How could university curricula empower our students and ourselves, and not alienate and exclude some? How do lecturers provide open discursive spaces for agreement, and disagreement? Sim Ntwasa explores aspects of ubuntu pedagogy, social justice and quality teaching and learning. UkuKhangela uBulungisa neNtsulungeko eNtlalweni T&L. Iikharityhulamu zeeyunivesithi zingabaxhobisa njani abafundi nathi ngokunjalo, bengakheswanga kananjalo bengakhutshelwanga ngaphandle abathile? Abahlohli bangabonelela njani ngamathuba okuxoxa ngezinto ngezinto ngenjongo yokuvumelana. U-Sim Ntwasa uphonononga imiba engokufunda nokufundisa okusekelwe kubuntu. Die Strewe na Sosiale Geregtigheid en Gehalte-O&L. Hoe kan universiteitskurrikula ons studente en onsself bemagtig sonder om party mensewigs sale nike air jordan 4 nike air jordan retro rose sex toy nfl fantasy nike air max 270 men’s stores adidas sales nike air jordan womens low chicago bears nike air max new cheap football jerseys black wig black wig shop nfl jerseys nike air max womens sale te vervreem en uit te sluit? Hoe voorsien dosente diskursiewe ruimtes wat vir konsensus en meningsverskil oopgestel is? Sim Ntwasa ondersoek aspekte van ubuntu-pedagogie.
by Sim Ntwasa
Knowledge has always contained a sense of control and power over populations. In most African countries, this control and power have been experienced in colonialism and in South Africa, it included the apartheid education system. Higher education in South Africa has been central in both colonialist and apartheid control and power in many forms, such as access, location, admissions and enrolments, and the curriculum (Mahaye, 2018:6; Assié-Lumumba, 2016:16,17,23; Boughey & McKenna, 2021:26).
The call for decolonisation in higher education has been under discussion for many years since the African liberation movements of the 1960s (Assié-Lumumba, 2016:16). Soudien (2008:26,28,43,105) has argued that the underlying social, cultural and power relations that define South African higher education institutions require deep change to transform how their institutional cultures privilege whiteness and Eurocentrism, remaining “intolerant and exclusive of any challenge to its hegemony” (Soudien, 2008:111). The Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions, chaired by Prof Crain Soudien, discussed social processes in which racist ideology, patriarchy and liberal individualism contributed to low-level resistance to substantive transformation in historically white universities (Soudien, 2008:105).
In the 2015-2017 #MustFallMovements, students rejected the white supremacist, capitalist and patriarchal status quo (Ndelu, 2017:22). Students were arguing for transformed curricula to reflect the lived experiences of African people (Langa, 2017:10). Black students at historically white universities said that they were experiencing the curriculum as colonial and alienating and called for a curriculum with more relevance in an African country (Malabela, 2017:116).
Diluted?
While universities have responded constructively to students’ call for relevance, I wonder whether the critical conversation on the curriculum was diluted as the focus of the #MustFallMovements shifted to fees. Maringira and Gukurume (2017:39) explain how “these movements’ demands could have been construed as resistance to Eurocentric knowledge production and consumption”. I believe that the #MustFallMovements were reduced to capitalist neoliberalism instead of taking the opportunity of being reflexive and interrogating the underpinning structural issues that affect our students in higher education today.
Boughey and Niven (2012: 648) argue that for many centuries, the university has not been ready to turn its gaze onto itself and admit how it needs to be transformed. Instead, the university locates student success in the attributes that students bring with them or ascribes it to skill sets that students need to be successful at university (Boughey & McKenna, 2021). Academics sometimes hide behind the university structures or act as if they are passive followers of the curriculum, without autonomy. I suggest that transformation is not only the responsibility of the university as a structure but it is also your and my responsibility as agents. While I agree that the university and its structural systems can change, it is you and I who need to make it happen.
Are universities ready?
Many intersectionalities affect the existence of students in all these academic spaces, and the university has always favoured the ‘white old man’s knowledge’ over that of anyone else. The challenges of racial, class, economic and gender inequities combine with alienating curricula to marginalise and alienate some students more than others. As the #MustFallMovements indicated, many students conceptualised a free, decolonised education to be inclusive and empowering to black students. They asserted that decolonisation is not only about the curriculum but also about the university architecture and composition, and its symbols. They called for knowledge that is embedded in local and contextual epistemologies (Maringira & Gukurume, 2017:39) and for a multiplicity of identities and narratives to receive equitable political space (Langa, 2017:10,65,99), but in my opinion, this was diluted into one single challenge, namely fees. I believe in a more dialectic approach amongst academics to discover various avenues towards closing the wide gaps that our curricula hold for most students.
