The "decolonial turn": what does it mean for academic staff development?

Abstract

It has become increasingly evident that the discourse of transformation that has shaped the democratising of higher education institutions over the first two decades of the democratic dispensation in South Africa has now run its course. Over the past few years, and particularly during the tumultuous student protests of 2015 and 2016, students and some academics have been calling for the decolonisation of university structures and cultures, including curricula. Using concepts from Margaret Archer's social realism we consider the failure of the discourse of transformation to lead to real change and examine a constellation of new discourses related to the decolonisation of universities that have emerged in South Africa recently. Furthermore, we critique the discourses that have underpinned our own practices as academic developers over the past two decades and then explore the implications of what could be termed a "decolonial turn" for academic developers and by implication for the academics with whom they work.

De/coloniality, disabled sexualities, and anti-oppressive education: a review of Southern African literature

“…Decoloniality discourse has gained attention around debates of how we can deconstruct and decentre Euro-North American-centric epistemologies and knowledge systems, particularly in teaching and learning environments (Zembylas, 2018). Zembylas (2018), Morreira (2017), and Vorster and Quinn (2017) argue how decoloniality discourses have made a visible impact on higher education as an enterprise to drive social transformation in teaching and learning pedagogies, academic staff development, and language policies. In terms of people with disabilities (PwD), similar transformation agendas that are informed by some aspects of the decoloniality movement have been enacted in policies such as employment equity, access to institutions of learning, and reasonable accommodation procedures (Sefotho, 2018).…”

Teaching Russian as a foreign language to students from the Republic of Angola

“…• games, role-play, audio, video and online technologies in teaching foreign languages [18][19][20][21][22]; • research works on teaching of African [23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. To test the effectiveness of the ethno-oriented approach in teaching Angolan students, the following assumptions were made:…”

Epistemic justice through ontological reclamation in pedagogy: Detailing mutual (in)fallibility using inseparable categories

“…Hegelian dialectics inform us that from the thesis and the antithetical tension we arrive at the final position which is synthesis, which can here be interpreted as Bhabha's Third Space Hybridity which is constituted by the amalgamation of both the cultures of the oppressed and the oppressor, creating a cosmopolitan reality located in modernity. The cosmopolitan reality of modernity in the scholarship of the decolonial movement of South America (Grosfoguel, 2007;Tlostanova & Mignolo, 2009;Maldonado-Torres, 2006;Mignolo, 2011;Nakata, Nakata, Keech, & Bolt, 2012), which in recent times has been adopted by the decolonial turn in South Africa evinced through the scholarship of Vorster and Quinn (2017) has been framed as synonymous with coloniality. Framing modernity as synonymous with coloniality reveals the chronology of modernity as emanating from the histories of the exploitation of Black cotton-farm slaves of the southern states of America, the indentured labourers of the sugar cane plantations of the south coast and the migrant labour in the gold and diamond mines of the Witwatersrand and Kimberly respectively, of South Africa.…”