Scholars create space for southern narratives on teaching and learning at the 5th SoTL Conference hosted by CUT

CUT News CILT Teaching and Learning
Scholars create space for southern narratives on teaching and learning at the 5th SoTL Conference hosted by CUT

The conference was attended by local and international presenters’ from universities such as the University of South Africa, Rhodes University, Walter Sisulu University, the University of the Free State, University of Cape Town to name a few and some international universities like the University of the Philippines, Northumbria University in Newcastle, UK and the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia.  Front row, 6th from left: Prof. Henk de Jager, Vice-Chancellor and Principal, Prof. Catherine Manathunga from the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC), Australia; Prof. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Director of the Center of Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, Portugal;  Ms Karabo Sitto from University of Johannesburg, and Prof. Jo-Anne Vorster, Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University.

In the postcolonial world of the 21st century, fundamental and urgent questions about the nature of knowledge have profound ramifications for the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Whilst attempts have been made to internationalise the curriculum in many countries around the world since as far back as the 1990s; there have been more recent calls to decolonise higher education curricula.

The Central University of Technology, Free State (CUT) in collaboration with the University of Johannesburg, co-hosted the 5th Annual Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) to unpack the theoretically grounded and practical strategies that address current important pedagogical debates on decolonisation. The three-day conference which commenced on 9 October 2019 in Bloemfontein, is intended to engage academics in innovative curriculum reform that addresses challenging issues.

In his address, one of the keynote speakers, Prof. Boaventura de Sousa Santos, a distinguished legal scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Center of Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, based his presentation on social, political and educational contexts. He spoke firmly about the effects of colonialism on the current higher education standard as a result of colonialism in society and said that these effects are not so easily removable contrary to popular belief. He added that due to this shifted and disguised colonialism, the educational system is still only serving the needs of the privileged few, because even as a tertiary level student, a black student is still subjected to the negative stereotype associated with his/her racial group, which shows the extent of the exclusion and injustice in social arrangements, that leaves students feeling hopeless.

Prof. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Acting Executive Director of the Change Management at UNISA, focused on the implications for teaching and learning as a result of the politics of knowledge in Africa. Prof. Ndlovu-Gatsheni delivered a historically enriched address focusing on the core issues of ontology and epistemology as departure points in understanding the politics of knowledge.

Prof. Jo-Anne Vorster, Associate Professor and Head of the Centre for Higher Education Research, Teaching and Learning at Rhodes University, shared some insight on the enablement and constraints for curriculum change from a higher education and academic development perspective, also touching on how scholarly teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning can contribute to the curriculum change.  She mentioned that many of the solutions are to be found in rethinking and reshaping of teaching and assessment practices and the curriculum. She further identified classrooms and the curriculum as spaces in which teachers and students can think about what knowledge is essential, the purpose of different kinds of knowledge and what knowledge practices can best serve students and enable them to contribute to a more socially equal globalised world.

Engagement at the parallel sessions gave academics the opportunity to engage with presenters. The topic of this session was ‘Undergraduate student perceptions on intrapersonal skills required for academic success’ by Prof. James Swart, Associate Professor in Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, CUT.

Prof Catherine Manathunga, co-leader of the University of the Sunshine Coast (USC) Transcultural and Indigenous Pedagogies Research group USC, Australia presented on “Decolonising Higher Education: creating spaces for southern knowledge systems”. Prof. Manathunga acknowledged that higher education at present remains dominated by northern scientific knowledge, despite decades of post-colonial, indigenous and feminist research. She said that in contemporary times the forces of globalisation, neoliberalism and managerialism only served to re-inscribe the northern knowledge hierarchy and that the effects of those efforts are killing the knowledge system. She referred to the northern knowledge processes as “global apartheid of higher education” that generates profound damage to democratic practices, cultures, institutions and imaginaries. In addition, she argued that in order to generate genuinely democratic approaches to knowledge production, a great deal of work needs to be done to decolonize teaching, learning and research.

Uploaded: 15 October 2019
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