THE AFRICAN RENAISSANCE AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION CURRICULUM IN SOUTH AFRICA (original) (raw)

African philosophy and the transformation of educational discourse in South Africa

The liberation of Africa and its peoples from centuries of racially discriminatory colonial rule and domination has far reaching implications for educational thought and practice. The transformation of educational discourse in South Africa requires a philosophical framework that respects diversity, acknowledges lived experience and challenges the hegemony of Western forms of universal knowledge. In this article I argue that African philosophy, as a system of African knowledge(s), can provide a useful philosophical framework for the construction of empowering knowledge that will enable communities in South Africa to participate in their own educational development.

Towards an African philosophy of higher education

Philosophical inquiry aims to explain, clarify and rationally justify higher education discourse. In this article we shall explore what an African philosophy of higher education could mean. We begin by offering a conceptual account of constitutive meanings of higher education discourse in South Africa with the aim to identify gaps. Thereafter we attempt to reconstruct a notion of African higher education, in particular how notions of ubuntu and community guide practices such as teaching, learning and research within higher education. Our contention is that higher education discourse in South Africa would be impoverished if it fails to recognise African philosophical thought and practice.

Some ref lections on the Africanisation of higher education curricula: A South African case study

Higher education is often celebrated as the 'powerhouse' and 'engine' for development in Africa. Central to this mandate is the 'esign and function of curricula in Higher Education Institutions in Africa. As the development discourse has moved away from a sole emphasis on economic development to human development, the content and the purpose of curricula in African higher education are contested. While higher education in Africa will continue to produce graduates who can contribute to the economic development of Africa, the critical move to emphasise human development requires higher education to produce critical graduates suited to finding solutions to the unique challenges on the African continent. Critical graduates in an African context however, also means students who can formulate and question accepted Western canons of knowledge; discover, validate and celebrate the contributions of indigenous knowledge systems, and negotiate an African identity in its multiple intersectionality with gender, race, location, language, religion and cultural markers. This article will critically explore the Africanisation of higher education curricula in the context of the University of South Africa (UNISA). I will interrogate Africanisation as legitimate counternarrative and the quest for an African identity and culture, propose a rationale for a critical African scholarship, and finally provide some pointers for the development of African curricula.

Decolonising The University In South Africa : A Precondition for Liberation

2012

The essay itself means to treat the way in which the general suppression and marginalisation of the African perspective in South African Education is an affirmation of an age-old philosophic racism and a confirmation of the pre-dominance of the white-supremacist power structure in South Africa. Our method will be to briefly treat the general history of racism with specific reference to the contact between Europeans and Africans, more specifically indigenous South Africans some time after the expeditions of conquest and settlement of the European invaders. We will then focus on this racism in the domain of education, focusing particularly on higher education and using the discipline of philosophy as a case study both because it is the area of training of the present author as well as because philosophy pervades all other disciplines and so our focus should have a specific as well as a general appeal. After arguing that very little has changed in the culture and practice of universities in South Africa since 1994, we will finally show how this condition of our universities, presents a serious obstacle to both Historical Justice and true liberation for the indigenous African people of the country.

Trends in African philosophy and their implications for the Africanisation of the South Africa history caps curriculum: a case study of Odera Oruka philosophy

Yesterday and Today, 2022

A Kenyan philosopher, Henry Odera Oruka (1944-1995), conceptualised and articulated the six trends in African philosophy. ese are ethno-philosophy, nationalistic-ideological philosophy, artistic (or literary philosophy), professional philosophy, philosophic sagacity and hermeneutic philosophy. In this article, we maintain that the last three of these trends, namely professional philosophy, philosophic sagacity, and hermeneutic philosophy, are useful in our a empt to contribute to Africanising the school history curriculum (SHC) in the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) in post-apartheid South Africa. Against this background, we make use of Maton's (2014) Epistemic-Pedagogic Device (EPD), building on from Bernstein's (1975) Pedagogic Device as a theoretical framework to view African philosophy and its implications for the Africanisation of the SHC in CAPS in post-apartheid South Africa. rough the lens of Maton's EPD, we show how the CAPS' philosophy of education is questionable; untenable since it promotes 'di erences of content';

