Contextualizing the Curriculum: A Teacher Educator's Response to Calls for Decolonizing the Higher Education Curriculum at a South African University
Studying Teaching and Teacher Education
ISBN: 978-1-83753-623-8, eISBN: 978-1-83753-622-1
Publication date: 10 August 2023
Abstract
Decolonizing the curriculum is an important topic in education but what does it really mean to decolonize the curriculum? In this self-study, I reflected, with the help of a critical friend, on what decolonizing the curriculum could mean in the context of my biology education classroom using the Pedagogical Content Knowledge model by Davidowitz and Rollnick (2011) as the guiding framework. From these reflections, I came to the conclusion that decolonizing the curriculum is not about erasing the known facts and principles of science but rather, it is about contextualizing it by replacing the Eurocentric stories, texts, and examples among other things, with our own Afrocentric ones. Contextualizing our curriculum is, however, fraught with challenges which include underdeveloped indigenous languages available to be used as languages of instruction, lack of locally produced teaching and learning resources including textbooks, and lack of documented indigenous knowledge that curriculum implementers can use in their teaching in order to make it contextually relevant. In this chapter, I share insights from my reflections.
Keywords
Citation
Nyamupangedengu, E. and Nyamupangedengu, C. (2023), "Contextualizing the Curriculum: A Teacher Educator's Response to Calls for Decolonizing the Higher Education Curriculum at a South African University", Craig, C.J., Mena, J. and Kane, R.G. (Ed.) Studying Teaching and Teacher Education (Advances in Research on Teaching, Vol. 44), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 37-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-368720230000044009
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2023 Eunice Nyamupangedengu and Cuthbert Nyamupangedengu. Published under exclusive licence by Emerald Publishing Limited