tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/curriculum-review-12845/articlesCurriculum review – The Conversation2023-07-07T03:47:04Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2092322023-07-07T03:47:04Z2023-07-07T03:47:04ZNZ curriculum refresh: the world faces complex challenges and science education must reflect that<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536195/original/file-20230707-19-4ntx5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5526%2C3084&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock/Ground Picture</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Long-standing debates about the purpose and focus of a school science curriculum have resurfaced this week as New Zealand is refreshing its approach to science education. </p>
<p>Some responses to an early draft of a proposed science curriculum warned it would “<a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/andrew-rogers-school-science-is-being-minimalised-wake-up/UMCLSNDOQNAQNPMGZE7AEJELXQ/">minimalise science</a>”. But an updated curriculum for today’s world presents an opportunity to <a href="https://pisa-framework.oecd.org/science-2025/">engage all students in science</a> through contexts that matter. </p>
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<p>As we witness record-breaking temperatures on land and in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/15/oceans-have-been-absorbing-the-worlds-extra-heat-but-theres-a-huge-payback">ocean</a>, “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/05/health/pfas-nearly-half-us-tap-water-wellness/index.html">forever chemicals</a>” contaminating drinking water in the US, and <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/32707/food-energy-water-systems-achieving-climate-resilience-and-sustainable-development-in-the-21st-century">food and energy systems under strain</a> globally, it is clear <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/9789087905057/Scientific-Literacy-Hodson-Derek-908790505X/plp">science literacy</a> is not just about “learning the basics”. </p>
<p>Teaching science should instead be about developing <a href="https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/agency-in-the-anthropocene_8d3b6cfa-en;jsessionid=SOgyghUBGkTzVtpo9yelYisuVbirqpJK7udVUScO.ip-10-240-5-56">systems thinking and agency, or “the ability to recognise and take action within complex systems”</a>. A meaningful and robust science education is increasingly <a href="https://pisa-framework.oecd.org/science-2025/">important for all students</a>, not just those who want to become scientists. </p>
<p>Students must learn to <a href="https://www.nzcer.org.nz/research/publications/enduring-competencies-designing-science-learning-pathways">critically evaluate and apply science knowledge</a>, alongside other forms of knowledge, to make informed decisions and act on issues that matter. </p>
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<h2>Curriculum change is necessary</h2>
<p>Decades of research have shown that school science that focuses predominantly on decontextualised scientific facts and theories has <a href="https://www.nzcer.org.nz/system/files/inspired-by-science.pdf">not supported student learning</a>. This approach has ill prepared students to engage competently or critically with science, and has failed to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21774">expand participation</a> in science careers or degree programmes. </p>
<p>Enrolments in traditional science programmes at New Zealand universities are <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/fears-proposed-science-curriculum-will-turn-out-ill-informed-students/LWUHI37MSNEBFAZVRHG7OAPT3I/">declining</a>. Fewer 15-year-old New Zealanders see the <a href="https://ero.govt.nz/news/supporting-science-teaching-with-new-science-reports">value of science</a> compared to international peers. </p>
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<p>As former chief science advisor Sir Peter Gluckman <a href="https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2021-10/pmcsa-Looking-ahead-Science-education-for-the-twenty-first-century.pdf">pointed out</a> in 2011, New Zealand needs radical changes to the science curriculum to better prepare students for the complex issues of our time. </p>
<p>A 2022 <a href="https://www.nzcer.org.nz/research/publications/enduring-competencies-designing-science-learning-pathways">background report</a> to the <a href="https://curriculumrefresh.education.govt.nz/">New Zealand curriculum refresh</a> reinforced this perspective. It highlighted how science education needs to prepare students for a world characterised by increasing disinformation campaigns, and growing environmental and other science-related social concerns. </p>
<h2>What needs to change</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj254OI0vn_AhUCpVYBHS1zBAYQFnoECA0QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnzcurriculum.tki.org.nz%2Fcontent%2Fdownload%2F1108%2F11989%2Ffile%2FThe-New-Zealand-Curriculum.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0lKnZ53z-1PuohiAQ_4UKk&opi=89978449">current New Zealand curriculum</a> states the purpose of science education is to ensure students “can participate as critical, informed, and responsible citizens in a society in which science plays a significant role”. </p>
<p>But as a <a href="https://ero.govt.nz/news/supporting-science-teaching-with-new-science-reports">recent report</a> issued by the Education Review Office revealed, New Zealand is far from achieving this goal. Students’ awareness of environmental problems has <a href="https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/publications/series/he-whakaaro/he-whakaaro-how-enviornmentally-aware-are-new-zealand-students">declined since 2006</a>. A <a href="https://www.newsroom.co.nz/kiwis-still-dont-understand-how-to-fight-climate-change-poll">recent poll</a> showed New Zealanders don’t understand how to act on climate change. </p>
<p>Faced with interrelated changes in the environment, <a href="https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2021-10/pmcsa-Looking-ahead-Science-education-for-the-twenty-first-century.pdf">science itself is changing</a>. It is becoming more interdisciplinary. We see new fields emerging at the intersection of physics, chemistry and biology.</p>
<p>Scientists are increasingly working alongside Māori and other Indigenous leaders, drawing from multiple knowledge systems to <a href="https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/courseinfo/GetCourseDetails.aspx?course=MAOR172&occurrence=23S2(C)&year=2023">collaborate on complex science-related problems</a>. A science curriculum for today’s world must be interdisciplinary and reflect these changes.
Students need to be able to see <a href="https://books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=-9wABAAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA395&dq=interdisciplinary+science&ots=gijIOLFA5J&sig=PvFWflX8GaLgVqieIt--EkiWvH4&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=interdisciplinary%20science&f=false">connections between traditional disciplines</a>. </p>
<h2>Teaching science in context</h2>
<p>Research shows that students learn fundamental science concepts better when they are <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-27982-0_9">contextualised within real-world problems and issues</a>. A contextualised curriculum also creates space for <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1013151709605">other valid knowledge systems</a> such as mātauranga Māori and Indigenous knowledge. </p>
<p>Such an approach supports learning in <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11165-019-9854-8">multilingual science classrooms</a>, which is particularly important given the growing diversity in New Zealand schools. </p>
<p>A science curriculum focused on contemporary issues will not only help prepare all students to engage more competently with science, it can also inspire more students to consider science-related career paths they might not have otherwise.</p>
<p>Curriculum wars in science are not new. Debates over the goals and content of a science curriculum are <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42330-020-00114-6">not uncommon</a>, and meaningful curriculum change that disrupts the status quo is difficult. </p>
<p>It requires a bold vision but must also be buttressed by extensive support for teachers. Some non-Māori science teachers are keen to make the change but have expressed concerns about lacking skills; for example, how to <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-manu-korihi/493288/i-don-t-know-enough-science-teacher-concerned-about-integrating-matauranga-maori">teach mātauranga Māori</a>.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/future-teachers-often-think-memorization-is-the-best-way-to-teach-math-and-science-until-they-learn-a-different-way-142448">Future teachers often think memorization is the best way to teach math and science – until they learn a different way</a>
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<p>Teachers are currently <a href="https://socialsciences.org.au/publications/climate-change-education/">not well prepared</a> to teach science in the context of the critical issues of our time, such as climate change. Teacher education and professional development will need to be “turbo-charged” with <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-should-we-teach-climate-change-in-schools-it-starts-with-turbo-charging-teacher-education-207221">robust and sustained investments</a>. </p>
<p>However, the goal of curriculum reform is to lay out a <a href="https://www.ets.org/Media/Research/pdf/reiser.pdf">bold vision for education</a>, which then drives and catalyses the required resourcing.</p>
<p>Fortunately, there are <a href="https://www.royalsociety.org.nz/what-we-do/funds-and-opportunities/science-teaching-leadership-programme/teacher-profiles/2023-teacher-profiles/bronwyn-hooper/">schools</a> and <a href="https://gazette.education.govt.nz/articles/science-and-culture-help-estuary-and-build-school-kaitiakitanga/">kura</a> in New Zealand currently leading the way. We can look to them to see what is possible and be inspired by all that science education can be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209232/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Tolbert receives funding from the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI). She also consults for the New Zealand Ministry of Education and is a co-writer to the New Zealand Curriculum Refresh for the science learning area.</span></em></p>We know students learn science concepts better when their learning is embedded in real-world issues. But teachers are currently not well prepared to teach science in this way.Sara Tolbert, Associate Professor of Science and Environmental Education, University of CanterburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1952352022-11-29T07:35:51Z2022-11-29T07:35:51Z6 priorities to get Kenya’s curriculum back on track – or risk excluding many children from education<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/497385/original/file-20221125-12-hp2nad.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kenya’s education curriculum was reformed in 2017 to improve its quality – but now many Kenyans are calling for change again. Public <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/life-and-style/dn2/we-don-t-hate-cbc-we-just-want-its-implementers-to-be-realistic-3947316">disillusionment</a> with the competency-based curriculum has forced a <a href="https://www.education.go.ke/he-president-ruto-appoints-task-force-evaluate-cbc">government review</a>. </p>
<p>Frustrations with the curriculum centre around the complexity of learning activities and its sustainability given the high costs involved in its delivery.</p>
<p>The previous <a href="https://www.schoolsnetkenya.com/critical-review-of-8-4-4-education-system-in-kenya/">8-4-4</a> curriculum, launched in 1985, required eight years of primary schooling and four years each of secondary and tertiary education. Critics were unhappy with its emphasis on rote learning and teacher-centered pedagogical practices. They also noted that graduates of the 8-4-4 curriculum were <a href="https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/bd/news/fresh-graduates-gap-in-skills-in-job-market-worrying-2217574">ill-prepared</a> for the workforce. A 2009 <a href="https://kicd.ac.ke/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Needs-Assessment-Rpt-ilovepdf-compressed.pdf">government evaluation</a> found the system had limited practical training opportunities and a heavy focus on examinations. </p>
<p>In 2011, the government <a href="https://kenyauptodate.blogspot.com/2011/02/8-4-4-system-review-team-unveiled.html?m=1">appointed a task force</a> to review 8-4-4. This review eventually led to the competency-based curriculum, a <a href="https://www.nexxushub.com/blog/CBC-New-Kenya-Education-System">2-6-3-3-3 system</a>. It requires two years of pre-primary education, six years of primary education, three years each of junior secondary and senior secondary school, and a minimum three years of tertiary education. </p>
<p>The competency-based curriculum emphasises student-centered teaching and practical experiences that better equip learners with 21st-century skills like critical thinking and problem-solving.</p>
<p>As experience from numerous countries shows, education reforms can be messy and rollouts messier. Success requires adequate planning. </p>
<p>In our view as education researchers, the adoption of the competency-based curriculum in Kenya shows glaring gaps in design, planning and execution. At the very basic level, there is a looming question on whether the curriculum is well understood. It is vastly different from 8-4-4, and many stakeholders, including parents and teachers, aren’t clear about how it works and what it requires of them. </p>
<h2>Uphill task</h2>
<p>A national curriculum provides a framework and guidance on the core knowledge students need to learn in key subjects. It’s a critical driver in teaching and learning. However, it exists within an intricate set of interconnected educational components that require intentional planning and execution to function optimally. </p>
<p>Failure to take multiple aspects into consideration – such as teaching capacity, assessments, transitions and resources – compromises the best intentions and harms a large population of learners. </p>
<p>In Kenya’s case, the competency-based curriculum ship has sailed; scrapping it now would do more harm than good. </p>
<p>Firstly, large financial investments have been made. According to the <a href="https://kicd.ac.ke/about-us/">Kenya Institute of Curriculum Development</a>, the government <a href="https://arena.co.ke/we-will-lose-sh-200-billion-and-more-if-we-scrap-cbc-warns-kicd-boss/">has spent</a> more than US$1.6 billion on curriculum reform. This includes the money spent on research, assessments and a two-year pilot study. </p>
<p>Secondly, we believe that the competency-based curriculum may potentially improve Kenya’s education system and provide learners with rich learning experiences. </p>
<p>The government has taken the first step in addressing discontent with the curriculum by <a href="https://www.education.go.ke/he-president-ruto-appoints-task-force-evaluate-cbc">appointing</a> a task force to address the <a href="https://www.pd.co.ke/news/public-engagement-in-cbc-reforms-start-156272/">public’s concerns</a>.</p>
<p>A new academic year begins in January 2023, with the first cohort of 1.3 million learners expected to join junior high school. Kenyans needs <a href="https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/realtime/2022-11-17-ruto-will-make-final-decision-on-junior-secondary-cs-machogu/">clear guidance</a> on this transition. They need to know where junior high schools will be located, for instance, and the costs involved. This will help <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/entertainment/education/article/2001460093/junior-secondary-classes-dominate-talks-on-cbc">ease the frustrations</a> caused by current uncertainties.</p>
<p>Based on our research experience on curriculum development, teaching and education systems, we have drawn up a list of six priorities the task force should consider. These include acknowledging that Kenyans’ frustrations with the curriculum change are legitimate, and that to be successful, the system needs adaptations.</p>
<h2>What’s wrong?</h2>
<p>The competency-based curriculum focuses on the development of competencies across subject areas, with a shift from students demonstrating what they know to demonstrating what they can do.</p>
<p>Some parents are receptive and enthusiastic about these aspects of the new curriculum. For those against it, the <a href="https://www.pd.co.ke/news/experts-fault-enactment-of-cbc-system-127178/">complaints</a> have focused on affordability and feasibility. </p>
<p>At face value, practical experiences are relevant and can enrich students’ learning. However, challenges arise when resources are unavailable and parents are required to constantly purchase and improvise resources.</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/kenya-extreme-inequality-numbers">already unequal society</a>, this model strains many families, particularly those who live in low-resourced households, outside urban centres, and those in places without access to basic infrastructure like electricity.</p>
<p>The curriculum also demands more <a href="https://kicd.ac.ke/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/SERIES-5-FParental-Roles.pdf">parental engagement</a> than 8-4-4 did. Some parents feel unprepared to <a href="https://theconversation.com/education-in-kenyas-informal-settlements-can-work-better-if-parents-get-involved-heres-how-192149">get involved</a>. </p>
<p>The frustrations with the competency-based curriculum may be magnified because of a familiarity with 8-4-4 – in place for 32 years – and the difficulties that come with change. Yet, concerns about its demands, both financial and skill-based, are legitimate for many parents who see the curriculum as catering only to those with particular skills and those who can afford the time and resources required. </p>
<p>Kenya isn’t the first country in the east African region to launch a competency-based curriculum. Rwanda did it in <a href="https://reb.rw/fileadmin/competence_based_curriculum/index0.html">2015</a>. Comparing the experiences of these two countries requires caution, given the differences in contexts, education policies, and political and cultural environments. Rwanda, however, faced some <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/rje/article/view/202582#:%7E:text=Major%20challenges%20included%20the%20lack,to%20overcome%20the%20identified%20challenges">challenges similar to Kenya’s</a>, including limited availability of resources and a persistence of old teaching practices. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>There’s an immediate need for stakeholders, particularly ardent supporters of the curriculum, to lessen the grip on their vision and evaluate where the curriculum rollout in Kenya missed the mark.</p>
<p>Task forces can create change by bringing stakeholders together and forging alliances. But they can also be costly. They have a reputation for under-delivering beyond publishing reports. </p>
<p>The curriculum task force should consider these six priorities.</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Reassure Kenyans that the stakes are high and providing a quality curriculum for learners is the priority. Take steps to rebuild public trust by addressing pressing challenges, such as financial strain accruing from the costs of learning materials. Guide schools on how to address this challenge.</p></li>
<li><p>Provide the public with information that fills knowledge gaps. For instance, teacher training, assessments and transitions.</p></li>
<li><p>Explain how the curriculum works in low-resourced households and schools, among students with special needs, and in settings with large class sizes and high student-teacher ratios.</p></li>
<li><p>Re-evaluate expectations on parents, remove extraneous demands, avoid blaming them and invite them as collaborators.</p></li>
<li><p>Identify the right drivers of change and avoid replicating avoidable mistakes. For instance, prioritise students and set aside the politics and in-fighting among educational agencies and associations.</p></li>
<li><p>Embrace local solutions and creatively use existing resources. Avoid surface-level solutions and remove existing barriers drawing on empirical evidence.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>There is value in curriculum reforms and in adapting best practices from different contexts. However, many challenges with the Kenyan curriculum stem from mismatches with the local context, inadequate preparation and foresight. </p>
<p>Ignoring the realities of large populations of learners and parents, and making sweeping assumptions doesn’t make these realities go away. </p>
<p>The task force has a monumental and urgent responsibility to bring Kenyans closer to a resolution.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/195235/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ignoring local realities risks excluding children from learning.Elisheba Kiru, Postdoctoral Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research CenterBrenda Wawire, Associate Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research CenterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1717452021-11-18T19:07:50Z2021-11-18T19:07:50ZWhy do Australian states need a national curriculum, and do teachers even use it?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432541/original/file-20211118-21-1331pze.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/routes-red-pins-on-city-map-1682668705">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority released a proposed revision of the foundation to year 10 national curriculum <a href="https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/consultation/">for public consultation</a> in April. Since then, the draft national curriculum — the final version of which <a href="https://www.acara.edu.au/curriculum/curriculum-review">will be released in 2022</a> – has caused much controversy. Federal Education Minister Alan Tudge has perhaps been its fiercest critic.</p>
<p>In September 2021, Tudge wrote an <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/revised-draft-curriculum-gets-c-must-try-harder/news-story/7e2254fa5eefc29b3c9db4a22e96f290">opinion piece in The Australian newspaper</a>, saying he will not support the draft in its current form. He noted the revised curriculum, which was meant to simplify the previous one, was “a ridiculously long and unwieldy document”. </p>
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<p>The biggest problem, though, was in the draft history curriculum. It gave the impression nothing bad happened before 1788 and almost nothing good has happened since. It downplayed our Western heritage […] It almost erased Christianity from our past, despite it being the single most important influence on our modern development […]</p>
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<p>These comments caused a stir among many historians, who <a href="https://theconversation.com/10-things-every-politician-should-know-about-history-170626">have argued for the importance of critical skills</a> in history. They also stressed being critical is not the same as “hating” Australia. Other controversial topics have included changes in maths content, which some experts have deemed “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/education/confused-and-confusing-maths-experts-say-curriculum-is-faddish-and-shallow-20210602-p57xj3.html">shallow and faddish</a>”. </p>
<p>So, with all the controversy, some may wonder why we need a national curriculum at all. </p>
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<h2>The curriculum is like a map</h2>
<p>Imagine the Australian <a href="https://doi.org/10.5204/thesis.eprints.107049">Curriculum is a map</a> — a broad picture of all the learning a teacher covers in each year of education for each particular subject. Using the map, teachers charter a course for each unit to ensure the territory is covered across the year and then plan the route they will take with their students. </p>
<p>When using a map to travel a particular route to your destination, you may take a detour along the way. It’s the same when travelling using the curriculum. A student may ask an interesting question, and that might take the class in a different direction for a bit. But that just adds to the journey.</p>
<h2>A history of the curriculum</h2>
<p>Since Federation in 1901, Australian states and territories have <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs41297-019-00077-1">maintained constitutional responsibility</a> for education and have had autonomy for their education agendas. But in 1963 the Commonwealth <a href="https://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30010321">began funding school education</a>, which came with a desire for more national collaboration.</p>
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<p>Since that time, successive Australian politicians and governments have <a href="https://www.dese.gov.au/australian-curriculum/resources/review-australian-curriculum-final-report-2014">aspired to develop and implement</a> a national curriculum. Their <a href="https://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30010321">objective was</a> to reduce duplication and enhance consistency across the nation’s various curricula.</p>
<p>The Australian Curriculum we have now is the fourth iteration of a national curriculum, but the <a href="https://doi.org/10.5204/thesis.eprints.107049">first to be effectively implemented</a>. Previous attempts at implementation were <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/3585060">met with a range of barriers</a> <a href="https://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30010321">related to</a> the states’ constitutional responsibility and desire for curriculum autonomy, as well as a lack of clear rationale, purpose and process for curriculum change. </p>
<p>So, the momentum fizzled out. That is, until Kevin Rudd’s 2007 election promise of an education revolution <a href="https://www.acsa.edu.au/pages/images/acsa%20boomer%20address.pdf">garnered the political support</a> to develop the Australian Curriculum. </p>
<p>The first draft was published by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority in 2010. </p>
<h2>What about the states’ curricula?</h2>
<p>While the responsibility for developing the curriculum shifted federally, the states <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-019-00077-1">retained the autonomy</a> to implement the curriculum. This is because each state and territory has its own senior assessment and tertiary entrance system. Although there have been attempts at an <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2016.1202452">Australian Certificate of Education</a> to mark the end of compulsory schooling, the proposal has never gathered momentum. </p>
<p>The curriculum authority now has the remit to develop the curriculum and the states the responsibility to implement it. </p>
<p>Teachers in <a href="https://www.qcaa.qld.edu.au/p-10/aciq">Queensland</a>, <a href="https://www.education.tas.gov.au/students/school-and-colleges/curriculum/">Tasmania</a>, <a href="https://www.education.sa.gov.au/schools-and-educators/curriculum-and-teaching/primary-and-secondary-curriculum/curriculum-birth-year-10">South Australia</a>, the <a href="https://nt.gov.au/learning/primary-and-secondary-students/nt-school-curriculum">Northern Territory</a> and the <a href="https://www.education.act.gov.au/public-school-life/Our-Curriculum/australian-curriculum">ACT</a>, use the Australian Curriculum as written by the national curriculum authority. </p>
