (Whitehead & Dipieri, 2025; Swartz & Blake, 2025). Early policies focused primarily on increasing participation among women and underrepresented minorities through scholarships, mentorship programs, and targeted recruitment, particularly in engineering and physical sciences (Pedersen et al., 2025; National Science Foundation, 2012). Gender equity gained particular urgency following reports documenting women’s persistent underrepresentation despite comparable academic performance to men (Hill et al., 2010). These interventions demonstrably improved enrollment rates—NSF data shows +20% participation from underrepresented groups since 2010—yet failed to address retention, leadership, and recognition disparities, especially for women of colour and Global South scholars (Whitehead & Dipieri, 2025).
Recent scholarship emphasizes intersectionality the recognition that overlapping identities (race, gender, class, disability) compound privilege and marginalization warning against superficial diversity policies (Ramiah et al., 2022). While post-2020 reforms post-BLM and COVID-19 adopted this lens, they often remain individual-level interventions focused on recruitment and retention without confronting deeper epistemic conditions (Takeuchi & Marin, 2022; Makonye & Dlamini, 2020). Australia exemplifies this gap: despite population diversity across culture, gender, disability, and caring responsibilities, STEM workforce and academia exclude these groups, forfeiting innovation benefits from diverse teams (Fisher et al., 2020; Ramiah et al., 2022). Representation gains thus fail to translate into equitable participation or influence.
Institutional policies from NSF, Royal Academy of Engineering, and UNESCO frame DEI as innovation drivers tied to economic competitiveness (National Science Foundation, 2016; UNESCO, 2015). Yet these frameworks frequently reproduce Western-centric merit definitions, excluding non-traditional learners and non-Western epistemologies while prioritizing measurable outcomes over cultural relevance (Şeker, 2025; Pedersen et al., 2025). Classroom micro-dynamics further entrench disparities: Gamez and Parker (2018) show how language, gender, and class hierarchies create unequal participation opportunities, reinforcing broader social stratifications.
Emerging inclusive pedagogies mark progress, with research showing improved outcomes when curricula integrate multiple knowledge systems and value Indigenous perspectives as foundational rather than supplementary (Madonda & Sesoane, 2025; Aikenhead & Elliott, 2010). Project-based learning (PBL) challenges exam-driven colonial hierarchies by valuing authentic problem-solving and multiple ways of knowing (Lalujan & Pranjol, 2024). However, these remain peripheral: Eurocentric science’s reductionist assumptions alienate Indigenous learners, and assessment practices continue privileging “objective” epistemologies (Anthony-Stevens & Matsaw, 2019).
The decolonial turn within equity discourse exposes fundamental limitations such as genuine equity demands dismantling epistemic hierarchies privileging Western traditions, not just expanding participation (Kayumova & Dou, 2022). Cross (2025) critiques Cannabis science education’s Western entrenchment despite access gains, proposing Freirean dialogical models redefining valid knowledge producers. Mikulan (2022) warn inclusion can become neo-colonial assimilation, advocating “deterritorialising inclusion” that transforms educational foundations rather than absorbing marginalised learners into Eurocentric norms. While these limitations point to underlying structural constraints, this section focuses primarily on how such barriers shape participation and representation, with a more detailed examination of systemic and institutional barriers provided in Section 4.3.
These representational successes alongside persistent epistemic limitations reveal DEI’s incomplete transformation of STEM knowledge hierarchies. While access has expanded, the fundamental question “whose knowledge counts?” remains unanswered. The next section examines emerging pedagogical and curricular innovations that directly challenge Eurocentric dominance, repositioning diverse epistemologies as legitimate co-creators of scientific understanding and demonstrating viable paths toward pluriversal STEM education.

