Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning

Decolonising management education: An empirical study

Chimene Nukunah, Neil Eccles — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Conversations in South Africa around decolonising higher education since the 2015/2016 #RhodesMustFall movements have remained largely theoretical. Recently, much of the attention in many higher education institutions seems to have moved on from these conversations to apparently more ‘interesting’ topics like the fourth industrial revolution and the impact of Covid-19. The aim of this article is to rekindle the desire among participants in higher education, specifically in management education, to respond in a practical manner to the call for decoloniality. Towards this aim, we present findings from a constructivist grounded theory study in which we interviewed 31 participants in the management education space on how to decolonise management education. We describe the following six themes that emerged: ‘globalisation’, ‘race’, ‘capitalism’, ‘meaning of decolonisation’, ‘lekgotla’, and ‘critical pedagogy’. Drawing on these themes we propose a tentative conceptual framework on how we might begin to construct a meaningful decoloniality movement in the context of management education.

Rethinking comparative politics in the context of debates about decolonising higher education

Sally Matthews — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In recent years, interest in the topic of the decolonisation of higher education curricula has intensified. A key aspect of attempts to decolonise higher education is the decolonisation of university curricula. This paper explores the question of curricular decolonisation in relation to comparative politics. The paper begins with an overview of debates on curricular decolonisation, proceeding to a discussion of the specific challenges that arise when trying to decolonise comparative politics. I then discuss some changes introduced to a first-year comparative politics course I teach to South African students, detailing my attempts to change the course in the light of debates on decolonising the curriculum. The paper concludes with reflections on some of the shortcomings of the intervention discussed, especially in terms of the persistence of Eurocentric orientations among some of my students and the difficulty in fostering sustained interactive learning.

Afrocentricity and decoloniality in disciplinarity: A reflective dialogue on academic literacy development

Oscar Oliver Eybers — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This study explores a transformative method to revise an academic literacy study guide in a Humanities faculty in South Africa. The methodology includes a critical literature review, positioning the study within the framework of Gee's discourse theory and Lea and Street's academic literacy model. The researcher functioned as a research instrument, critically evaluating the practical reasons for the guide's revision and challenges prompting changes. The transformed text maintains its previous structure while adopting discourse, Afrocentric, and decolonial paradigms. Revisions aim to align with disciplinary discourses, critical thinking and to prepare students for nuanced literacies required in the Humanities. The inclusion of Afrocentric and decolonial paradigms involves introducing students to the origins of literacies in Africa, incorporating Indigenous Knowledge Systems, and utilising a Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) narrative. The discussion reflects on the anticipated effectiveness of the guide and address potential challenges during future implementation.

Locating academic development within the decolonial turn in higher education: The affordances of systems thinking for decolonial practice

Bongi Bangeni, Riashna Sithaldeen, Aditi Hunma — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The student protests of 2015 and 2016 (re)surfaced the call to decolonise South African higher education (HE), highlighting the alienation experienced by black students within historically white institutions. This article describes how an academic development unit at one such institution responds as part of its reconceptualisation process. We consider the interplay between policy, structure, and practice within our context, and the extent to which these enable decolonial work. We also show how approaches to decolonisation within HE work to reinscribe coloniality and argue that these must be holistic and intentional to transform exclusionary institutional practices and the structures that sustain them. Drawing on the area of support services, which is typically designed around individualistic approaches to help-seeking, we illustrate, through a case study, how systems thinking principles enable productive decolonial work within colonial structures, and their affordances to inform policy for an integrated and responsive student support system.

Foregrounding relational dimensions of curriculum and learning design in online and hybrid learning environments

Arona Dison, Karen Collett — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper reflects on a collaborative intervention implemented by an Education lecturer and Writing Centre staff at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) before and during the COVID-19 lockdown. The migration to emergency remote teaching was destabilising and exposed and exacerbated existing student inequalities. This collaborative intervention involved formative feedback being provided by writing tutors to students in Honours modules as part of a strategy of embedding academic literacies development within the modules. We used a Design Based Research (DBR) approach combined with collaborative action research. Key elements of a response-able pedagogy (Bozalek & Zembylas, 2017) and Tronto’s political ethics of care (Tronto, 1993, 2013) were drawn on to explore our curriculum design principles. We argue that online and hybrid curriculum design needs to consider affective dimensions of learning such as trust and care. Building webs of support into curriculum and assessment design constitutes a necessary element of a just pedagogy.

From a student to a teacher educator: Becoming better acquainted with my new professional identity through self-study

Hlologelo Climant Khoza, Eunice Nyamupangedengu — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Acquiring a teacher educator identity can be challenging, especially when one comes straight from being a student of teaching. The purpose of this self-study was to investigate how I got acquainted with my teacher educator identity. The study is underpinned by the socio-cultural theory. The main data source was a reflective journal where I recorded my experience from multiple sources. I analysed the data in a narrative and reflective manner with my mentor. The key finding is that I acquainted myself with a teacher educator through engaging in Discourses with my mentor while interrogating past experiences that resembled student identity and interacting with experienced teacher educators. I narrate these findings and draw conclusions and recommendations.

Relational Reading~Writing~Thinking~Becoming in Higher Education: Possibilities for scholarly reading and writing in times of turbulence

Belinda Verster, Carolien van den Berg, Karen Collett — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The paper explores our scholarly practice of collaborative academic writing by engaging with a Relational Reading of Text approach and Slow scholarship. It grew out of our need to explore the tensions and inertia in our collaborative writing before, during, and after the COVID-19 lockdown, to find our way back to flourishing and thriving through each other. We draw on the relational reading~writing~thinking~becoming dimensions of ‘sense of movement’, ‘shifts to the in-between spaces of meaning’, ‘the quality of kindred’, and ‘shared responsibility’. A collaborative autoethnographic approach was used in relation to the notion of diffraction. We conceptualise a ‘pandemic-transformed’ approach for us to not only survive the digital turn our co-writing practices have taken but to find our way back to an authentic, creative, and joyful engagement. Insights may be of value to other academics who seek to co-write in ways that support flourishing and Slow scholarship in higher education.

A timely question: How can we not talk about becoming a professor in the context of a neoliberal and decolonising higher education?

Emmanuel Mfanafuthi Mgqwashu — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Drawing from my own experiences and critical reflections on my journey to becoming a professor, I show how two types of pressures facing higher education institutions necessitate a revisiting of the role of a professor. These pressures are, firstly, to account for “market-friendliness” and, secondly, to respond to the transformation and decolonisation imperatives as a result of massification. I show the broader socio-economic and political conditions under which universities exist and the impact these have on the knowledge project. I argue that such impact manifests through instrumental reasoning and the commodification of knowledge, as well as “Western hegemony” over others. I then explore the extent to which a professorial role may need to re-adapt in order to respond to these broader socio-economic and political exigencies that continue to spill over into higher education.