<p>Teachers get the curriculum directly from the website. For these teachers, the Australian Curriculum is like Google Maps. It tells them what to teach. </p>
<p>This is why what is written in the curriculum is of utmost importance. The curriculum authorities in these states and territories exist to support implementation, providing advice on how much of the curriculum teachers are required to implement.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-crowded-curriculum-sure-it-may-be-complex-but-so-is-the-world-kids-must-engage-with-157690">A 'crowded curriculum'? Sure, it may be complex, but so is the world kids must engage with</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>But <a href="https://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/">Victoria</a>, <a href="https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/understanding-the-curriculum/curriculum-syllabuses-NSW/!ut/p/z1/lZFNC4JAEIZ_SwePObPrR9Fti1IzsIOSzSU0bBPMFbOkf1_YKSiruc3wPMPwDhDEQGVyzWXS5KpMike_JXtnei6igXzlhGKGYuqv5mthcMdjsOkALpjNXJP5OBozFKFp-tYCGXoG0F9-4HR-wGy-HPEgsn7z8UMJ_M3vAah__QaoQz4k4PhWP9BF9Aq8yeDbFUsgWaj0-TBRpsZYAtXZIauzWr_Uj_GxaarzREMN27bVpVKyyPS9Omn4TjmqcwPxKwnVKYqiGHNvSOmtFYM7Xf4HkQ!!/dz/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/">New South Wales</a> and <a href="https://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/home/teaching/curriculum-browser">Western Australia</a>, use an intermediary document (or syllabus) <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41297-019-00077-1">in place of the Australian Curriculum</a>. These interpretations, written by their curriculum authorities, repackage the Australian Curriculum. In NSW, for instance, the syllabuses package the content in stages. These each represent two years of schooling (stage 2 is for years 3 and 4, for example).</p>
<p>Occasionally these state packages contain a bit more or less content compared to the Australian Curriculum. For example, the Victorian Curriculum for The Arts has <a href="https://victoriancurriculum.vcaa.vic.edu.au/the-arts/visual-communication-design/introduction/rationale-and-aims">Visual Communication Design</a> as an additional content area.</p>
<p>Adding further complexity, some states have not yet updated some subjects (such as languages in Western Australia or <a href="https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/understanding-the-curriculum/curriculum-syllabuses-NSW/nsw-and-the-australian-curriculum">the creative arts</a> in NSW) to align with the Australian Curriculum.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432540/original/file-20211118-23-1aafj9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432540/original/file-20211118-23-1aafj9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/432540/original/file-20211118-23-1aafj9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432540/original/file-20211118-23-1aafj9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432540/original/file-20211118-23-1aafj9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=227&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432540/original/file-20211118-23-1aafj9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432540/original/file-20211118-23-1aafj9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/432540/original/file-20211118-23-1aafj9d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=286&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Australian Curriculum’s Creative Arts content has not yet been incorporated into the NSW curriculum.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/k-10/understanding-the-curriculum/curriculum-syllabuses-NSW/nsw-and-the-australian-curriculum">NSW Education Standards Authority (screenshot)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<hr>
<p>Despite these differences, there is still a great degree of <a href="https://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30010321">alignment in curricula</a> across the states and territories. Prior to the Australian Curriculum some of this was more coincidental than coordinated. </p>
<h2>So, why is the curriculum controversial?</h2>
<p>Many things <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305767382_Australian_curriculum_making">influence the curriculum’s development</a>, including the power struggles between federal and state governments and their sometimes differing political ideologies.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1456475056129945606"}"></div></p>
<p>The curriculum also needs to be <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305767382_Australian_curriculum_making">responsive to the needs</a> of today’s students, while preparing them for their future. It must prepare them for jobs that don’t currently exist, with skills we can only imagine, while also ensuring they can navigate the transitions from childhood into adolescence and beyond.</p>
<p>Education Professor Kerry J Kennedy has written <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/289255552_The_idea_of_a_national_curriculum_in_Australia_What_do_Susan_Ryan_John_Dawkins_and_Julia_Gillard_have_in_common">curriculum debates</a> are not just an academic argy-bargy over what should or should not be included, but also reflect a “nation’s soul”. It is an insight into what we value. Hence the many heated debates about what is “important” for young people to learn become value laden.</p>
<p>But with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s41297-019-00077-1">a clear rationale</a> we can build the map for Australian teachers to plan their students’ learning journey. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/teaching-a-hatred-of-australia-no-minister-heres-why-a-democracy-has-critical-curriculum-content-167697">Teaching a ‘hatred’ of Australia? No, minister, here’s why a democracy has critical curriculum content</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171745/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emily Ross does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The draft version of the revised Australian Curriculum has caused much controversy since it was released in April this year. And many wonder what the point is of having a national curriculum at all.Emily Ross, Lecturer, Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of the Sunshine CoastLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1625242021-06-17T13:18:38Z2021-06-17T13:18:38ZWhy the push to overhaul teacher training in Kenya is a bad idea<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/405927/original/file-20210611-17-gpgiex.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kenyan teacher Ayub Mohamed giving a lesson in the Nairobi suburb of Eastleigh.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kenya is in the fourth year of implementing a <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/news/education/education-your-cbc-queries-answered-3286928?view=htmlamp">new competence-based curriculum</a> for all levels of schooling. The new curriculum seeks to develop student competencies including mastery of content, critical thinking and complex problem-solving. </p>
<p>This new curriculum is the third topdown overhaul of the country’s education system since Kenya’s independence in 1963. The previous curriculum was deemed too <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1745499917711550">academic and examination-oriented</a>. It was deficient in hands-on, experiential learning, and practical experimentation to allow for competence. </p>
<p>The goals of the new curriculum are worthwhile. But a controversial government <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/education/article/2001414062/tsc-plans-to-hit-education-graduates-hard">proposal to radically change teacher training</a> is unwarranted. Under new guidelines by the Teachers’ Service Commission – the government agency which administers public school teachers – the Bachelor of Education (B.Ed.) teacher training degree is to be abolished. </p>
<p>This degree, in place for the past 50 years, emphasises the mastery of teaching (pedagogical) skills during training. The teacher candidates simultaneously take courses in education courses as well as in content areas during their entire undergraduate studies. </p>
<p>The approach being proposed is identical to the one <a href="http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/89063">abandoned</a> in 1970. Under this model – which emphasised subject matter expertise – prospective teachers enrolled in regular arts or sciences degree lasting three years. This would be followed by a one-year post-graduate education diploma, completing a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science (Education Option). </p>
<p>The diploma covered educational courses in pedagogy, curriculum, foundations, and management. </p>
<p>In some countries like the US and UK, both approaches are common depending on the institution attended. India and Nigeria, like Kenya, adhere to the Bachelor of Education model only. </p>
<p>Kenya’s official support for change has met a <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/opinion/article/2001415003/bed-programme-best-for-kenyas-education-syste">forecul defence</a> of the existing programme. But, in fairness, research is inconclusive on whether student learning is enhanced by the development of teachers’ theoretical professional knowledge or subject matter expertise. </p>
<p>As such it isn’t definitive which is the best approach for teachers to get their initial training (called pre-service training). Given student learning outcomes aren’t determined by what type of pre-service training teachers get, it is my view that the new teacher training policy initiative isn’t driven by research evidence. Rather, it is informed by political calculations. The public teachers’ commission is seeking to project a reformist stance because it wants to be seen to be contributing to the new education system. </p>
<p>There is an alternative. Rather than overhauling the existing pre-service teacher training programmes, the commission should pursue a staff development programme for teachers that would focus on collaboration, active learning and problem-solving of complex issues in the new curriculum. </p>
<p>Just as important, university curricula and how they’re implemented should remain the preserve of the academic institutions. This control would ensure that academic programmes are grounded in the best knowledge available. And it would ensure courses were free of short-term political considerations.</p>
<h2>Back to the future?</h2>
<p>The Bachelor of Education programme, offered under arts or science, is the most widely offered degree in Kenya’s universities. Some 56 of the 74 public and private universities – equivalent to 76% – <a href="https://nation.africa/kenya/blogs-opinion/editorials/tsc-s-education-proposal-has-many-grey-areas-3423350">offer the course</a>. The popularity of the programme emanates not only from the ease of mounting the programmes but also the good employment prospects, captured in <a href="https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/education/article/2001371384/kenya-short-of-50000-teachers-says-state">teacher shortage </a> surveys. The degree was launched at the then Kenyatta University College in 1970. </p>
<p>Prior to this, prospective teachers completed undergraduate studies in the content teaching areas (either arts or science). This was followed by a one-year postgraduate diploma in professional educational studies. Offered at the University of Nairobi, it stressed the mastery of teaching content over pedagogical skills as a basis for effective student learning outcomes.</p>
<p>But by the late 1960s, teacher graduates from the university were <a href="http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/89063">being rated below</a> the exemplary teaching records of teachers from two institutions – Kenyatta University College (arts) and the Kenya Science Teachers College (science). The <a href="http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/handle/11295/89063">perceived reason</a> was the focus on teacher pedagogical skills rather than content mastery at the two institutions. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, graduates of the two diploma-awarding institution could only teach junior high school. Only degree holders were entitled to teach the rest of the high school classes. This precipitated the introduction of the Bachelor of Education degree which has remained in place for 50 years.</p>
<p>The real issue isn’t about whether there is a focus on content mastery or on pedagogical skills. The problem is that many of Kenya’s teachers <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2158244011434102">fail to excel in teaching</a> mainly because the pre-service training is disjointed and fragmented. Teacher education scholar Deborah Loewenberg Ball has observed that teacher candidates in universities take standalone professional and subject matter courses with <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022487100051003013">minimal opportunities for integrating this knowledge</a> in the context of their work. Such integration, according to Ball, is a complicated task, yet it is assumed teachers achieve it in the course of their work. </p>
<p>Some will, most won’t.</p>
<p>Content mastery, on the other hand, is important yet there’s little research to demonstrate the connection between this mastery to students’ learning outcomes. As the Ball rightly <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022487100051003013">observes</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>what is measured as “content knowledge” (often teachers’ course attainment) is a poor proxy for subject matter understanding. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Furthermore, she argues, many teachers with content mastery lack sufficient understanding of how to hear students, select good learning tasks, or help students learn.</p>
<p>Equally, the benefits of excessive focus on pedagogy, or the method and practice of teaching, are uncertain. Though it elevates teachers’ practice and may improve students’ learning outcomes, research has <a href="https://www.education.uw.edu/ctp/sites/default/files/ctpmail/PDFs/TeacherPrep-WFFM-02-2001.pdf">not identified</a> which aspects of pedagogy contribute to this. </p>
<p>Therefore, a hodgepodge of education courses is offered without a clear justification of their effectiveness in teacher preparation. </p>
<p>What has been <a href="https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/effective-teacher-professional-development-report">found to be effective</a> and helped in teacher retention is consistent in-service professional development activities. </p>
<h2>Next steps</h2>
<p>What the government should focus on is providing school or site-based in-service professional development to improve student learning outcomes.</p>
<p>It would enable teachers to learn and refine pedagogies in context, it would be content-focused, incorporate active learning, use models of effective practice, and support collaboration between teachers and school administrators. </p>
<p>This cannot be achieved in any pre-service training. This because opportunities for such collaboration and practical sharing of experience are unavailable in universities and colleges.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/162524/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ishmael Munene does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What Kenya should focus on is providing in-service professional development to improve student learning outcomes.Ishmael Munene, Professor of Research, Foundations & Higher Education, Northern Arizona UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1312462020-02-16T14:33:50Z2020-02-16T14:33:50ZWhat connects Shaka Zulu, decolonisation and mathematical models<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/315264/original/file-20200213-11023-1kzv7y8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There's a body of historical African examples that universities can use to teach a more inclusive mathematical sciences curriculum. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">GettyImages</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Is it possible to <a href="https://journals.co.za/content/journal/10520/EJC-1aaa3ba0f5">decolonise mathematical sciences</a>? </p>
<p>Some researchers argue that it’s not. They cite numerous reasons why. Two include the fact that decolonisation is extremely difficult for the “pure sciences” such as mathematics. And that the concept of decolonising is “<a href="https://www.sajs.co.za/article/view/5175">poorly defined and contentious, in this domain</a>”.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://journals.co.za/docserver/fulltext/linga_v18_n2_a1.pdf?expires=1579860992&id=id&accname=57837&checksum=EC2A8B2AE4AE0FD99CD19F08CDDB3B38">our research</a> shows that it is possible to achieve the goal of decolonising teaching material for mathematics. This process refers to getting <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/the.v1i1.9">rid</a> of teaching and learning methods and research that reflects a colonial mindset. It’s the transformation of the curriculum to one that’s inclusive and non-discriminatory. </p>
<p>We argue that by rediscovering and recovering African examples in the teaching of maths, it’s possible to “deconstruct” an exclusive Western body of knowledge. </p>
<p>We focused on the operational research curriculum as an example of a mathematical science. Classical operational research is mainly concerned with the use of mathematical techniques and models used to <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2079-8954/7/1/5">make decisions</a>. Both quantitative modelling – for example, mathematical and computational techniques – and qualitative modelling (problem structuring methods) are used to analyse complex problems.</p>
<p>The discipline was developed in European universities in the late 1930s and early 1940s. It was further developed during World War II, when mathematical techniques were used in warfare. </p>
<p>But this is a very narrow version of the history of operational research. It excludes similar practices elsewhere in the world. For example, there are a number of examples from African history that are similar to Western problem situations. These also typically solved complex problems by using operational research models and techniques.</p>
<p>Operational research is an important subject and taught at most South African universities at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. It’s often taught under different names. These include: quantitative management, management science, decision science, business analytics and industrial engineering. </p>
<p>But no attempt has been made to investigate the decolonisation of operational research in South Africa. This would require, among other things, an <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2520-9868/i74a01">inclusive curriculum</a> by replacing existing material with examples from Africa. </p>
<h2>Examples from Africa</h2>
<p>We identified a range of examples in agriculture and warfare from the continent that could be used in teaching operational research.</p>
<p><strong>Agriculture:</strong> We identified three historical agricultural examples. These were <a href="https://www.aehnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Green.Production-Systems-in-Pre-Colonial-Africa.pdf">market days</a>, maize production and integration between <a href="http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/lead/pdf/05_article01_en.pdf">grazing livestock</a>, crops and <a href="https://www.ajol.info/index.php/orion/article/view/34279">wildlife</a>. </p>
<p>In pre-colonial Africa market days were organised and rotated between different villages. Finding the right village for a market day was comparable to an operational research problem involving a host of criteria and a great deal of decision-making. The criteria would include factors such as availability, cost considerations, population (clients), facilities and fair rotating of locations. </p>
<p>The maize production example reflects the fact that farming the crop had to be integrated into the forest zones of West Africa. Farmers had to <a href="https://www.aehnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Green.Production-Systems-in-Pre-Colonial-Africa.pdf">create complex fallow systems</a> by resting sections of land between crops to restore the land’s fertility or to manage surplus production. This too required a typical operational research approach. </p>
<p>These are typical examples of problem situations in an African context, where operational research models functioned in their own unique way.</p>
<p><strong>War strategies:</strong> There are remarkable similarities between operational research applications developed in World War II and African warfare. To illustrate these similarities, we analysed the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/myth-of-iron-shaka-in-history/oclc/65188289">war strategies</a> of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/creation-of-the-zulu-kingdom-18151828/B8D56BDA08FFB09833820A6F256538B6">King Shaka Zulu</a>. </p>
<p>King Shaka Zulu is one of the best-known leaders in African war history. His life and work are widely recognised in <a href="https://dl4.globalstf.org/products-page/proceedings/bizstrategy/applicability-of-shaka-zulus-leadership-and-strategies-to-business/">various disciplines</a> as having had a profound influence on South African history. </p>
<p>Here, we also found possible links with operational research techniques and models. For example, an operational research assignment model is aimed at determining the most efficient assignment of people to projects. This is so that the total cost or time to perform a task is minimised. </p>
<p>Shaka Zulu <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a612214.pdf">divided his soldiers into regiments</a> – a typical assignment problem where soldiers are assigned based on criteria such as age, skill and physical capabilities. </p>
<p>The problem may also be viewed as a labour planning problem, where staffing needs (number of soldiers) over specific time periods or for specific purposes (battles) are required. </p>
<p>We also identified an operational research application in selection models. Here, people (soldiers) are selected on the basis of strengths and weaknesses of warriors in the context of the expected battle. </p>
<h2>Going forward</h2>
<p>Including examples like this in the curriculum would benefit students who have been marginalised by the exclusive use of Western examples in academia. It would also legitimise knowledge that’s embedded in their own <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Decolonizing-Methodologies-Research-Indigenous-Peoples/dp/1848139500">histories</a>. And it would show how operational research is fundamentally linked to Africa, its people and its history. </p>
<p>Including African examples would also show how knowledge systems are <a href="https://www.amazon.com/As-Fire-South-African-University-ebook/dp/B072353MFV">intertwined</a> and create a new frame of reference. </p>
<p>A few practical pointers could include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Identifying examples from African history that are similar to Western problem situations that are typically solved using mathematical models.</p></li>
<li><p>Ensuring the focus is on <a href="https://www.journals.ac.za/index.php/sajhe/article/view/709">decentering Western knowledge</a>, not simply replacing the Western ownership of mathematical sciences with an African discipline. </p></li>
<li><p>An acknowledgement that using African examples is just the starting point. The curriculum then needs to be <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">expanded</a>.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>The decolonisation of mathematical sciences should be treated as a continuous process. It involves <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Indigenous-Research-Methodologies-Bagele-Chilisa/dp/1412958822">dreaming</a> but also laborious research and development.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131246/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Decolonising mathematical sciences is possible. The answer lies in rediscovering existing African examples of teaching maths and including them in the Western body of knowledge.Anné H. Verhoef, Professor in Philosophy, North-West UniversityHennie A Kruger, Professor of Computer Science and Information Systems, North-West UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/968532018-05-27T19:57:53Z2018-05-27T19:57:53ZDecluttering the NSW curriculum: why reducing the number of subjects isn’t the answer<p>Recently, the NSW government announced a review of the state’s curriculum, <a href="https://bit.ly/2IAhJ0i">describing</a> it as “a once in a generation chance to examine, declutter and improve the NSW curriculum to make it simpler to understand and to teach”. The review will take place over the next 18 months. </p>
<p>This review is significant because it might result in significant changes to what students study in school. But it needs to focus on the primary school curriculum. It should also take into account the <a href="https://bit.ly/1BIbQ4B">Melbourne Declaration</a> on Educational Goals for Young Australians, and strategically investigate the range of NSW syllabuses and outcomes. These indicate the knowledge, understanding and skills most students are expected to gain by the end of a stage of learning. </p>
<p>Simplistic approaches to this issue may advocate reducing the number of subjects in the primary curriculum. But this would be a backward step and potentially deny students a range of learning experiences.</p>
<h2>Why the review needs to focus on the primary curriculum</h2>
<p>The review needs to focus on the primary school curriculum for three reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>many have long claimed primary schools are being asked to implement what is called a “<a href="https://ab.co/2x3wwem">crowded curriculum</a>”</p></li>
<li><p>in NSW, 20 new senior school syllabuses have already been released for implementation this year. And given the promotion of the <a href="http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-12/hsc/about-HSC">Higher School Certificate</a> (HSC) by successive governments as the “<a href="http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/media-release/2008/mr-2008-05-01.html">gold standard</a>”, it’s hard to imagine significant changes to the structure of this award</p></li>
<li><p>five new <a href="https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/">kindergarten to year ten syllabuses</a> have been implemented in NSW schools over the past four years, so the withdrawal of these documents would cause considerable disruption to schools. </p></li>
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<h2>What can be done about a crowded curriculum?</h2>
<p>So far, the debate about decluttering the curriculum <a href="https://bit.ly/2kmV9cV">has focused</a> on deleting subjects. One recommendation was for children to initially study English and mathematics and delay the study of science, history and geography until year four. </p>
<p>While no-one disputes the importance of developing students’ literacy and numeracy skills, this suggestion would be a retrograde step, potentially denying children learning experiences in and exposure to the knowledge, ideas and skills particular to these other learning areas. </p>