4.2. Epistemic Decolonisation in STEM Curricula

Epistemic decolonisation in STEM extends beyond diversifying participation to fundamentally interrogating knowledge production politics questioning who produces knowledge, what forms are valued, where/how it’s created, and for whose benefit (Jackson, 2021). Unlike equity initiatives focused on “who participates,” decolonising STEM challenges underlying epistemic assumptions defining legitimate knowledge, repositioning learners and educators as co-creators fostering environments where multiple epistemologies coexist equitably. This paradigm challenges the dominance of Western universalist perspectives by advocating for a pluriversal understanding of science. It calls for curricula to be rooted in local knowledge systems and contexts, rather than being shaped by a single, homogenized framework (Matindike & Ramdhany, 2024; Vandeyar, 2020).
Culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies align STEM teaching with diverse learners’ lived experiences, values, and epistemologies, enhancing identity, belonging, and relevance (Makonye & Dlamini, 2020; Govender & Mudzamiri, 2022). Eglash et al. (2020) demonstrate this through Anishinaabe wood-bending practices redirecting STEM from corporate priorities toward Indigenous community empowerment progressing from digital simulations to hybrid cultural-technological creations generating Indigenous futurity.
North American innovations include Anthony-Stevens and Matsaw (2019)’s Ways of Knowing (WoK) module creating “productive uncertainty” for graduate students, questioning positivist assumptions and recognizing science as culturally situated. Gandolfi (2021) operationalizes decolonial pedagogy via an intercultural History of Science (HOS) model embedding global narratives (African inoculation, Silk Road exchanges) into mainstream medicine/magnetism/evolution lessons integrating non-Western contributions conceptually rather than tokenistically.
Canada’s Two-Eyed Seeing (Aikenhead & Elliott, 2010) advances cross-cultural science education encouraging dual Indigenous-Western lenses, with Saskatchewan curricula co-created by elders demonstrating pluralistic, community-embedded approaches (Eglash et al., 2020). Africa’s Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach (CTCA) (Oladejo et al., 2025) integrates cultural values, local technologies (mortars, canoes, medicines), and community contexts enhancing comprehension and ownership while addressing girls’ STEM barriers (Gumbo et al., 2021; Hunter & Hunter, 2023). Hawaii’s STEMS2 Framework (O’Neill et al., 2023) embeds Indigenous epistemologies via five pillars Ao (interconnected learning), Makawalu (multiple perspectives), Mo’olelo (storytelling), Advocacy, Sense of Place fostering teacher/student transformation through community co-creation linking STEM to cultural responsibilities (Bang & Marin, 2015).
Project-Based Learning (PBL) embodies decolonial principles through collaboration, contextual inquiry, and student agency (Lalujan & Pranjol, 2024). Unlike hierarchical traditional STEM, PBL promotes knowledge co-creation reflecting cultural/epistemic backgrounds, aligning with Indigenous frameworks treating community knowledge as equally valid (Aikenhead & Elliott, 2010; Battiste, 2013).
Freirean Cannabis science education (Cross, 2025) rejects “banking” models, integrating biology/sociology/CRT for dialogical inquiry linking science to social justice challenging objectivity myths and empowering marginalized knowers. Place-based learning (O’Neill et al., 2023) connects traditional crafts/land stewardship to STEM concepts, fostering deeper cultural engagement (Avery, 2013; Morris et al., 2021).
These innovations collectively validate home-based knowledge, shifting from deficit models pathologizing “underrepresented” students to asset-based approaches leveraging cultural strengths (Vandeyar, 2020). Comprehensive curriculum reform weaves global/Indigenous epistemologies into core content (Mansfield et al., 2024), fostering cross-cultural collaboration challenging Western scientific monopoly (Menon, 2021; Khalid & Ting, 2025). These pedagogical innovations demonstrate viable pathways toward pluriversal STEM, yet their transformative potential remains constrained by institutional structures treating them as peripheral experiments. Although structural limitations are acknowledged here in relation to implementation, a more comprehensive and focused discussion of systemic barriers is developed in Section 4.3 to avoid analytical overlap.

