Towards a criticalre-conceptualization of the purpose of higher education: the role of Ubuntu-Currere in re-imagining teaching and learning in South African higher education

"We've been taught to understand that we don't have anything to contribute towards knowledge": Exploring academics' understanding of decolonising curricula in higher education

“…and isolated site of curriculum design, or what Bernstein (1975) refers to as the site of the discursive gap is critical to achieving the decolonial agenda in curricula. Ntokozo's and Thoko's conception of decolonising curricula reflects the arguments advanced by scholars such as Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013), Hlatshwayo and Shawa (2020) and Heleta (2018) who are not necessarily calling for the rejection of all Eurocentric scholarship and its epistemic traditions but for the re-centring of previously othered knowledge systems, and for this agenda to be prioritized in higher education curricula. For Ntokozo, there is a tension between Eurocentric and African epistemic traditions, and, for him, the decolonial project is to ensure that there is a sensitive balance between the two.…”

“…(Sanchez, 2018, pp. 3-4) In the South African context, the calls for decolonising and transforming 2 curricula have often suggested that the post-1994 political dispensation did very little to challenge or interrupt colonial and apartheid epistemic traditions, and bring about new and inclusive knowledges in curricula (Heleta, 2018;Hlatshwayo & Fomunyam, 2019a;Hlatshwayo & Shawa, 2020). The 1990s and early 2000s were shaped and informed largely by a policy framework that sought to open the doors of higher education to all, especially for the millions 2 While there are new and emergent debates in South African higher education on the differences between transformation (which is seen as reforming the system) and decolonization (which is seen as overhauling and restructuring the system), in this paper we have adopted and operationalized both transformation and decolonization as being concerned with changing the system and attempting to make it socially just and inclusive.…”

“…Universities in the Global South 1 continue to face intensive scrutiny and critique regarding the ever increasing demands to change, reform, transform, decolonise, and, in the Indian higher education context, to de-commodify curricula in the academy (Dey, 2019;Hlatshwayo & Fomunyam, 2019a;Hlatshwayo & Shawa, 2020). Common to the above debates is the assumption that the contemporary university in its current constitution not only colonises, oppresses, and marginalises, but also fails to serve the interests of society, and thereby continues to reinforce its structural inequality (Heleta, 2016;Mbembe, 2016;Morreira, 2017).…”

The role of teachers’ assessment beliefs in fostering self-directed learning skills within the school learning context and its implications for higher education

“…Le Grange also interprets Ubuntu as having a similar meaning as ukama, a Shona word emphasising 'relatedness'. Therefore, it is proposed that SDMA is considered within a broader Ubuntu-currere (Hlatshwayo & Shawa 2020;Le Grange 2019) approach where the emphasis is shifted from the individual (the teacher) to 'an assemblage of human-human-nature' (Le Grange 2019:222). Hence, this humanness, as not only a South African phenomenon, but rather a more global communal approach, should be prominent for learning and ultimately assessment.…”

Re-Thinking the Humanities Curriculum in the Time of Covid-19

“…In the South African context, the 2015-2016 student movements highlighted the Eurocentric and colonial nature of the South African higher education landscape, with the need to re-centre African epistemic traditions in curricula and de-centre and provincialise Euro-American thought (Maxwele 2016;Ngcobozi 2015;Ramaru 2017). Thus, even before the COVID-19 period, Hlatshwayo and Shawa (2020) and others had already called for the need to reflect on the purposes of higher education in light of the academic disruption and ethical call for transformation currently occurring in the global South (Badat 1994; Council on Higher Education 2008).…”