Browsing by Subject "Decolonisation"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    De-creating Language Borders at the University of Cape Town: “The Fall of English” and the Rise of African Languages in Education
    (2021) Botes, Inge-Ame; Nyamnjoh, Francis
    The salience of English as the main language of instruction at tertiary institutions across South Africa has not been without critique. At the University of Cape Town, henceforth UCT, conversations surrounding language and academic success have become bolstered by the rhetoric of decolonisation, necessitating a review of policy and practice. This in turn has opened up research opportunities pertaining to student and staff experiences of language at the institution. This thesis is a response to the urgent need for ethnographic focus on the language situation at UCT and higher education institutions countrywide, where increasingly light falls on the language question within quests for decolonisation and social justice. Focusing the language question within frameworks of decoloniality, glocalisation, translanguaging and the development of African languages in education, this thesis distills ethnographic data to argue that language borders need to be reevaluated in a quest for conviviality informed by the universality of incompleteness, where fluidity, interconnection, and interdependence are prioritised over the current dominance of English. Grounded in rich ethnographic evidence in the form of student interviews and reflections, meeting at the intersection of social and linguistic anthropology, this thesis grapples with the critical questions: “What is language at UCT? And what does language do?”
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    Evaluating the decolonisation of the Humanities curriculum at the University of Cape Town: Khanyisa courses as a case study
    (2025) Phetlhu, Ontiretse; Morreira, Shannon; Hoadley, Ursula
    This study sought to bring the conversation around the decolonisation of the curriculum to the fore by evaluating the decolonial work that the Humanities Faculty at the University of Cape Town has attempted to do with regard to the undergraduate degree programme through the introduction of a new suite of course, called the Khanyisa Courses. As such, this study establishes the various ways in which the Humanities faculty through the Khanyisa Courses (specifically the course called: Literature: How and why? – ELL1013F) has attempted to decolonise the curriculum in terms of the way the course is structured, the way it is taught and the way the course is assessed. The aim is to establish whether the course fulfils the decolonial project by means of disrupting and challenging the Eurocentric traditions of teaching and assessing the course. The thesis argues that the ELL1013F course does decolonial work in that it adopts a paradigm shift away from Eurocentric traditions within the discipline of literary studies. The course does this decolonial work by means of adopting epistemic disobedience as one of the approaches in how the course is structured and how the content is taught and assessed – with the idea of the students' positionality being at the at the centre of the learning process thereby disrupting existing hierarchies of knowledge. Furthermore, the thesis argues that the various modules also adopt different approaches in terms of Jansen's (2017) six conceptions of decolonisation and this varied from the different lecturers that taught the modules of the ELL1013F course. Lastly, this thesis shows how the course did not managed to fully decolonise the curriculum, at the level of assessment as it did not overtly disrupt hierarchies of western knowledge in any significant way.
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    Exploring a framework for decolonised disability-inclusive student walk support practices in an open and distance learning institution
    (2021) Sipuka, Olwethu; Lorenzo, Theresa; Behari-Leak; Kasturi; ‪Ngubane-Mokiwa, Sindile
    This research examined underpinning aspects of decolonised support service needs and preferences of open distance learning students with disabilities. In order to fulfil this purpose, views and perceptions of students with disabilities on the importance, availability, and accessibility of student support services were investigated. The extensive literature review done confirms the extent to which decolonisation of higher education has received prominence however, that prominence is not given to the decolonisation of support services for students with disabilities. The Capabilities Approach is utilized as the theoretical framework for this study. It coupled with the Social Model of disability channels our focus on the person's abilities rather than the impairments. Positioned as a qualitative illustrative case study, it sought to examine the factors that positively and negatively affect increased decolonisation of the higher education experiences of students with disabilities in South African universities. As the foremost Open Distance Learning institution in South Africa; the University of South Africa is the primary site for the study. Interviews with students with disabilities, the student representative council and staff members responsible for student support revealed the current experiences and perceptions of both students and staff regarding the topic. The study findings revealed key aspects of a decolonised Student Walk as being internationally relevant, students playing a pivotal role as a stakeholder, controlling worldviews, replicating inequalities and curriculum and power plays and clear strategy as a cardinal aspect of the process. It also discovered that decolonisation was not well understood by both staff and students, hypothetically pointing to many barriers than opportunities. There was disjointed institutional support initiatives that needed to be decolonised, inclusive, teaching and student support aligned. The major implications are linked to institutional level strategic support, staff training and awareness, policy reflection and strategy, inclusive initiatives and student involvement. Above all, a decolonised Student Walk framework has been proposed.
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    Investigating the structural and cultural conditions that reproduce coloniality and inhibit decolonisation at a private higher education institution in South Africa
    (2025) Leburu, Mosuwa Nemeya Prince; Behari-Leak, Kasturi
    This qualitative research study seeking to establish the structural and systemic inhibitors of decolonisation at a South African Private Higher Education Institution (PHEI), adopted a Critical and Social Realism theoretical framework while employing a critical discourse analytical approach. Working within an interpretive paradigm, the study gathered data through semi-structured interviews involving the PHEI lecturers whose agential association purposively placed them at vantage points to assess the structural and cultural elements that stunt the progression of transformation. The study established that the absence of institutional commitment to decolonisation informed the lecturers' peripheral influence in executing a decolonisation agenda. It was also established that the lecturers' perceptions of decolonisation did not progress beyond intellectual and academic pronouncements and as such, institutional structure and culture continue to inhibit decolonisation. That lack of depth on the part of lecturers compromised their competence to pronounce on apparent structural and racial configurations manifest in the institution. The study recommended further investigations that would triangulate the experiences of multiple stakeholders in a bid to propose a framework that would foreground decolonisation and curriculum change as a central concern.