Epistemological resistance towards diversality: teaching community psychology as a decolonial project

Abstract

In contexts of political instability and change, the value of disciplinary knowledges and the processes that constituted them is often questioned. Psychology is not exempt from this process. Little South African work has illustrated what teaching for decoloniality may mean in South African psychology. We draw on examples of curriculum design in community psychology from the Universities of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and Stellenbosch, three large South African public universities, in an attempt to surface what we regard as the decolonial frameworks that underpin their development and delivery. Capacities for reflexivity and the ability to hold multiple epistemologies encourage economies of knowledge that may prevent abyssal thinking, while contributing to cognitive justice and minimising opportunities for epistemicide. Some challenges to our pedagogy involve the potential for romanticising decoloniality.

Psychology education and the neoliberal episteme in Australia

“…However, this deceit should not rest with individual educators, but rather be located as the product of a number of forces currently governing higher education which legitimise what some have termed neoliberal pedagogies (Mccafferty, 2010). This is not to say that psychology educators are not continually grappling with ways to creatively insert critical aspects within psychology education both in Australia and elsewhere (see Carolissen et al, 2017;Reyes Cruz & Sonn, 2011;Fox & Fryer, 2018). Nor is this to suggest that textbooks do not address critical thinking as an important skill for psychology students.…”

“…Ideologically, neoconservatism proposes that the only way out of educative dilemmas is to return to “real knowledge,” and other knowledge that sits outside this, that belongs to and represents the lives of the more marginalized communities, is disregarded and delegitimized (Apple, 2001). For instance, the delegitimizing of Indigenous and community knowledges within the neoliberal university has been noted by those working toward epistemological resistance and decoloniality (Carolissen et al, 2017; Dudgeon & Walker, 2015; Moreton-Robinson, 2004).…”

“…This is not to say that psychology educators are not continually grappling with ways to creatively insert critical aspects within psychology education both in Australia and elsewhere (see Carolissen et al, 2017; R. Fox & Fryer, 2018; Reyes Cruz & Sonn, 2011).…”

“…In the South African context, Carolissen and colleagues (2017) have suggested that it is not simply a matter of advocating for change in curriculum content, but also a recognition of the “social, historical and contemporary factors that frame curriculum” (p. 502). This is an important case study that draws attention to the impacts that an ahistorical and apolitical psychology has on students of colour, one which has been echoed here in Australia with discussions around psychology and “the negative impact that certain disciplinary theories and practices have had on Indigenous Australians” (Dudgeon & Walker, 2015, p. 276).…”

Teaching toward Decoloniality in Community Psychology and Allied Disciplines: Editorial Introduction

“…The focus on teaching community psychology creates opportunities for engaging with deeply entrenched power relations in teaching and learning in community psychology. For example, in South Africa, the politics of difference creates one of the core challenges for teaching community psychology (Carolissen, Rohleder, Swartz, Leibowitz, & Bozalek, ; Carolissen et al., ; Graham & Langa, ). Addressing difference, civic responsibility, social action, and oppression in the curriculum and teaching process is a crucial preparatory step to foster critical reflexivity of personal‐professional identities among faculty and students, while simultaneously expecting educators to make sense of our connections to our social and political worlds (Suffla & Seedat, ).…”