The notion of decolonisation implies the existence of a territory, entity, structure, or system which has previously been colonised by exogenous forces and thus needs to be liberated. In most African countries, the discourses of decolonisation of higher education emanate from the shared experience of imposed European colonisation that perpetuated epistemic violence on African indigenous knowledge systems. Thus, a lived experience of colonialism became a foundation for the decolonisation debates imagining and aspiring to alternative and inclusive futures. This (...) point of departure yet makes the discussion of decolonisation as the subject of only those who have had colonial experiences – an event of interruption of a specific process considered colonial and therefore, undesirable. This approach conceptualises decolonisation in a narrow sense as a linear process with a distinct historical beginning, which is colonial, and an envisaged liberating decolonial end. This article critically challenges this dominant narrative of decolonisation and reconceptualises it as a complex, dynamic, and lifelong process of re-centring. It argues that decolonisation, as a concept in higher education, goes beyond a pre-existing colonial foundation. Taking the context of Ethiopia, a country that remained independent during the European colonisation of Africa, this article aims at reconceptualising the notion of decolonisation of higher education in a space that has never been colonised. The article discusses epistemological challenges of the Ethiopian higher education system and provides a proactive alternative future departing from monolithic epistemic tradition to a pluralistic approach that accommodates diverse structures of knowledge. (shrink)

Although the issue of transformation has always been on the agenda of higher education since the transition to a democratic government in 1994, it is only since the student protests in 2015 and 2016 that the call for decolonisation of higher education in South Africa attracted much attention. The aim of this article is to reflect on the discipline of practical theology in South Africa in view of this call for decolonisation. Looking through the theoretical lens (...) of decolonial theory, the author opts for an epistemological perspective on decolonisation. More particularly, the call for decolonisation of knowledge implies a struggle for epistemic justice. With this understanding of the call for decolonisation, the author reflects on the situation of practical theology in South Africa. The article concludes with three proposals for the decolonisation of practical theological research. (shrink)

The commodification of higher education is a global phenomenon that many argue has reduced education into a product that serves the interests of global capitalism and perpetuates the hegemony of western knowledge. Decolonisation discourses demand for access and an Africanised curriculum constitutes resistance to commodification. Theological education as part of higher education has not escaped commodification. African theologians pioneered resistance against the hegemony of western theologies. However, there are additional factors driving commodification, such as (...) high demand for training, that outstrip supply because of the phenomenal growth of Christianity and rise in Christian consumerism. African theologians therefore need to continue resisting western hegemony and also pursue critical dialogues with decolonisation movements as well as all stakeholders such as churches, government and civil society as resistance to commodification. The inclusive and communitarian methodology of the Theological Colloquium on Church, Religion and Society in Africa will be critically assessed for its potential as a possible model. (shrink)

The legacy of colonial rule has permeated into all aspects of life and contributed to healthcare inequity. In response to the increased interest in social justice, medical educators are thinking of ways to decolonise education and produce doctors who can meet the complex needs of diverse populations. This paper aims to explore decolonising ideas of healing within medical education following recent events including the University College London Medical School’s Decolonising the Medical Curriculum public engagement event, the (...) Wellcome Collection ’s Ayurvedic Man: Encounters with Indian Medicine exhibition and its symposium on Decolonising Health, SOAS University of London’s Applying a Decolonial Lens to Research Structures, Norms and Practices in Higher Education Institutions and University College London Anthropology Department’s Flourishing Diversity Series. We investigate implications of ‘recentring’ displaced indigenous healing systems, medical pluralism and highlight the concept of cultural humility in medical training, which while challenging, may benefit patients. From a global health perspective, climate change debates and associated civil protests around the issues resonate with indigenous ideas of planetary health, which focus on the harmonious interconnection of the planet, the environment and human beings. Finally, we look further at its implications in clinical practice, addressing the background of inequality in healthcare among the BAME populations, intersectionality and an increasing recognition of the role of inter-generational trauma originating from the legacy of slavery. By analysing these theories and conversations that challenge the biomedical view of health, we conclude that encouraging healthcare educators and professionals to adopt a ‘ decolonising attitude ’ can address the complex power imbalances in health and further improve person-centred care. (shrink)

Calls for complementing, modifying and ‘decolonising’ the conceptualisation and implementation of Diversity Education (e.g. multicultural, intercultural, and/or social justice education) are currently being heard in the ‘West’. This paper explores some of the characteristics and benefits of Chinese Minzu Education as a potential addition to the field. Our starting point is that Chinese education is often misrepresented and that knowledge about diversity in China (which includes, amongst others, minority groups and Han people), and especially about (...) how people are educated for and through it, is scarce and negatively evaluated in the ‘West’. Taking a university specialising in Minzu studies as a case study (which should not be generalized to other Minzu institutions), we problematise formal and informal aspects of Minzu education that could be inspiring to, e.g. interculturalists and multiculturalists in ‘Western’ education. Fieldwork notes, student interviews about Minzu education and models of Minzu Diversity Learning co-constructed by Minzu students, illustrate the characteristics of Minzu education in higher education. The paper ends on a call for exploring other ‘unknown’ perspectives on diversity in education emerging from the so-called peripheries of the ‘West’. (shrink)

This article brings into perspective the need to decolonise the concept of the Trinity (as the specific doctrine and Christian name of God) as a crucial step in decolonising the religious education curriculum. It discusses the concept of decolonisation and its applicability to religious education, specifically Christianity, within higher education (e.g. in Teacher Education Programmes) in the South African context. God as the Trinity has throughout the history of Atlantic slavery and colonialism been employed (...) to legitimise colonial rule and it, therefore, needs to be decolonised. To decolonise the concept of the Trinity is, however, highly problematic, as the historic relation between Christianity and African traditional religions (ATRs) indicates. Decolonising the concept of the Trinity can quickly develop into a tension between a position of either continuity or discontinuity (of ATR with Christianity). Contribution: This article argues for an alternative approach for the decolonisation of the concept of the Trinity, namely to allow for the deconstruction of the concept of the Trinity, and by implication of other concepts – like decolonisation and religion – as well. This approach is proposed to develop more openness and playfulness with regard to religious beliefs in general. I argue that this may provide a hopeful, open and just vision of life which should be part of the decolonised religious education curriculum. (shrink)

This article problematises the critical subject of the decolonisation of the university and theological education in South Africa from the neo-colonisation of commercialisation and commodification. The article, written from a decolonial perspective, serves as an epistemic critique of the cultures of corporatisation, rationalisation and entrepreneurship in higher education driven by the marketisation of society by the neoliberal institutions of globalisation. The article engages the role of decolonising theological education by drawing insights from African/Black theologies, the (...) discourse on Africanisation and liberation to counter the strangulation and dominance of the commodification and commercialisation of theological education and prosperity theology in Africa, particularly in South Africa. (shrink)

