Browsing by Author "Steyn, Shani"
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- ItemCurrere as deracialisation : an autobiographical reflection of a white teacher in multicultural post-apartheid South African classrooms(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2020-12) Steyn, Shani; Le Grange, Lesley; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Education. Dept. of Curriculum Studies.ENGLISH SUMMARY: This thesis, “Currere as Deracialisation: An autobiographical introspection by a ‘white’ South African teacher in post-apartheid South Africa”, is written from a psychoanalytical perspective. I use Pinar’s (1975) work on currere1 and biographic situation2 to explore the meaning and challenges of being a ‘white’ educator, born, raised and schooled during the apartheid era,3 having to reconceptualise my pedagogy in order to meet the needs of post-apartheid culturally inclusive education. I explore the concepts of currere within the framework of Pinar’s reconceptualist theory4 on curriculum with the hope that this will breathe new life into my educational experience. Currere; a Latin word meaning “to run” and the root word for the word curriculum, is used by Pinar and Grumet (1976) to outline their method of educational autobiographical inquiry. Pinar uses the word ‘curriculum’ as an active verb for understanding the running of the course. Although the main theoretical framework is that of currere, other theories that form part of the framework for this thesis are social construction theory, cognitive dissonance theory and critical race theory. The points of departure for my research questions are summed up in this quotation from Pinar (1975:3): “What is the experience of being …a stranger in a land not one’s own?” As a consequence of my privileged and exclusive upbringing, I am not well versed in what it takes to teach in post-1994 South African classrooms. I am now a stranger and entirely inexperienced in my once familiar classroom. The four walls are the same; the demographics of the student population are not. The purpose of this thesis is two-fold: firstly, to critically examine myself as a post-apartheid educator so that I may begin to understand how my auto/biographical experiences under the political regime of apartheid in South Africa (including my whiteness and privilege) are influencing my current pedagogy, and secondly, to inspire other ‘white’ South African educators to reflect on their own understanding that ‘racial’ muteness and an adoption of ‘colour-blindness’ are not the solutions for resolving the problems in providing meaningful education in post-apartheid classrooms. The dismantling of apartheid and the consequent shift in learner demographics stemming from the new laws on education left me facing multiple and complex issues that challenged many of my own educational practices and personal assumptions. A review of the literature explored the works of education philosophers such as Maxine Greene and curriculum scholars including Ted T. Aoki and Madeleine Grumet, in addition to those of Pinar. All of them believed that in order to achieve greater social justice in education, teachers need to subject themselves to a process of critical autobiographical inquiry – in other words, currere. As a result of my journey, a new appreciation of my pedagogical self emerged in the unfamiliar terrain of my post-1994 classroom. The tensions in the dichotomies of language and culture that came to surface became creative spaces within which I could contemplate the complexities of my ‘culturally diverse’ classroom and ultimately discover new meanings.