Bringing Africa into New Epistemologies: Rethinking the University in Africa

Journal of Educational Research and Reviews, 2022

The concepts Africanization and decolonization have been stressed in the 1960s by the founder leaders of the free African states. Pan African leaders such as Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Kenneth Kaunda and Julius Nyerere sought to establish truly independent states free from Europeanization and colonialism. The mission was to liberate various institutions from colonial ills. These leaders wanted to transform government institutions including institutions of higher learning. The 1960s witnessed the leaders' search for relevance and liberatory philosophies. Since the advent of colonization, the African continent there has been the gradual alienation that has seen the African lose not only culture but history, language and indigenous ways of thinking. The leaders in newly independent states strived to redress this barbarism veiled as modernism which was widespread in African institutions. This article examines the reasons behind the sustained calls for Africanization and decolonization in higher education institutions in Africa. The following five topics are examined: i) Why re-Africanize the university in Africa ii) Revisiting and fostering the relevant soul of the university iii) New epistemologies and reawakening the renaissance of knowledge iv) Research, curriculum and pedagogy infusing the new idea of a university v) Rethinking thinking

Transforming epistemologies in the postcolonial African university? The challenge of the politics of knowledge

Journal of Education and Learning (EduLearn), 2014

The process of knowledge production, dissemination and consumption has captured much scholarly attention from a political viewpoint in recent times. Discourses on development, empowerment, transformation and democracy have revolved around knowledge and power and more precisely on the politics of knowledge. Institutions of higher learning, especially universities, globally, as nerve centres of knowledge production and distribution, have not been spared from the challenges of the politics of knowledge. In this conceptual paper, we theorise the dynamics of the challenges and opportunities of the politics of knowledge in the context of the postcolonial African university’s endeavour to transform epistemologies in higher education in the 21st century Africa. Our case is premised on three claims, namely that 1) the production and mediation of knowledge is a genuinely political process(Weiler, 2011b) 2) universities can be considered among the most political institutions in society (Ordori...

The search for ecologies of knowledge in the encounter with African epistemicide in South African education

South African Journal of Higher Education, 2016

this article discusses the manufactured absence of African epistemologies, that we refer to as 'epistemicide', in formal education in Africa. the exemplifying case for our argument is the western hegemonic positioning of university and school-based knowledge in south African education during the past 20 years. This is taken up in the first half of the article where we illustrate how this (westernised) knowledge form is instantiated in the education body politik. the

Cloete, N., Maassen, P., & Bailey, T. (Eds.). (2015). Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education. Cape Town: African Minds

Journal of Student Affairs in Africa, 2015

Manuel Castells (2001), who is regarded as one of the most influential social scientists commenting on the role of higher education in contemporary global consciousness, describes the roles of universities as the generation of new knowledge, the conceptualisation and diffusion of ideology and forms of knowing, the recreation of elites, and the development of skilled labour. The tension between the utilitarian role, on the one hand, and the generation of new forms of knowledge and the contradictions inherent in this, on the other, is the focus of this widely influential new book. The African university, despite calls for it to act as an instrument of development in the post-colony and engine of an African renaissance, has struggled to assert itself within the paced global knowledge economy which requires the university to 'become a central actor of scientific and technological change' and to become the centre of 'cultural renewal and cultural innovation … linked to the new forms of living' (Castells in Cloete et al., 2015, p. 2). Knowledge Production and Contradictory Functions in African Higher Education builds on these premises and explores the trends and debates around the intended and emerging identity of African flagship universities in eight countries by relying on comparative indicators and sets of data. Empirical data from universities and governments on research levels and outputs, numbers of students and staff, and contextual factors, are used to present a textured analysis of the eight flagship universities, which are the