The complicated colonial history of the Philippines impacts notions of gender in the Islands. Specifically, institutions with strong foreign roots, such as universities, maintain and challenge gender relations. The Philippines sees multiple gender issues in universities despite government-mandated gender mainstreaming policies for education (CMO-1), yet the influence of colonial values remains overlooked. This article contributes to philosophising Philippine education by providing the history of the country’s universities and their role in shaping gender relations. A threefold model of gender (...) structures, relations of power, production and cathexis (emotional attachment), frames historical literature during the Philippines’ Spanish and American colonial periods and contextualises the country’s gender order. The interplay of religion and higher education during the Philippines’ Spanish colonial period reveals why sexuality remains policed by education institutions. The gendering of courses during the American Colonial period details the feminisation of certain disciplines and occupations. Harmful manhood practices adopted during this period continue to affect men in university systems through Philippine fraternities. Lastly, private education perpetuates and maintains power among the elite. The evolution of the Philippine university provides points for analysis for gender issues. These become building blocks to the discourse surrounding the Filipino philosophy of education, by understanding facets of Filipino identity construction, and proposing avenues to explore when decolonising the university. (shrink)

Colonialism’s legacy in South Africa includes persistent economic inequality which, since the country’s universities charge fees, bars many from higher education, perpetuating the marginalisation of those previously disadvantaged by the apartheid regime. In 2015-6, country-wide unrest raged across university campuses, as students protested the yearly cycle of tuition increases under the slogan #FeesMustFall, demanding “free, decolonised education”. Protests ended in December 2017 when the government announced a sliding-scale payment policy alleviating the economic burden for poorer students. This (...) paper sets the #FMF movement and its twin demands within the context of decoloniality, and argues that while free education has been achieved, imagining and implementing decolonised education for South Africa in an increasingly globalised world is a more challenging, elusive goal. (shrink)

The recent debate on decolonisation calls for all academic disciplines, including missiology modules, at public universities to reflect on its content, curriculum and pedagogies. However, the danger is always that to ‘de-…’ might lead to an exclusivist and essentialist pattern of a person or institution, and an act that does not take all epistemic communities seriously. The author argues in this article that such tendencies would not be conducive in South Africa, a country with a rich heritage of various cultures. (...) Epistemologies at public universities should embrace all cultures in order to be relevant and transformative. The article oscillates between essentialism in social, racial identities and non-essentialism thereof – primarily contending for the inclusion and appreciation of all social and cultural identities in South African curriculum and content for higher education, in particular, the cultural tradition and heritage among the so-called ‘coloured’ communities. The article reassesses the contributions of theologians towards racial and ethnic identity. The author uses one particular ‘racial identity’ as a case study for racial essentialism and to argue for an inclusive approach in mission education. The article conclusively argues for the re-imagination and inclusion of ‘coloured’ as an African identity in the discipline of missiology. (shrink)

UK Higher Education is characterised by structural and institutional forms of whiteness. As scholars and activists are increasingly speaking out to testify, whiteness has wide-ranging implications that affect curricula, pedagogy, knowledge production, university policies, campus climate, and the experiences of students and faculty of colour. Unsurprisingly then, calls to decolonize the university abound. In this article, we draw upon the Critical Race Theory method of counter-storytelling. By introducing composite characters, we speak back to assumptions that universities are race-neutral, (...) meritocratic institutions. We illustrate some of the key themes that shape the experiences of faculty of colour in UK Higher Education: institutional racism, racial microaggressions, racial battle fatigue, and steadfast fugitive resistance. We argue that, despite the paradox of working under (what purports to be) a ‘decolonial’ agenda, widespread calls to decolonize our universities have further embedded rather than dismantled whiteness, thus continuing to characterise the careers, wellbeing, and daily lives of faculty of colour. (shrink)

Anti-racist education within the Academy holds the potential to truly reflect the cultural hybridity of our diverse, multi-cultural society through the canons of knowledge that educators celebrate, proffer and embody. The centrality of Whiteness as an instrument of power and privilege ensures that particular types of knowledge continue to remain omitted from our curriculums. The monopoly and proliferation of dominant White European canons does comprise much of our existing curriculum; consequently, this does impact on aspects of engagement, inclusivity and (...) belonging particularly for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) learners. This paper explores the impact of a dominant Eurocentric curriculum and the Decolonising the Curriculum agenda within higher education and its influence upon navigating factors such as BAME attainment, engagement and belonging within the Academy. This paper draws on a Critical Race Theory (CRT) theoretical framework to centralize the marginalized voices of fifteen BAME students and three academics of colour regarding this phenomena. Aspects examined consider the impact of a narrow and restrictive curriculum on BAME students and staff and how the omission of diverse histories and multi-cultural knowledge canons facilitates marginalization and discriminatory cultures. (shrink)

Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, Volume 21, Issue 3, Page 223-239, July 2022. Contributing to the debate on decolonising the curriculum, this reflective article questions: What does a safe space in a decolonised classroom mean? For whom is it safe? And at what cost? Must we redraw the parameters of ‘safe’? Prompted by a real-life ‘n-word incident’ in the classroom, this article unpacks the collision of decolonising the curriculum to continue making teaching and learning more (...) pluriversal and inclusive, with the enactment of the ‘wounded attachments’ of identitarian politics and the playing of ‘Privilege or Oppression Olympics’. Using snippets from British parody and satire on decolonising the university, we query how far wokeness in a university setting can become political correctness taken to extremes that threaten decolonising efforts. In its concluding reflections, the article makes tentative recommendations for setting up safe spaces, away from self-silencing or censoring, and backing away from contention and provocation in the classroom. (shrink)

Depending on the Sitz im Leben of practical theologian, the issue of decolonisation will be a greater or lesser reality. For South Africans, decolonisation has become a part of their daily living. Decolonisation can be regarded as a second wave of liberation in the post-apartheid South Africa. Following on the first wave, or even the tsunami of transformation, is the urgent call for the decolonisation of colonial knowledge, structures and epistemologies that endured in the new dispensation. Squarely in the aim (...) of decolonisation efforts are institutions of higher learning and by implication all disciplines taught there, including theology. The non-negotiability of the decolonisation of higher education is evident in the recurring violent protests and mass action, as expressed in different ‘#must-fall’ campaigns over the last few years. This article argues that the current decolonisation drive in South Africa is urging local practical theologians to make an important choice, namely to move ‘selfishly backward’ or ‘selflessly forward’. In other words, maintaining current practices or exploring alternatives in a new context. This choice is embedded in the reality that a significant number of practical theologians in South Africa are white males that may, from a decolonisation perspective, be deemed part of the colonisation legacy. Against this background, the article attempts to provide a reflective insider’s perspective on a challenge and opportunity this creates for practical theology. (shrink)

