De-coding or de-colonising the technocratic university? Rural students’ digital transitions to South African higher education

Abstract

Despite wide-ranging policies and practices intended to address historical inequalities in South African higher education, and calls for decolonisation to include more local relevance, little attention has been paid to the experiences of rural students, especially their digital participation once at university. Previous research has highlighted limitations in technological access in rural areas and the importance of mobile phones for transitions. Whilst universities offer wideranging digital support, there remains a tendency towards universalist mechanisms. Drawing on a longitudinal study across three universities, and employing Holland's theory of figured worlds, we highlight rural students' experiences of digital transitions across different cultural worlds, prior to university and once they arrive, including the bewildering technocratic systems and practices and resulting conflicts and positionings encountered. We show how students improvise to decode the digital university and figure out new practices. Decolonisation of universities involves rethinking the 'technocratic consciousness' (both colonialist and neoliberal) and its apparatus including digital systems and structures. For rural students to become successful digital practitioners in higher education, universities should acknowledge prior digital experience and forms of knowledge and focus on expanding individual and collective agency in supporting transitions, as mechanisms for shaping a decolonised digital education.

What is ‘critical’ in critical studies of edtech? Three responses

“…During the COVID-19 pandemic, access reappeared as an obvious marker of inequality, with disparities among students' access to online instruction, if their institutions were able to offer online instruction. But digital inequalities have been highlighted beyond the pandemic, e.g., rural students' need to decode digital practices when transitioning to higher education (Timmis and Muhuro 2019) or the ambivalences when social media simultaneously provide a space of opportunity for international students and enact legacies of their marginalisation (Madge et al 2019).…”

Ontological Transparency, (In)visibility, and Hidden Curricula: Critical Pedagogy Amidst Contentious Edtech

“…Ownership, access, and meaningful use of the digital become harbingers of access to and success in higher education. This positions universities largely as technocracies, systems of governance in which ‘technically trained experts rule by virtue of their specialised knowledge and position in dominant political and economic institutions’ (Fischer 1990 : 17) underpinning knowledge hegemony in higher education as a result (Timmis and Muhuro 2019 ).…”

Networked Learning: Inviting Redefinition

“…As Bill Mitchell forecast, we have seen an accelerating interpenetration of the digital and material, spaces have become hybrid and digital infrastructures are taken for granted (Mitchell 2003 ; Guribye 2015 ; Goodyear 2020 ). Even in countries with fewer resources and strong digital divides, inventive practices using mobile phones are creating rich meshworks of learning relationships (Czerniewicz and Brown 2012 ; Timmis and Muhuro 2019 ). It is now rare to find real learning situations that can be described as ‘purely face-to-face’ or ‘wholly online’.…”