I say this because it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish class and racial inequities from multiple other kinds of injustice (Boughey & McKenna, 2021:69). Instead of trying to make such a distinction, we might benefit from conceptualising our approach to learning and to curricula in intersections of being and knowing in multiple ways. I say this because we don’t want to replace one form of misrepresentation with another. If we all became aware of the nature of power in our curricula, it should be our focus irrespective of our own backgrounds and experiences. Waghid (2020:303) offers the notion of ubuntu pedagogy, meaning, among other things, a deliberative practice whereby humans address major social problems and their implications for higher education. He puts forward three meanings of ubuntu that can create a new understanding of higher education in South Africa (Waghid, 2020:304).
- An autonomous human of ubuntu can speak out against injustice and inhumane practices because s/he is autonomous and responsible. For example, a student will be able to feel comfortable enough to voice their feelings of alienation in the classroom.
- Ubuntu as an act of co-belonging manifests when humans exercise their common humanity as they seek to respond to social problems, such as allowing students to actively participate in social issues concerning their studies. This can involve sending students out to communities or using group work to experience their common humanity (Malgas & Phiri, 2020).
- Ubuntu involves being attentive to others as deliberate practice. That means listening attentively and being respectful towards differences instead of tolerating microaggressions that occur in the classroom (Simatele, 2018).
Waghid (2020:305) proposes that ubuntu can contribute to transforming higher education in Africa with pedagogical encounters that foster an ethic of discomfort, practical criticism and scepticism. With ubuntu pedagogy, teachers and students would be encouraged to make up their minds, act freely and identify problems that need to be resolved. If we approach knowledge and learning with ubuntu, we could see it differently, breaking free from entrenched thinking and being sceptical in pedagogical encounters, allowing learning and teaching to be self-questioning and self-developing.
University curricula should thus present knowledge not as neutral but as socially situated. Curricula often present only one perspective on learning and knowledge, which might be ignorant of some students present in the classroom, excluding them and their thinking. University curricula tend to provide formal, codified, theoretical & generalizable ideas of knowledge in disciplinary knowledge structures and tend to block other forms of knowing. But not everything known can or needs to be contained in single-discipline systems and grammar. Knowledge and knowing should be grounded in our experiences and interaction with the world and how we navigate that process as knowledge (Alderson, 2020: 97; 98).
All experiences matter
University curricula should provide space to discuss all forms of knowing and knowledge. University lecturers can provide opportunities for open discursive spaces for agreement for some and noting for others, based on their circumstances, experiences and context. Students come to university possessing knowledge and the capability of knowing (Nussbaum, 2000: 05; Walker, 2003: 170 & 173). Most students have overcome many challenges in the process of enrolling in higher education; they have individual experiences and are not empty vessels who are waiting to be poured full of knowledge. What the university should do is to “help students develop the deep experiential moral knowledge they already have, as well as their highly effective methods of self-directed learning” (Alderson, 2020: 99). In doing so, we will have students who are critical thinkers, who can solve societal problems and who are able to learn beyond university life, that is, a socially just curriculum.
Unlearning in order to Learn
Unfortunately, many black students, including myself, have had to unlearn their discourses and ways of knowing before they could enter the discourse of the university, which is characterised by new literacies and grammar. The knowledge and capabilities that I possessed were not recognised, and the university and its curricula demanded a great deal of adjustment from me from the outset. For example, it was discomfiting for me to look a sociology lecturer, an elder, in the eyes and have a critical debate, arguing a point and agreeing to disagree on concepts that were foreign to me in a discussion on Marxist theory. Essay writing on Marxist theory demanded a discourse unfamiliar to me, and I struggled. Now, this may not be problematic to a student who comes from a middle-class home with educated parents and who is used to critical discussions over a meal, but some students will find such discussions as odd and incomprehensible as I did. Thus, curricula hold power and social privilege that are alien and that alienate those students who unfortunately were previously not exposed to such privilege (Kapp & Bangeni, 2011: 2006).
I don’t mean to digress into a racial and class comparison; my point is the privileges encoded by the curriculum that favours one kind of student and alienates another. I thus feel that the university’s ways of understanding knowledge and knowing is not neutral. It is linked to certain value systems, skills and ways of understanding (Alderson, 2020:102), and I argue that middle-class students (mostly white) have access to these value systems and forms of knowing, which is an advantage for them in proceeding effectively. If we open dialectic spaces for such realities and together seek possible solutions in our curricula and move towards ubuntu pedagogies, much can be achieved. I would be included more, the discourses that I possess prior to university would be valued by my peers and I would be introduced to discourses beyond just mine.
Please don’t get me wrong. I respect that all students need academic integration and support, not just black students, but I argue that middle-class students have an advantage of integrating into the university system much faster because “the degree to which individuals can reconstruct who they are is regulated by the extent to which they can access the material, linguistic, social and cultural resources that are valued within dominant discourse” (Kapp & Bangeni, 2011:02). That is why dialogues on ubuntu pedagogies at Stellenbosch University are important: for us with our different backgrounds and experiences to come together as one and branch off into various spaces with one objective in mind – ubuntu.