<p>One critical aspect is that NSW is a signatory to the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians. It provides the philosophical basis for curriculum development in Australia. It aims to develop students as successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/gonski-2-0-teaching-creativity-and-critical-thinking-through-the-curriculum-is-already-happening-95922">Gonski 2.0: teaching creativity and critical thinking through the curriculum is already happening</a>
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<p>This is important because a reduction in the breadth of primary curriculum might be at odds with NSW’s commitment to this agreement. In any case, the NSW curriculum authority <a href="https://syllabus.nesa.nsw.edu.au/english/english-k10/introduction/">states</a> “syllabuses have been developed with respect to some overarching views about education” based on key documents such as the Melbourne Declaration.</p>
<p>So what can be done? One answer lies in revisiting the aims of the 2003 <a href="http://bit.ly/2eLc5XA">Eltis Report</a>. This report, in part, examined the number and role of syllabus outcomes. But this time we need to consider outcomes in the context of the existing mix of new K-10 syllabuses and old (2004) syllabuses. </p>
<p>Currently across the subjects of English; mathematics; science; personal development, health and physical education (PDHPE); creative and performing arts; history; and geography, there are approximately 300 outcomes teachers must integrate into their teaching. Assessment of student performance is based on these outcomes. This is reaching the same exorbitant number of outcomes that sparked the Eltis Report over a decade ago. </p>
<p>Such a review will identify, for example, English, where teachers are advised to spend 25-35% of weekly teaching hours teaching the subject, has 45 outcomes across kindergarten to year six. Yet in the current PDHPE syllabus, where the recommendation is 6-10% of teaching hours per week, the current syllabus contains 52 outcomes. A rationalisation of the volume of outcomes according to recommended teaching hours needs to happen.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-will-changes-to-the-national-curriculum-mean-for-schools-experts-respond-46933">What will changes to the national curriculum mean for schools? Experts respond</a>
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<p>Another step is to change the requirement all outcomes in a subject are to be assessed. Instead, provide teachers with the opportunity to teach all outcomes in a subject but only assess two to three designated key outcomes. </p>
<p>This will provide a more targeted approach to assessment while allowing for the teaching of an appropriate scope of content. As with the Eltis Report, priority might be given to literacy and numeracy outcomes to allow for deep and meaningful engagement by students. </p>
<h2>Don’t oversimplify the task</h2>
<p>“Decluttering” the curriculum is not a simple case of reducing the number of subjects. We need to closely examine the current suite of syllabuses and identify where overlap, duplication and redundancy in outcomes exist and eliminate these aberrations. </p>
<p>We also need to remember primary-aged children are not mini-adults in a pre-employment phase of life. Each child deserves a childhood that nurtures learning across a well-balanced program of learning, fosters the development of imagination and creativity, and provides the skills and knowledge that enables the development of high order literacy and numeracy skills. And importantly, each child deserves to enjoy their school education.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/96853/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Don Carter (as part of a UTS research team) receives funding from the NSW Department of Education Centre for Education Statistics & Evaluation to conduct a research project entitled 'Evaluation of the K-2 Literacy and Numeracy Action Plan Phase 2'. This project is current and will conclude in 2020. </span></em></p>The NSW government will review the K-12 curriculum over the next 18 months. Simplistic approaches may suggest reducing the number of subjects, but this would be a backward step.Don Carter, Senior Lecturer, Education, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/927512018-04-15T08:44:40Z2018-04-15T08:44:40ZA more flexible curriculum approach can support student success<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/208653/original/file-20180302-65516-ll6cxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C4%2C995%2C672&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young people don't always know exactly what they want to study, or what their interests are. Flexibility helps.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Financial access is extremely important for poor and working class students wanting to get a foot in the door at universities. But on its own this isn’t a guarantee of success.</p>
<p>South Africa has very poor student throughput (that is, from enrolment to graduation) and low retention rates in <a href="http://www.che.ac.za/">undergraduate education</a>. Only 30% of students complete a three-year bachelor’s degree in three years. And less than two-thirds complete within an <a href="http://che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/CHE_South%20African%20higher%20education%20reviewed%20-%20electronic_1.pdf">additional two years</a>. </p>
<p>A <a href="http://www.africanminds.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/9781928331698_web.pdf">recent study</a> of students’ experiences in BA and BSc degree programmes found that curriculum structure and flexibility can play a crucial role in students’ progression and success.</p>
<p>The study traced the influence of higher education on the lives of 73 young people who had registered for a BA or BSc at one of three South African universities. In-depth interviews were carried out with them six years after their first year at university.</p>
<p>We found that most students didn’t enter university with fully formed ideas of their interests and strengths. The experience of knowing exactly what they wanted to do, coming to university and seamlessly doing it, was rare.</p>
<p>Our study found that flexibility in the structure of BA and BSc degrees was important. It helped students to find their strengths and passions, and to allow them to change direction during the degree if they needed to. This in turn helped them complete their studies.</p>
<p>In narrowly specified programmes with limited choice or flexibility, students could be left feeling trapped in programmes that no longer matched their interests or strengths. </p>
<h2>Different experiences</h2>
<p>Curriculum structure in the formative science and arts degrees varies substantially across the country’s universities. Some universities offer flexibility of subject choice within the BA and BSc degree structures (taking into account prerequisites for senior courses), or even the choice of a few electives in other faculties. </p>
<p>In at least one university in South Africa, students can select a mixture of BA and BSc subjects, in a very flexible, <a href="https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED415738">liberal arts type approach</a>. Including Philosophy in a Science degree, taking Zoology with Psychology, or Law with Geography, allows students to engage with a broad spectrum of concepts and ways of thinking. </p>
<p>Other institutions have more highly specified offerings - for example, a BA in Tourism, or a BSc in Biological Sciences. These sort of programmes were introduced in some South African universities in the early 2000s, in response to <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/B:HIGH.0000035544.96309.f1">a policy move</a> away from the traditional bachelor degree. </p>
<p>This was intended to make undergraduate degrees more “relevant” and to lead more directly to particular employment options. In these rigid degree programmes, subjects are tightly specified with little room for choice of elective modules or for curriculum flexibility. </p>
<p>Our study found that flexibility really helped students. This is not surprising, considering that most of the young people we interviewed came from schools that offered limited career guidance. Also, many are first in their families to enter university; they have <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-class-and-social-capital-affect-university-students-92602">limited family experiences</a> of higher education to draw on.</p>
<p>Change in direction of study was easier for those in BA programmes, since the BA rules of subject combination allowed for more wrong choices and changes in direction without leading to an extra year of studying.</p>
<p>This is to be expected as the sciences have hierarchical knowledge structures: senior BSc courses have junior courses as prerequisites. Failure in key first year science courses meant that students could be barred from progressing to the second year of study. If there was no chance to retake these courses during the year, a whole extra year of study was required. </p>
<p>So what can universities learn from these students’ experiences?</p>
<h2>Rethinking structure</h2>
<p>There has already been one significant proposal around curriculum restructuring in South African universities; it suggested lengthening the three-year bachelor’s <a href="http://che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/Full_Report.pdf">degree to four years</a>. This is unlikely to be adopted given the current financial pressures on the country’s higher education sector. </p>
<p>But we do think there is still scope to address some curriculum issues our study has highlighted within the current BA and BSc structures.</p>
<p>Universities should know that students don’t enter higher education with a full sense of their strengths and interests. A curriculum needs to make some trial and error possible. Professional degrees such as medicine or engineering may need a more specified curriculum, but the relative flexibility in the formative BA and BSc degrees is important. This allows students to try out different disciplines and find their passions.</p>
<p>In a degree with limited choices and, at some universities, very fixed prerequisites, many students fall by the wayside and can’t easily get back on track. For these students, mounting debt tends to compound the challenge of academic progression.</p>
<p>The academic year could also be better structured to enable flexibility. Vacation periods could be used for students who need time to resit assessments, repeat prerequisite modules or attend credit-bearing summer schools. This would support students’ progression through the curriculum.</p>
<h2>Flexibility matters</h2>
<p>A more flexible programme, coupled with strong <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-universities-need-to-invest-in-strong-advice-systems-for-students-92750">academic advising structures</a>, allows young people to find their strengths and interests – and to change direction, if need be. </p>
<p>It can also allow them to develop the sort of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2013/aug/12/students-interdisciplinary-teaching-research-university">interdisciplinary perspectives</a> needed to address the key issues facing society in the 21st century.</p>
<p>Universities will need to rethink curriculum structures to enable rather than constrain students’ success and progression through higher education. </p>
<p><em>This is an edited abstract from “Going to University: The influence of Higher Education on the lives of young South Africans” (2018) Case, J., Marshall, D., McKenna, S. & Mogashana, D. African Minds. Available for <a href="http://www.africanminds.co.za/dd-product/going-to-university-the-influence-of-higher-education-on-the-lives-of-young-south-africans/">download here</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The other authors of the book from which this piece is extracted are Professor Jenni Case (Head of Department of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech), Professor Sioux McKenna (Head of Postgraduate Studies at Rhodes University) and Dr Disaapele Mogashana (student success coach and consultant at <a href="http://www.mytsi.co.za/">True Success Institute</a>).</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors of the book 'Going to University: The influence of higher education on the lives of young South Africans' are grateful for the financial support of the NRF.</span></em></p>Curriculum structure and flexibility can play a crucial role in students’ progression and success.Delia Marshall, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of the Western CapeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/750902017-04-03T14:22:08Z2017-04-03T14:22:08ZWhy the new education curriculum is a triumph for Kenya’s children<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163085/original/image-20170329-1664-1fsnvlt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">In Kenya the obsession with high exam grades means extra pressure on children.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Mukoya</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every child and parent in Kenya knows all too well that grades matter.
During the final year of primary school, pupils sit to write a nationally administered exam that determines their progression to secondary school. Children have to attain high grades in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) to secure places in the best secondary schools – public or private.</p>
<p>Here too, the teachers emphasise attainment of high grades, perhaps even more than back in primary school. Long hours in class are just a part of the preparation for the final exam which determines admission into university.</p>
<p>Private schools, which many parents opt for, have a financial incentive to pursue high grades for their students. When these schools attain a high mean grade, they draw more students into their ranks which translates into higher revenues.</p>
<p>This obsession with high exam grades means extra pressure on children to cram content in order to pass a series of internal exams leading up to KCSE. It also means that schools have little time to pay attention to learners who are struggling with the <a href="http://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Improving-learning-outcomes.pdf">challenges of adolescence</a>.</p>
<p>Learners received little guidance on appropriate coping mechanisms that would enable them to deal with the academic pressures and other life changes that they were experiencing. Those that became truant and undisciplined were eventually pushed out of the school because they weren’t meeting the minimum grades expected.</p>
<p>But a fundamental change is about to take place. A new education system is set to replace the 32 year-old 8-4-4 system which has come to symbolise much of what’s wrong with education in Kenya today. The current <a href="http://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/ERP-III-policy-brief-2.pdf">system</a> of education starts with eight years of primary school followed by four years each for secondary school and university.</p>
<p>The changes mean that children will have an opportunity to be children. They will not be pressured to get high scores so that they can join the so-called ‘good schools’. Children will be able to learn at their own pace and not be pawns in an education system that’s obsessed with high mean scores. </p>
<p>The changes proposed in the new curriculum are aligned to the vision of the new curriculum reform and that is to </p>
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<p>enable every Kenyan to become an engaged, empowered and ethical citizen. This will be achieved by providing every Kenyan learner with world class standards in the skills and knowledge that they deserve, and which they need in order to thrive in the 21st century </p>
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<h2>Children will be children</h2>
<p>The new <a href="http://www.kicd.ac.ke/images/PDF/national-curriculum-policy.pdf">2.6.3.3.3. curriculum</a> is designed to place children’s needs before those of their teachers, schools and parents. It aims to enable every Kenyan child to be an engaged, empowered and ethical citizen. This will be accomplished by equipping teachers with the means to teach well, within school environments that have adequate resources for every learner. </p>
<p>Effective delivery of the curriculum will require knowledgeable and professional teachers who can use appropriate teaching methodologies including coaching, facilitation, and mentoring. In this way, teachers will be viewed as role models who inspire learners to achieve their potential.</p>
<p>Moreover, teachers will need to adapt this curriculum to meet the requirements, interests, and talents of every child, while diagnosing the learner’s needs and collaborating with other significant people in the child’s life such as parents and members of the local and wider community.</p>
<p>Another change in the new curriculum is elimination of summative evaluation. This refers to exams that were done at the end of 8 years of primary school, four years of secondary school, and four years of high school, in the 8.4.4 system of education. Instead, it spreads out the evaluation throughout the duration of the child’s stay in school. </p>
<p>Children will be assessed based on their competencies, meaning their ability to apply knowledge and skills in performing various tasks within specific settings. This will help determine the individual strengths and weaknesses of the learners. </p>
<p>There will be two types of evaluation in upper primary. Formative assessment will be continuously administered from grades 4-6. This will enable the continuous monitoring of learning and provide regular feedback that teachers can use to improve their delivery. </p>
<p>Summative assessment for a group of randomly selected learners from across the country, will be administered at the end of grade 6. Their performance will be used to gauge the overall ability of all the students transitioning to Grade 7. In doing so, the new curriculum moves away from a one-off summative assessment and embraces an approach where all children’s abilities are recognised and appreciated.</p>
<h2>Navigating life’s challenges</h2>
<p>They will also be exposed to life skills from pre-primary in addition to all the other subjects that they will be taught. This will ensure that from an early age, children have the opportunity to acquire the necessary skills to help them navigate life’s challenges as they progress with their education.</p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.unicef.org/evaldatabase/index_66242.html">UNICEF</a></p>
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<p>life skills refer to both psycho social and interpersonal skills that can assist people to make informed decisions, communicate effectively and develop coping and self-management skills that would help lead to a healthy and productive life.</p>
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<p>Children in senior secondary will be exposed to community service and physical education. The assessment of this level of education will be based on project work, national examinations and community service, in which parents and other stakeholders will be involved. Moreover, parents and other players will help in identifying opportunities for the learners to apply their competencies. Teachers will then document the learner’s achievement.</p>
<p>This emphasis on parental involvement reflects the importance that the curriculum places on the role of parents. Parental involvement has been a key component of two intervention studies conducted by the African Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC), in Nairobi’s informal settlements. </p>
<p>APHRC research has documented that the school is just one place where the teaching of life skills occurs. In the home and family setting, parents shape the attitudes, skills, and values that young people acquire. The project, <a href="http://aphrc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Improving-learning-outcomes.pdf">Improving Learning Outcomes and Transition to Secondary School</a>, showed that communication between parents and their children improved learning outcomes. </p>
<p>More research shows that parental communication with a child of the opposite gender (father to daughter and mother to son) <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4546127/">significantly reduces risky behaviour</a> and delays sexual activity among adolescents.</p>
<p>The new curriculum therefore offers parents the opportunity to be involved in their children’s education. These empowered parents will take the initiative to participate in school, at home and within the community. More importantly, the curriculum will help ensure the holistic development of children within a friendly learning environment.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75090/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Benta A. Abuya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new education system in set to replace the 32-year-old 8-4-4 system which has come to symbolise much of what’s wrong with education in Kenya today.Benta A. Abuya, Research Scientist, African Population and Health Research CenterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/737722017-03-09T16:12:56Z2017-03-09T16:12:56ZDecolonising the curriculum: it’s in the detail, not just in the definition<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159583/original/image-20170306-20739-ozkyo3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The "de-" in decolonisation is a chance to break away from colonial ways of doing things.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the two years since <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-student-protests-roiling-south-africa">student protests</a> kicked off at South Africa’s universities, people have become increasingly interested in what decolonisation means. This stems from students’ <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20160527145138375">calls</a> for university curricula to be decolonised. People want a precise definition. But it’s not that simple.</p>
<p>“Decolonisation” is a nuanced, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09502380601162548">layered</a> concept. Its meaning cannot be unlocked using a scientific formula, recipes or definitions. An understanding of the process of “decolonisation” lies more in its detail than its definition. </p>
<p>For instance, little attention has been paid to how universities still reproduce colonial methodologies and practices that may not be relevant in South African universities today. </p>
<p>Committee meetings are one example of an inherited practice. A meeting is a gathering of a group of people to make decisions. Most groups use some form of western parliamentary procedure for their meetings. “Parliamentary procedure” is a set of rules for meetings which ensures that the traditional principles of equality, harmony and efficiency are kept. Robert’s <a href="https://www.afsc.noaa.gov/Education/activities/PDFs/SBSS_Lesson6_roberts_rules_of_order.pdf">Rules of Order</a>, the best-known description of standard parliamentary procedure, is used by many different organisations as their rule book for conducting effective meetings.</p>
<p>The thought of a two-hour committee meeting – a staple of university life – fills many academics with dread. They know what will happen: they’ll sit and listen passively, contributing only when asked to; watching others dominate the space and push their own agendas. They’ll glare at anyone who dares to object or raise a point. Everyone just wants to escape.</p>
<p>So why do things continue this way and, some may ask, why does it matter?</p>
<p>There are many similarities between how students experience colonial classroom practices and how these manifest in university meeting practices. In both scenarios those who can speak are those who already have the currency to do so. Others, concerned about how their accents, use of language and lived experiences will be judged, remain silent and left out. </p>
<p>There are other ways to conduct meetings and present lectures; many are already part of South Africa’s cultural heritage. Could adopting, adapting or even just understanding more about these help universities to release colonialism’s grip on their practices?</p>
<h2>Rethinking traditional practices</h2>
<p>In African settings, different “meeting” practices are followed. For example in traditional historic African societies, “meetings” were gatherings to make decisions and to discuss issues that affected the community.</p>
<p>The traditional <a href="https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/lekgotla"><em>lekgotla</em></a>, for example, has been used for centuries for village assemblies and village leaders’ meetings. There’s also the <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/indaba"><em>indaba</em></a>, historically an important conference held by the principal men of a particular community or with representatives of other communities; and the <a href="https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/imbizo"><em>imbizo</em></a>, a forum for policy discussion.</p>
<p>There are no doubt many more variations from a wider range of perspectives that could provide different “meeting” approaches.</p>
<p>The <em>lekgotla</em>, <em>indaba</em> and <em>imbizo</em> have featured in meetings and conferences for some years now. But have these cultural practices been appropriated in name only? Do people really engage with what it means to be part of such a gathering?</p>
<p>Ideally, by bringing individuals into a collective space, organisers should be inviting different knowledge and thought perspectives. Changing the way that “meetings” are convened and conducted is a chance to canvass wisdom and experience. </p>
<p>During a recent executive meeting of the Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa <a href="http://heltasa.org.za/">(HELTASA)</a>, we decided to put this thinking to the test. Our approach was informed by some scholars’ writing about decolonisation as a “<a href="http://waltermignolo.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/WMignolo_Delinking.pdf">de-linking</a>” gesture.</p>
<p>The “de-” in decolonisation, they argue, is an invitation to be active in making a “gesture” that breaks with colonial ways of doing things – especially those that continue to alienate, marginalise and silence people and their experience.</p>
<p>We attempted to do things differently, and the ways of interacting that emerged drew on members’ background, context, disposition and theories of change in meaningful ways. The feedback from members showed that individuals were able to find their voices, contribute meaningfully to discussions and felt valued through the personal and professional narratives and expertise they brought in. </p>
<h2>A different approach</h2>
<p>The agenda was designed to include time for members to introduce themselves, share their vision and connect with each other in the group. They did this by dialogue and participatory techniques such as reflective exercises and drawings. They explained who they were, where they were located in higher education, and also reflected on their journeys into higher education as well as their reasons for being on the executive team.</p>
<p>This was an important break from traditional meeting procedure, where the chairperson makes the introductions and effectively speaks for everyone. Our approach was a chance for people to speak for themselves and to bring their authentic selves, contexts and backgrounds into the room. </p>
<p>The traditional academic-support staff divide in universities relegates administrative work to those who are lower on the academic hierarchy. Menial tasks are ascribed to secretaries and administrative support. Cognitive labour is carried out mainly by academics. By bringing people into the “meeting” space on more equal terms, irrespective of their assigned roles – chair, secretary, treasurer - we started to “populate” the room in a different way that validated and acknowledged the team’s varied expertise and energies. </p>
