In the South African higher education context, which is fraught with inequities and where many feel uncomfortable, the focus on socially just pedagogies and the positioning of teachers in relation to this is not just timeous and relevant, but crucial. In this article we share what we believe a posthumanist view has to offer researchers and educationists. The article revisits data from a scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) research project, in which 23 audio-recorded interviews were conducted with academics from a variety of faculties and units for academic development. We discuss two discourses which emerged from our reading of the data: the first concerns lecturers and students having fixed racial identities that influence how learning does or does not take place and the second concerns students learning in a developmental and teleological manner. We discuss ideas culled from the literature on posthumanist ontologies that helped us to respond to these discourses, and which we believe, could be shared with academics and researchers who wish to advance a socially just pedagogy in higher education. We reflect briefly by way of conclusion on what, as researchers, our responses and responsibility towards the data and the complexities of our time could or should be.
This paper reports on a study that focuses on students from rural areas of South Africa and their experiences of higher education. These students have attracted little attention in widening participation research in South Africa, despite being one of the most marginalised groups (Mgqwashu 2016a). The paper, drawing on the experiences of student co-researchers and using the concepts of decoloniality and curricular justice as a theoretical framework, argues for greater acknowledgement of epistemic reciprocity in curriculum development as a way to ensure more socially just curricula. Findings illustrate the importance that students attribute to being able to relate to curricula that reflect their experiences, curricula that they do not experience in higher education.Students report feelings of marginalisation, lack of recognition of the importance of knowledge and skills developed in their communities and their relevance to higher education together with the challenges they face accessing and engaging with the curriculum.
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