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Critical performativity for a decolonising curriculum: Possibilities in creating emancipatory classroom spaces for exploring alternative knowledge frames
Get PDFThis conceptual paper argues that the decolonising curriculum project at a faculty of health sciences reifies a paradigmatic tension between African and Western knowledge frames within the programmes’ curriculum. In the race to respond to students’ demand for decolonisation of university curriculum, in 2017 the faculty took a decision to focus on socio-economic determinants of health as a decolonisation trajectory. I contend that this approach is not a decolonising project as there is no engagement with what ought to be an alternative African paradigm. Drawing on the notion of critical performativity, I propose a pragmatic approach to explore African indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in politically conscious and authentic ways to transform epistemologies and pedagogies in the faculty. Proposed as a possible pedagogical tool to engage students in co-curriculum construction, critical performativity could open up emancipatory spaces for academics and students to bring into classrooms extant African IKS to redress decades-long epistemic injustice
Schools as restorative spaces for democratic citizenship education
Get PDFThe inception of desegregated schools has persistently been accompanied by sophisticated, exclusionary policies and practices, often masked by excuses of language, residential area, and fees. That a number of schools continue to employ dubious learner selection practices, is a concern that extends beyond the confines of school halls, and holds particularly worrisome implications for conceptions of democratic citizenship. On the one hand, is the obvious tension and seeming juxtaposition between school choice and learner selection. On the other hand, is the reduction of learner selection to racial discrimination. This article has a twofold interest: what is necessary for schools to shift their policies and practices of learner selection, so that they make a foundational contribution to democratic citizenship education, rather than undermining it? How might schools better position themselves as the custodians of democratic citizenship education, so that they play a restorative role
Education and Empire: Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies, 1833–1880 by Rebecca Swartz
Get PDFIn recent years, a range of new institutional histories of education have emerged that castlight on South Africa’s broader educational history. Rebecca Swartz’s book emphaticallybreaks with this trend by coming at the history of education from the transnational rather thanlocal end, centred as it is on constructions of black education and childhood during thenineteenth century. The focus is not specifically on South Africa—the lens is much wider—but it nonetheless also illuminates it. The book is an ambitious and highly successful attemptto examine the connections between the imperial and colonial educational worlds: the linksbetween the local, national, and global. In so doing, it is firmly located in new imperial andeducational historiographies that seek to think beyond the nation, and to examine educationalentanglements at different levels and scales of analysis. As a contribution to comparativehistory of education, it is significant
Teachers’ Know-How: A Philosophical Investigation (2017) by Christopher Winch
Get PDFChristopher Winch’s Teachers’ Know-How: A Philosophical Investigation (2017) is a mustreadfor teacher educators, especially where market forces and political expediency arepushing towards an education universe that emphasises market relevant skill sets. In a worldin which unemployment and dissatisfaction are high, pushing for a skills discourse does muchfor those in power. The state can claim to have provided market relevant skills, and so blamethe individual for not finding work, saying something like, “We have provided you with theskills so, if you cannot find a job, then it’s your fault, you layabout.” The danger, for us asacademics in education, is that this abusive use of skills discourses by the state and its neoliberaldisciples can result in a strong sense of repulsion for anything based on skills
Profile and Motivation of Women Enrolled in the Brazilian Telemedicine and Telehealth Postgraduation Distance Education Programme
Get PDFPurpose: Women’s participation in Telehealth is increasing around the world and they should be prepared to work in this new job market. The aim of this study was to evaluate the profile and motivation of women enrolled in the Brazilian Postgraduate Programme on Telemedicine and Telehealth. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from May to July 2018 of all women enrolled in the postgraduate programme using an anonymous online Google form. It consisted of a multiple choice form regarding: age, number of children, profession, date of graduation, current occupation, current number of jobs, workload, postgraduate programmes completed, duration of Telehealth experience and motivation to enrol on the Programme. Data collected were exported to an Excel® sheet, summarised and analysed. Results: Of 44 women, 36 completed the survey. Mean age and time passed since graduation were respectively 43.5±13.5 years and 18±17 years for student and 53±13.5 years and 31.5±8.5 for professors; 25 women have at least one child, work more than 30 hours weekly and 10 of them work in two jobs. Health professionals and health occupations were predominant in both groups. Most students had little or no experience in Telehealth. The decreasing order of frequency motivation was professional refinement (63.8%), job opportunity (55.5%), financial gain (52.7%) and innovation (38.8%). Conclusion: Regardless of age, children, workload and professional qualification, the major women's motivation for enrolling in the Telehealth Postgraduate Programme is to professional refinement in this field
Post-Discharge eLearning Platform for Cardiac Patients: Developing the Format of the Educational Units and Recording the Contents
Get PDFMyocardial infarction patients face an increased risk of cardiovascular problems. This risk can be reduced by adjusting one’s lifestyle. However, once discharged from the hospital and faced with self-care at home the patient faces a loss of adequate information and diminishing motivation with time after infarction the event. There is a gap of two weeks between being released from the hospital and the patient having any chance of joining organised cardiac rehabilitation programmes, if these are organised by the health system at all. Unfortunately, by that time the highest motivation for lifestyle change has already been lost.
