Research Articles (Education Policy Studies)
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- ItemCreative agency in the colonial encounter: foundations for a decolonial pedagogy(Taylor & Francis, 2024-12-10) Fataar, A.This essay emphasises the imperative to move from discussions about decolonising education to the practical implementation of a decolonial pedagogy. This task necessitates challenging Eurocentric perspectives and incorporating diverse insights into curriculum design and pedagogical processes. By drawing on Edward Said’s concepts of democratic humanism, worldliness, and contrapuntal, the essay argues for an expanded understanding of colonial and postcolonial contexts that highlight the agency of colonised peoples. It underscores the significance of acknowledging cultural connections and interactions as vital components of human formation. The essay explores how enslaved people at the Cape of Good Hope navigated their circumstances, establishing creative agency to shape their worlds. Briefly discussing the literacy practices of enslaved people and the literary portrayals of enslaved women, the essay illustrates how a decolonial pedagogy can offer a more inclusive and critical perspective on historical cultural formations.
- ItemDecolonization in South African universities: storytelling as subversion and reclamation(Oxford University Press, 2024-06) Davids, Nuraan, 1970-Underscoring recurrent calls for the decolonization of university curricula in South Africa are underexplored presumptions that by only disrupting theoretical content, universities might release themselves from a colonialist grasp, that continues to dominate and distort higher education discourse. While it might be the case that certain theories hold enormous authoritative, ‘truthful’ sway, as propagated through Western interpretations and norms, there are inherent problems in exclusively approaching the decolonization project as a content-based hurdle, removed from the subjectivities of students’ social, lived, and learning realities. The argument advanced in this article is that until the epistemic harm of colonialism and apartheid are afforded careful recognition and attention—as in focusing on the lived experiences, realities, and stories of individuals—the hard work of delegitimizing coloniality, and its implicit structures of hegemonies and binaries cannot unfold. In addressing these harms, I commence by describing some of the contexts of epistemic harm, promulgated through colonialism and apartheid. This is followed by a consideration of decolonization, both as theory and practice-within-context. Here, I also foreground the #Rhodesmustfall campaign, as a particular moment of painful clarity about why decolonization, as well as transformation, has faltered in higher education in South Africa. In the second half, I focus on the necessity of prioritizing storytelling as a deep manifestation of decolonization. Stories, I maintain, provide access into unknown lives, and can subvert the invisible, normative framings, which dictate how we live in this world. As a manifestation of decolonization, students’ stories hold profound implications for the recognition and affirmation of pluralist identities, histories, knowledge, values, and world-views.
- ItemTeaching as Epistemic Mistrust(Springer Nature, 2024-08-19) Davids, Nuraan, 1970-Long portrayed as a virtuous profession, teaching has always been embedded in notions of trust and trustworthiness. Alongside expectations of epistemic cultivation and development, is an implicit handing over of discretionary powers to ‘the trusted teacher’. At the height of #blacklivesmatter protests in 2020, however, high school learners all over South Africa took to social media—@yousilenceweamplify—to express their hurt and anger at their dehumanising experiences at some of the country’s leading schools. Their accounts not only exposed some schools as intense sites of racial, religious, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic tension and conflict, but shattered presumptions about ‘the trusted teacher’. Following a consideration of what trust infers, and the potential harms that arise from epistemic mistrust, the paper considers what might be gained from philosophical engagements in the espousal of teaching as a relationship of epistemic trust, and which ensures the flourishing of both learner and teacher? How might philosophy of education assist teacher education programmes in attuning students to an understanding that being trustworthy as teachers resides in self-knowledge as well as knowledge of the differences of, and among others?
- ItemKnowledge-building and knowers in educational practices(University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2021) Rusznyak, Lee; Hlatshwayo, Mlamuli Nkosingphile; Fataar, Aslam; Blackie, MargaretThe South African education system continues to be confronted with calls for free decolonial quality education. Sparked by the #RhodesMustFall and #FeesMustFall student protests in 2015 and 2016, students pushed for the need to re-think and reimagine teaching and learning and the kinds of knowledge(s) that are valued and legitimated in curricula (Fataar, 2018; Heleta, 2018; Maxwele, 2016; Ngcobozi, 2015). Part of realising a more inclusive education system requires paying attention to knowledge-building in practices and intellectual fields.
- ItemPublic-private partnerships in South African education : risky business or good governance?(Unisa Press, 2020-08-13) Feldman, Jennifer AnnThis article discusses the globalised phenomenon of public-private partnerships, which involve the private and public sector collaborating to provide infrastructure and service delivery to public institutions. Within the education sector, the most commonly known public-private partnerships exist in the United States as charter schools and the United Kingdom as academies. Discussing this phenomenon in the South African context, this article draws on the Collaboration Schools Pilot Project as an example for understanding how the involvement of private partnerships within public schooling is being conceptualised by the Western Cape Education Department. Framed within the debate of public-private partnerships for the public good, the article provides a critical discussion on how these partnerships are enacted as a decentralisation of state involvement in the provision of public schooling by government. The article concludes by noting that the Collaboration Schools Pilot Project, which involves significant changes in policy regarding how schools are governed and managed, requires more rigorous and critical dialogue by all stakeholders as the model unfolds in schools in the Western Cape.