Africanising The Curriculum

ÿThe alienating nature of the dominant curriculum in African schools and universities is an issue which simmered just below the surface in the 2015 student protests that swept through the South African higher education sector. The collection of essays found in this timely publication, offers compelling arguments for the deliberate embrace of the African culture to advance African knowledge and enhance African lives. It proposes fresh perspectives on what shape and form a decolonised curriculum should take on.

The alienating nature of the dominant curriculum in African schools and universities is an issue which simmered just below the surface in the 2015 student protests that swept through the South African higher education sector. The collection of essays found in this timely publication, offers compelling arguments for the deliberate embrace of the African culture to advance African knowledge and enhance African lives. It proposes fresh perspectives on what shape and form a decolonised curriculum should take on.

Connecting cultures to educational settings is an essential component of critical pedagogy. This book addresses many of the key issues and challenges in decolonizing the African school curriculum. It highlights important philosophical arguments on the challenges and possibilities of achieving these goals in a meaningful manner. Topics covered in the book include: operationalizing the key terms of “inclusion” and “curriculum” strategies for Africanizing the school curriculum, and the implications of local knowledge for schooling reform This book also raises a variety of key questions: how do we frame an inclusive anti-colonial African future and what is the nature of the work required to collectively arrive at that future? what education are learners of today going to receive and how will they apply it to their schooling and work lives? how do we re-fashion our work as African educators and learners to create more relevant understandings of what it means to be human? how do we challenge colonizing and imperializing relations of the academy? What are the possibilities and limits of counter-visions of education? how do we make school curricula inclusive through teaching, research and graduate training in questions of Indigeneity and multi-centric ways of knowing? The book identifies specific areas of an “inclusive/decolonized curriculum agenda” through educational programming and reform. It is essential reading to any student or teacher concerned about understanding the many facets of an African school curriculum. Perfect for courses such as: Principles of Anti-Racism Education | Anti-Colonial Thought: Pedagogical Implications | Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization: Pedagogical Implications | Modernization, Development and Education in African Contexts | African Systems of Thought | Introduction to African Studies

This book, appropriately titled Decolonisation, Africanisation and the Philosophy Curriculum, signposts and captures issues about philosophy, the philosophy curriculum, and its decolonisation and Africanisation. This topic is of critical importance at present for the discipline of philosophy, not the least because philosophy and the current philosophical canons are perceived to be improvised by virtue of their historical marginalisation and exclusion of other valuable and important philosophical traditions and perspectives. The continued marginalisation and exclusion of one such philosophical tradition and perspective, i.e. African philosophy connects to issues of space contestations and raise questions of justice. The chapters in this book engage with all of these issues, and they also attempt to make sense of what it will mean for philosophy and the philosophy curriculum to be decolonised and Africanised; how to go about achieving this task; and what the challenges and problems are that confront efforts to decolonise and Africanise the philosophy curriculum. Furthermore, the contributors initiate discussions on the value and importance of non-western philosophical traditions and perspectives, and by so doing challenge the dormant and triumphant narrative and hegemony of Western philosophy, as well as the centrality accorded to it in philosophical discourse. The chapters in this book were originally published as articles in the South African Journal of Philosophy.

Higher Education in South Africa should be of considerable interest to higher education researchers outside of South Africa, as well as within, for the general and comparative assessments it makes. The South African higher education researchers included within its covers have clearly engaged with research and writing from many parts of the world, which they have then applied to make sense of their own condition. - Malcolm Tight Lancaster University, UK

The discourse of decolonisation, though littered with unresolved contestation in the university as an institution of higher learning, has often been blamed on the impact of neoliberal globalisation philosophy. The volume focuses on unfinished project of decolonisation, with an aim on African knowledge and the historical question of canonicity by keeping the emancipative dialogue alive. The authors place great scrutiny on the quality of curriculum offered in universities arguing that a sound relevant curriculum, original to the continent, can save Africa’s citizenry from challenges bedevilling socio-economic development. This book proposes a disruption and potential end to western hegemonic epistemologies that manifest the neoliberal geopolitical terrain in the form of cultural imperialism, epistemicide, and linguicide through a decolonial approach to the curriculum in African universities. It interrogates and challenges the neo-colonial entanglement in regional higher education policy processes coupled with the excessive dependence of regional stakeholders on western external actors for higher education policy and envisages a decolonial alternative future for the regionalisation of higher education in Africa. To this end, the book brings in a more philosophical and practical hermeneutic of knowledge production and dissemination that unyokes post-independence African universities from the bondage of erstwhile colonisers.

If you are involved in academia, policy-making, or are simply curious about the complex features of internationalisation in the Global South, this work is your roadmap to deeper, more critical reflections on the internationalisation of higher education.

Higher education has recently been recognized as a key driver for societal growth in the Global South and capacity building of African universities is now widely included in donor policies. The question is; how do capacity building projects affect African universities, researchers and students? Universities and their scientific knowledges are often seen to have universal qualities; therefore, capacity building may appear straight forward. Higher Education and Capacity Building in Africa contests such universalistic notions. Inspired by ideas about the ‘geography of scientific knowledge’ it explores what role specific places and relationships have in knowledge production, and analyses how cultural experiences are included and excluded in teaching and research. Thus, the different chapters show how what constitutes legitimate scientific knowledge is negotiated and contested. In doing so, the chapters draw on discussions about the hegemony of Western thought in education and knowledge production. The authors’ own experiences with higher education capacity building and knowledge production are discussed and used to contribute to the reflexive turn and rise of auto-ethnography. This book is a valuable resource for researchers and postgraduate students in education, development studies, African studies and human geography, as well as anthropology and history.