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Research paper thumbnail of Changes in how English FAL learners appreciate poetry when indigenous poetry is brought into the classroom: a practitioner case study of grade 11 learners in Gauteng

Research paper thumbnail of Mapping Pathways for an Indigenous Poetry Pedagogy: Performance, Emergence and Decolonisation

Education as Change

Poetry is notoriously unpopular in high school English classrooms all over the world, and English... more Poetry is notoriously unpopular in high school English classrooms all over the world, and English FAL (First Additional Language) classrooms in South Africa are no exception. We report on a pedagogical intervention with Grade 11 learners in a township school in Johannesburg, where the classroom was opened to indigenous poetry and identities by allowing learners to write and perform their own poetry in any language and on any topic. Rejecting essentialist notions of indigeneity as defined by bloodline or “race”, we work with a notion of indigenous identity as fluid and performative, and as inescapably entwined with coloniality. We argue that indigenous poetry, meanings and identities were emergent in the open space created by the intervention. To further explore this emergence, we discuss pedagogy itself as performative, an interaction between teacher and learners in which knowledge is built, stories told and identities sedimented. We focus on what can be learned about possible pedag...

Research paper thumbnail of Changes in how English FAL learners appreciate poetry when indigenous poetry is brought into the classroom: a practitioner case study of grade 11 learners in Gauteng

Research paper thumbnail of Mapping Pathways for an Indigenous Poetry Pedagogy: Performance, Emergence and Decolonisation

Education as Change

Poetry is notoriously unpopular in high school English classrooms all over the world, and English... more Poetry is notoriously unpopular in high school English classrooms all over the world, and English FAL (First Additional Language) classrooms in South Africa are no exception. We report on a pedagogical intervention with Grade 11 learners in a township school in Johannesburg, where the classroom was opened to indigenous poetry and identities by allowing learners to write and perform their own poetry in any language and on any topic. Rejecting essentialist notions of indigeneity as defined by bloodline or “race”, we work with a notion of indigenous identity as fluid and performative, and as inescapably entwined with coloniality. We argue that indigenous poetry, meanings and identities were emergent in the open space created by the intervention. To further explore this emergence, we discuss pedagogy itself as performative, an interaction between teacher and learners in which knowledge is built, stories told and identities sedimented. We focus on what can be learned about possible pedag...

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