<p>The question of agency in any organisation is critical. The power and ability to make decisions cannot rest with leadership alone. By empowering people in meeting spaces you enable them to exercise their agency to ask more questions, offer more suggestions and contribute more meaningfully to decisions.</p>
<h2>“Powerful knowledges”</h2>
<p>Those who oppose decolonisation might argue that you cannot just throw out all the current ways of being and behaving; that not all structures or practices are harmful.</p>
<p>But by exercising agency in this collaborative and responsive way, meetings can be seen as a spiral, not a linear process. People in academia should constantly move backwards and forward in their quest to find a solution. While striving for better ways to understand South African higher education today, those in the sector should look back and assess which ideas are still relevant and which should be done away with.</p>
<p>If higher education is to re-centre itself, academics and other staff must be invited to engage with the “powerful knowledges” they bring in. They have a wealth of cultural resources that the academy must value. How can academics reconceptualise and reframe what they know and do in their own fields – and then bring these visions into meetings and similar spaces?</p>
<p>The changed meeting procedure we’ve described here may offer some answers to these hard questions. It was a way to learn about others’ narratives, disciplines and practices in much more nuanced, gentle, respectful, imaginative ways. It created opportunities for dialogue characterised by mutual vulnerability that we hope can be sustained and valued in future. </p>
<p>Vulnerability, authenticity and respect – as well as imagination – are so vital in the decolonisation debate to ensure we really sink our teeth into the detail rather than bellowing at each other only about definitions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/73772/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are other ways to conduct meetings and present lectures. Could adopting, adapting or even just understanding more about these help universities to release colonialism’s grip on their practices?Kasturi Behari-Leak, Academic Staff Development Lecturer, Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape TownLangutani Masehela, Senior Educational Development Practitioner, University of VendaLuyanda Marhaya, Senior Researcher Academic Development, University of ZululandMasebala Tjabane, Teaching Facilitator, Vaal University of TechnologyNess Merckel, Academic DevelopmentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/718192017-01-26T13:45:41Z2017-01-26T13:45:41ZSouth African universities: common problems but no common solutions<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/154030/original/image-20170124-436-1jxfh0g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Universities are in the grip of a torrid period of change and disquiet.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kim Ludbrook/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Students at South Africa’s universities are starting the 2017 academic year with unfinished business: <a href="https://theconversation.com/search?q=%23feesmustfall">demands</a> dating back to the middle of 2015 that include scrapping tuition fees and decolonising higher education.</p>
<p>These demands are far reaching. Essentially students want universities to change the way they perform their three key functions: teaching, generating new knowledge and contributing to solving social problems. They also want government to support this process of transformation.</p>
<p>So far, the government has treated each demand as distinct from the other. It has focused largely on the fees issue. Its current strategy assumes that this issue can be dealt with most efficiently through centralisation. It’s proposing to create an entity that draws on the expertise of the financial industry and can achieve economies of scale by centralising the application process. This body also streamlines the disbursement of funding and collection processes. It takes these functions away from individual universities.</p>
<p>Such an approach has two consequences. It limits each university’s ability to make its own decisions about how to allocate bursaries, grants and scholarships among the students it admits. This, in turn, may affect curricula and teaching decisions. </p>
<p>It also allows government to leave the other more complicated aspects of transformation to other stakeholders – confident in the knowledge that if things take an unsatisfactory turn, it can pull the purse strings to bring students and university management back into line. </p>
<p>This is a short sighted, unsustainable approach. In reality the financial, institutional and pedagogical aspects of transformation are interlinked and interdependent.</p>
<h2>Complex, interlinked issues</h2>
<p>Transformation is a complex issue that can only be dealt with holistically. It also costs money. Universities’ teaching and management practices cannot be transformed without taking their financial situations into account. </p>
<p>For example, decolonised education will require revised curricula, new teaching materials and possibly new teaching methods. University managers will have to think through how implementing these new approaches will affect their management, hiring and budgetary decisions. Will their research agendas have to change – and if so, how? What about their management practices?</p>
<p>The way in which students are selected and bursaries, scholarships and loans allocated is another factor to consider in designing and implementing this transformation process. It will influence hiring decisions, teaching assignments and pedagogical choices. </p>
<h2>A shared goal</h2>
<p>Amid this complexity, two things are clear.</p>
<p>First, all stakeholders have an underlying, shared goal: building a national university system that satisfies two requirements. All qualifying students should have equal access to affordable university education. The system must provide the high quality educational and research services needed to build a more equitable society.</p>
<p>Second, although universities face common problems and should be working towards a common goal, they cannot be expected to conform to a common solution. There is not one correct way to the shared goal. Each university, based on its own circumstances, will have to design and implement its own path to this destination. Its approach to transformation will be influenced by its history under apartheid; its student body’s and staff complement’s racial, class and gender composition; its institutional culture; its existing areas of teaching and research excellence. Other factors are at play too. Each university differs in its relationship with its alumni; its financial capacity; its past efforts at transformation and its strategic vision of its role and responsibilities as a South African university. </p>
<p>An institution’s approach will also be shaped by the manner in which and the extent to which management incorporates all members of the university community – students, academic and support staff, parents and alumni – into planning and implementing its transformation process.</p>
<p>Universities’ engagement with their external actors also matters. For example, universities can share information with each other and learn from each other’s successes and failures. They can also use their existing international networks to learn from universities in other countries that have addressed similar issues. Where appropriate, resources can be pooled and joint efforts launched to raise tuition funds, develop new teaching materials and promote research.</p>
<p>These processes will look different at each of South Africa’s 25 public universities. It is the end goal that’s universal.</p>
<h2>Autonomy is crucial</h2>
<p>It is in all South Africans’ interests to encourage the government and other external stakeholders to support the construction of an equitable, productive and sustainable national tertiary education system. </p>
<p>However, it is also crucial to ensure that, within this framework, university communities are given – and utilise – the autonomy to design and implement their own customised approaches to transformation. The country’s future success, and that of its young people, may depend on it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71819/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danny Bradlow's SARCHI chair is funded by the NRF.</span></em></p>It’s easy to understand why the government treats each student demand as distinct. But these are complex issues and they are intertwined.Danny Bradlow, SARCHI Professor of International Development Law and African Economic Relations, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/710232017-01-10T19:53:43Z2017-01-10T19:53:43ZSouth African universities won’t change unless mindsets start to shift<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152102/original/image-20170109-23468-1ohmruw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students want things to change at South Africa's universities.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nic Bothma/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The start of the academic year is looming in South Africa. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-survive-south-africas-universities-must-learn-to-engage-with-chaos-70597">student protests</a> that rocked most public universities’ campuses in 2016 – the second consecutive year of protests – died down long enough for most institutions’ exams to go ahead as usual. But the fundamental conditions that led to the protests are still largely unresolved. </p>
<p>The ongoing debates around reform in higher education – specifically the call for “<a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonising-the-curriculum-the-only-way-through-the-process-is-together-69995">decolonisation</a>” of the curriculum and space – are a piece of a much wider historical, political, and cultural set of issues and contexts. Some of these issues are decades old and are not unique to South Africa.</p>
<p>This means that while there have been a few small, encouraging moments for higher education in the past 12 months, there’s still much to do in addressing the deeper, often more hidden issues.</p>
<p>For higher education to progress, especially in the context of the country’s wider historical, political and cultural realities, three significant mindset changes are required: focusing on what’s possible in education; viewing real learning as a product of creative and constructive engagement from multiple viewpoints; and, related to the other two points, understanding that any good educational system will inherently always be developing and a work in progress. </p>
<p>If these shifts are achieved, the debate can move into more productive territory.</p>
<h2>Focus on possibilities</h2>
<p>Students have repeatedly called for a decolonised curriculum, but this push could ironically end up trapping universities in a colonised curriculum. This is because describing a vision or mission statement in terms of anti-, dis-, or de- inherently ties the process to the very idea a group is trying to avoid.</p>
<p>It forces you to take your cues solely from that framework – either to change them or reject them. It leaves the thing after the “anti-, dis-, de-” driving the conversation, limiting the scope to replace it with something else. If the goal is to transform the curriculum, then it’s important to imagine and pursue possibilities rather than simply condemning what some people feel doesn’t work currently.</p>
<p>And once the sector has agreed that it must not simply reject, but also seek to redefine and re-imagine, then everyone involved in the university system must understand that actual curriculum and educational systems do not exist on paper, but in practice. These systems include teaching methods, support, training for educators and many factors beyond the actual curriculum.</p>
<h2>Space for constructive engagement</h2>
<p>Extensive research reveals that there are many types of curricula. The most relevant in this debate appear to be the written curriculum – syllabi, handbooks and websites – and the <a href="https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000115829">“hidden” curriculum</a>. This refers to what is actually taught and learned due to assumptions, norms, teaching practices and <a href="http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ443182">experiences</a> in and outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>The written curriculum is important, of course. But it pales by comparison with what is experienced in the shared teaching and learning process. It is here where ideas are exchanged, evaluated, critiqued and modified, accepted or rejected. Quality teachers know that the best, most meaningful learning happens through engagement with students since everyone has things to learn. </p>
<p>These are not new thoughts. “<a href="http://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ309444">Synergogy</a>” (learners not just at the centre of learning, but actually driving it) has long been mooted as a powerful way of enhancing learning.</p>
<p>In other words, the curriculum becomes nothing more than words on a page if students don’t have the opportunity to actually engage with it. </p>
<p>If South Africa is to transform education, people must have space to grapple with – and actively challenge – different viewpoints. The “hidden” curriculum can only be addressed when it is brought into the light of the teaching and learning process. If classrooms are closed down, which some in the #FeesMustFall movement believe is the best way to force decolonisation, society will lose one of the most powerful ways it has to actually create transformational education. </p>
<h2>Education is a work in progress</h2>
<p>Another issue is how one measures when education is finally decolonised and transformed. Educational reform is certainly possible – but education generally, and curricula specifically, are constantly emerging.</p>
<p>Other demands under the student protesters’ banner can have discrete, achievable indicators – no fee increases, no fees at all, changing workers’ contractual rights, etc. But education is an inherently evolving and developing process. It is never going to change from “untransformed” to “transformed”, from “colonised” to “decolonised”. These make for powerful slogans but, as is so often the case, the devil is in the details.</p>
<p>There will literally never be a point in time when an educational system is definitively any one thing. The way in which each group of students engages with the material, each other and the teacher is significantly different each time – even if the material was identical. This is the joy of the educational process: it is always a work in progress. </p>
<p>That notion keeps teachers young at heart, but it also flies in the face of arguments made to keep classrooms closed until a set point is reached. </p>
<p>It is essential that universities work to make better education a reality; this is only possible with open classrooms. These are not spaces where facts are memorised, but where an engaged, interactive and constantly transformational learning process can be experienced by all – not just students.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71023/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Timothy London does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The push for decolonisation could ironically end up trapping universities in a colonised curriculum.Timothy London, Senior Lecturer, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/699952016-12-19T14:13:02Z2016-12-19T14:13:02ZDecolonising the curriculum: the only way through the process is together<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/148895/original/image-20161206-25768-g3yxdq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Police guard a building at the University of Cape Town – from whom, since knowledge is not really owned by anyone.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a young black undergraduate studying in the UK more than 15 years ago, I can remember the first time I came across a viewpoint from a black academic – because it was that unusual. The academic was <a href="http://www.up.ac.za/research-innovation/article/1924629/nkomo-sm-prof">Stella Nkomo</a>, a pioneer in the research of race and gender in organisations, and the experience for me was profound. I was not alone. </p>
<p>So when South African students talk about feeling alienated because the examples in their curricula are all from overseas or feature dead white men, I know exactly how they feel – and why it is important to change this. </p>
<p>How to do so is far from clear. The theme of decolonisation is not new. It is a field of study several decades in the making. Yet the problem remains essentially unresolved, and, in recent times, there’s a sense that it has been somewhat sidelined. </p>
<p>Much of the talk within South African academia is of inclusion. But for many, the felt reality is of a status quo that is more concerned with maintaining the hegemony of whiteness than including other knowledges, systems and values. There is an eerie absence of the other, because – quite literally – only half of the country and the continent’s story has been told.</p>
<p>As scholars Martin Fougere and Agnet Moulettes <a href="http://mlq.sagepub.com/content/43/1/5">argue</a> in a recent paper, the tendency has been towards political correctness. The importance of “cultural sensitivity” is named in discussions about curricula, but not really embodied. And an awful lot has been left unsaid about colonial history. There has been a kind of glossing over the issues at the expense of real change and engagement.</p>
<p>A certain amount of this has undoubtedly happened at institutions in South Africa. Fixing this is no easy task. It is difficult to establish what the board looks like, never mind starting the game. But there are a few questions that can be posed and unpacked if universities are to move towards genuine decolonisation.</p>
<h2>Crucial questions</h2>
<p>For instance, what is this thing called Africa or African that people wish to infuse into curricula? Unpacking it makes clear that the notion of “Africa” is a largely a social construct that’s not borne out by the facts. Somalia is different to Zimbabwe. One cannot mistake Egypt for South Africa.</p>
<p>And if the continent is just one big happy family as this narrative of an African identity suggests, what is the xenophobia that’s played out across South Africa in recent years all about? </p>
<p>It’s also difficult to get to grips with what people are trying to decolonise. What is this “Western hegemony” that’s so often mentioned? Philosopher and novelist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/western-civilisation-appiah-reith-lecture?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other">Kwame Anthony Appiah</a> wrote in The Guardian recently that the use of the term “West” is itself problematic. Is it a contrast between east and west/Europe and Asia – as it was used in the 18th century – or between communism and capitalism as during the Cold War? </p>
<p>In recent years, Appiah writes, “the west” seems to mean the north Atlantic: Europe and her former colonies in North America: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The opposite here is a non-western world in Africa, Asia and Latin America – now dubbed “the global south” – though many people in Latin America will claim a western inheritance, too. This way of talking notices the whole world, but lumps a whole lot of extremely different societies together, while delicately carving around Australians and New Zealanders and white South Africans, so that “western” here can look simply like a euphemism for white.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Theorist Edward Said has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVC8EYd_Z_g">pointed out</a> that when caricaturing and parodying the other, one runs the risk of absurdity. Additionally, if people lose themselves in an obsession with the terms, they run the risk of being trapped in these identities and miss an opportunity to forge something larger.</p>
<h2>The difficulty of laying claim to knowledge</h2>
<p>Even if questions like “What is Africa?” and “What is Western?” are satisfactorily answered, there’s another thorny question on the path towards decolonisation: What is knowledge? More specifically, who owns it?</p>
<p>Knowledge is not really owned by anyone. It’s a cumulative, shared resource that is available to everyone. </p>
<p>There is perhaps no better way to illustrate this than with the fact that the classical inheritance of Greek and Roman learning, hailed by many as the foundation of western civilisation, is actually an inheritance shared with Islam – traditionally an enemy of the west. </p>
<p>In the BBC documentary <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00729d9/episodes/player">Mistaken Identities</a>, Appiah points out that the Islamic world played a significant role in preserving this knowledge during the dark ages after the fall of the Roman Empire. In Baghdad of the ninth century Abbasid caliphate, the palace library featured the works of Plato and Aristotle, Pythagoras and Euclid, translated into Arabic.</p>
<p>The knowledge did not belong to the Europeans any more than it belonged to the Caliphate. It was useful to the human project more broadly. </p>
<p>So, back to South African universities. The conversation here would be more beneficial if it was not about what needs to be taken away. The country should be striving for the best of both worlds, not an either or. If there is African indigenous knowledge out there then yes, I want more of it. But if some “Western” scientist has the cure for cancer – then hell, I want that too. </p>
<p>The only way through this is together.</p>
<h2>Dialogue and debate</h2>
<p>Rather than polarisation and othering in the best traditions of colonial inheritance, South Africa needs to move towards the middle ground where ideas can be exchanged and built upon.</p>
<p>It is crucial to foster dialogue to facilitate this exchange. Universities are traditionally the spaces where ideas can be rigorously and critically debated. They need to step up and own this space at this difficult and exciting time in the country’s history. </p>
<p>As the distinguished scholar <a href="http://www.bc.edu/research/cihe/about/pga.html">Philip Altbach</a> has pointed out, education has certainly been one of the most important (however insidious) vehicles of colonialist appropriation. It also, therefore, has the power to play a crucial role in forging a new narrative for South Africa and for Africa that is both global and local.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/69995/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nceku Nyathi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are a few questions that can be posed and unpacked if universities are to move towards genuine decolonisation.Nceku Nyathi, Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Business, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/680802016-11-20T19:49:14Z2016-11-20T19:49:14ZDecolonisation: academics must change what they teach, and how<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/145978/original/image-20161115-30742-89b5xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students in South Africa are tired of Western, Eurocentric university curricula.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Mike Hutchings</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of decolonisation frightens many South African academics. Since students launched the movement to <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/10/feesmustfall-decolonising-education-161031093938509.html">decolonise higher education</a> in early 2015, I’ve heard several of my peers ask, “What do ‘they’ mean by decolonisation? Going back to the Stone Age? Teaching only about South Africa and Africa? Isolation from the rest of the world?”</p>
<p>Legal academic Joel Modiri <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2016-10-16-in-the-fall-decolonisation-and-the-rejuvenation-of-the-academic-project-in-south-africa/">points out</a> that these “cynical queries by mostly white academics, demanding that students explain to them what decolonisation even means, suggests their own illiteracy about the history and intellectual debates in their disciplines”.</p>
<p>These sorts of questions also show a distinct lack of engagement with the African continent. After all, other African countries have grappled with precisely the same issues for decades. In <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">Kenya</a>, <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14649373.2016.1140260">Uganda, Tanzania</a> and <a href="http://escholarship.org/uc/item/13m5c5vp">Ghana</a>, academics and intellectuals have long tried to break down colonial shackles and decolonise their disciplines and universities.</p>
<h2>Reconstructing and rethinking</h2>
<p>More than two decades after apartheid ended, South African universities still tend to offer a view of the country and continent that is rooted in colonial and apartheid thinking.</p>
<p>The university curricula remain largely Eurocentric, dominated by what some academics have <a href="https://theconversation.com/decolonising-the-curriculum-its-time-for-a-strategy-60598">called</a> “white, male, Western, capitalist, heterosexual, European worldviews”. </p>
<p>Students are railing against this dominance at the expense of theories, thinkers and ideas from Africa and the global South. Black students also complain that their own lived experience isn’t reflected in lecture halls. In the old colonial fashion, they are the “other”, not recognised and valued unless they conform.</p>
<p>Decolonisation, for them, involves fundamental rethinking and reframing of the curriculum and <a href="http://thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/9/21">bringing South Africa and Africa to the centre</a> of teaching, learning and research.</p>
<p>Decolonisation is also about <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533959808458649">reconstructing the African continent</a> from various perspectives. The continent’s history, the way its cultures and civilisations are studied and understandings of its political economy have been shaped by European thinkers.</p>
<p>It’s time for Africa to tell its own stories in university classrooms.</p>
<p>As I argue in <a href="http://thejournal.org.za/index.php/thejournal/article/view/9/21">newly published research</a>, universities also need to end epistemic violence. This concept has been defined by the Indian scholar <a href="http://abahlali.org/files/Can_the_subaltern_speak.pdf">Gayatri Spivak</a> as the Eurocentric and Western domination and subjugation of former colonial subjects through knowledge systems. </p>
<p>The world views expressed through colonial knowledge systems were designed to degrade, exploit and subjugate people in Africa and other parts of the formerly colonised world. These views persist today at South African universities. Black students are confronted by texts and theories that negate their own history, lived experiences – and their dreams. They get little exposure to their own continent and all its complexity.</p>
