Decolonising pedagogy: A critical engagement with debates in the university in South Africa

Abstract

In 2015 universities around South Africa ground to a standstill while students called first for the fall of Rhodes and then for the fall of fees. For educational theorists such as Vygotsky (1986) it is in moments of crisis that contradictions within a system become visible, forcing change in the system. For Roy (2020) crises are portals, through which we travel and effect change. Change, of course, can be progressive in the sense that one moves forward to overcome a cris, but it can also be regressive. With the call for fees to fall, students went further and articulated a need to change the current curricula in the academy to reflect previously marginalised voices; a call, they announced, to decolonise university-based knowledge. What exactly is meant by the term, decolonisation, is not immediately clear. For some, such as Long (2018) this is merely a hollow signifier while for others, it represents an erasure of some, even all, Western thought. In this paper, I do not discuss decolonising education in the broader sense, but rather, focus my gaze on what it can mean to decolonise pedagogy. What does an inclusive, transformative pedagogy look like in South Africa? Can the work of South American pedagogical giants such as Freire cast light on how South African pedagogy should unfold in a time when colonialism and its sister capitalism seem to be teetering on the edge of an abyss? To develop my argument about a decolonial, inclusive pedagogy, I begin the paper by articulating what I understand pedagogy to be before moving on to develop an argument about what a decolonial pedagogy could look like. I draw on the work of Vygotsky, Freire, and Derrida to articulate a pedagogy capable of inclusion