This article will consider the parameters of systematic theological-‘knowledge’ today by examining the contribution of women’s theology to the field. This examination takes place in the context of debates about knowledge-construction within institutes of higher learning, and context of increased numbers of women theology students, as well as international emphasis on achieving gender equality, such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. With regard to curriculums of systematic theology, it is noted that a proverbial ‘canon within a canon’ exists (...) with regard to including a diversity of voices in prescribed study material, specifically the contributions of women’s perspectives and women’s history as subject-content. This ‘data-gap’ is problematic with regard to epistemology and hermeneutics, which are instrumental in constructing a grammar of faith – that is, ‘church doctrine’ (which is traditionally the main component of systematic theology). This implies that a type of decolonisation, or unlearning is necessary. If a next generation of women systematic theologians are to be nurtured, approaches to teaching systematic theology and the methodology of systematic theology itself requires deconstruction. Contribution: This research aims to contribute to the fields of systematic theology, women’s studies, women’s theology and gender studies. It will also contribute to the fields of postcolonial epistemology and hermeneutics, as well as the study of the methodology of systematic theology. (shrink)

The need to decolonise the academy and academic writing requires that methodology for research be chosen carefully. The methodology of a study reflects the researcher's point of departure or worldview, as well as their belief system. The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has drastically influenced the functioning of higher education institutes, as well as how scholars plan and execute their research. This includes investigation into the global environmental crisis that is widely researched from various disciplines. These disciplines (...) tend to develop and favour different methodologies. The purpose of this presentation was to report on the inquiry into a suitable methodology to study social discourses about the environmental crisis. The methodologies investigated were an eco-linguistic approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, combined with eco-criticism, which was linked to the concept of an eco-sophy, using the framework of Dark Green Religion. The umbrella-concept of Dark Green Religion as a theoretical framework allows the comparison and incorporation of disparate methodologies as well as discourses. This framework also gives prominence to the role of religion in societal response to the environmental crisis. Due to the study being situated in an African context and striving to implement a decolonising discourse, some suggestions were made on decolonising research methodology in higher education. CONTRIBUTION: This article's contribution to new knowledge centred around situating current and new research in Africa in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and deliberating on the impact for future studies. The conclusion was drawn that the COVID-19 pandemic can be a catalyst for re-interpreting research methodology from a decolonised perspective. (shrink)

Higher education has been changing radically in recent years, with increasing numbers of students, and complaints about declining standards. This volume brings together leading intellectuals from the US and UK to examine the issues involved.

In South Africa, the implementation of serious games and gamification in the design of curricula, being presented in schools and institutions of higher education, is mostly a novelty. As we are in a transitional phase with education, especially on two levels, namely, with the decolonisation of education and preparing education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, it would be fitting and high time to fully implement gaming into the curricula. This article takes a look at the (...) implementation of a serious game on an undergraduate level at a residential university. It focuses in a pragmatic way on applying the serious game on biblical languages – Greek, Hebrew and Latin – proposing that they should be presented to the student as paper behind the glass. (shrink)

One of the important determinants of development during the transition to adulthood is the undertaking of social roles characteristic of adults, also in the area of finishing formal education, which usually coincides with beginning fulltime employment. In the study discussed in this paper, it has been hypothesized that continuing full-time education above the age of 26, a phenomenon rarely observed in Poland, can be considered as an unpunctual event that may be connected with difficulties in the process of (...) identity formation. Relationships between identity dimensions and identity statuses, and age and educational context were analyzed. 693 individuals aged 19-35 took part in the study. The participants attended three types of educational institutions: full-time university studies, part-time university studies, and full-time post-secondary school. Among the students of full-time university studies predictable dependencies, also in respect of highlevels of indicators of identity crisis and a high frequency of diffused identity occurrence, were observed. Such dependencies were not found in the group of full-time post-secondary school students. (shrink)

This paper sets out to accomplish two goals. First, drawing on the Irish perspective, it reconceptualises one of the enduring legacy-based harms of epistemic colonisation, in this case, ‘linguicism’, in terms of ‘hermeneutical injustice’. Second, it argues that otherwise well-meaning attempts to combat epistemic colonisation through the inclusion of marginalised testimony can, in certain circumstances, lead to cases of ‘epistemic exploitation’, which, in turn, can result in ‘ontic burnout’. Both linguicism and epistemic exploitation, this paper theorizes, have the potential to (...) bring about ontic burnout. Here is the plan: to set the scene, section I briefly surveys some key arguments supporting the call for higher education institutions (HEIs) to engage in epistemic decolonising, focusing on the importance of striking a balance between two extremes: (i) abandoning all forms of Eurocentric/colonial knowledge through the elimination of inherited thinking and conceptual schemes which result from colonization, in particular, those which remain in our thinking “owing to inertia rather than to our own reflective choices” (Wiredu 2002, p.56); (ii) the other—pursuing a more positive project where we seek to, “exploit as much as is judicious the resources of indigenous conceptual schemes” (Wiredu 1996: p.136). From here, it moves to consider harms associated with a subset of ‘epistemicide’, that is, ‘linguicism’—a phenomenon where the language and culture of the colonizer become part of the ‘civilising project’ and, in more extreme cases of linguicide, forcibly replaces indigenous languages. Section II then explores the subtleties of harmful by-products deriving from ‘inclusion’, namely that which scholars refer to as ‘epistemic exploitation’. Situations where marginalised scholars are finally ‘at the table but still on the menu’ arise when privileged persons, compel marginalised knowers to educate them [and others] about the nature of their oppression (Berenstain, 2016). Habitual requests to turn themselves inside out for emancipatory principles give rise to a phenomenon known as ontic burnout (Dunne and Kotsonis, 2022, p.9)—“a form of dissociative explanatory fatigue culminating in oppressed persons engaging in a conscious or unconscious decoupling from their socially constructed identity, from the burdens and injustices associated with being a member of a certain social kind”. This harm is, I argue, rarely discussed in the literature and worthy of further analysis. (shrink)