<p>When Africa does appear in the curriculum, <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02533959808458649">argues scholar Mahmood Mamdani</a>, it is no more than a version of the continent offered by apartheid’s reviled Bantu education system:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… students are being taught a curriculum which presumes that Africa begins at the Limpopo [River, which divides South Africa from Zimbabwe and Botswana], and that this Africa has no intelligentsia worth reading.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So how might South Africa tackle epistemic violence and usher in an era of decolonisation of knowledge?</p>
<h2>African universities</h2>
<p>Contrary to what some academics fear, decolonisation is not about moving backwards to “the Stone Age”. Nor is it about isolating South Africa’s universities from the rest of the world.</p>
<p>The country’s Higher Education and Training Minister Blade Nzimande has made this clear, <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/higher-education-is-at-critical-juncture--blade-nz">saying</a> at a 2015 summit that</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Building African universities does not mean creating universities that are globally disengaged. They should be globally engaged, but not only by being consumers of global knowledge. They should be producers of knowledge as well, knowledge that is of relevance locally, continentally, in the South and globally.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Universities must <em>incorporate</em> epistemic perspectives, knowledge and thinking from the African continent and the global South into their teaching and research.</p>
<p><a href="http://ahh.sagepub.com/content/15/1/29">As the academic Achille Mbembe</a> points out, decolonisation “is not about closing the door to European or other traditions. It is about defining clearly what the centre is”.</p>
<p>South Africa is not alone in the push to do away with colonial education. In fact, it’s very far behind the curve. </p>
<p>For example, the movement to decolonise education in Kenya started at the end of the 1960s, after the country won independence from Britain. Author and academic Harry Garuba, writing of this time, <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">says</a> that a “fundamental question of place, perspective and orientation needed to be addressed in any reconceptualisation of the curriculum”.</p>
<p>And, he <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">points out</a>, one of the decolonisation movement’s main desires was that “Kenya, East Africa and Africa needed to be placed at the centre of teaching, learning and research at Kenyan universities”.</p>
<p>According to Garuba, the work that began more than four decades ago has led to “major curriculum transformation” not only in Kenya but across East Africa.</p>
<p>Still, while Kenya is far ahead of South Africa, the decolonisation process there isn’t over yet. One of the main reasons for this, <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-africas-professors-are-afraid-of-colonial-education-being-dismantled-50930">it’s been argued</a>, is that the majority of academics in Africa “are cut from the cloth of Western knowledge” and are often “reluctant to repudiate their very make-up” through dismantling colonial knowledge systems.</p>
<p>South African higher education system faces a similar challenge. Its universities will not be decolonised overnight. But the process is non-negotiable. The question is whether those academics who fear decolonisation will go along for this important ride.</p>
<h2>Academics must come on board</h2>
<p>The decolonisation project needs to encompass more than just changing the curriculum. How things are taught and academics’ attitudes to this process matter just as much.</p>
<p>Kenyan author Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Decolonising_the_Mind.html?id=qlZBsYQtSeoC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">writes</a> that decolonisation of knowledge “calls for more than choice of materials”.</p>
<p>While adding the literature from the African continent and the global South is crucial in the decolonisation project, it is not enough. The attitude to the materials used in the curriculum – as wa Thiong'o points out – is as critical.</p>
<p>This presents a massive challenge. Universities can easily prescribe new readings and other materials but what about the academics’ attitudes to these and to new ways of thinking? </p>
<p>Research by the then <a href="https://www.cput.ac.za/storage/services/transformation/ministerial_report_transformation_social_cohesion.pdf">Department of Education</a> in 2008 found that many in the South African academy still assume that Western knowledge systems “constitute the only basis for higher forms of thinking”.</p>
<p>Are these academics willing to change today? Are they ready to unlearn, learn and fundamentally transform as academics and individuals? Are they ready to decolonise their minds, <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books/about/Decolonising_the_Mind.html?id=qlZBsYQtSeoC&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">to borrow from wa Thiong'o</a>?</p>
<p>If not, the country will require new generations of academics and administrators. They must be at least literate about the historical injustices and diverse intellectual debates within their disciplines, <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2016-10-16-in-the-fall-decolonisation-and-the-rejuvenation-of-the-academic-project-in-south-africa/">to paraphrase Joel Modiri</a>, if they’re to reach senior university positions.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68080/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Savo Heleta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More than two decades after apartheid ended, South African universities still tend to offer a view of the country and continent that is rooted in colonial and apartheid thinking.Savo Heleta, Manager, Internationalisation at Home and Research, Nelson Mandela UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/668052016-10-11T18:04:27Z2016-10-11T18:04:27ZStudents in South Africa feel unheard. Here’s one way to listen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/141121/original/image-20161010-3881-pxsfxo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Critical dialogue could help South African universities get back on their feet.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ian Barbour/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The new round of protests at South Africa’s public universities was triggered by the announcement that universities will be allowed to <a href="http://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-blade-nzimande-2017-university-fees-media-briefing-19-sep-2016-0000">raise their fees</a> in 2017. Amid discussions about high fees and free higher education, many may have forgotten that students’ demands aren’t just related to cost. </p>
<p>They also want universities to decolonise. They want diverse, representative teaching bodies and curricula that aren’t rooted in Europe and the global north. This demand underpins a great deal of the anger and frustration expressed by students in the ongoing standoff with university managements. But there has been a lack of healthy, meaningful dialogue between students and academic staff during the current cycle of protests. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.uct.ac.za/dailynews/?id=9882">An initiative</a> set up at one South African university earlier this year in response to these particular calls could offer a way to diffuse the current protests. We have learned many lessons as part of the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) <a href="http://www.institutionalplanning.uct.ac.za/curriculum-change-working-group">Curriculum Change Working Group</a>. We believe they may be valuable for individual academics, departments, faculties and entire institutions.</p>
<p>The working group was initially set up to look at the broader issue of curriculum reform and decolonisation. It was called on to play a role when the current wave of protests began. It is a combination of the work started earlier in 2016 plus our more recent engagements with students and staff that we believe might offer useful pointers for other universities.</p>
<h2>Debate and engagement</h2>
<p>The working group is led by black scholars – a very deliberate move for a westernised university in post-apartheid South Africa. The notion of blackness in this context extends beyond simply a racial category. It embraces those who have a particular <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09502380601162548">consciousness around coloniality</a>. The group has considerable experience, knowledge and expertise related to the development of contextually and socially relevant curricula. They are well versed in the use of inclusive approaches to teaching and learning.</p>
<p>When we were first formed we developed a concept paper and terms of reference. We collaborated closely with faculty academic representatives, student representatives from faculty councils and those academics and students who wanted to get involved.</p>
<p>Our work has been put to the test during the recent protests. </p>
<p>The working group was approached by the vice-chancellor Dr Max Price to engage with protest groups after it became clear that there was deadlock between the university’s management and the protesters. </p>
<p>One group we worked with involved students who had <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/09/24/Protecting-UCT-medical-students-vow-to-continue-occupy-deans-suite">occupied</a> the Dean of Health Science’s suite. These students wanted to disrupt their faculty’s traditional power structures, and the practices that made them feel like they were not worthy and didn’t belong.</p>
<p>Using the theoretical framework of <a href="https://roybhaskar.wordpress.com/what-is-critical-realism/">critical realism</a> we got to work. </p>
<h2>What is critical realism?</h2>
<p>Critical realism isolates underlying and invisible mechanisms to show how these can act as negative influences. In this example, the mechanisms in question have led students to experience the curriculum as alienating.</p>
<p>This approach provides the wherewithal to drill down to the underlying reasons for people’s behaviour and experiences. It doesn’t allow students’ feelings simply to be dismissed. Having committed to a critical realist approach the working group couldn’t just say, “we’ve heard you, and we’ll fix the problem at some point”. </p>
<p>Having engaged extensively with the students we were able to gain a deeper understanding of their concerns. There are two that we will discuss here: how a particular <a href="http://www.osceskills.com/">practical clinical examination</a> was conducted, and how marking practices are undertaken.</p>
<p>The protesting students complained that this practical test left them feeling judged on the basis of their appearance or the accent with which they spoke English. They tabled a demand for follow up questions to be standardised – meaning that all students be asked the same questions rather than it differing from person to person. They also wanted clear guidelines about how markers arrive at a final result. </p>
<p>This, they felt, would guard against students being marked down based on how they express themselves in English or their appearance. In this example, race and class intersect directly in the clinical learning setting. Those who perform better identify easily with the norms expected in such settings. </p>
<p>Using a critical realist framework, our task was then to drill down to the values, attitudes and beliefs that underpinned the students’ demands. This revealed how their experiences of the examinations were influenced by the faculty’s underlying practices – conscious or unconscious – and beliefs.</p>
<p>In other words, what were the conditions in the faculty that led students to make such demands? What were the conditions being reproduced that led students to this experience? </p>
<p>The lack of trust in how marks are allocated led to some students experiencing assessments as discriminatory. This in turn raised issues for the whole faculty about assessment as a social and knowledge practice.</p>
<p>These students experienced assessments as being affected by racial markers like appearance and accent. This highlights students’ fear of marginalisation and alienation in a higher education environment where value systems have prejudiced race, class and gender. </p>
<h2>Thorough analysis, deep understanding</h2>
<p>In a system built on hierarchies of power, students are questioning who controls the outcomes of assessments. They’re also asking hard questions about who controls the norm for the archetypal doctor who is deemed successful enough to be worthy of being a health practitioner. More significantly for students, they are asking who is constructed as the “other”.</p>
<p>Our role wasn’t to table solutions. It was to create a space in which students’ demands were thoroughly analysed and deeply understood. We presented our analysis of student demands to the students, the faculty’s management and its staff. </p>
<p>The students seemed visibly encouraged by the alignment between their own ways of understanding the issues and what the analysis allowed those “in power” to see about hierarchies of power and patterns of inclusion and exclusion that self-perpetuate within faculties and departments.</p>
<p>Our analysis has yielded <a href="http://www.news24.com/Video/SouthAfrica/News/how-ucts-health-science-faculty-protested-peacefully-for-change-20161004">positive early results</a>. The Dean of Health Sciences has taken on board the outcome of our exploration and committed to changing current practices to enable a decolonisation of the curriculum.</p>
<p>Based on this commitment, the students have ended their occupation of the Dean’s suite. We’re currently working with a different protesting group at another of the university’s campuses.</p>
<h2>Towards solutions</h2>
<p>As our experience shows, deadlocks can be broken and truces brokered when protesting students are presented with concrete solutions to their immediate problems. </p>
<p>With universities in turmoil and students feeling unheard, this may be the approach that’s needed. Genuine listening and a deep understanding of students’ demands could make all the difference.</p>
<p><em>Amanda Barratt, Senior Planning Officer in UCT’s Institutional Planning Department, also contributed to this article.</em></p>
<p><em>Authors’ note: This article was updated to correct a factual inaccuracy. The protesting Health Sciences students did not return to class as initially indicated, but did end their occupation of the Dean’s Suite.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66805/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The CCWG receives funding from the VC for its curriculum work. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>The CCWG receives funding from the VC for its curriculum work.</span></em></p>When students are genuinely listened to and understood, and their proposed solutions to problems are taken seriously, real change can happen in university faculties.Kasturi Behari-Leak, Academic Staff Development Lecturer, Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape TownElelwani Ramugondo, Associate Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy, University of Cape TownHarsha Kathard, Interim Head of the Health Sciences Education Department, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/659022016-09-27T16:15:25Z2016-09-27T16:15:25ZDecolonising psychology creates possibilities for social change<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138773/original/image-20160922-22521-1rununb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Psychology as an academic discipline needs to take a long, hard look at itself.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The issues raised by South African university students in a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/22/south-african-police-fire-teargas-as-university-fees-protests-spread">new round of protests</a> must be read as inter-related and integral to the ongoing decolonial project. </p>
<p>Racism, gender-based violence and oppressive working conditions – which persist at the country’s universities – are fuelled by ideas that crafted a world in which we’ve come to justify and legitimise society’s hierarchical organisation. Psychologists are key participants in that legacy. They are complicit in shaping such attitudes of mind. </p>
<p>Psychologists drew historically from theories of social Darwinism and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2986998/">eugenics</a> to espouse the hierarchical categorisation of people into race groups. African people were posited as the <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/pseudo-scientific-racism-and-social-darwinism-grade-11">least human of all</a>.</p>
<p>Examples include the early 20th century psychological projects that involved intelligence testing and other forms of <a href="http://www.pins.org.za/pins/pins21/4_psychometric_testing.pdf">psychometric testing</a>. These placed people’s minds and abilities on a hierarchy determined by race.</p>
<p>Psychologists <a href="http://www.iep.utm.edu/evol-psy/">defended</a> ideas of natural selection and “survival of the fittest”. Their defence ultimately led to the legitimisation of slavery, <a href="http://jspp.psychopen.eu/article/view/143/html">colonisation</a> and apartheid. It resulted in the genocide of millions of Africans and colonised people from the global South. </p>
<h2>Indexes of difference</h2>
<p>Psychological research still uses the mind, and more recently the brain, as indexes of difference. </p>
<p>The focus on <a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28582-scans-prove-theres-no-such-thing-as-a-male-or-female-brain/">neurological differences</a> between men and women; or understanding the mental health or brain types of substance abusers, criminals, homosexuals, obese people, HIV positive people, is problematic when it translates into research findings that link <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1531487/The-greater-your-weight-the-lower-your-IQ-say-scientists.html">obesity with low intelligence</a>, women with irrationality, young people with deviance or the poor with lack of empathy.</p>
<p>When such findings are <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychology-s-credibility-crisis-the-bad-the-good-and-the-ugly/">made public</a> they re-inscribe processes of inferiorisation and control. Such research reproduces ideas about who is considered “normal” – and who requires “intervention” as well as the type of intervention.</p>
<p>But the mind doesn’t exist on its own. It is inside a living person. It is shaped by personal experiences, beliefs and actions. These take shape in a social context. The mind is produced by our social environment. </p>
<p>A decolonial turn for psychology would mean moving away from the assumption that the individual is the central unit of analysis in ways that overlook people’s social, economic and political contexts. </p>
<p>To understand the root causes of mental illness, we have to school ourselves and other psychologists in how broader relations of domination and subjugation play themselves out in people’s daily lives. Once we recognise the impact of social ills on people’s well being we can begin to see how prescribing therapies and medication are only stop-gap measures. If we want to make a lasting difference in people’s lives as psychologists, we must also intervene in the structural inequalities and experiences of violence and discrimination that exist in society. </p>
<p>If we don’t, aren’t we simply assisting people to adapt to and survive oppressive living conditions?</p>
<h2>Politicising psychology</h2>
<p>In an <a href="http://www.gipca.uct.ac.za/great-texts-nelson-maldonado-torres/">address</a> at UCT’s Institute for Creative Arts, scholar Professor Nelson Maldonado-Torres proposed 10 theses on decoloniality. </p>
<p>He emphasised the need for an aesthetic decolonial turn through which <a href="http://abahlali.org/files/On_Violence.pdf">les damnés</a> – Frantz Fanon’s term for the oppressed – emerge as creators and agents of social change. He went on to say that for academics, this means no longer only taking refuge in knowledge projects or academic work. What is needed is a collective project that involves political organising, strategy and activism. </p>
<p>More politicised forms of psychology have emerged since the 1980s. These include feminist psychologies, <a href="http://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-5583-7_226">postcolonial psychology</a> and liberation psychology. These strands of the discipline have a more social and critical focus. They investigate relations of power between groups in society. They treat people’s identities as diverse, fluid, and intersecting. People are viewed as historical beings whose minds have been constructed by and through their <a href="http://www.simplypsychology.org/social-psychology.html">social, economic and political environment</a>.</p>
<p>They also propose innovative, creative methods that question traditional relationships between researchers and participants in ways that mitigate the epistemological violence often exercised against those who are researched. </p>
<p>These theoretical projects are intrinsically political, involving forms of activism through consciousness-raising, mobilisation and social action.</p>
<p>Students have shown academics that they want to learn about these types of knowledges as they re-centre their experiences and cultures in the academy. They are asking a fundamental question about what academia is for. </p>
<p>Is academics’ work critically engaging with issues of race, class and gender and against oppressive practices? What are the theories that can craft, guide and sustain alternative social systems? These theories should and must emerge from the relationship between the knowledge production taking place in academic institutions and people’s lived experiences. How would we know what needs to change to achieve a just society without knowing about the lives of those who are most marginalised by social systems, and how to engage them in collective struggles?</p>
<h2>A process of change</h2>
<p>A decolonial turn is a process of change, both in thinking and practice. This is closely linked to academic institutions as key locations of knowledge production. </p>
<p>Several things have become central to a university’s functioning: eradicating the colonial past, reflecting on what is still wrong with the present and imagining a future where the intersecting experiences of the most oppressed are recognised and valued. This can all contribute to the emergence of relevant, productive theories. </p>
<p>For psychologists in South Africa, I suggest that an engagement with blackness, black feminisms and black masculinities is central to the project of building healthy communities. It opens up possibilities for mobilisation, action and social change.</p>
<p><em>This article is adapted from an address made at the <a href="http://www.psyssa.com">Psychological Society of South Africa’s</a> Annual Psychology Congress that took place in Johannesburg from September 21 - 23 2016.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shose Kessi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Psychologists drew historically from theories of social Darwinism and eugenics to espouse the hierarchical categorisation of people into race groups.Shose Kessi, Senior Lecturer in Social and Critical Psychology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/648332016-09-08T20:45:36Z2016-09-08T20:45:36ZTransforming higher education: first comes knowledge, then curriculum<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/136711/original/image-20160906-6121-c0ej3v.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ancient fermentation techniques are an example of African chemistry in action.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Akena/Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>If you want to learn about Africa, there’s no need to go to Algeria, Mali, Zambia or anywhere else on the continent. </p>
<p>Instead, you’ll need to visit – at great cost – institutions in the global north like Johns Hopkins or the School of Oriental and African Studies. Places like these host a wealth of <a href="https://www.questia.com/library/journal/1P3-3147532381/supporting-capacity-building-for-archives-in-africa">African knowledge databases</a>. They’re also home to scores of useful <a href="http://library.ifla.org/1269/1/080-simon-en.pdf">archives</a>, artefacts and records. This begs the question: what does Africa know about itself if most of its vital data sources are held away from its shores?</p>
<p>This and similar questions have been given fresh impetus by recent student movements like <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">#RhodesMustFall</a>. Students want the curriculum at universities in the global south to be decolonised. But such demands are not new. Some of Africa’s brightest minds – among them <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/chinua-achebe-20617665">Chinua Achebe</a>, <a href="http://www.biography.com/people/wole-soyinka-9489566">Wole Soyinka</a>, <a href="http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/">Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/20/ali-mazrui">Ali Mazrui</a> and <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/cu/mesaas/faculty/directory/mamdani.html">Mahmood Mamdani</a> – have fought hard down the decades for decolonisation: of knowledge, of the curriculum and of the mind.</p>
<p>With all this energy and focus, why hasn’t decolonisation happened? Why have various generations failed to decolonise or transform the curriculum? My own struggle and failure to transform a course about the archaeology of farming communities in southern Africa has been instructive. </p>
<p>It’s convinced me that no full and meaningful curriculum transformation is possible without first transforming the knowledge that is taught. </p>
<h2>Knowledge is power</h2>
<p>The old saying states that knowledge is power. If you own it, you can control those without it. Since so much knowledge about Africa doesn’t sit on the continent, it’s apparent that Africa lacks power in this regard.</p>
<p>Most of the best archives and research facilities are located in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/oct/26/africa-produces-just-11-of-global-scientific-knowledge">the global north</a>. There, research budgets are more than generous. Comparatively, Africa’s research budgets are <a href="http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/9214011e.pdf?expires=1473080089&id=id&accname=ocid56029661&checksum=FEC8C2D34BCE9EE17AAAFF5FB7BF7341">chronically low</a>; research and development makes up a <a href="http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GB.XPD.RSDV.GD.ZS?view=map">tiny portion</a> of countries’ GDPs.</p>
<p>It would be utopian, then, to think that African researchers are best placed to produce knowledge about the continent. They may have the will, but they lack the money and institutional support.</p>
<p>This paucity of knowledge production is also <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-redraw-the-worlds-very-unequal-knowledge-map-44206">visible in academic journals</a>. Many of the world’s <a href="http://www.pambazuka.org/governance/africa-and-poverty-knowledge-production">most influential works</a> on Africa are written by those from and or working in the global north with access to good databases and generous research funds. The editors of influential journals appear to be most influenced by and interested in topics that are of interest to a western audience with deep pockets. </p>
<p>So their journals become stronger and stronger. Africa’s become poorer and poorer. Many African academics actively frown on journals from the continent, focusing their efforts on publishing in international, supposedly “superior” titles that will earn them promotion.</p>
