Decolonising Higher Education explored at Indaba
LANGUAGE DEVELOPERS: CPUT’s Prof Ken Barris and Dr Bernadette Millar address this year’s Language Indaba
Friday, 09 June 2017
The thorny topic of decolonising university curricula was tackled head-on during the annual Language Indaba this week.
Hosted by the Fundani Centre for Higher Education Development’s Language Unit this year participants explored the topic of Decolonising the Language Curriculum.
Delegates at the Indaba included discipline specialists, curriculum officers, language specialists, academics and researchers and students in relevant fields.
Delivering the keynote address, University of Cape Town’s Prof Carolyn McKinney cited examples of how colonialism in education negatively impacts the linguistic resources of African people.
McKinney questioned whether parents of English and Afrikaans – speaking children would allow their children to learn everything from Grade 4 onwards in isiXhosa as their Xhosa counterparts are compelled to learn in English.
She discussed various dominant language ideologies before offering the audience de-colonial approaches to language teaching.
She suggested multilingual class discussions, group work and learning materials as well as assignments requiring the use of more than one language and group to share resources, among others.
Prof Johannes Cronje, Dean of the Faculty of Informatics and Design at CPUT, discussed his approach to teaching and learning in communication which allows students to interact with each other and himself, uses Dashboard and other online forms of learning as well as innovative assessment methods.
Jabar Mohammed, DeafSA’s Western Cape director, explained the role of DeafSA and the challenges faced by the South African deaf community as well as what is being done to address them.
CPUT’s Dr Bernadette Millar argued that decolonization is a journey of self-discovery culminating in a reawakening and a re-orientation.
Millar said decolonising the mind involved a radical process of finding the colonial master’s intention and undoing conditioning, normalisation, power and privilege of the white mind.
Written by Kwanele Butana
Email: butanak@cput.ac.za
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