Photo ID 279661800 © Sidewaypics|Dreamstime.com ABSTRACT Decolonization is complex, vast, and the subject of an ongoing academic debate. While the many efforts to decolonize or dismantle the vestiges of colonialism that remain are laudable, they can also reinforce what they seek to end. For decolonization to be impactful, it must be done with epistemic and cultural humility, requiring decolonial scholars, project leaders, and well-meaning people to be more sensitive to those impacted by colonization and not regularly included in the discourse. (...) INTRODUCTION Decolonization is complex. To successfully achieve decolonization, projects should incorporate the voices of those subjugated or silenced. Including such voices requires sincerely exploring who has been affected by colonialism or neocolonialism and how, as well as cultural sensitivity. In its basic use, decolonization refers to countries under colonial rule gaining independence or freedom from forms of subjugation. Additionally, scholars use the term to refer to efforts to dismantle neocolonialism and vestiges of colonialism. The process includes de-silencing subjugated voices.[1] I use decolonization in the latter way to refer to countries with technical independence. While arguably colonization ended formally with independence from colonizing powers, neocolonialism is the indirect, informal, and sometimes subtle control of the people, their economy, and political life despite formal independence from colonizing authorities. I conceptualize neocolonialism as a system that involves direct and involuntary control of another’s political, economic, or social life, impacting their worldview and ways of encountering the world. Decolonization may target actions, places, or systems like health care or AI to overcome the ills of colonialism and neocolonialism. It also may target knowledge and require rethinking how people develop their knowledge base. For example, if people grew up seeing an outside colonizer as superior, they would need to change their knowledge of superiority. Decolonization may target power, for example, changing who owns and distributes COVID-19 vaccines and who distributors exclude in the distribution of vaccines. Decolonization could require looking at those disempowered in the distribution process. Additionally, decolonization may target autonomy of persons by freeing people, ensuring human and individual rights, and respecting cultural traditions. Decolonization projects that try to de-silence by including the voices of those affected by colonialism and neocolonialism must examine inclusiveness in the context of the culture of the subrogated individuals. Examples of decolonization projects include making datasets inclusive of diverse peoples and places, returning to traditional food and eating practices, making sure hospitals in developing countries are led by locals and respectful of cultural traditions, returning unethically obtained artefacts or objects. Another project would be laying the groundwork for equality in formerly colonized countries to ensure that business ownership, education, and financial success will flow fairly to those previously victimized by colonization. Summarily, there are many strategies for decolonizing. However, it is worth asking whether the strategies have risks that undermine the goal of decolonization. I. Understanding Decolonization Discourses Many fields, from AI to politics, economics, health care, aviation, and academia, discuss decolonization. The content of the discourse on decolonization depends on the region and field discussing it. Rather than just reporting on decolonization, the discussions may be calls to action. For example, decolonization discourses reflect activism for cognitive justice, such as equal consideration of Indian or African knowledge systems in global health discourses.[2] In politics and political science, some scholars frame decolonization as an anti-western, anti-colonial movement by Africans to emancipate Africa/ns from subjugation or shift the continent to postcolonialism and post-neo-colonialism. This framing walls off non-African participants and may undermine their capacity to benefit the conversation.[3] There are other political scientists who actively support decolonization and see it as a field of activism in support of anyone and countries where colonization harmed people and development.[4] The point is that two ways of conceptualizing decolonization in politics and political science are discernible. One conceptualization is less inclusive since it alienates scholars and professionals from Western, high-income, or developed countries. The other is more inclusive. In humanitarian studies, including philosophy, some decolonization articles and conversations are efforts to end the destructive force of colonization. They focus on either the form, such as ecocide, genocide, and many others, or the geographic location, such as Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Oceania.[5] Finally, the feelings one brings into this conversation can adversely impact how one engages in them and who they listen to or are willing to hear from. For example, anger, rage, bitterness, and hatred are emotions that are not uncommon in spaces of decolonization conversations. Decolonization conversations that originate from a place of negativity risk deepening the psychological state of victimhood and prevent people from disrupting constructively or critically engaging in the conversation.[6] II. Understanding Decolonization Strategies Decolonization strategies mainly aim to de-silence victims of domination or subjugation. People have proposed many strategies for decolonizing. These strategies may be informed by what the target is for decolonization. Decolonization can target power relations in global health. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, public health organizations noted the power imbalance in vaccine distribution. Decolonization could involve de-silencing those affected by neocolonialism to bring about a more balanced distribution of power and a more fair distribution of the vaccine. By analyzing who was adversely impacted by the distribution and who ought to wield power, those engaged in decolonizing advocated for positive change and equitable power relations. Equally, when being is the target of decolonization, the language of unlearning or relearning and mental decolonization take centre stage in the decolonization discourse. For example, the quest to decolonize colonized minds aims to demythologize African inferiority and Western superiority. Demythologizing African inferiority enables those engaged in the decolonization discourse to cultivate and foster African agency.[7] Finally, when knowledge production is the target of decolonization, scholars use inclusion and cognitive justice. For example, they try to alter the knowledge that underlies global health ethics.[8] “[D]decolonizing researchers aim to respectfully understand and integrate theory from Other(ed) perspectives, while also critically examining the underlying assumptions that inform their Western research framework.”[9] One common strategy that scholars use in decolonization is inclusion. It is worth asking, does including people who have been subrogated foster decolonization? Whether that is effective depends on whether included people are more heard or whether the strategies to include them create new forms of silencing. III. Inclusion and the Quest to Decolonize Evaluating how effective inclusion is in the quest to de-silence subjugated voices is important. First, inclusive strategies are not neutral. They are epistemically situated. This situatedness constrains meaning-making in different ways: how and what questions are asked, how social roles are constructed, organized or assigned, and who is admitted to the room where these conversations occur.[10] Inclusion strategies may reinforce (unchallenged) assumptions. For example, to address prejudices and stereotypes in global health images, Arsenii Alenichev and his colleagues[11] successfully inverted “one stereotypical global health image” by prompting a generative AI to produce “an image of a traditional Indian or African healer healing a White Child.” Although there were some problems with the image of the White child, this innovation is a significant, useful effort to de-embed or strip global health images of problematic pictures that mythologize White superiority and Black inferiority. Yet it is possible that using categories like traditional Indian or African reinforces unchallenged assumptions, raising key questions regarding how language and words create new stereotypes. It is common to define traditional as non-conventional, unorthodox, and informal. Yet studies continue to reveal that non-scientifically appraised healing approaches in India or Africa are not only effective but also real, meaningful, fundamental, and primary care-seeking behaviours in many communities in these regions.[12] Suppose inclusive strategies are not un-situated. These conversations may be had within the structures, language, and spaces built by or connected to colonialism. The spaces, language, places, and structures in which these conversations occur can limit who can participate and how they participate. Importantly, some conditions are not conducive to participation as equals. The allocated time for the discussion could also constrain how individuals express themselves. It is unclear who is ultimately heard. Furthermore, epistemic situatedness of inclusion can impact decolonization conversations when participants are beneficiaries of, products of, and trained by structures and systems they seek to dismantle. To enhance the decolonization project and its goals, a pressing task is to unveil and question how the circumstances may inhibit activism. If the vestiges of colonialism continue to structure the decolonization discourse invisibly, the vestiges may undermine decolonization. For example, a public health discussion that includes white Western doctors and Western pharmaceutical executives in Africa may have many local Africans at the table but could still effectively devalue their input based on built-in assumptions and biases that are vestiges of colonialism. Second, exclusion and inclusion are also not binary. Individuals may experience exclusion, even while included (the phenomenon called internal exclusion). In other words, inclusion can fail to be substantial or become a means of enhancing optics, “a way of (un)consciously weakening the radical claims being pursued.”