4.3. Intersectionality and Systemic Challenges

Despite global momentum toward diversifying and decolonising STEM education, persistent coloniality sustains Western epistemic dominance, marginalising Indigenous and non-Western ways of knowing within institutions (Anthony-Stevens & Matsaw, 2019; Dei, 2020). Western knowledge systems are positioned as universal while others are erased or devalued (DiAngelo & Sensoy, 2018), confining Indigenous pedagogies to elective margins rather than core curricula (Lopez & Jean-Marie, 2021). African and Canadian contexts exemplify how education systems explicitly and/or implicitly perpetuate coloniality, marginalising indigenous students (Gyamerah et al., 2025).
Standardised, exam-driven curricula reinforce Eurocentric hierarchies, prioritising Western paradigms and measurable outcomes over contextual epistemic diversity (O’Neill et al., 2023; Seehawer, 2018). Global benchmarks, accreditation standards, and accountability systems leave minimal space for Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) integration, confining decolonial efforts to enrichment activities (Hlalele, 2019). Graduate programs rarely train in culturally responsive methodologies, while curriculum overcrowding, teacher workload, and limited Science and Technology Studies (STS) knowledge hinder implementation (Gandolfi, 2021; Govender & Mudzamiri, 2022).
Teacher agency enables flexibility but creates vulnerability without institutional support educators lack training, confidence, and resources for decolonial pedagogies (O’Neill et al., 2023). Institutional inertia and the “persistent myth of scientific neutrality” constrain transformative potential, leaving initiatives as isolated experiments (Cross, 2025). The “chilly climate” embeds discrimination in cultural practices, with hierarchical cultures privileging Western epistemologies, authorship conventions, and funding networks particularly disadvantaging Global South scholars (Palid et al., 2023; O’Meara et al., 2017; Hofstra et al., 2020).
Power dynamics maintain colonial validation hierarchies, treating Indigenous Knowledge as supplementary/unscientific (Anderson et al., 2021). A key barrier is the lack of “ethical relationality” that is treating Indigenous Knowledge with genuine respect and mutual learning rather than as an add-on (Vandeyar, 2020). Without this two-way partnership, decolonization efforts become superficial: a few cultural examples get added to curricula as “tokens,” but Western science remains dominant. True transformation requires institutions to value diverse ways of knowing as equally legitimate partners, not inferior supplements. Even promising innovations like Project-Based Learning (PBL) face ethical/structural challenges such as group work power imbalances, faculty unpreparedness, and tokenistic IKS inclusion undermine intent without institutional investment and community partnerships (Lalujan & Pranjol, 2024).
To overcome barriers, institutions must change evaluation systems to value mentorship, collaboration, and community impact alongside traditional publications (Khalid & Ting, 2025). Ethical accountability requires acknowledging past injustices and amplifying marginalized voices through partnerships between teachers, curriculum designers, and Indigenous communities (Bottia et al., 2021). Success metrics should also include cultural identity, community advocacy, and ecological stewardship rather than just Western academic standards (Aikenhead & Elliott, 2010).
These findings illuminate a stark paradox: representational progress, promising pedagogies, yet systemic containment. While equity expanded access and innovations demonstrated epistemic possibility, entrenched colonial structures limit transformation to margins. The Discussion synthesises these tensions through decolonial theory, proposing principles aligning equity initiatives with genuine epistemic justice for pluriversal STEM education.

5. Discussion

Building on the findings of this critical review, the Section 5 interprets what the results mean for theory and practice in efforts to decolonise STEM education beyond representational equity. It synthesises the key tensions between DEI reforms and epistemic transformation, considers implications for curriculum, pedagogy, and institutional structures, and then outlines the study’s limitations alongside clear suggestions for future research.