An eLearning platform has been put forward to bridge this period, however, the content needs to be carefully prepared to educate and motivate the patient and their family. By analysing how health information is acquired over the Internet today, and by applying social-cognitive learning and storytelling into educational videos we developed a format of an effective educational unit. In order to develop an essential set of educational units seven interviews were recorded with members of medical teams and five with patients who had coronary disease, of which two were with their partners who were their informal caregivers.
The format of the educational unit was designed as such that it can be viewed in 4-8 minutes and was composed of three videos featuring peer-patients and medical team members. The videos were accompanied by a short text of up to 50 words, illustrations or quiz questions. From the recorded video material 60 educational videos were edited and used to compose 20 educational units for patients with coronary disease. Legal issues regarding Rights of Publishing and General Data Protection Regulation issues were solved and backend data analytics was developed. Thus, the platform was prepared for next step which will be a large random clinical study
Pedagogical supportive strategies to support economics students’ learning at an open distance learning university
No full textThis article investigates the use of pedagogical strategies employed to support students’ learning in an online Teaching Methodology of Economics course. To this end, a systematic review was conducted of the extant literature on student support in an open distance learning context. The article employed a pragmatic approach, along with an explanatory mixed methods design to conduct the research. Data were collected via an online questionnaire, and from eDiscussion forum entries. Convenient and purposive sampling was done of postgraduate students (n = 179) in economics education, after which the respondents voluntarily completed an online survey. The findings and practical implications of the study on which this article is based, have been formulated to advance online pedagogical strategies aimed at supporting students’ learning, to promote essential competencies for the course in the College of Education at an open distance learning university
Reflecting on lecturer dispositions to decolonise teacher education
Get PDFAn increasingly diverse student population is becoming more and more the norm at South African (SA) universities with culturally and linguistically complex classrooms being the new reality. Lecturers are challenged not only to prepare students to participate in an increasingly diverse democracy, but also to respond to such diversity within their own sites of learning and teaching. Most of the current lecturers at Higher Education Institutions (HEI’s) were schooled during the “Apartheid era” and were predominantly exposed to Western ideologies and fundamental pedagogics. This complicates curriculum transformation at HEI’s as a mind-shift is required to bring about the change required to address the needs of the new generation of students. Despite the transformation and curriculum renewal efforts at universities in SA; students still claim that they feel the effects of colonialism in lecture halls and in the rendition of the curriculum – and calls for the decolonization of the curriculum. Changing the curriculum without changing the curriculum maker is especially difficult under conditions of radical social transformation. Changing the curriculum too far ahead of the lecturers who have to implement it, is unlikely to rearrange the epistemological order of things in the classroom. This paper seeks to understand lecturer dispositions to decolonizing teacher education and reflects on three dispositions – a disposition of resistance, a disposition of inertia and a disposition of possibility