What does decolonising education mean to us? Educator reflections

Abstract

The #FeesMustFall and #RhodesMustFall student protests accelerated the call for a decolonised higher education space. Much complexity and debate exists around the notion of a decolonised curriculum, how to frame it, describe it and/or enact it. Within this debate, the positionality and identity of individuals who design, implement, and evaluate curricula are important. The purpose of this article is to reflect on how theory-informed pedagogical reflections can assist in our understanding of decolonisation. The four educator reflections include our personal accounts of pedagogical philosophies, methodologies, and practices. A major focus is social work, which aims to enhance the well-being of all persons especially the disadvantaged, the marginalised and the voiceless. Through belonging to a community of practice, we embarked on the process of articulating our voice, positionality, and identity and how this informs our teaching, which is both personal and political within a South African higher education context. We provide our ways of knowing regarding how we (try) to contribute to social justice and equity ideals. We conclude with our consolidated view on an envisioned, decolonised education in the global South context. We recommend an approach that values ongoing, collective reflection, critical questioning, and agitation of how a decolonised curriculum can be envisaged. The contribution that this article makes is in the value of collective reflection, coupled with embracing personal stories/biographies to theorise decolonisation.

Educator Narratives on Student Success Through Enacting a Humanising Pedagogy and Care: A Transformative Approach

“…In my role as Curriculum and Teaching Unit Head, my moral obligation (Bozalek, 2014) is to encourage the relational aspects of curricula, initiate dialogue around student success, horizontalise knowledge and essentially humanise pedagogies. By way of example, through group approaches and collective practices (Agherdien et al, 2022) and a forthcoming book chapter on a Writing Intensive pedagogical approach in a social work course, we slowly and steadily work towards student success and reimagining South African Higher Education.…”

“…See for example the collaboration betweenAgherdien et al, (2022), where they theorised what decolonisation meant to them, serving as a good starting point to design curricula in more intentional and pedagogically sound ways.…”

Enacting criticality and care

“…Being socially just involves universal principles of justice and fairness and an ethical and moral obligation to challenge, critique, and question continued injustices (Agherdien, et al, 2022). Specifically, associated economic, cultural and political dimensions (Bozalek & Boughey, 2012) cannot be left out of the equation.…”

Beyond the pandemic: Lessons for the future of SOTL in the global South (part two)

“…That first part focused on staff, leadership and management perspectives. These include the perspectives of university management(Motala and Menon, 2022), lecturers(Dison, Padayachee, de Klerk, Conradie, MacAlister, Moch and Krull, 2022;Agherdien, Pillay, Dube and Masinga, 2022;Hendricks, 2022), academic advisors (De Klerk, 2022), doctoral supervisors(Manathunga, Qi, Raciti, Gilbey, Stanton and Singh, 2022), and tutors(Ndwambi, Hlabane, Motlhabane and Malgas, 2022).In this second part of the special issue, we place greater focus on student perspectives in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first paper, however, acts as a bridge between the two parts by showcasing a particular SOTL journey from micro to macro levels of teaching and learning practice.In this paper, Mohd-Yusof and Samah, demonstrate how scholarship in teaching and learning takes place at multiple levels, beginning in individual classrooms with a focus on developing studentcentred pedagogy.…”