Concluding Remarks
Could pedagogical practices and strategies then be a form of empowering our students (and ourselves) through purposeful teaching and learning? I say that yes, by being more aware and conscious of the complexity of the nature of our students, by being more aware and conscious of the curriculum and how it is designed (see Delta process) and by understanding the importance of a transformed curriculum and how it will contribute towards social justice, pedagogical practices and strategies will indeed be a form of empowering ourselves and our students in higher education. Could South African students be empowered and not alienated by university knowledge? Yes, we need to think differently about the power of our knowledge, and we need to be intentional about social justice. Alderson (2020:104) summarises it well for me when she says that “all students need an education that combines social usefulness with personal relevance, with access to the knowledge, values and skills that will help them through their personal and working lives”. Students will participate in hard or boring work provided that they understand and see the value that it has for their being. I don’t have all the answers, and as I venture into the Stellenbosch University spaces seeking social justice and quality teaching and learning in higher education, I hope that I will connect with individuals who are aware of the power of the curriculum and its ability to exclude and alienate, and its otherness. I also hope that on this journey, we will work together towards social justice and quality in higher education.
References
Alderson, P. 2020. Powerful knowledge, myth or reality? Four necessary conditions if knowledge is to be associated with power and social justice. London Review of Education, 18(1):96–106. https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.18.1.07
Assié-Lumumba, N.T. 2016. Evolving African attitudes to European education: Resistance, pervert effects of the single system paradox, and the ubuntu framework for renewal. International Review of Education, 62:11–27. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-016-9547-8
Boughey, C. & McKenna, S. 2021. Understanding higher education: Alternative perspectives. Somerset West: African Minds.
Boughey, C. & Niven, P. 2012. The emergence of research in the South African Academic Development Movement. Higher Education Research and Development,31(5):641–653.
Kapp, R. & Bangeni, B. 2011. A longitudinal study of students’ negotiation of language, literacy and identity. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies. 29(2): 197-208. DOI: 10.2989/16073614.2011.666.
Kapp, R. & Bangeni, B. 2006. Positioning (in) the discipline: Undergraduate students’ negotiation of disciplinary discourses. Paper presented at the Interdisciplinary Colloquium, Cape Town and Stellenbosch, 30-31 March 2006.
Langa, M. (ed.). 2017. #Hashtag: An analysis of the #FeesMustFall Movement at South African universities. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation.
Mahaye, N.E. 2018. The philosophy of ubuntu in education. [Online]. Available: https://www.researchgate.net › publication › 336995193 Retrieved January 2022.
Malabela, M. 2017. We are already enjoying free education: Protests at the University of Limpopo (Turfloop). In: Langa, M. (ed.). #Hashtag: An analysis of the #FeesMustFall Movement at South African universities. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, pg. 108 – 120.
Malgas, R. & Phiri E. 2020. First-generation learning & teaching in COVID19. Stellenbosch: Centre for Teaching and Learning, Stellenbosch University. [online]. Available: First-generation Learning & Teaching in COVID-19 – Centre for Teaching and Learning (https://www0.sun.ac.za/ctlresources/first-generation-learning-teaching-in-covid-19/) Retrieved on 20 October 2021.
Maringira, G. & Gukurume, S. 2017. Being black in #FeesMustFall and #FreeDecolonisedEducation: Student protests at the University of the Western Cape. In: Langa, M. (ed.). #Hashtag: An analysis of the #FeesMustFall Movement at South African universities. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, pg. 33 – 47.
Ndelu, S. 2017. ‘A Rebellion of the Poor’: Fallism at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology. In: Langa, M. (ed.). #Hashtag: An analysis of the #FeesMustFall Movement at South African universities. Johannesburg & Cape Town: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, pg. 1 – 32.
Nussbaum, M. 2000. Women and human development: The capabilities approach. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
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Soudien, C. 2008. Report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion and the Elimination of Discrimination in Public Higher Education Institutions. 30 November 2008. Pretoria: Department of Education.
Waghid, Y. 2020. Towards an ubuntu philosophy of higher education in Africa. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 39:299–308. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-020-09709-w.
Walker, M. 2003. Framing social justice in education: What does the capabilities approach offer? British Journal of Educational Studies, 15(2):168–187. [Online]. Available: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3122419. Retrieved on 20 October 2021.
About the Author
Simbongile Ntwasa joined Stellenbosch University as an advisor at the Centre for Teaching & Learning in February 2021. He comes from the Eastern Cape and has been involved in academic development for eight years. He started his career in higher education as a junior lecturer, teaching in the Extended Degrees Programme. He developed a passion for academic development, which he uses to advance academics’ and students’ success in higher education. His Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees are in Social Work and he is currently enrolled for a PhD in higher education with a special interest in social justice and quality in higher education.
Disclaimer
All views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not represent those of the Stellenbosch University.
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