[13] For example, in South Africa, many institutions have made significant efforts to diversify their faculties due to the promulgation of the Employment Equity Act 55.[14] The act requires South African institutions to implement employment equity that redresses the history of harmful discrimination in the country. The act further requires transforming departments and institutional administrations. Although many recognize and support the need to transform departments in South Africa, the rhetoric of transformation departs sharply from the lived experiences.[15] This misalignment between the plan and practice is evident in the underrepresentation of black people and females in senior management teams, professorships in many universities and health departments, and positions of power in some South African institutions. Those selected in the transformation of the departments have also complained of being overworked. The burden of extra work undermines their ability to develop agency and voice in the space they now occupy or fulfil key requirements that have implications for their career trajectory.[16] This is called the minority tax. Notably, "the minority tax… is the burden of extra responsibilities [placed] on faculty of colour to achieve diversity and inclusion and contributes to attrition and impedes academic promotion."[17] One challenge for decolonializing projects will be for decolonial scholars and those selected for decolonization objectives to have the humility to decline invitations, requests, roles, and platforms for which they are either unqualified or lack the capacity to fulfil. At its heart, decolonization strategies must empower those included rather than weaken them. Finally, inclusion can lead to a phenomenon known as elite capture.[18] Elite capture occurs when socially advantaged individuals in a group monopolize or exploit activism to their own benefit at the expense of the larger, struggling group. Elite capture weakens decolonization efforts from within, revealing that those likely to benefit from global inclusive efforts are those who fulfil globally constructed standards, those “already present in the room.” There is no better strategy to weaken decolonial movements than weakening the project from within by strategically positioning individuals who share physical properties with the victims of exclusion and silencing but intellectually, behaviourally, psychologically, and emotionally share more common ground with the colonizer. Such insiders may be unaware they are furthering neocolonial conditions rather than decolonizing. In relation to decolonization, particularly in global health, elite capture reveals that those whose voices are loudest in the room are not necessarily those more impacted by colonialism. They may benefit more from reinforcing colonialism. Opportunism weakens meaningful activism from within, preventing good initiatives and strategies from having their intended impact or taking substantive root.[19] This paper cannot do justice to elite capture, but it is worth noting its negative impacts. IV. Improving the Impact of Decolonization To end neo-colonialism, it is important to understand how it manifests and what to do at each level. Beyond the academic discourse, many tangible efforts exist to decolonize through de-silencing. Examples of these efforts include the ME2 movement that seeks to centre the concerns and experiences of sexually abused or harassed victims in the public discourse. At the funding level, many grant-awarding agencies like Wellcome Trust have dedicated huge budgets to studies that help them understand how they may have perpetrated colonialism or neocolonialism and what they can do differently going forward.[20] In South Africa, promulgating the Employment Equity Act 55 was a tangible attempt to entrench decolonization concerns in a country's regulatory framework. Yet, these decolonization efforts could fail to be substantive if they do not reflect cultural sensitivity. Two key components of cultural sensitivity are worth highlighting here: epistemic and cultural humility. Epistemic humility is an intellectual virtue described as knowing one’s limitations and the limitations of the learning methods employed. At its simplest, it is the ability to admit when one is wrong. Cultural humility includes genuine attempts to learn about and embrace other cultures. Epistemic and cultural humility are signs of academic excellence and strength. Epistemic and cultural humility seriously acknowledge how the state of our knowledge, cognitive limitations, experiences, and backgrounds, while constraining us, also invite us to listen, learn, grow, and change. The limitations-owing account of epistemic and cultural humility suggests that “a person who is aware of her cognitive limitations and owns them is much better positioned to achieve such epistemic goods as true beliefs and understanding than someone who… simply has insight into the epistemic status of her beliefs.”[21] Epistemic and cultural humility may help prevent decolonization projects that unintentionally reinforce what they seek to dismantle. Epistemic humility calls on decolonizers to defer tasks for which they are not qualified to suitably qualified persons. Beyond this, humility supports brave scholarship that imagines and reimagines how featuring the same voices, faces, and perspectives possibly introduces new forms of domination or silencing. Cultural knowledge can lead to a more intentional way of seeking out the right people or a more diverse group than those frequently featured in decolonization conversations. This would give others more opportunities to navigate these spaces and should do so in ways that are familiar to them. One ought to be more sensitive to those who would ordinarily not be included in these conversations. Unless we radically and boldly reimagine these discussions, we risk alienating those most negatively impacted by neocolonialism. CONCLUSION Decolonization conversations are complex and the subject of academic debate. The strategies employed to decolonize can harm or help the victims of neo-colonialism. Inclusion of previously silenced individuals may not be enough to overcome the vestiges of colonialism, leading to a false inclusion, where those included feel excluded or contribute in ways reflecting their own biases and circumstances. Inclusion of an elite or people who do not truly represent the subjugated can lead to elite capture. For decolonization strategies to be impactful, for example, in the context of global health, project leaders and participants must engage in conversations employing epistemic and cultural humility. In many ways, epistemic and cultural humility can help us demythologize our assumptions of any cultural superiority or cognitive authority, allowing for diverse voices, cultures, and perspectives to emerge without domination. - [1] Caesar Atuire & Olivia Rutazibwa. 2021. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization [Online]. Available from: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/african-reading-covid-19-pandemic-and-stakes-decolonization [Accessed July 29, 2021 2021]. [2] Bridget Pratt & Jantina De Vries 2023. Where is knowledge from the Global South? An account of epistemic justice for a global bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, medethics-2022-108291. [3] Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh 2023. Is decolonisation Africanisation? The politics of belonging in the truly African university. Social Dynamics, 1-20. [4] Rianna Oelofsen 2015. Decolonisation of the African mind and intellectual landscape. Phronimon, 16, 130-146. [5] Caesar Atuire & Olivia Rutazibwa. 2021. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization. An African Reading of the Covid-19 Pandemic and the Stakes of Decolonization [Online]. Available from: https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/african-reading-covid-19-pandemic-and-stakes-decolonization [Accessed July 29, 2021 2021]. [6] Pedro Alexis Tabensky 2008. The Postcolonial Heart of African Philosophy. South African Journal of Philosophy, 27, 285-295. [7] Nicholas M. Creary 2012. African Intellectuals and Decolonization, Ohio, Ohio University Press. [8] Bridget Pratt & Jantina De Vries 2023. Where is knowledge from the Global South? An account of epistemic justice for a global bioethics. Journal of Medical Ethics, medethics-2022-108291. [9] Vivetha Thambinathan & Elizabeth Anne Kinsella 2021. Decolonizing Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Creating Spaces for Transformative Praxis. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 20, 16094069211014766. [10] Abimbola Seye 2023. Knowledge from the global South is in the global South. Journal of Medical Ethics, 49, 337. [11] A. Alenichev, P. Kingori & K. P. Grietens 2023. Reflections before the storm: the AI reproduction of biased imagery in global health visuals. Lancet Glob Health. [12] Jonathan K. Burns & Andrew Tomita 2015. Traditional and religious healers in the pathway to care for people with mental disorders in Africa: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 50, 867-877. [13] Anye-Nkwenti Nyamnjoh & Cornelius Ewuoso 2023. What type of inclusion does epistemic injustice require? Journal of Medical Ethics, jme-2023-109091. [14] 1998. Employment Equity Act. In: GOVERNMENT, S. A. (ed.) 19370. [15] Dina Zoe Belluigi & Gladman Thondhlana 2019. ‘Why mouth all the pieties?’ Black and women academics’ revelations about discourses of ‘transformation’ at an historically white South African university. Higher Education, 78, 947-963. [16] Juliet Ramohai & Khomotso Marumo 2016. Women in Senior Positions in South African Higher Education: A Reflection on Voice and Agency. 231, 135-157. [17] J. Trejo 2020. The burden of service for faculty of color to achieve diversity and inclusion: the minority tax. Mol Biol Cell, 31, 2752-2754. [18] Olufemi Taiwo 2020. Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference. The Philosopher, 108, 7. [19] Margarita Kurbatova & Elena Kagan 2016. Opportunism of University Lecturers As a Way to Adaptate the External Control Activities Strengthening. Journal of Institutional Studies, 8, 116-136. [20] Jeremy Farrar. 2022. An update on Wellcome's anti-racist programme. An update on Wellcome's anti-racist programme [Online]. Available from: https://wellcome.org/news/update-wellcomes-anti-racism-programme [Accessed August 10, 2022 2022]. [21] Katherine Dormandy 2018. Does Epistemic Humility Threaten Religious Beliefs? Journal of Psychology and Theology, 46, 292-304. (shrink)