<p>This lack of control or power over knowledge production explains why even though Africa is very much affected by poverty, conflict and drought it relies on specialists from the global north to tackle these wicked problems. Such specialists ultimately set the agenda.</p>
<p>Sometimes, grant awarding bodies – mostly based in the north – only provide funding to address <a href="http://www.whitaker.org/">specific issues</a> that they, and not us in Africa, deem important. This creates misaligned expectations. African organisations or institutions accept funds that don’t contribute much to changing local circumstances.</p>
<h2>Making knowledge address Africa’s challenges</h2>
<p>Much of this thinking, research and theory finds its way into African universities. These institutions favour material from international journals, mostly produced by international experts. The language is often very esoteric; it cannot be easily understood by common men and women who should be served by this knowledge. </p>
<p>My grandmother, a potter, was very excited to discover that I teach about pottery in a university’s archaeology department. But she was taken aback when I started talking about <a href="http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens2.htm">Giddens’ structuration theory</a> and others drawn from the global North.</p>
<p>And this sort of disconnect doesn’t just happen in my discipline: economics professors often use Germany’s post-first-world-war economy to illustrate the concept of hyper inflation. Why not look to Zimbabwe’s <a href="https://www.rt.com/business/267244-zimbabwe-currency-compensation-hyperinflation/">hyperinflation crisis</a>, which is closer to home and defied all imagination?</p>
<p>These external theories must be domesticated. This will make them meaningful to African situations and, more importantly, contribute towards solving local challenges.</p>
<p>Some of my colleagues have complained that chemistry and similar sciences can’t be decolonised. But there are numerous examples of African chemistry. Southern African communities produced beer by fermenting sorghum, millet and rapoko powder. They created distillation techniques. </p>
<p>In colonial Southern Africa a company that’s now owned by the global giant SAB-Miller started making a beer called <a href="http://www.delta.co.zw/trad/chibuku">chibuku</a> – a Shona word for “small book”. Today chibuku is sold all over southern Africa.</p>
<p>The problem right now is that it’s difficult to transform knowledge produced using benchmarks developed for non-African needs. It is difficult to produce a curriculum that responds to local needs without local examples and experiences.</p>
<p>In my view, this explains why despite so much talk about the need to transform the curriculum, not much happens in practice. It is one thing to talk about decolonising the curriculum with the right content at hand. But how can decolonisation really occur without the right, relevant content?</p>
<p>Without transforming knowledge, African universities cannot transform – let alone decolonise – the curriculum. </p>
<h2>Towards decolonised knowledge</h2>
<p>How can knowledge be decolonised? First, it is a process that must happen while discussions continue about curriculum change. Debating the curriculum will feed into the desired knowledge which must be created to solve contemporary challenges. </p>
<p>African countries also need to start directing funding towards research that answers the continent’s needs and challenges. This is happening elsewhere in the world, such as in China, and is bearing <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/science-major-plank-china-s-new-spending-plan">tremendous fruit</a> for those nations.</p>
<p>Finally, it’s crucial to understand that African knowledge systems can’t exist in isolation from others. This might sound contradictory but it is idealistic to ever think that we can return to an Africa that’s uninfluenced by the rest of the world. Rather, the knowledge revision project and its sibling curriculum reform must be anchored on the need to teach and produce knowledge that serves the continent. </p>
<p>If this work succeeds, Africa will be equipped to solve its own problems, intellectual and otherwise. The continent can start to produce homegrown development specialists, water experts, chemists and many others. </p>
<p>Now is the time to seriously consider knowledge production change as a catalytic factor in the much desired curriculum change. Africa urgently needs knowledge that addresses its challenges. This will then spill over into a transformed, decolonised curriculum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64833/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shadreck Chirikure receives funding from the University of Cape Town Research Office's Africa Knowledge Project and the National Research Foundation of South Africa. </span></em></p>Knowledge is power. If you own it, you can control those without it. Since so much knowledge about Africa doesn’t sit on the continent, it’s apparent that Africa lacks power in this regard.Shadreck Chirikure, Associate Professor in Archaeology, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639482016-08-22T19:15:08Z2016-08-22T19:15:08ZUniversities can’t decolonise the curriculum without defining it first<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/134125/original/image-20160815-27181-wi36ne.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Academics are trying to rid South Africa’s universities of the procedures, values, norms, practices, thinking, beliefs and choices that mark anything non-European and not white as inferior.</p>
<p>Decolonising the curriculum forms part of this work. But what does this actually mean? The definition of “decolonising the curriculum” remains a grey area. There’s also no clarity about whose responsibility it is to undertake this process. It’s crucial to develop shared understandings and ideas of the meaning of both curriculum and decolonisation. </p>
<p>American theorist William <a href="http://www.khuisf.ac.ir/DorsaPax/userfiles/file/motaleat/0805848274.pdf">Pinar</a> defines curriculum theory as the interdisciplinary study of educational experience. Educational experience implies more than just the topics covered in a course. It encompasses the attitudes, values, dispositions and world views that get learned, un-learned, re-learned, re-formed, deconstructed and reconstructed while studying towards a degree.</p>
<p>And what is decolonisation? When it comes to university curricula, this seems to involve replacing works from Europe or the global North with local theorists and African authors. This is meant to prevent African universities from becoming mere extensions of former colonisers.</p>
<p>But decolonising the curriculum is far more nuanced than replacing theorists and authors. If “curriculum” encompasses a broader educational experience, universities first need to define how they approach the development and dissemination of curricula. Only then can they move forward with the process of decolonisation.</p>
<h2>Approaches to curriculum theory</h2>
<p>So what approach to curriculum theory and practice do South Africa’s universities subscribe to? There is no single answer. But this question is particularly crucial in any post-conflict society. There are <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=JbvmF4b1wWYC&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=four+ways+of+approaching+curriculum+theory+and+practice&source=bl&ots=o2Rt7hRHzh&sig=VASC4PNSl2J6xij_3oRtMx8ASRY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiO76SQyLvOAhXLD8AKHcQ0BbgQ6AEIUjAJ#v=onepage&q=four%20ways%20of%20approaching%20curriculum%20theory%20and%20practice&f=false">four ways</a> of approaching curriculum theory and practice. These are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>curriculum as product: certain skills to master and facts to know;</p></li>
<li><p>curriculum as process: the interaction of teachers, students, and knowledge;</p></li>
<li><p>curriculum as context: contextually shaped; and,</p></li>
<li><p>curriculum as praxis: practice should not focus exclusively on individuals alone or the group alone. It must explore how both create understandings and practices.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I’d like to focus particularly on curriculum as context and as praxis. These approaches seem to align well with my definition of “decolonising the curriculum”. A contextual approach opens the door for universities to critique how curriculum – and therefore education – reproduces unequal social relations after graduation. </p>
<p>Praxis creates conditions to democratise learning spaces. It makes room for both individual and group identities within the teaching and learning context. This creates shared and negotiated understandings and practices while knowledge is being generated and disseminated.</p>
<p>Universities that wish to decolonise their curricula could benefit from understanding these approaches. This might also help people to stop conflating transformation – another imperative at universities and in South Africa more broadly – with decolonisation.</p>
<h2>Transformation is not decolonisation</h2>
<p>Many people in South Africa use the terms transformation and decolonisation interchangeably. In curriculum debates after apartheid, transformation has come to mean replacing texts by scholars and writers who are white or European with work done by those who are neither.</p>
<p>These debates invoke strong emotions and responses. An overwhelming impression has emerged: that decolonisation equals an attack on white academics by black academics. This perception, in my view, requires unsettling. </p>
<p>Decolonisation is not a project over which one racial group can claim sole custodianship. I argue that South Africans, as a people, must agree that colonialism and apartheid robbed the country of ideas, skills, creativity, originality, talent and knowledge. All of these attributes got lost through legislated discrimination of black people, most of whom could have enriched the country even further. </p>
<p>But some people who have benefited directly from the ills of colonialism and apartheid still struggle to accept this fact. They have developed a false need to defend a system that maimed, dehumanised, oppressed and stripped generation after generation of the South African majority. These groups, I’d argue, should be the first to be genuinely repentant about this history. They need to openly acknowledge what’s become a common lie at universities: that if something is white or European, it’s superior to anything black or African.</p>
<p>To put it in plain terms: white South African academics are as vital in driving genuine curriculum decolonisation as their black peers.</p>
<h2>Black and white academics are in this together</h2>
<p>This will involve conscious, deliberate, non-hypocritical and diligent interest by both black and white academics in indigenous knowledge systems, cultures, peoples and languages. Theories must be generated that are informed by life as it is lived, experienced and understood by local inhabitants. Universities need to introduce well theorised scholarship emerging from, and underpinned by, the African local experience. This must happen across disciplines.</p>
<p>All of this work will encourage the growth of truly African universities.</p>
<p>Charles Eliot, a former Harvard University President, once <a href="http://www.educationpost.com.hk/resources/education/150922-education-towards-global-prominence">described</a> the characteristics of an American university: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>A university must grow from seed. It cannot be transplanted from England or Germany in full leaf and bearing. When the American university appears, it will not be a copy of foreign institutions, but the slow and natural growth of American social and political habits.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My definition of a decolonised curriculum foregrounds African identities and world views. But this doesn’t exempt it from critique. Universities need to keep encouraging critique and problematisation of what is considered to be knowledge and the processes involved in generating it. And a decolonised curriculum needs to exist in dialogue and contestation with the Greek, Arab and European worlds. It cannot be seen to be everything about all things.</p>
<p>I’d suggest that this definition will initiate genuine, sincere and progressive decolonisation of South Africa’s higher education curriculum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63948/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emmanuel Mgqwashu receives funding from National Research Foundation (NRF). </span></em></p>Decolonising the curriculum is far more nuanced than replacing theorists and authors. Universities first need to define how they approach the development and dissemination of curricula.Emmanuel Mgqwashu, Professor of English Language Teaching and Literacy Development, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/638402016-08-16T19:39:52Z2016-08-16T19:39:52ZDecolonisation debate is a chance to rethink the role of universities<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/133929/original/image-20160812-16360-1dbac4k.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The decolonisation of South Africa's university curriculum seems to have fallen off the agenda, overtaken by the push for free higher education.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When South African students launched the “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">Rhodes Must Fall</a>” campaign in 2015, one of their major demands was that the university curriculum be decolonised. This seems to have fallen off the agenda, overtaken by the push for free higher education. </p>
<p>It would be a pity if <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/summit/Docs/2015Docs/Annex%203_DHET_Progress%20with%20transformation%20_What%20do%20the%20data%20say.pdf">funding challenges</a> – important as they are – preclude a focus on challenges related to higher education’s core functions: teaching, learning and research.</p>
<p>The decolonisation debate raises critical issues about the relationship between power, knowledge and learning. It provides an opportunity to rethink the role of universities in social and economic development and in fashioning a common nation.</p>
<p>There are two underlying issues that should be unpacked to take the decolonisation debate forward.</p>
<h2>Institutional cultures in focus</h2>
<p>The first issue is to recognise that decolonisation is about more than the curriculum. It involves more than changing reading lists through adding texts by African writers and those from the global south. It is about how knowledge – and the assumptions and values that underpin its conception, construction and transmission – is reflected in the university as a social institution. </p>
<p>It is in essence about institutional culture: the ways of seeing and doing that permeate a university and are reflected in learning and teaching. In this sense it is both about the formal curriculum and the informal or “hidden” curriculum. This includes the symbols and naming conventions that privilege and affirm certain knowledge and cultural traditions while excluding others.</p>
<p>Decolonisation is first and foremost about inclusion, recognition and affirmation. It seeks to affirm African knowledge and cultural traditions in universities, which remain dominated by western traditions. As a student commented during <a href="http://sotlforsocialjustice.blogspot.co.za/2016/03/first-seminar-at-uj-decolonizing">a panel about decolonisation</a> at the University of Johannesburg (UJ):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Please let us see ourselves within the degrees that are taught – otherwise, UJ, how is it an African university?</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/n2Dh-K4S-Ak?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Brenda Liebowitz of the University of Johannesburg unpacks aspects of the decolonisation debate.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All of this means reflecting on and unpacking an institution’s culture. Universities must guard against solutions that may, in the very process of inclusion, lead to exclusion. </p>
<p>To illustrate this from beyond the world of higher education: my children attended a primary school in Johannesburg that celebrated all religious festivals – Eid, Diwali, Rosh Hashanah. At a special school assembly each year, children from different religions explained what their festivals symbolised.</p>
<p>But Christmas was celebrated through a nativity play in which all of the students participated and which all the parents attended. So the process of inclusion privileged one tradition, Christianity. Non-Christian traditions, although unintentionally, were marginalised as “other”.</p>
<h2>Narrow lens</h2>
<p>The second issue is to recognise that decolonisation is too narrow and limiting a lens through which to engage the debate on curriculum change. </p>
<p>Decolonisation refers to the historical process whereby countries that were ruled by foreign powers obtain their independence. It is about replacing the foreign with a national power, both of which are assumed to be homogeneous. It isn’t about changing or transforming a colonised society’s institutional structures.</p>
<p>This is also a key conceptual weakness in curriculum decolonisation. It assumes that different knowledge systems are homogeneous. This ignores the social underpinnings of knowledge – the fact that all traditions feature dominant and marginal knowledges. These are based on power relations and worldviews linked to race, class, gender and other societal divisions.</p>
<p>This leads to two dangers: racial essentialism - replacing white with black or Freud with Fanon; and social conservatism, which pits modernity against tradition. It calls for African solutions to African problems. But it does this in a context where tradition is viewed as static rather than dynamic – evolving with changing social and economic contexts.</p>
<p>As South African President Jacob Zuma <a href="http://ewn.co.za/2016/04/08/Before-turning-to-the-court-we-should-solve-things-Africa-way">has argued</a> in response to his various legal challenges, the law (West/modern) is cold; the body (Africa/tradition) is warm.</p>
<p>These dangers can be avoided if knowledge is understood in terms of epistemological diversity. This recognises the universality of knowledge. It is premised on an open dialogue and the interdependence of – and porous boundaries between – different knowledge traditions. It enables the reclaiming and affirming of African knowledge traditions. </p>
<p>It also acknowledges that the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/enlightenment">Enlightenment</a>, the cornerstone of modern (western) social and economic thought, was itself influenced by ideas that emanated from other traditions.</p>
<h2>On the edge of an abyss</h2>
<p>The issues and problems raised by students are not new. The need to transform institutional cultures has been a constant refrain in higher education policy debates since 1994. It was brought to the fore by the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/27/bloemfontein-students-black-staff-campus">Reitz affair</a> at the University of the Free State in early 2008. There, a group of white students at a university residence humiliated black workers.</p>
<p>This caused a national outcry. It led to the establishment of a <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/Support/Report%20of%20the%20Ministerial%20Committee%20on%20racism%20at%20higher%20education%20institutions.pdf">ministerial committee</a> to consider issues of discrimination, transformation and social cohesion in higher education.</p>
<p>The committee’s report offered a comprehensive set of recommendations to both the ministry of higher education and training and individual universities. The failure to implement these systematically has led to the current crisis of legitimacy confronting the higher education system.</p>
<p>The committee’s views on curriculum change were prescient. It placed epistemological transformation at the centre of the higher education transformation agenda. It called for a macro-review to <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/Support/Report%20of%20the%20Ministerial%20Committee%20on%20racism%20at%20higher%20education%20institutions.pdf">assess the appropriateness</a> of the “social, ethical, political and technical skills and competencies embedded” in the curriculum. </p>
<p>It’s important, the committee argued, to consider whether the current curriculum prepares young people for their role in post-apartheid South Africa, in Africa and the world. Does it enable them to grapple with what it means to be human in South Africa in the 21st century?</p>
<p>But the voices that speak of the pain of marginalisation and plead for affirmation that leap out of the pages of the committee’s report were not listened to. Ignoring students’ voices in 2016 will lead higher education to the abyss.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>Author’s note: This article is based on speaking notes as a respondent to professor Brenda Leibowitz’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2Dh-K4S-Ak">inaugural lecture</a>, Power, knowledge and learning: A humble contribution to the decolonisation debate. This was delivered at the University of Johannesburg on April 18, 2016.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ahmed Essop does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The decolonisation debate in South Africa’s universities raises critical issues about the relationship between power, knowledge and learning.Ahmed Essop, Research Associate in Higher Education Policy and Planning, Ali Mazrui Centre for Higher Education Studies, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628402016-08-14T21:05:57Z2016-08-14T21:05:57ZExplainer: why Kenya wants to overhaul its entire education system<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131425/original/image-20160721-32628-l9bvud.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kenya's existing school system isn't producing the sorts of working people the country needs.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dai Kurokawa/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Kenya is <a href="http://www.kicd.ac.ke/curriculum-reform.html">reforming</a> its education system for the first time in 32 years. It’s also changing its curriculum from pre-school all the way through to high school. </p>
<p>Part of what’s prompted this huge overhaul is <a href="http://www.ibe.unesco.org/National_Reports/ICE_2008/kenya_NR08.pdf">the realisation</a> that Kenya isn’t doing enough to produce school-leavers who are ready for the world of work. The government’s own assessments have <a href="http://www.kicd.ac.ke/images/PDF/national-curriculum-policy.pdf">showed</a> that the current system isn’t flexible. It struggles to respond to individual pupils’ strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>In this article I’ll explain what the current Kenyan education system looks like. I’ll explore its weaknesses and then unpack how the new structure that’s being proposed hopes to tackle these.</p>
<h2>The status quo</h2>
<p>Kenya operates on an 8-4-4 education system. This was introduced in 1985 and based on a <a href="http://softkenya.com/education/mackay-commission/">presidential commission’s</a> recommendations. Under this system, pupils had to complete eight years of primary schooling and four at the secondary level. University degrees took a minimum of four years to complete. The whole system’s guiding philosophy was education for <a href="http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/bitstream/handle/11295/90450/Ambaa%20Carolyne_Analysis%20of%20the%20kenyan%208-4-4%20system%20of%20education%20in%20relation%20to%20aims%20of%20education%20for%20self-reliance.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y">self-reliance</a>.</p>
<p>There have been some reviews and evaluations since then. These have mostly addressed curriculum content issues and tidied up areas where there’s unnecessary overlap. The reviews haven’t adequately addressed fundamental issues. If these issues are tackled, the education system could transform Kenyan society by enhancing all citizens’ productivity and accelerating economic development.</p>
<p>Then in 2008 the Kenyan Institute of Education produced an <a href="http://www.ibe.unesco.org/National_Reports/ICE_2008/kenya_NR08.pdf">evaluation report</a> about the 8-4-4 system. It found that the system was very academic and examination oriented. The curriculum was overloaded. Most schools, the institute <a href="http://www.ibe.unesco.org/National_Reports/ICE_2008/kenya_NR08.pdf">reported</a>, weren’t able to equip their pupils with practical skills. Many teachers also weren’t sufficiently trained.</p>
<p>The evaluation report pointed out that secondary school graduates didn’t have very many entrepreneurial skills – the sort needed for self-reliance. High unemployment arises from this phenomenon. There’s also the risk of social vices emerging among those youngsters who aren’t prepared for the world of work. The institute <a href="http://www.ibe.unesco.org/National_Reports/ICE_2008/kenya_NR08.pdf">worried</a> about increased levels of crime, drug abuse and antisocial behaviour. </p>
<p>It also found that the existing system wasn’t providing flexible education pathways. These are important for identifying and nurturing learners’ aptitudes, talents and interests early enough to prepare them for the world of work and career progression. This lack of flexibility was found to be pushing up drop-out rates, even among academically talented pupils.</p>
<p>One of the biggest problems was a focus on exam results. The system didn’t seem to care whether pupils had the skills and knowledge they needed at different levels. It just wanted them to perform well on written assessments. </p>
<h2>A new approach</h2>
<p>The Kenyan government decided to take action. Drawing from the institute’s evaluation and a <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/erykkoh/task-force-finalreportfeb20123">2012 report</a> by the Ministry of Education, it developed <a href="http://www.kicd.ac.ke/images/PDF/national-curriculum-policy.pdf">a plan</a> to reform education and training. This stated that the sector should be guided by a national philosophy that places education at the centre of Kenya’s human and economic development.</p>
<p>Some of the plan’s aims include:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>developing learners’ individual potential in a holistic, integrated manner while producing intellectually, emotionally and physically balanced citizens;</p></li>
<li><p>introducing a competency-based curriculum that focuses on teaching and learning concrete skills rather than taking an abstract approach;</p></li>
<li><p>establishing a national assessment system that caters for the continuous evaluation of learners;</p></li>
<li><p>putting in place structures to identify and nurture children’s talents from an early age; and,</p></li>
<li><p>introducing national values, cohesion and integration into the curriculum. This will, it’s hoped, promote a Kenyan society whose values are harmonious and non-discriminatory.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Another important element of the plan is an emphasis on science, technology and innovation. The current education system doesn’t provide a strong foundation for developing such skills. The proposed new system will try to develop <a href="http://www.kicd.ac.ke/images/PDF/national-curriculum-policy.pdf">vocational and technical skills</a> in a bid to meet Kenya’s demand for skilled labour and its push for greater industrialisation.</p>
