Teachers and Students as Co-Learners

Postcolonial history education: Issues, tensions and opportunities

“…Indeed, history lessons are -at their best -open arenas of dialogue for groups with different experiences and orientations, and there are clearly rewards associated with undertaking in the classroom the socio-political experiment of attempting to write everyone into the narrative. Both the Botswana and Uganda papers in this special issue incorporate the idea of 'Mutual Value Theory' (Boyanton, 2015) in suggesting more bottom-up and agentic forms of historical exploration by young people, drawing upon local historical events that may unsettle but at the same time also exemplify national narratives, especially when they are seen 'from below.' To be inclusive, history lessons need at least to attempt to incorporate and recognise the specific and idiosyncratic histories of many groups.…”

“…The teacher is there as a guide to help them navigate this, to make the links and bring the history to life. This is seen to be particularly relevant for minorities in every jurisdiction where the teacher's role is to enable the mutual valuing of students between themselves (Boyanton, 2015).…”

Dialogues over decolonisation in East Africa: A case study of history education in Uganda

“…Mutual value theory (MVT), within the broader family of social constructivism, is a formulation of Dengting Boyanton (2015) in the field of educational psychology. It can also be applied to an active approach to decolonisation and reclaiming ownership.…”

“…MVT acknowledges that despite the fact that the previous learning theories differed in terms of key conditions for learning to occur, still they supplemented each other. The central element for learning as brought in by MVT is value (Boyanton, 2015). Boyanton argues that it is unrealistic to claim that factor A affects learning (as established in the previous theories of learning).…”

“…The pedagogical text is informed by the work of Bruner, Vygotsky and Hedegaard. This work feeds into reflections on how mutuality (Boyanton, 2015) and opportunities for dialogue, ownership and internalisation might be established and developed. We explore how psychological, social, emotional and cultural aspects of learning play a part in establishing a link between identity, relevance and significance which takes into account how teachers and learners give and receive value through a search for authenticity.…”