The liberation of Africa and its peoples from centuries of racially discriminatory colonial rule and domination has far-reaching implications for educational thought and practice. The transformation of educational discourse in Africa requires a philosophical framework that respects diversity, acknowledges lived experience and challenges the hegemony of Western forms of universal knowledge. In this article I reflect critically on whether African philosophy, as a system of African knowledge(s), can provide a useful philosophical framework for the construction of empowering knowledge that will (...) enable communities in Africa to participate in their own educational development. (shrink)

Bourdieu’s concept of habitus clivé illuminates Indigenous Australians’ experiences in tertiary environments for both Aboriginal students and Aboriginal staff. Habitus formed through family, schooling and social class is also shaped by urban, regional or rural upbringing, creating a durable sense of self. Aboriginal people in Australia live in all of these places, often in marginalised circumstances. Bourdieu’s more specific concept of habitus clivé, or divided self, is less well known than habitus, but offers value in giving expression to Indigenous people’s (...) experiences within a dominant White society. The complexity of participation and educational change is explored here through the experiences of three authors’ intersecting positionalities within the Australian academy. Developing more nuanced scholarly language reduces the imposition of perspectives that see Indigenous people as objects within western frameworks. Scholarly understanding and respect for Australia’s first peoples’ concepts and cultural practices would engage more appropriately and fairly with Aboriginal knowledge and society. Habitus clivé chronicles one version of habitus that can be changed or be reconfirmed but not easily or by fiat. Understanding the concept can be learned, however. Educational opportunity, glorified in today’s higher education, means little for Aboriginal people without long-term strategies addressing existentially and culturally split habitus. (shrink)

This paper is a complete student-led, student-edited collective writing project (CWP) conducted virtually in Spring 2022 throughout the course Knowledge Socialism taught by professor Michael Peters for the Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal university. The CWP involves 4 international, 5 domestic Ph.D. students, and 2 senior Western scholars as reviewers, revealing their thoughts, arguments, understanding, and criticisms towards the creative economy status in East Asian countries (Japan and China mostly) higher education as reflected in the knowledge socialism (...) narratives. Xiyuan as the lead author, co-editing with Woraport and Stefan, assigned each section to other authors and successfully devoted themself to organizing, proofreading, and revising the paper. Through a month of collective work, the final version of the paper elaborates on the contribution of East Asian creative universities and the economy as a whole to the knowledge socialism through co(labor)ation, with implications to the creative labors cultivation and shifted roles of students. (shrink)

This article is an attempt to provide a systematic and integrative picture of the main contributions presented at the colloquium which addressed the current state of theological education, proposals for the basic values to be laid as foundation for a new theological curriculum and concrete attempts to build such a curriculum in South Africa, the African continent and especially at the University of Pretoria with a particular stress on decolonisation as contextualisation. In dealing with these aspects, the article focuses (...) on whether or not theology as an academic field has a future in university and society by implementing a concrete programme of decolonisation which is adapted – by means of education – to the specifics of various local contexts including those in Africa. If the answer to this question is positive – and the colloquium contributors, as well as the authors, of this article do believe to be so – then one must find out how theology should be done in the university, how theology should work in society and what theology should be taught in the university so that its impact in society is continuously transformative and permanently relevant to human life and human existence in Africa and throughout the world. (shrink)

I seek to answer the question of whether publicly funded higher education ought to aim intrinsically to promote certain kinds of ‘‘blue-sky’’ knowledge, knowledge that is unlikely to result in ‘‘tangible’’ or ‘‘concrete’’ social benefits such as health, wealth and liberty. I approach this question in light of an African moral theory, which contrasts with dominant Western philosophies and has not yet been applied to pedagogical issues. According to this communitarian theory, grounded on salient sub-Saharan beliefs and practices, (...) actions are right insofar as they respect relationships in which people both share a way of life, or identify with one another, and care for others’ quality of life, or are in solidarity with each other. I argue that while considerations of identity and solidarity each provide some reason for a state university to pursue blue-sky knowledge as a final end, they do not provide conclusive reason for it to do so. I abstain from drawing any further conclusion about whether this provides reason to reject the Afro-communitarian moral theory or the intuition that blue-sky knowledge is a proper final end of public higher education. I do point out, however, that the dominant Western moral theories on the face of it do no better than the African one at accounting for this intuition. (shrink)

Scholarship on higher education research (i.e., research on the topic of higher education) within the UK has frequently emphasised some of the weaknesses with work in this area, sometimes juxtaposi...

Higher education exchange between America and the Middle East is a comparatively recent development, but the colorful history of circumstances and events that preceded the relationship is ancient and deep. Here, Brawner explores the multifarious and intriguing story from antiquity to the end of the twentieth century.