<h2>Three tiers</h2>
<p>The new system that’s being proposed will involve a three-tier approach to education.</p>
<p>Tier one is described as the early years of education. It focuses on what the plan calls the “foundational skills of literacy and numeracy”. It will consist of pre-primary and lower primary school. Kindergarten and primary school grades one to four will offer general education. Grades five and six will centre on academic subjects, including languages, sciences and arts. </p>
<p>Tier two will concentrate on “curriculum exploration, abilities and interests, as well as pathways for high school”. It will cover grades seven to 12 and offer subjects that are relevant to some generalised learning areas. This will allow learners to firm up their interests and strengths. </p>
<p>Finally there’s tier three. This will combine senior school education and tertiary training. It will offer more specialised and targeted competencies that prepare learners either for vocational, college or university education. </p>
<p>By the end of this level, learners should be equipped with the skills they’ll need to either be self-reliant – entrepreneurs – to join the labour market, pursue a diploma or enrol for a university degree. College education, technical and vocational training would last for two years. An average university degree would be three years long. </p>
<p>University education also has its critics. They argue that Kenyan universities are not preparing students well for the job market. Reform, if it happens, will be led by the <a href="http://www.cue.or.ke/">Commission for University Education</a> and individual universities.</p>
<h2>The process</h2>
<p>So, the plan exists. Now it must be brought to life. Policies must be formulated. Curricula must be designed. Every subject’s syllabus needs to be developed and approved. Curriculum support materials – course books and teachers’ guides, handbooks and manuals – must be developed.</p>
<p>Teachers, education officers and other stakeholders must be trained and prepared for all of these changes. Then it will be time to select pilot schools where the new plan can be put to the test. Once this is done, it’s on to national implementation and a crucial period of monitoring and evaluation.</p>
<p>This is an ambitious, important process. Can it be done? Yes – but only if the national government of Kenya puts its money where its mouth is and invests comprehensively. Overhauling the curriculum will require a great deal of physical and human resources; a proper financial investment is critical.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Sifuna does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Kenya has realised that its school-leavers aren’t ready for the world of work. An ambitious plan aims to change this.Daniel Sifuna, Professor of History of Education, Kenyatta UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/608262016-07-17T17:20:12Z2016-07-17T17:20:12ZWhy universities’ ‘academic English’ courses should be valued, not vilified<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130190/original/image-20160712-9274-1ekekp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every year hundreds of thousands of applicants from China, Brazil, Angola, Iran and other non-English speaking countries vie fiercely for places on universities’ <a href="http://www.uefap.com/bgnd/whatfram.htm">English for Academic Purposes</a> courses. They know that successfully completing these programmes will help them get into universities around the world that use English as their medium of instruction.</p>
<p>There is no value judgment attached to these students’ choice. They are not viewed as deficient in any way. They’re simply students for whom English is a second, foreign or additional language. They want to study at universities that teach and test in English, and English for Academic Purposes courses equip them with the skills they’ll need to do so. </p>
<p>The situation is very different in South Africa, where English for Academic Purposes has long fallen from grace in the university system. It’s not difficult to understand why this happened after the fall of apartheid in 1994. </p>
<p>Such programmes were <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=7zofaqCcXgIC&lpg=PP1&dq=access%20to%20success&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false">tarred</a> with implications of linguistic hegemony and colonialism. They were foisted upon unwilling participants. English for Academic Purposes was seen as using a “deficit model” that made individual students, their families and their communities a “problem” that required correction before the participant could succeed in an academic environment. They were superseded by the imperative of multilingualism.</p>
<p>In recent years, internationalisation has been added to most universities’ strategic goals. This offers an opportunity to draw on the global academic talent pool, pursue innovation through international collaboration – and benefit from the <a href="http://monitor.icef.com/2015/11/the-state-of-international-student-mobility-in-2015/">ever-rising number of internationally mobile students</a>. It could also be a chance to reimagine English for Academic Purposes at South African universities.</p>
<h2>Competing priorities</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776">Student protests</a> in 2015 and 2016 have centred on calls for decolonisation. These naturally include an emphasis on granting space in the curriculum, teaching and assessment for multilingualism and, particularly, African languages.</p>
<p>In the current South African university system, there’s a clear difference between epistemic access and epistemic justice. The first relates to accessing knowledge through English. The second involves bringing other knowledges and languages onto an equal footing with colonial languages. The decolonising movement seeks epistemic justice. So any ongoing discussion in universities must focus on, to adapt educationist Neville Alexander’s <a href="http://www.disa.ukzn.ac.za/webpages/DC/WpNov93.1608.2036.000.093.Nov1993.13/WpNov93.1608.2036.000.093.Nov1993.13.pdf">famous phrase</a>, reducing the English language to equality with South Africa’s other languages.</p>
<p>There are many urgent needs at the country’s universities: to diversify faculty and student bodies, decolonise the curriculum and ensure access for historically disadvantaged groups. All other concerns have been pushed to the side. </p>
<p>This includes the need for internationalisation. And indeed, in the context of limited capacity for university places, is there not a conflict between the two priorities of internationalisation and transformation? Shouldn’t universities be turning away from the international space to create room for more South African students, academics and researchers? </p>
<p>We would argue that the answer is “no”. There is actually a genuinely synergistic relationship between transformation and internationalisation. </p>
<h2>A tool for dismantling the colonial academy</h2>
<p>Successful internationalisation cannot be represented as a set of statistics. It’s not about how many international students have been enrolled or how many international research partnerships have been formed. Instead, it’s a cultural exercise that opens universities to a greater diversity of thought and opinion. It enables students to become part of the generation of self-confident, truly global citizens who will shape the 21st century. </p>
<p>A focus on English may seem to serve the ongoing “coloniality” of the academy. But it could be argued that this is a case of using the tools to dismantle the house. Access to English in the current South African academy is crucial as a tool in the battle to dismantle that system. Giving students access to English in a country where a privileged minority has such <a href="http://www.salanguages.com/stats.htm">access</a> as a “home” language can be seen as a decolonising move – if it’s part of a longer-term strategy to fight for multilingual universities.</p>
<p>The critique of English is <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500782.2015.1102274">often contradicted</a> by students’ desires and those of their parents. People want the physical and economic international mobility that English offers. Parents want their children to study in English-medium schools and universities. Students recognise the capital and affordances of English and how central it is in the current global market. </p>
<h2>A new space</h2>
<p>The University of Cape Town’s <a href="http://uctlanguagecentre.com/">English Language Centre</a> was set up in November 2015. We believe it offers an opportunity to crystallise the relationship between transformation and internationalisation in a way that can support both South African and international students. It will allow the university to further its internationalisation and transformation agendas at the same time. </p>
<p>Students aren’t forced onto the programme. They choose to enrol. In this setting, the English for Academic Purposes classroom is multicultural and multinational. International and South African students work together towards the same goals. This has the potential to be a mutually supportive, judgment-free environment. </p>
<p>It’s not a lecture hall, with its structural hierarchies and embedded roles. Instead it is a learner-centred, communicative space where participants can engage with English to acquire the skills and competencies they need to study at an English-medium university. It is not about learnedness, intelligence or even academic preparedness. It is about language as a means to an end – and not an end in itself. </p>
<p>Crucially, such a space is also about multicultural exchange and enrichment. Participants from São Paulo, Shanghai, Soweto and Stellenbosch can meet to share their unique ideas and experiences. They are able to do so away from the preconceptions and value judgments that those names might elicit elsewhere. This complexity reflects the reality of the global, transcultural mobility that many students will go on to participate in. </p>
<p>The longer-term challenge of transformation in higher education will be to not merely replace one prescriptive cultural, epistemic and language system with another. Instead, it will be about allowing a diversity of thought to emerge and take its own distinctive shape within the complexities of contemporary South Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60826/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Harrison works for UCT English Language Centre</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ellen Hurst receives funding from the South African National Research Foundation, grant number
90376 and grant number 91543.</span></em></p>In South Africa there’s a value judgment attached to students who take part in universities’ English for Academic Purposes programmes. This shouldn’t be the case.Simon Harrison, Principal: UCT English Language Centre, University of Cape TownEllen Hurst, Senior Lecturer in Education Development, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/621332016-07-11T14:33:22Z2016-07-11T14:33:22ZDecolonisation involves more than simply turning back the clock<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/129699/original/image-20160707-30705-1aede4o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A traditional rainmaker in Kenya. How can indigenous knowledge become part of university curricula?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department For International Development/International Development Research Centre/Thomas Omondi/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>South Africans have been appalled during 2016 by images of graduates “<a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/graduates-are-begging-for-jobs-2034214">begging</a>” for jobs at traffic lights. Their pleas are a stark depiction of the country’s grave <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-04-18-the-great-reversal-stats-sa-claims-black-youth-are-less-skilled-than-their-parents/#.V35A17h97IU">youth unemployment crisis</a>. This, and the broader <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-south-africa-needs-to-do-to-step-away-from-the-downgrade-precipice-61335">economic crunch</a>, has probably at least partly driven the <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-protests-it-cant-be-business-as-usual-at-south-africas-universities-50548">student protests</a> that began in early 2015.</p>
<p>During their protests students have raised critical questions about the structural causes of growing inequalities. They want to know why black South Africans are still suffering the debilitating effects of material immiseration when their parents and grandparents’ generations struggled – and sometimes died – for a better future.</p>
<p>Many student leaders have pointed out that the protests aren’t about a single issue. Katlego Dismelo, a PhD candidate at the University of Witwatersrand, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776">argues</a> that their work is about:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>eradicating the painful exclusions and daily micro aggressions which go hand-in-hand with institutional racism within these spaces … And it is also about laying bare the failures of the heterosexual, patriarchal, neoliberal capitalist values which have become so characteristic of the country’s universities.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One of the ways they’re seeking this “eradication” is through a call to decolonise universities’ curricula. This has been echoed by the country’s higher education minister, who <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politics/higher-education-is-at-critical-juncture--blade-nz">has said</a> that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>universities, all of them, must shed the problematic features of apartheid and colonialism.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But what do students mean when they talk about decolonising the curriculum? And why is it such an important process?</p>
<h2>Colonial models</h2>
<p>All of South Africa’s universities have, since their inception, adopted Western models of academic organisation. These largely excluded and decimated the knowledges of colonised people. The colonial model of academic organisation is based on Western disciplinary knowledge. It was entrenched during apartheid and has not been redressed during the post-apartheid era in any serious way.</p>
<p>The theories and theorists you’ll find today in university disciplines from the humanities through to the social and natural sciences are largely derived from Europe or the global North. This is 22 years after apartheid ended and in spite of growing bodies of literature about theories and theorists from the global South. </p>
<p>The transformation of higher education after 1994 has focused on issues like governance, <a href="http://www.actacommercii.co.za/index.php/acta/article/viewFile/175/172">mergers and incorporations</a>, and quality assurance regimes. Matters of the curriculum have been neglected. Some universities have “preserved” colonial curricula under the guise of institutional autonomy and academic freedom.</p>
<p>Although student demographics have changed <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/DHET%20Statistics%20Publication/Statistics%20on%20Post-School%20Education%20and%20Training%20in%20South%20Africa%202013.pdf">significantly</a> at most historically advantaged universities, academic staff demographics <a href="https://theconversation.com/professors-arent-born-they-must-be-nurtured-43670">haven’t</a>. So the curriculum-makers haven’t really changed.</p>
<p>All of this explains <em>why</em> it’s so crucial that decolonisation should happen. The more complex element, though, is <em>how</em> the process ought to unfold.</p>
<h2>Destruction or refocus?</h2>
<p>Listening to students via the media and through my own direct interactions with some, I have come to understand their view as follows: they believe that decolonisation involves destroying the existing Western-based curriculum and replacing it with something new. This ought to be something indigenous or African. </p>
<p>Recovering and reclaiming ways of knowing that have been denigrated during the colonial and apartheid periods are important to the process of decolonisation. So too is legitimating the commitments, worldviews, beliefs and values held in common by the world’s colonised people. This forms part of an emerging and evolving Indigenous Paradigm. I use Indigenous with a capital “I” here to depict not simply what is homegrown but also what all colonised people across the world share in common.</p>
<p>However, we can’t simply turn back the clock. Decolonisation can’t mean reversing technological advancement and going back to old formulas that were pertinent when the planet was less densely populated and when social relations were much stronger than they are today. </p>
<p>Moreover, indigenous knowledge doesn’t reside in “pristine fashion” outside of the influences of other knowledges. All bodies of knowledge have been influenced to lesser or greater degrees by others. Of course this doesn’t mean that imperial ideologies and colonial relations of production that continually characterise and shape academic practices should be left unchallenged. It might suggest instead that decolonisation doesn’t have to mean the destruction of Western knowledge – but its decentring. It would then become one way of knowing rather than <em>the</em> way of knowing. </p>
<h2>Different approaches to consider</h2>
<p>This decentring by implication means the legitimation of indigenous knowledge. It makes possible the creation of new knowledge spaces – third or interstitial spaces. Australian scholar David Turnbull provides <a href="http://www.academia.edu/4846560/REFRAMING_SCIENCE_AND_OTHER_LOCAL_KNOWLEDGE_TRADITIONS">an example</a> of such a third space. </p>
<p>He points out that Aboriginal Australians in that country’s Northern Territory have for many years used their own performative modes to map their country. They do this by identifying every tree and every significant feature of their territory. Today some are doing the same thing using the latest in satellites, remote sensing and geographical information systems. By representing their local knowledge on digital maps they can make their ways of knowing visible in advanced technological terms. That’s created a new knowledge space which has transformative effects for all Australians.</p>
<p>Another way to achieve decolonisation could be through the process of deterritorialisation. Put simply, this is the idea that anything has the potential to become something other than what it is. For example, botany has been deterritorialised into ethnobotany. This field involves botanists working closely with indigenous communities when collecting and documenting plants for medicinal remedies. </p>
<p>Yet another approach is that used by the <a href="https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/22779.html">Intercultural University of the Indigenous Nations and Peoples</a>, Amawtay Wasi, in Ecuador. Its curriculum pathway comprises three cycles: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>The learning of indigenous knowledge;</p></li>
<li><p>The learning of Western sciences; and</p></li>
<li><p>The learning of interculturality.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In this approach students first learn about knowledge that is local or Indigenous. Then students learn about Western sciences, which includes unlearning the mistruths these tell about colonised peoples. It also highlights the blindspots produced by Western sciences. Finally, what is useful of Indigenous and Western sciences are melded together and learnt. This becomes the basis for action that transforms education and society. </p>
<h2>An important matter</h2>
<p>As I’ve said, we can’t turn back the clock and wish for a world that draws on pre-colonial formulas. But universities also can’t let the imperial ideologies and colonial practices that still characterise many practices go unchallenged.</p>
<p>To the thorny issue of decolonising the curriculum there is not a single approach. The academy might have to think widely and carefully and not just throw the baby out with the bathwater. Destruction and replacement of the Western sciences may not be the only way of decolonising the curriculum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62133/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lesley Le Grange receives funding from the National Research Foundation (NRF). </span></em></p>Decolonisation of the curriculum doesn’t have to mean the destruction of Western knowledge, but it’s decentring. Such knowledge should become one way of knowing rather than the only way.Lesley Le Grange, Distinguished Professor of Curriculum Studies, Stellenbosch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/609412016-06-26T13:53:43Z2016-06-26T13:53:43ZLiterature by Africans in the diaspora can help create alternative narratives<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127369/original/image-20160620-8880-1cpvpi7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Celebrated Ghanaian writer and academic <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/aidoo_life.shtml">Ama Ata Aidoo</a> <a href="http://www.thejournalist.org.za/books/write-for-social-change-says-ama-ata-aidoo">has no time for “Afropolitans”</a>. This is a notion <a href="http://thelip.robertsharp.co.uk/?p=76">popularised</a> by the self-described <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/taiye_selasi_don_t_ask_where_i_m_from_ask_where_i_m_a_local?language=en">“multi-local”</a> author Taiye Selasi. Afropolitans are a current, cosmopolitan generation of “Africans of the world”.</p>
<p>But Aidoo believes that Afropolitanism is “evidence of self-hatred”. Its proponents, she charges, use it as a “fancy moniker” that tries “to mask the terror associated with Africa”.</p>
<p>Her objections speak to widespread, global calls for the decolonisation of institutionalised cultures. This is of particular interest to university communities at large right now. In South Africa, one crucial and complex aspect of this process is a call to Africanise university curricula. This is certainly necessary. But, as ongoing debates around African literature reveal, it must be done cautiously.</p>
<p>One element of this “Africanisation” debate involes assessing the value of contemporary literature written by Africans who live in the diaspora. Its critics complain that current Afrodiasporic literature is not in tune with everyday life on the continent. They see its versions of Africa as sanitised and Westernised.</p>
<p>I disagree. These works take students beyond their national and personal borders. This is crucial in these times of global cultural flux.</p>
<h2>Beyond national and personal borders</h2>
<p>The notion that contemporary Afrodiasporic fiction is socially and culturally inapplicable is typically couched in racialised and nativist interpretations about what is or who isn’t African. This highlights the ideologically safe and unimaginative spaces that many still occupy. It also reveals something about how deeply ingrained colonising structures are.</p>
<p>The question of who writes, and what is written, about Africa is both pre- and over-determined. The emphasis on ethnic and cultural distinctiveness risks reestablishing exclusionary inter- and intra-racial hierarchies.</p>
<p>Contemporary black African writers in the diaspora are contesting precisely this imposition of culturally representative literature. Some examples include Maaza Mengiste’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/07/african-writers-caine-prize">cynical</a> article “What makes a ‘real African’?” and Binyavanga Wainaina’s sarcastic <a href="http://granta.com/how-to-write-about-africa/">instructions</a> on “How to write about Africa”. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/15/americanah-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-review">Americanah</a>”, is a fictive caution about an issue she first raised in her 2009 <a href="https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en">TED Talk</a>, “The Danger of a Single Story”.</p>
<p>As novels such as Selasi’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/apr/03/ghana-must-go-selasi-review">Ghana Must Go</a>” reveal, contemporary
Afrodiasporic writing expresses less explicitly politicised, ambiguous
versions and visions of Africa and the African diaspora. In doing so, it
transgresses what Helon Habila <a href="http://caineprize.com/blog/2015/12/1/tradition-and-the-african-writer-by-2014-judge-helon-habila">describes</a> as “pass-laws” that seek to
restrict where “African literature can go”.</p>
<h2>No need to reinvent the wheel</h2>
<p>Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, recently organised a conference at which concerned scholars gathered to reexamine established ideas about African literature and philosophy. </p>
<p>We weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel. This issue is not new, after all. The first African Writers’ Conference was held at Uganda’s Makerere University in 1962. There, scholars debated the significance and place of African literature written in English for nation states on the cusp of independence. More than five decades on, the conference offers valuable lessons to universities trying to critically reconceptualise educational curricula for post-colonial subjects.</p>
<p>But the wheel must be modified. It needs to reflect and engage South Africa’s own post-traumatic, post-apartheid landscape. In this respect, two recurring challenges emerge: first, what exactly is (black) Africa(n) in this fragile, shifting global village? Second, how does a university “Africanise” its curricula in the face of different ideologies and realities?</p>
<h2>Global cultural flux</h2>
<p>I teach contemporary Afrodiasporic literature to undergraduate students. In my experience, these works speak to their encounters with subjectivities beyond their national and personal borders. We exist in a time of profound global cultural flux. Against this backdrop, inflexible and insular readings of both Africa and Africans do not adequately interpret the diversity and complexity of their own subjective realities.</p>
<p>Contemporary Afrodiasporic literature’s worldly reinterpretation of Africa and Africans presents imaginatively inclusive visions. In its responsiveness to ever-shifting contexts and realities, it is committed to revealing what author Ben Okri <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/27/mental-tyranny-black-writers">calls</a> the “strange corners of what it means to be human”. </p>
<p>Universities envisaging getting closer to what writer Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o called “<a href="http://www.swaraj.org/ngugi.htm">decolonising the mind</a>” could stand to take current Afrodiasporic literature seriously. These works can help in the push to realise genuinely transformed, revitalised and reflective, alternative narratives of Africa.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>
