​Decolonising the Science Curriculum: can Legitimation Code Theory show a way forward?

Presenter: Dr Hanelie Adendorff, Senior Advisor: Higher Education, from Centre for Teaching and Learning.

The conversation around the decolonization of higher education curricula hit South Africa by storm with the #RhodesMustFall and subsequent #FeesMustFall campaigns. Prior to this, decolonization conversations, if they were happening at all in higher education institutions, were limited to small pockets of interest. Whilst the presence and influence of Western ideology in the humanities and arts curricula might be fairly recognisable, the decolonization of science curricula, for the most part, is a far less obvious project. The study that will be reported on in this presentation used Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to reflect on what is at stake in these conversations. It is hoped that results from this study will help to offer a framework which both staff and students could use in conversations about and attempts at the decolonisation of science curricula.

LCT provides a means of conceptualizing the principles or 'rules of the game' underlying different knowledge practices (Maton, 2012). In this project LCT was used to uncover the underlying principles related to the knowledge practices in the conversation about decolonizing science curricula. The presentation will start by focussing on the way the conversation developed in social media circles and a few scholarly domains. The findings of this part of the study indicated that some of the heated arguments in decolonisation conversations can be equated to a code clash in terms of what counts as legitimate knowledge between those arguing for decolonization and the dominant codes, or practices, in the field of science.

The question thus becomes: can science be decolonized, and if so, how? In order to address this question, LCT was used to look at a number of decolonization examples, including the three scenarios for decolonising engineering curricula presented by Winberg & Winberg (2017). Results from this part of the study helped to explain (1) the favoured scenario in the Winberg & Winberg study as well as (2) why some attempts at decolonization may not necessarily be seen as such.

References:

Maton, K. (2014) Knowledge and Knowers: towards a realist sociology of education. London, Routledge.

Maton, K. (2016) Bringing It All Back Home: The art of building knowledge from diverse sources. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrdCPvrcWNk&t=836s .

Winberg, C. & Winberg, S. (2017) Using a social justice approach to decolonize an engineering curriculum, IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 25-28 April 2017, Athens, Greece, pp 248 – 254.

Venue: Room 3008, Faculty of Education

Date: 06 September 2018

Time: 13:00 – 14:00 pm

Rsvp: Ms Patsy van de Rheede,  Email: pvrheede@sun.ac.za, Tele Phone (021) 808 3563