In an age of pressing global issues such as climate change, the necessity for countries to work together to resolve problems affecting multiple nations has never been more important. Interdisciplinarity in higher education is a key to meeting these challenges. Universities need to produce graduates, and leaders, who understand issues from different perspectives, and who can communicate with others outside the confines of their own disciplines. -/- Drawing on contributions from 37 scholars from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, (...) Malaysia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, this volume examines issues inherent in providing interdisciplinary education within the structures of universities and proposes ways in which these issues might be best managed. -/- The book has a dual focus on perspectives and practicalities. Themes covered include: the need for graduates who can work within and across multi-disciplinary and multi-professional teams; interdisciplinary leadership; the critical importance of interdisciplinary thinking to meet global challenges; collaboration in interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and learning; the role of institutional and other systems to support interdisciplinary endeavours; the centrality of disciplines; balancing disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity; and the place of interdisciplinarity in graduate outcomes and attributes. Definitional aspects of interdisciplinary higher education and current interdisciplinary practice across a range of contexts are also examined. -/- Contributors represent a wide range of discipline areas, including accounting, academic development, agriculture, food and wine science, biotechnology, employment relations, environmental science, the health sciences, higher education, land and environment, languages and cultures, occupational therapy, science communication, social work and social policy. (shrink)

This monograph aims to uncover value-belief-systems underlying dominant narratives in modern IHEs, impacting the lives of many multidimensional adult learners. To do so, Eurocentrism and neoliberalism are used to analyze the socio-cultural-political movements of the U.S. and its influence on higher education trends. Then, models of adult consciousness and transformative approaches to adult learning are introduced to problematize dominant narratives and make the case for more complex epistemologies. With critical contemplation, acts of compassion for interdependence, self-compassion for intentionality, (...) authentic relationships for political consciousness, listening for non-duality, and mindfulness for impermanence (CALM) are introduced as ways to emphasize self-transformation and self-actualization. CALM practice is just one way to join others in the social justice work of wholeness and humanity to better support multidimensional adult learners. Along with this understanding comes the potential to disrupt dominant narratives with a moral stance, honoring innate human value and the diverse human condition. The future of institutions of higher education must be guided by a moral position in the name of healing and wellness. Together, we can transform higher education so that institutions are a place where adult learners create the conditions of freedom to actualize the right to self-worth, the liberty to connect with others, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment, honoring this nations guiding principles of life, liberty, and happiness. (shrink)

Most Americans believe that higher education is heading in the wrong direction. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the eponymous heroine’s tumble into a rabbit hole immerses her in a bizarre, surreal, disorienting universe. Has higher education fallen down the rabbit hole? This paper will examine the many ways that academe has become a peculiar, illogical, and topsy-turvy world where things are often the opposite of what we call them and of what we expect them (...) to be. To restore the credibility of our education system and make it of value to most students, it must be completely reimagined and, in fact, totally rebuilt from the ground up. (shrink)

The central focus of this monograph is the concept of higher education reform in the light of an international and global comparative perspective. This volume takes a close look at these changes, the drivers of change, their effects and possible future scenarios.

This paper intervenes in debates on Chinese higher education and social (re)production strategies in the contemporary African diaspora, developing the link between ‘Chinese’ capitals, social status and spatial mobility. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with both disadvantaged and middle-class African international students, I unpack how migration to China will enable them to accumulate prized forms of capital and position advantageously in different spheres of African society. The paper focuses on two ‘Chinese’ capitals – specifically high proficiency in the Chinese (...) language, and exposure to and internalisation of Chinese lifestyles and practices – which are convertible to profit, distinction and secure coveted jobs in their respective home countries. By exploring how China’s ‘in the middle’ position within the global political economy and exercising its soft power over peripheries are reflected in the ways these African students and their families play the ‘class game’ and make higher education choice, this paper moves beyond the ‘West’ vs. ‘the Rest’ gaze and nuances an emergent mobility pattern within the Global South. I conclude by presenting an argument that in seeking these ‘Chinese’ capitals, the students and their families may enhance China’s geopolitical standing and facilitate its movement towards the ‘core’ within the arena of the world (knowledge) system. (shrink)

_Higher Education and the Color Line_ examines the role of higher education in opening up equal opportunity for mobility in American society--or in reinforcing the segregation between white and nonwhite America. In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision upholding affirmative action, this comprehensive and timely book outlines the agenda for achieving racial justice in higher education in the next generation. Weaving together current research and a discussion of overarching demographic, legal, and political (...) issues, the book focuses on the racial transformation of higher education and the structural barriers that perpetuate racial stratification at the postsecondary level. _Higher Education and the Color Line_ includes chapters that outline the demographic changes in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary school enrollment; the evolving role of law and policy; the barriers faced by minority college students; and the kinds of programs that best serve them. Topics addressed include financial aid; the role of community colleges; nontraditional paths to postsecondary education; and the role of higher education in social and economic mobility. In addition to providing a thorough and up-to-date assessment of the state of racial integration in higher education, the book goes beyond the usual black-and-white analysis to provide a multiethnic perspective supported by extensive new data. Taken together, these discussions examine the role of higher education in opening up equal opportunity for mobility in American society--or in reinforcing the segregation between white and nonwhite America. It provides insight for how institutions, states, and the country should be thinking about U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s hope that affirmative action will no longer be needed in 25 years. (shrink)

This book sets out to generate new ways of reflecting ethically about the purposes and values of contemporary higher education in relation to agency, learning, public values and democratic life, and the pedagogies which support these.

The paper links higher education reforms and welfare states reforms in postcommunist Central European countries. It links current higher education debates (and reform pressures) and public sector debates (and reform pressures), stressing the importance of communist-era legacies in both areas. It refers to existing typologies of both higher education governance and welfare state regimes and concludes that the lack of the inclusion of Central Europe in any of them is a serious theoretical drawback in (...) comparative social research. The region should still, after more than two decades of transition and heavy international policy advising, be viewed as a “laboratory of social experimentation”. It is still too risky to suggest generalizations about how Central European higher education and welfare systems fit existing typologies. Consequently, the “transition” period is by no means over: it is over in terms of politics and economics but not in terms of social arrangements. Both higher education and welfare states should be viewed as “work in progress”: permanently under reform pressures, and with unclear future. (shrink)

Higher education institutions are mining and analyzing student data to effect educational, political, and managerial outcomes. Done under the banner of “learning analytics,” this work can—and often does—surface sensitive data and information about, inter alia, a student’s demographics, academic performance, offline and online movements, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, and social network. With these data, institutions and third parties are able to describe student life, predict future behaviors, and intervene to address academic or other barriers to student success (however (...) defined). Learning analytics, consequently, raise serious issues concerning student privacy, autonomy, and the appropriate flow of student data. We argue that issues around privacy lead to valid questions about the degree to which students should trust their institution to use learning analytics data and other artifacts (algorithms, predictive scores) with their interests in mind. We argue that higher education institutions are paradigms of information fiduciaries. As such, colleges and universities have a special responsibility to their students. In this article, we use the information fiduciary concept to analyze cases when learning analytics violate an institution’s responsibility to its students. (shrink)