5.1. Theoretical Implications

This study implies that equity in STEM education must be theorised as an epistemic project rather than treated primarily as a distributive or representational one. When equity is framed largely through access, participation, and attainment, it risks leaving intact the deeper epistemic rules that govern intelligibility in STEM: what counts as legitimate knowledge, which forms of evidence are authorised, and whose accounts are recognised as “scientific.” The theoretical shift, therefore, is from equity as demographic correction to equity as epistemic justice, foregrounding credibility, authority, and recognition as central analytic concerns. Within this reframing, exclusion is not only a matter of barriers to entry but also a matter of constrained knowledge relations that position certain epistemologies as universal while rendering others local, supplementary, or non-scientific.
A further implication is the need to treat decolonisation as conceptually distinct from DEI rather than as its rhetorical extension. DEI can be understood as inclusion within an inherited epistemic order, whereas decolonisation targets the constitution of that order itself, including its ontological assumptions, standards of warrant, and regimes of validation. Theoretically, this distinction demands sharper language in scholarship: decolonisation should not be reduced to “adding perspectives” or diversifying examples but analysed as a paradigm shift in what STEM is taken to be, how it is justified, and for whom it is accountable. This reorientation also invites theorists to conceptualise pluriversality not as an additive pluralism but as a contested relational field in which epistemologies meet under asymmetrical power conditions, making questions of translation, commensurability, and ethical engagement unavoidable.
The study also implies that epistemic power in STEM education should be modelled across nested levels rather than located solely in curriculum content or interpersonal bias. Epistemic dominance is reproduced through micro-level pedagogic norms (e.g., what counts as an explanation, the preferred genres of argument, the implicit hierarchies of “hard” versus “soft” knowledge), meso-level organisational infrastructures (assessment, accreditation, quality assurance, and departmental gatekeeping), and macro-level political economies of knowledge (funding metrics, publication hierarchies, and global standards that stabilise Western canons as benchmarks). A multi-level theory of epistemic power clarifies why promising pedagogies may remain theoretically legible yet practically marginal: they confront not only classroom conventions but also institutional architectures that regulate legitimacy and constrain curricular possibility.
Another implication concerns the theoretical status of objectivity in STEM. Rather than assuming objectivity as value-free neutrality, the study supports accounts that treat it as a historically produced epistemic virtue and a form of boundary work with political effects. This is consequential for STEM education theory because it differentiates methodological rigour from universalist claims that erase context and relational accountability. Analytically, objectivity functions as a governing discourse that can authorise some methods and ways of speaking while disqualifying knowledge practices that are land-based, oral, practice-embedded, spiritual, or community-situated. The implication is not that STEM should abandon evidence, but that theory must examine how “evidence” is culturally organised and institutionally policed, and how such policing shapes who can appear as a credible knower.
The review further implies that decolonial STEM requires theoretical frameworks that exceed cognition-only models of learning by foregrounding ethical relationality as an epistemic condition. If knowledge-making is situated and accountable, then legitimacy depends not only on correctness or procedural competence but also on relationships: reciprocity with communities, responsibility for consequences, and recognition of historical and ongoing colonial harm. This shifts theory from outcomes alone toward the conditions under which knowledge is produced, circulated, and authorised, positioning consent, reciprocity, and accountability as constitutive rather than ancillary to STEM learning. Such a move reframes STEM from a merely technical enterprise to a relational practice in which epistemic humility and community obligations become educationally central.
Finally, the study implies an expanded theoretical role for intersectionality: not only as a framework for describing differential participation, but as an epistemic analytic of credibility and interpretive resources. Intersectional positions shape whose questions are read as meaningful, whose reasoning is heard as rigorous, and whose communicative styles align with dominant scientific genres. This pushes scholarship toward intersectional epistemology, analysing how racialisation, gendering, classed and ableist norms, linguistic hierarchies, and colonial location distribute epistemic authority in STEM spaces. Correspondingly, theories of validity and evaluation in STEM education must be broadened beyond positivist inheritances to account for community-grounded standards, contextual relevance, and ethical consequence alongside reliability and generalisability. Conceptually, this is best understood not as lowering standards but as re-theorising warrant itself, what it means for knowledge to be justified when multiple epistemic traditions are treated as legitimate partners rather than peripheral supplements.

