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The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how everyday knowledge can be incorporated into the classroom practices of institutions of higher learning to inform inclusive outcomes for linguistically and culturally diverse students. Using a metaphor of a marketer’s everyday interrogation of market conditions, a postgraduate guide to proposal writing and the funds of knowledge socio-cultural framework, we illustrate how forms of everyday and school knowledge can be used concurrently in the construction of socially responsive dialogic pedagogy. We argue for scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) in the South in which knowledge and theory generation is not a preserve of English only, but more so, of the complex interactions between English and the multiplicity of languages that students bring to the classroom. We conclude that SOTL in the South needs to be founded on the transfiguration of everyday knowledge and formal academic knowledge to facilitate the production of new and more powerful knowledge in multicultural postcolonial society. This would allow for inclusive pedagogy that caters for diversity in classrooms, and activity-based teaching and learning, networking students’ experiential, community/home and formal academic knowledge in the construction of new and powerful knowledge.   How to cite this article: BANDA, Felix; BANDA, Dennis. Demystifying research methods: everyday experiences as socio-cultural co(n)texts for effective research methods in teaching and learning in institutions of higher learning in Africa. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, [S.l.], v. 1, n. 1, p. 60-77, sep. 2017. Available at: <http://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=13>. Date accessed: 12 sep. 2017.   This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This study was on the influence of rurality and its Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS) with reference to the Ukulange Mbusa (UM) ceremony of the Bemba people of the Northern Zambia. Rurality is a demographic and a social category and implies distance from urban centres, sparse population, lack of amenities, infrastructure and sometimes social deprivation. A lot of forms of indigenous knowledge are imparted on learners from rural areas before they join universities and meet other knowledge systems. The study tried to establish if some learning and teaching approaches, methods and techniques used in such traditional ceremonies and settings could influence the teaching and learning in higher learning institutions. Interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGD), and documents analysis were used to collect data. The sample was drawn from traditional chiefs, women counsellors (alangizi) and university students initiated in the Ukulange Mbusa ceremony. Findings of the study are that the positive influences of rurality and their forms of indigenous knowledge are often minimised, misunderstood, ignored, viewed as backward, local, native, and therefore not suitable for use in higher learning institutions. However, this study argues that progressive indigenous forms of knowledge must be hybridized with the university ones, save negative ones such as those fuelling early marriages.   Keywords: Indigenous knowledge, Rurality, Folklore, Culture, ZambiaHow to cite this article:Banda, D. & Kapwepwe, M. 2020. The influence of rurality and its indigenous knowledge on teaching methods in higher education – lessons from Ukulange Mbusa of the Bemba people of Zambia. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South. 4(2): 197-217. https://doi.org/10.36615/sotls.v4i2.148.This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This chapter intends to push the frontiers of knowledge production and raise consciousness of indigenous knowledge systems as an essential strategy that can enable transformation and enhance intergenerational approaches to learning for all Africans. The lack of inclusion of indigenous knowledge that is produced through the daily interaction of African children within the home and their environment in African education systems has had a negative impact and is a threat to the beingness of Africans. This does not only have a negative impact on the beingness of the African child but also on the journey of becoming an African. Becoming an African is an evolving concept that requires consistent self-reflection and adjustment according to the context and ongoing changes that occur in that context. African education systems and research can play a transformative constructive role in the revival of beingness and becoming an African person.

This article shows how indigenous knowledge systems and everyday experiences can be used to scaffold theoretical and analytical frameworks as well as to teach aspects of research processes and procedures in a non-intimidating way. We use everyday African experiences and proverbs to show that production of new knowledge does not have to be in English and associated exogenous culture; rather it will be more expedient and have lifelong impact on students if expressed in familiar language practices and knowledge systems. Eurocentric-based epistemologies and knowledge systems will only have profound meaning in Africa if framed in and expressed through local indigenous knowledge systems. We conclude that there is need for research protocols and theoretical/analytical frameworks to be filtered through African socio-cultural contexts and knowledge systems for comprehensive and culturally-relevant meaning making. This would dispel the current obsession with ritualized research, the mysticism associated with Eurocentric research, and perceptions that only formally-educated people are eligible to do research.