Mapping Pathways for an Indigenous Poetry Pedagogy: Performance, Emergence and Decolonisation (original) (raw)
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Education As Change, 2020
This article presents the reflections of a research team from the ZAPP-IKS project. ZAPP (the South African Poetry Project) undertook a three-year NRF-funded research project titled “Reconceptualising Poetry Education for South African Classrooms through Infusing Indigenous Poetry Texts and Practices”. The research on which we report here was undertaken as part of that project. The team consists of an English teacher, a poet and an academic. Together, they attempted a research intervention at a Johannesburg secondary school. The article presents their reflections on the challenges, successes and potentials of the attempted research intervention, which was intended to energise and inspire the teaching of English poetry by drawing from and developing indigenous knowledges and principles. Presented as a play, a praise poem and a conventional academic analysis by the school-based teacher, the university-based poet, and the university-based academic, respectively, the article offers dive...
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