5.2. Practical Implications

The practical implications of this review are directed at how STEM education systems can move from representational inclusion toward sustained epistemic transformation. In practice, this requires treating decolonisation as a whole-of-system change agenda that aligns curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, teacher development, and institutional governance, rather than positioning Indigenous and local knowledges as optional enrichment. For policymakers and education leaders, a central implication is that equity goals should be operationalised through standards and accountability measures that explicitly value contextual relevance, cultural sustainability, and community partnership, not only participation rates and achievement metrics.
At the curriculum level, institutions and school systems should embed Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) and other local epistemologies within core STEM concepts through co-design with communities, Elders, and knowledge holders. This entails shifting from “add-on” cultural examples to curriculum architectures that foreground multiple epistemic traditions as legitimate sources of explanation, problem framing, and method. Practical curriculum work should therefore include locally grounded problem contexts (e.g., land, water, health, food systems), explicit attention to the history and sociology of scientific knowledge, and opportunities for learners to compare how different knowledge traditions generate warrants, evidence, and responsibility.
At the pedagogical level, educators can translate epistemic justice into classroom routines by designing learning that legitimises multiple ways of knowing and communicating. Practical strategies include dialogical teaching that makes epistemic assumptions discussable, project-based and place-based learning that centres community-defined problems, and structured reflection that supports learners to analyse power in knowledge production (e.g., whose explanations are treated as authoritative and why). Importantly, these approaches require careful facilitation to prevent tokenism or appropriation; pedagogies should be grounded in ethical relationality, including reciprocity, consent, and accountability to community priorities.
Assessment and evaluation practices require particularly concrete redesign. High-stakes testing and narrow “objectivity” criteria often function as gatekeeping mechanisms; therefore, assessment should incorporate varied demonstrations of competence, including portfolios, inquiry projects, community-facing products, and oral or multimodal explanations aligned with local communicative traditions. Rubrics can be adapted to recognise epistemic practices such as relational reasoning, contextual justification, collaborative knowledge-making, and ethical consideration of consequences, alongside conventional analytic and quantitative competencies. Where external examinations remain unavoidable, institutions can still diversify internal assessment regimes to avoid making one epistemic style the sole route to recognition.
Teacher education and professional learning emerge as non-negotiable conditions for implementation. Educators need sustained development in culturally sustaining pedagogies, decolonial theory, and Science and Technology Studies (STS) so that they can teach disciplinary knowledge while also engaging critically with its histories, values, and power dynamics. Practically, this means moving beyond one-off workshops toward ongoing communities of practice, mentoring, time allocations for collaborative planning, and access to community partners. Institutions should also provide guidance on ethical engagement with Indigenous knowledge, including protocols for consultation, attribution, and safeguarding knowledge that is not intended for public dissemination.
Finally, institutional governance must be aligned with these pedagogical and curricular shifts. Universities and systems should revise incentives that privilege narrow publication metrics and Eurocentric canons by recognising community-engaged scholarship, mentoring, curriculum co-design, and partnership work in promotion and workload models. Funding structures should support long-term partnerships rather than short-term pilot projects, and leadership should establish mechanisms for shared decision-making with community stakeholders. Without these structural supports, decolonial initiatives are likely to remain peripheral, placing the burden of transformation on individual educators and sustaining inequities through institutional inertia.

5.3. Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research

This critical review is subject to limitations inherent to interpretive, theory-driven synthesis. Although a structured multi-stage search and PRISMA-informed screening were used, the review did not aim for exhaustive coverage, and relevant studies may have been missed due to database indexing practices, keyword variability across disciplines, and the exclusion of sources that addressed participation without explicit epistemic framing. The inclusion criteria privileging theoretical engagement with decolonisation and epistemic justice may also have introduced selection bias toward particular scholarly traditions, potentially under-representing practitioner knowledge, community-authored outputs, and locally circulated scholarship, especially where such work is not captured in dominant academic repositories. In addition, the manual thematic analysis, while enabling contextual sensitivity, necessarily reflects interpretive judgement shaped by the researcher’s positionality; despite reflexive practices (audit trails, peer debriefing, bracketing), alternative readings and different theoretical lenses could yield divergent emphases. Finally, the heterogeneity of contexts, sectors, and STEM disciplines across the included literature constrains claims of transferability, as the review synthesises patterns across varied educational systems rather than evaluating the effectiveness of specific interventions under comparable conditions.
Future research should build empirically robust and context-attentive accounts of epistemic decolonisation by pairing decolonial theory with methodological designs capable of tracing change across classroom, institutional, and policy levels. Longitudinal and multi-sited studies are needed to examine how pluriversal curricula and culturally sustaining pedagogies become stabilised (or marginalised) over time, including how assessment regimes, accreditation requirements, and institutional reward structures shape implementation fidelity and unintended consequences. Participatory, community-led, and Indigenous methodologies should be prioritised to ensure ethical relationality, epistemic accountability, and appropriate governance of knowledge, while also generating evaluative frameworks that move beyond conventional metrics to capture outcomes such as belonging, cultural continuity, community benefit, and ecological stewardship. Comparative research across Global North and South contexts can clarify how coloniality operates through different policy infrastructures, languages of instruction, and resource conditions, and can identify conditions under which decolonial initiatives avoid tokenism and epistemic extraction. Finally, conceptual work is warranted to refine constructs such as “pluriversality,” “objectivity,” and “validity” in STEM education, producing analytic tools that help researchers and practitioners distinguish representational inclusion from substantive epistemic transformation.