I have previously received funding from the Mellon and Rhodes Foundations for my academic research. </span></em></p>Its critics complain that current Afrodiasporic literature is not in tune with everyday life on the continent. They see its versions of Africa as sanitised and Westernised.Aretha Phiri, Lecturer in English, Rhodes UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/605982016-06-13T13:23:50Z2016-06-13T13:23:50ZDecolonising the curriculum: it’s time for a strategy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125664/original/image-20160608-3481-1ns2rao.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students cheer as a statue of Cecil John Rhodes is removed from the University of Cape Town in April 2015.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">REUTERS/Sumaya Hisham</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In April 2015 a statue of colonialist <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes">Cecil John Rhodes</a> was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/09/university-cape-town-removes-statue-cecil-rhodes-celebration-afrikaner-protest">removed</a> from the University of Cape Town’s campus in South Africa. The statue was the flash point around which students organised themselves under the banners of #RhodesMustFall, <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-african-student-protests-are-about-much-more-than-just-feesmustfall-49776">#FeesMustFall</a> and drove a national – later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/16/the-real-meaning-of-rhodes-must-fall">international</a> – debate about decolonisation and structural change in universities.</p>
<p>In the 14 months since the statue was removed, there has been a great deal of debate about “decolonising the curriculum” but very little change. This is understandable – statues fall, fees fall but curricula don’t “fall”. There is a risk that because of fatigue, frustration, and silencing this important moment will pass us by. It will take years if not decades to gain momentum again. I believe that it’s important to be clearer about the range of issues that feature under the “decolonising” banner.</p>
<p>To this end, I carefully read three pieces contributed by students Calum Mitchell, Brian Kamanzi and Njoki Wamai to the website University World News’ <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/publications/archives.php?mode=archive&pub=1&issueno=415&format=html">special edition</a> on decolonisation. I reread and listened to earlier contributions to tease out from the many entangled demands a list of challenges. The six which I’ll explore in this article are by no means the only ones and are not discussed in order of priority. But I found that they recur again and again. With a proper, focused strategy and resources, they can be tackled – and universities can ensure that these crucial debates result in real change.</p>
<h2>Challenge #1: A “fit” undergraduate curriculum</h2>
<p>One of the challenges raised is that South Africa’s undergraduate curriculum is simply no longer fit for its purpose. This echoes a much bigger debate in other parts of the world and raises fundamental questions about the appropriateness or “fitness” of the existing undergraduate bachelors degree across disciplines.</p>
<p>Its fitness is questioned on two points. Firstly, there has been a massive <a href="http://www.che.ac.za/media_and_publications/higher-education-monitor/higher-education-monitor-9-access-and-throughput">expansion</a> of higher education. It has opened up in the past two decades to South Africans across race and class lines. But is the curriculum actually relevant for these new students, many of whom don’t fit the profile of the typical “mainstream” middle class, white, “university-ready” 18-year-old school leaver? </p>
<p>Secondly, is it fit for the rapidly changing world into which graduates of these degrees move into? Leading universities around the world and in some cases entire national systems are courageously <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/sydney-takes-first-step-on-radical-reform-plan/news-story/891726397d7d874f14c883754bf297cc">revamping </a>their undergraduate curricula to address these changes of demography and the future <a href="http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs.pdf">world of work</a>.</p>
<h2>Challenge #2: Real world relevance</h2>
<p>This notion of “relevance” is another challenge. Professional areas of study like health sciences, engineering and law have grappled with their relevance to the “real world”. For example, in an African medical curriculum, should universities prepare students for the problems of first world specialists or those of doctors working in poor, rural areas? Or both? Many professional curricula have shifted to problem-based or problem-centered. </p>
<p>A focus on problems raises other issues: the balance and sequence of theory and practice, and the plurality of theories and methods required to solve the problems. Very few of today’s <a href="https://www.wickedproblems.com/1_wicked_problems.php">“wicked” problems</a> can be solved through one perspective or one method of investigation. These kinds of curriculum change are highly complex and contested but are being tackled in many disciplines. </p>
<h2>Challenge #3: Students’ voices must be heard</h2>
<p>Students argued that they need to have a voice or a say in curriculum matters that affect them. This raises issues of meaningful representation of students on departmental and programme governance structures. Some academics will be concerned or even opposed to this. They need not be.</p>
<p>Students are not naive about their role in curriculum change. They know they are not the experts –- they have come to university to be taught by the experts. But they do have a perspective that comes from their experiences both inside and outside the classroom. If students’ input is valued, the overall quality of the curriculum will be strengthened.</p>
<h2>Challenge #4: Dominating worldviews</h2>
<p>One of the concerns of the decolonising movement is how curriculum content is dominated by – to name some – white, male, western, capitalist, heterosexual, European worldviews. This means the content under-represents and undervalues the perspectives, experiences, epistemologies of those who do not fit into these mainstream categories. </p>
<p>African Studies expert Harry Garuba <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">situates</a> the current agitation for change in the long tradition of calls for curriculum change of the 1960s in post-colonial Africa and the moves of multiculturalism in the 1980s in the US. He makes a useful distinction between inserting these new inputs into an existing largely unchanged curriculum versus a more radical rethinking of how the subject is taught.</p>
<p>Again, this kind of debate happens best in individual disciplines – though it can be precipitated by external events, as has been the case in Economics.</p>
<h2>Challenge #5: Power plays</h2>
<p>Another challenge raised by students is that many curricula are taught in oppressive classrooms by academics who are demeaning, unprofessional and use their power in ways that discriminate unfairly against students. </p>
<p>Misuse and abuse of power by academics on students or students on academics is simply wrong. The inadequacy of existing policies and procedures for exposing and addressing the abuse of power has been brought under a very <a href="https://theconversation.com/angry-student-protests-have-put-rape-back-on-south-africas-agenda-58362">harsh spotlight</a> at South African universities. The extent to which academics are unaware of their “rank” and its potential harmful consequences on students will nullify everything else that’s done. For this reason, one could argue that this is the most important item on the agenda.</p>
<h2>Challenge #6: Reproducing inequalities</h2>
<p>The curriculum – and particularly its assessment systems – serve to reproduce society’s broader inequalities. This challenge has received very little attention in the recent debates on “decolonising”. It is the way in which the curriculum at every point – from who gets admitted, who thrives, who survives, who fails – mirrors back the historical and current unequal distribution of educational resources in the broader society. </p>
<h2>A clear strategy is key</h2>
<p>Some of these challenges may fit more or less appropriately on the “decolonising the curriculum” agenda. Perhaps it doesn’t matter: they are all important. The point is that they will require different strategies, different kinds of resources and expertise, different lines of responsibility and accountability. The risk of not having a clear strategy is that the curriculum will look no different in 2020 than it does in 2016.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60598/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Suellen Shay does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is a risk that because of fatigue, frustration and silencing the important moment created by South Africa’s student movements will pass by with no proper, long-term structural change.Suellen Shay, Dean and Associate Professor, University of Cape TownLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/593272016-06-06T09:28:49Z2016-06-06T09:28:49ZChanging what universities teach is a process, not a single event<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/124773/original/image-20160601-1959-w2keqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Transforming the curriculum isn't as simple as replacing some books with others.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>There is a debate unfolding around the world about what universities teach and whether their curricula are relevant to today’s students. In South Africa, students have been extremely vocal in their calls to transform and decolonise the curriculum. But what does this mean? What sort of work will it require? The Conversation Africa’s education editor Natasha Joseph asked educationists Professor Yusuf Sayed and Orla Quinlan to explain.</em></p>
<p><strong>Maybe the best place to start is to ask what “curriculum” is so that we can understand better what people are fighting to change?</strong></p>
<p>There is no universally accepted <a href="http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/quality-framework/technical-notes/different-meaning-of-curriculum/">definition</a> of curriculum, but it is a planned learning experience. </p>
<p>It encompasses the values, attitudes, beliefs, understandings, skills, competencies and dispositions of educators. It considers students’ different backgrounds, abilities, motivations, experiences, dispositions and learning styles. It includes learning resources, teaching methodologies and forms of assessment. </p>
<p>The formal curriculum is concerned with the selection of content, as well as how students engage with and respond to that content. </p>
<p>In the sciences, incremental steps are needed to build knowledge of certain subjects. You must first learn the periodic table to develop the required literacy in chemistry. In areas like law, accounting and pharmacy, specific content may be required to secure professional accreditation, leading to specific employment opportunities and career paths. </p>
<p>Content needs to be renewed on a frequent and ongoing basis, especially in disciplines like computer science, pharmacy, media studies, international relations and politics. After all, research and developments are ongoing. New knowledge is emerging all the time. The Humanities are more dependent on the selections of individual academics and, as such, can be a more contested area. </p>
<p>“Curriculum” (formal, informal and hidden) not only focuses on academic endeavours but also on the attributes of graduates; ideally as active, critical and constructive citizens, entrepreneurs, employees and leaders. </p>
<p>In an increasingly <a href="https://theconversation.com/international-students-love-south-africa-but-xenophobia-could-be-a-heartbreaker-41707">xenophobic environment</a>, South Africa’s universities need to imbue the curriculum with <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-universities-can-teach-their-students-to-respect-different-cultures-56857">intercultural competencies</a>. Students need to be equipped to engage meaningfully with each other and people from elsewhere, at a time when South Africans have never been more interdependent in forging a sustainable, inclusive and constructive future for all.</p>
<p><strong>So what does it mean when people talk about “transforming” the curriculum?</strong> </p>
<p>Curriculum transformation has to avoid the uncritical borrowing of ideas and concepts. Richard Tabulawa, an educationist from Botswana, <a href="http://ubrisa.ub.bw/jspui/bitstream/10311/518/1/Tabulawa_CE_2003.pdf">has argued</a> that we must be critical of concepts and approaches to teaching that are transposed to the global South but totally ignore local knowledges, culture and context.</p>
<p>Content needs to reflect diversity of knowledge. So, certainly, increase the African authors in a literature course. However, transformation is not about a straight swap of content. You don’t throw out <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/19/harper-lee-american-novelist-deserving-serious-attention">Harper Lee</a> for <a href="http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1720/the-art-of-fiction-no-139-chinua-achebe">Chinua Achebe</a> and say, “We’ve fixed it!” </p>
<p>A transformative curriculum emphasises less the <em>specifics</em> of content and more how students <em>critically engage</em> with it. For example, instead of claiming Shakespeare was part of a “colonial curriculum” and omitting it, teach why Shakespeare was taken out of the curriculum for black schools and the significance of <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/bonisile-john-kani">John Kani</a> playing Othello under <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/apartheid-and-reactions-it">apartheid</a> in 1987. Help today’s students, who never experienced apartheid, understand their own history intellectually. Share the humour of how <a href="https://www.britishcouncil.org/going-global/programme/sessions/5-may-2016/special-guest-dr-john-kani-breakfast-othello">disappointed</a> Kani was with the English version of Shakespeare having first been exposed to a more passionate Xhosa translation. </p>
<p>Fundamentally, a transformed curriculum should encourage openness, curiosity, critical thinking, creativity, flexibility and problem-solving. It should provide students with the skills they need to keep researching and learning throughout their lives, helping them to rise to new challenges that require new knowledge.</p>
<p><strong>What does curriculum transformation mean in the South African context? Is it an event or process?</strong></p>
<p>Transforming the curriculum raises questions about whose knowledge is to be valued and validated – and how. In South Africa it would clearly include validating and teaching about a wide range of perspectives, experiences, contexts and knowledge. This would move beyond the selected content that was taught during the period of colonialism and the apartheid era. </p>
<p>Several individual academics have, in the 22 years since democracy, worked hard to transform their own curricula. Others have kept teaching content that they’re personally comfortable with but that may not be appropriately diverse for the South African student body. And then others still are driven by developments in their disciplines, regardless of their origin or geographical location.</p>
<p>Universities cater for South African and international students from a variety of race, class and cultural backgrounds with a range of sexualities and disabilities. So the curriculum needs to validate and give voice to students’ diverse range of experiences and identities.</p>
<p>That said, students’ voices – like their professors’ – are not impartial or complete. Lived experience brings valid perspectives, but it must also be informed by reflective knowledge and understanding. The challenge is to balance what students and professors bring into learning with what is important to learn. This healthy tension is what makes curriculum a dynamic and reflexive process. It requires an ongoing <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/browse/epistemology">epistemological</a> humility from all involved. </p>
<p>South Africa isn’t the only country in this boat. Many universities in Africa grappled with the same issues, and there’s a lot to learn from their experiences.</p>
<p>Harry Garuba, an African literature expert based at the University of Cape Town, <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-17-what-is-an-african-curriculum/">has described</a> an important process in Kenya. This was led by authors <a href="http://www.ngugiwathiongo.com/">Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o</a> and <a href="http://www.africanbookscollective.com/authors-editors/taban-lo-liyong">Taban Lo Liyong</a>, and scholar <a href="http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780195382075.013.1651">Henry Owuor Anyumba</a>. The trio felt that Kenya, East Africa and the African continent more broadly should be placed at the centre of whatever historic continuity Kenyan students were to study. They argued that a fundamental question of place, perspective and orientation needed to be addressed in any reconceptualisation of the curriculum for a Kenyan university. </p>
<p>It will take a process of extensive participation and validation of diverse experiences to transform and renew the curriculum. Alumni, employers and students must have a say in determining what is taught, while acknowledging the epistemic knowledge and authority of teacher and professors.</p>
<p>Simultaneously, lecturers must be open to a number of things. They must be willing to introduce new content or teach old content in different ways. For example, when teaching about modern European art, a creative lecturer could focus on the African influences that inspired the art of Henri <a href="http://www.henri-matisse.net/">Matisse</a> and Pablo <a href="http://www.pablopicasso.org/">Picasso</a>, rather than teaching it solely from a Eurocentric <a href="http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aima/hd_aima.htm">perspective</a>. They must employ diverse teaching approaches and methodologies. And to democratise their classrooms they should encourage extensive student participation and engagement.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59327/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yusuf Sayed currently has a research grant from ESRC for a project on teachers as Agents of Peacebuilding,</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Orla Quinlan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Curriculum transformation has to happen. But it has to go further than simply borrowing ideas and concepts.Orla Quinlan, Director Internationalisation. Lead on Internationalisation of Curriculum for International Education Association of South Africa (IEASA), Rhodes UniversityYusuf Sayed, South African Research Chair in Teacher Education; Director of Centre for International Teacher Education (CITE) & Professor of International Education and Development Policy (University of Sussex, UK), Cape Peninsula University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/596042016-05-23T13:59:33Z2016-05-23T13:59:33ZDecolonising universities isn’t an easy process – but it has to happen<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/123175/original/image-20160519-30711-1n6lbg5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Students want colonial symbols, such as this statue of Cecil John Rhodes, gone from their universities. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Nic Bothma</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>South African universities have become protest sites. Beginning in 2015 and continuing this year, students have organised against colonial symbols, fee structures, worker exploitation and sexual violence. The anger displayed during these protests speaks directly to students’ frustration with the slow and skewed transformation of society at large – and in the academy particularly.</p>
<p>Universities have been under enormous pressure to increase access for black students, who were historically kept out of higher education or pushed into institutions reserved for “non-whites”. There’s a drive to promote equity and to become “internationalised”.</p>
<p>At the same time they’re dealing with <a href="http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/0e47a0804a3cd210af40efa53d9712f0/SA-universities-under-extreme-financial-pressure-20151017">massive</a> financial constraints. Most universities have been able to <a href="http://www.dhet.gov.za/DHET%20Statistics%20Publication/Statistics%20on%20Post-School%20Education%20and%20Training%20in%20South%20Africa%202013.pdf">increase access</a> for black students. But they have not spent adequate resources and time reviewing the cultures and curricula of these institutions. Students’ demands, then, coalesce under the rallying call for decolonisation - of symbols, aesthetics, language, culture, knowledge, representation and more.</p>
<p>What is meant by decolonisation in South Africa’s current context? What should the process entail, especially in relation to the curriculum, teaching and learning? Universities are grappling with these and other questions on a number of platforms. Our own institution, the University of Johannesburg, has hosted three well-attended panel discussions about decolonisation. These have thrown up some interesting, challenging ideas that hold important lessons for all universities.</p>
<h2>A long history</h2>
<p>Calls for the decolonisation of countries, institutions, the mind and of knowledge are not new. They emerged from global anti-colonial liberation movements. They found expression in the <a href="http://www.padeap.net/the-history-of-pan-africanism">Pan Africanist</a>, <a href="http://www.blackpast.org/gah/negritude-movement">Negritude</a>, <a href="http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/black-consciousness-movement">Black Consciousness</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=FvgJhJdQOaEC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=african+renaissance+movement&source=bl&ots=VMYmyJFuON&sig=pWyfSlNcIIphjoOxqcISjqA921k&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjq1tGg3uXMAhXpB8AKHTqVCpkQ6AEIUTAK#v=onepage&q=african%20renaissance%20movement&f=false">African Renaissance</a> movements. </p>
<p>Universities, too, have long been at the centre of decolonisation debates. Discussions have been held for decades about the space for African indigenous knowledge systems and the role of African philosophy. Several theories and areas of study have sprung up from these debates: critical race theory, post-colonial studies, <a href="http://www.sas.upenn.edu/%7Edludden/ReadingSS_INTRO.pdf">Subaltern studies</a> and feminist theories from the global South. There were attempts particularly at the universities of Dar es Salaam and Makerere in the 1970s to provide alternative epistemologies. The University of Cape Town also engaged with the issue of decolonisation during the 1990s when <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2015/04/07/anger-over-rhodes-vindicates-mamdani">Professor Mahmood Mamdani</a> was appointed as chair of African studies. </p>
<p>Scholars within these thought systems have critiqued the dominance of western epistemology, methodology and scholarship. They’ve railed against the silencing of the ‘Other’ – particularly African scholars. They’ve objected to what theorist <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/books/academic-professional/sociology/Southern-Theory-Raewyn-Connell-9781741753578">Raewyn Connell</a> calls the rendering of Africa as “a place to learn about and not from”. </p>
<p>Given this long history of debate, thought and agitation for change, why are universities lagging so far behind? Part of the answer may lie in a comment Puerto Rican Professor of Ethnic Studies Nelson Maldonado-Torres made during one of our institution’s panel discussions. He noted that the very act of decolonisation generates anxiety. It unsettles one’s sense of well being and belonging. It calls identities and the project of enlightenment into question.</p>
<h2>It’s not about replacement</h2>
<p>The South African academy is experiencing this unease right now. It manifests in several ways. Many students and staff simply refuse to engage with the debates at all. Some staff ridicule students’ demands for a multiplicity of knowledge systems by denying that these systems exist or debunking them as inferior to western theories and systems. Many academics have <a href="http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2016-04-22-letter-to-the-editor-appeasing-the-uct-taliban/#.VxuzeXeEbqC">responded</a> to calls for an African-centered curriculum by saying this would render South Africa’s universities <a href="http://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2016/05/04/rw-johnson-ucts-critical-choice-go-private-or-become-another-turfloop/">parochial</a>. </p>
<p>This last point may, in certain instances, be the case. But then one can make the same claim about so much of the work that emanates from the West. What’s important is to expose students to different forms of inquiry and to enable them to think critically about all forms of knowledge production. </p>
<p>Decolonisation of knowledge demands that universities revisit their curricula and include – not in uncritical ways – epistemologies, texts and scholarly work that have been previously excluded or marginalised. During this process of inclusion, academics must also explain why certain forms of knowledge and values have been privileged; the academy’s assumptions about what constitutes knowledge, and the impact that this has had.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.uwc.ac.za/Biography/Pages/Desiree-Lewis-.aspx">Professor Desiree Lewis</a> of the University of the Western Cape, who spoke on one of the panels, pointed out that it’s not enough to simply replace one body of content with another and keep the power relations and teaching and learning processes as they have been. </p>
<p>Knowledge is hybrid and interactive. It is imperative that universities examine the relations between knowledge and power. The reluctance to do so, we would argue, stems primarily from a fear of the unknown. Lecturers are worried about needing to reskill to be able to deliver a new curriculum. Academics have not reached this place voluntarily or through consensus: students are pressuring us to reflect on how we teach, and this is forcing us to rethink and revise what the academic project should be. </p>
<p>Students must play a central role in the decolonisation of knowledge. They need to participate in the attempts to revisit how and what is taught. </p>
<p>The journey ahead for the academy will be a long and unnerving one, but it has to be undertaken. The consequence of not doing so is to continue to be complicit in the reproduction of social and cognitive injustices; to condemn students to be perpetual consumers of knowledge. In fact, students have pointed out that if knowledge isn’t decolonised academics, too, will remain perpetual consumers rather than creators and authors. </p>
<h2>Asking new questions</h2>
<p>Universities need to be asking a new set of questions about the nature of society, the kind of students they want to produce and the best paths for achieving this. </p>
<p>When students question the 1994 transformation and reconciliation project, they in effect are asking academics to revisit the paths to political, social and economic development in this country so that they address the needs of a future generation. Part of the purpose of a university is to think through these broader societal challenges and to provide students with access to alternative ways of envisioning the world and interpreting their experiences.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/59604/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Calls for the decolonisation of countries, institutions, the mind and of knowledge are not new. In South Africa, these changes are crucial and long overdue. But they must be carefully thought through.Cheryl Hendricks, Professor of Political Science, University of JohannesburgBrenda Leibowitz, Professor of Teaching and Learning, University of JohannesburgLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.