Decolonisation Of Higher Education Research Articles

Invisible Statues of Colonisation: Regulatory Curriculum Requirements in South African Higher Education

Over the past 20 years, the South African higher education (HE) system has become increasingly regularised. All programmes offered at South African public universities have to be registered and accredited by the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET); the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC) under the auspices of the Council on Higher Education (CHE); as well as the South African Qualifications Authority (SAQA). Such accreditation, registration and quality assurance is subject to a growing series of stringent regulatory frameworks that must be adhered to, chief amongst which are the Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework (HEQSF) and the Classification of Educational Subject Matter (CESM) manual and the later Addendum. Increased calls from both students and government for curriculum transformation and the decolonisation of HE require a critical review of the regulatory regime as one of the barriers to curriculum transformation at South African universities. The aim of this article is to present a conceptual analysis of the CESM and its regulatory context within a decolonial framework in order to show that the regulatory requirements for curricula have created a rigid and colonised conception of what universities may and may not teach. The CESM categories and their concomitant requirements have become the so-called invisible statues of colonisation based on narrow and morally decadent Western conceptions of academic disciplines in current university curricula.

Black working-class students’ negotiation of boundaries across time and space: A longitudinal analysis

This article critiques representations of black South African students as victims, as colonised by academic discourse or as entitled millennials in the current debates about decolonisation in higher education. It argues that, albeit from different ideological perspectives, such representations depict black students’ experiences as homogenised and reified, and separate identity from the processes of learning. We draw on data from two qualitative longitudinal studies to analyse the ways in which black working-class students are positioned by the expected subject positions within the academy and at home. We illustrate the diverse and contradictory ways in which the participants reposition themselves as they straddle the boundaries of home and the academy over time. The article argues that the activity of straddling boundaries and making meaning from a diversity of positions is situated agentic work, and is central to learning, to critical engagement, and to enabling new ways of knowing and being.

Informal Education and Collective Conscientisation in the #FeesMustFall Movement at Nelson Mandela University

This paper draws attention to the intellectual life of the #FeesMustFall movement, highlighting how it became a student platform for critical informal education. Freire's concept of conscientisation is utilised to frame the social movement as a learning space of dialogue, critical thinking, knowledge exchange, and formulation of practical political action against higher education injustices. The Nelson Mandela University in South Africa is the site under study where informal education, conscientisation, and active learning occurred in its #FeesMustFall uprisings. Although the #FeesMustFall movement broadly took on a national temperament, each university campus had its own local unique experiences of the agitation. For Nelson Mandela University's microenvironment, the movement took on strong student-worker alliance organising principles and solidarities that yielded promising and continuing material transformations within a short period of time for its low-income university workers and black students. As one of the student leaders of this social movement, I provide here a personal activist experience from that period and space, emphasising the debates, knowledges, learning experiences, and theorising efforts that went with the protests that the #FeesMustFall student-worker alliance movement organised. This study contributes to the decolonisation of university learning spaces by centring alternative "classrooms" provided on the university margins by student social movements as pioneering platforms in the sociopolitical rollout of critical intellectual development and decolonisation of higher education.

The relevance of identity style and professional identity to academic commitment and academic achievement in a higher education setting

ABSTRACTStudent retention remains an ongoing concern for higher education institutions worldwide. In the present study, we examine the predictive utility of identity styles, professional identity and academic commitment to academic achievement. We asked 120 second-year students in the profession of engineering in an augmented degree programme to complete the Identity Styles Inventory, the Engineering Identity Factors Inventory and the Academic Commitment Scale. We found that a normative identity style predicted professional engineering identity and meaningfulness, which predicted the participants’ investments in their studies. Additionally, a diffuse-avoidant identity style negatively predicted professional identity, meaningfulness and satisfaction, which provides empirical evidence of the contribution of identity to academic commitment. None of the variables we studied predicted academic achievement. Our findings are relevant, given current debates on access, equity and decolonisation in higher education, because it suggests that students’ sense of identity largely influences whether they feel a sense of belonging at university. Although identity styles and meaningfulness are not significant direct predictors of academic achievement, they probably do have an indirect effect on academic achievement through their direct influence on investment.

Community social psychologies for decoloniality: an African perspective on epistemic justice in higher education

The decolonisation of higher education in South Africa is closely linked to questions of knowledge production. The epistemic violence of the colonial encounter has put into question the possibilities and modes of doing research in marginalised communities. In this article, I argue that praxis in community social psychology can lead to more relevant and just research methods, especially when rooted in liberation thinking. In the South African and African context, this requires an engagement with the particularities of Blackness and the Black experience. Drawing on examples of participatory action research projects with young Africans using Photovoice methods, and the establishment of the Black Academic Caucus at the University of Cape Town, the article shows the links between praxis and epistemic justice as exercised within the cultural practices of the university, and between researchers and participants from marginalised communities.

Decolonising the classroom

Abstract Taking the concept of credibility as a focal point, this article explores inclusive and decolonised classroom dynamics in the Dutch universities. Though much has been written on diversity and decolonisation in higher education, from curricula to epistemology to recruitment, there is a dearth in the discourse when it comes to decolonisation of classrooms. Drawing on Sally Haslanger’s conceptualisation of ‘credibility’ in classroom dynamics (2014), I focus on the intricate ways of classroom interaction which can usher those present in retracting from participating and engaging in class due to micro-aggressions, intimidation, or oppression in any form. As class participation and engagement are pivotal to success in the current format of academia that values individual participation and visibility, especially so in the Humanities, special attention to credibility addresses how classrooms can be transformed into inclusive teaching environments for all. The main question of this paper is: how are inclusive classrooms, in which every attendee feels credible as a knowledge producer, created and sustained? Classroom dynamics are complicated when both visibly and invisibly ‘marked’ attendees join the classroom, as power dynamics, inherent biases, and (micro-)aggressions can become hurdles in the learning process. It is the coloniality (Quijano & Ennis, 2000) of the classroom and the overrepresentation of Man (McKittrick, 2014) which I first analyse to demonstrate the need for decolonisation of the classroom. Then, I show the innovative investigative lens that the concept of credibility can offer in analysing classrooms through an illustration. Based on this exploration of classroom credibility, tools to evaluate the coloniality of classrooms and strategies to decolonise the classroom may be formulated.

Decolonisation of higher education: Dismantling epistemic violence and Eurocentrism in South Africa

Since the end of the oppressive and racist apartheid system in 1994, epistemologies and knowledge systems at most South African universities have not considerably changed; they remain rooted in colonial, apartheid and Western worldviews and epistemological traditions. The curriculum remains largely Eurocentric and continues to reinforce white and Western dominance and privilege. This article traces the roots of Eurocentrism and epistemic violence at universities. The author argues that South Africa must tackle and dismantle the epistemic violence and hegemony of Eurocentrism, completely rethink, reframe and reconstruct the curriculum and place South Africa, Southern Africa and Africa at the centre of teaching, learning and research. However, this will not be easy as opposition to change is entrenched in the university structures. The movement to radically transform and decolonise higher education must find ways to hold institutions accountable and maintain the non-violent and intellectual struggle until epistemic violence and Eurocentrism are dismantled.