6. Conclusions

This critical review set out to examine how contemporary equity and inclusion practices in STEM education engage the deeper challenge of epistemic decolonisation. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, Feminist Science Studies, and decolonial scholarship, the review clarified a central tension in current reform agendas: while DEI initiatives have meaningfully broadened participation, they frequently leave intact Eurocentric assumptions about objectivity, universality, and what counts as legitimate knowledge. In response, decolonial approaches foreground epistemic justice by insisting that transformation must extend beyond “who is included” to the foundational questions of how STEM knowledge is produced, validated, and taught, and for whose purposes it is mobilised.
Across the reviewed literature, the analysis indicates that epistemic decolonisation is most coherently enacted through pedagogical and curricular work that re-situates science and mathematics as culturally embedded, relational, and accountable. Innovations such as Two-Eyed Seeing, place-based and culturally sustaining pedagogies, project-based learning, and the integration of the history, philosophy, and sociology of science illustrate pathways for positioning Indigenous Knowledge Systems and other local epistemologies as legitimate co-constitutive resources for inquiry rather than peripheral supplements. Yet the review also shows that the transformative potential of such approaches is routinely constrained by entrenched institutional conditions, including exam-driven curricula, accreditation and accountability pressures, disciplinary gatekeeping, and incentive structures tied to positivist metrics, publication hierarchies, and Western canons.
Taken together, the review argues that moving “from access to epistemology” requires systemic alignment across curriculum design, assessment, educator preparation, and institutional governance. In this sense, decolonising STEM does not mean rejecting Western science; rather, it involves creating a more balanced approach that recognises and includes diverse knowledge systems alongside Western perspectives. For policymakers, educators, and institutions, the challenge is therefore to create enabling structures that support sustained community partnership, expand conceptions of warrant and validity, and cultivate learning environments where multiple ways of knowing can coexist without assimilation or tokenism. Importantly, this review advances existing debates on STEM equity and epistemic justice by synthesising fragmented strands of DEI and decolonial scholarship into a coherent analytical framework that foregrounds the relationship between access, participation, and knowledge production. By explicitly identifying the gap between representational inclusion and epistemic transformation, the study contributes a clearer conceptualisation of what constitutes meaningful change in STEM education.
Furthermore, the review offers a structured account of how pedagogical innovations and institutional constraints interact, thereby providing a foundation for future empirical and policy-oriented research seeking to operationalise decolonising approaches in diverse educational contexts. By articulating these tensions and trajectories, this review contributes a conceptual foundation for future work aimed at advancing STEM education that is not only more inclusive, but also epistemically just, socially accountable, and responsive to the complex challenges of the twenty-first century.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, K.A.A.G.; methodology, S.C.P.D. and K.A.A.G.; formal analysis, S.C.P.D.; investigation, K.A.A.G., S.C.P.D. and S.J.; writing—original draft preparation, K.A.A.G. and S.C.P.D.; writing—review and editing, K.A.A.G. and S.J. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Gamage, K.A.A.; Dehideniya, S.C.P.; Jayasinghe, S. From Access to Epistemology: A Critical Review of Decolonising STEM Education Through Equity and Inclusion Practices. Educ. Sci. 2026, 16, 559. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci16040559

AMA Style

Gamage KAA, Dehideniya SCP, Jayasinghe S. From Access to Epistemology: A Critical Review of Decolonising STEM Education Through Equity and Inclusion Practices. Education Sciences. 2026; 16(4):559. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci16040559

Chicago/Turabian Style

Gamage, Kelum A. A., Shyama C. P. Dehideniya, and Shan Jayasinghe. 2026. "From Access to Epistemology: A Critical Review of Decolonising STEM Education Through Equity and Inclusion Practices" Education Sciences 16, no. 4: 559. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci16040559

APA Style

Gamage, K. A. A., Dehideniya, S. C. P., & Jayasinghe, S. (2026). From Access to Epistemology: A Critical Review of Decolonising STEM Education Through Equity and Inclusion Practices. Education Sciences, 16(4), 559. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci16040559

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