This book explores the emergence of the modern higher education sector in the independent Irish state. The author traces its origins from the traditional universities, technical schools and teacher training colleges at the start of the twentieth century, cataloguing its development into the complex, multi-layered and diverse system of the early twenty-first century. Focusing on the socio-political and cultural contexts which shaped the evolution of higher education, the author analyses the interplay between the state, academic institutions (...) and other key institutional actors - notably churches, cultural organizations, employers, trade unions and supranational bodies. This study explores policy, structural and institutional change in Irish higher education, suggesting that the emergence of the modern higher education system in Ireland was influenced by ideologies and trends which owed much to a wider European and international context. The book considers how the exercise of power at local, national and international level impinged on the mission, purpose and values of higher education and on the creation and expansion of a distinctive higher education system. The author also explores a transformation in public and political understandings of the role of higher education, charting the gradual evolution from traditionalist conceptions of the academy as a repository for cultural and religious value formation, to the re-positioning of higher education as a vital factor in the knowledge based economy. This comprehensive volume will appeal to students and scholars of the Irish education system, educators and practitioners in the field, and those interested in higher education in Ireland more generally. (shrink)

Despite the severe social, health, political and economic impacts of the outbreak of Covid-19 on Palestinians, we contend that one positive aspect of this pandemic is that it has revealed the perils and shortcomings of the teacher-centered, traditional education which colonizes students’ minds, compromises their analytical abilities and, paradoxically, places them in a system of oppression which audits their ideas, limits their freedoms, and curtails their creativity. While Israeli occupation has proven to be an obstacle in the face of (...) the Palestinian government’s attempt to combat and contain the Corona crisis, on-line education, the sole arena that escapes this colonial system, has forced many instructors to give up their domination over the process of education and to create a more collaborative atmosphere of education that is based on dialogue, research and flexibility of the curriculum content. This study is designed to gauge English literature students’ responses to this mode of digital learning. We interviewed a hundred students from six English literature programs between March and August, 2020. Thus, through critically examining students’ answers, and by drawing on Freire’s concepts of banking education, consciousness and dialogue, we propose that online education is an important step towards the decolonization of education and a call for a paradigm shift on the account that the existing paradigm of traditional education is stifling students’ creativity and critical thinking. (shrink)

The article reviews two essays in connection with the changing higher education. The two essays were entitled "Financing Higher Education: Answers from the UK," edited by Nicholas Barr and Iain Crawford, and "Reform and Change in Higher Education: Analysing Policy Implementation," edited by Ase Gornitzka, Mauruce Kogan, and Alberto Ameral.

This paper examines the marketization of higher education. It takes the curriculum development for a degree sponsored by industry as a focus for exploring the involvement of industry and, more specifically, prospective employers, in shaping higher education provision. Empirical material gathered from a three and a half-year ethnographic study is used to illustrate how mundane promotional work associated with sponsored curricula operates to reconstitute higher education. It is shown how, in the process of introducing (...) sponsored curricula into the university, a market relevance discourse is merged with traditional discourse to promote a new discursive order and thereby contribute to the reformation of university education. This hybrid discourse (of tradition and relevance) makes traditional resistance to the encroachment of "relevance" into university education more difficult to justify, and perhaps impossible to sustain. Nonetheless, it produces new antagonisms that provide future sites of resistance. (shrink)

In higher education, interdisciplinarity involves the design of subjects that offer the opportunity to experience ‘different ways of knowing’ from students’ core or preferred disciplines. Such an education is increasingly important in a global knowledge economy. Many universities have begun to introduce interdisciplinary studies or subjects to meet this perceived need. This chapter explores some of the issues inherent in moves towards interdisciplinary higher education. Definitional issues associated with the term ‘academic discipline’, as well as (...) other terms, including ‘multidisciplinary’, ‘cross-disciplinary’, ‘pluridisciplinarity’, ‘transdisciplinarity’ and ‘interdisciplinary’ are examined. A new nomenclature is introduced to assist in clarifying the subtle distinctions between the various positions. The chapter also outlines some of the pedagogical and epistemological considerations which are involved in any move from a conventional form of educational delivery to an interdisciplinary higher education, and recommends caution in any implementation of an interdisciplinary curriculum. (shrink)

This book is not just about thinking or acting in transdisciplinary ways, but about being transdisciplinary. To achieve this requires a deconstruction of our current way of acting within the definition of being that others impose upon us. Transdisciplinarity is a phenomenological perspective of reality and its manifestation in the world in which we exist. The volume develops a widely based transdisciplinary understanding of the issues faced by higher education institutions and those who work within and with these (...) institutions to educate professionals. It incorporates international contributions from organisational theory, anthropologists, historians, psychologists, social sciences, philosophers and practitioners to create a volume that makes an important and distinct contribution to the literature on higher education and professional practice. "Transdisciplinarity provides one of our greatest challenges in higher education, both to the way it is organized and to the nature of the curriculum. This book is an important contribution to the debate about its implications." "Higher education is being challenged by the nature of knowledge and how it is organized-the world is transdisciplinary but out institutions are constrained by the disciplines. This book contributes to the important debates about the challenges transdisciplinarity provides to our institutions." Professor David Boud Emeritus Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney. (shrink)

Institutions of higher education in the United States are remarkably diverse in their educational purposes, their organizational structure, and their architectural styles. But underlying all this diversity are two distinct historical models: the decentralized British "collegiate" model of university education, and the centralized Germanic university model. Early American higher education grew out of the British collegiate tradition and emphasized the comprehensive development of students' intellect and character, while the Germanic university tradition, introduced in the late (...) 1800s, shifted the focus to technical scholarship and research. The Germanic university model held sway for much of the twentieth century, but there is now a widespread renewal of interest in the older decentralized British collegiate model, and in universities across the United States and around the world, small "residential colleges" like those at Oxford and Cambridge are now being planned and built. These residential colleges or "houses" (as they are sometimes called) provide small, stable, faculty-led, home-like environments for a few hundred students each, and their social and architectural design seeks to counteract the impersonal bureaucratic experience that students often have in large Germanic-style universities. This revival of the collegiate model of university organization is one of the most important trends in the design of educational communities in the world today. (shrink)

From a historical point of view, theuniversity as an institution has had the roleof educating an elite, rather than any obvioustask of enforcing democracy. But what kind ofexpectations regarding citizenship anddemocracy can we justifiably have when it comesto the role of higher education and ouruniversities today when higher education isundergoing a process of massification. Couldthe university eventually become a place fordeliberative communication, developingdeliberative qualities among its many students?According to the contributions presented here –stemming from a conference (...) on the theme``Higher education, democracy and citizenship'',held at Örebro university, Sweden 2000 –the answer is yes, to some extent, if there isroom for pluralism in different dimensions,opportunities to challenge one's own tradition,and tolerance and respect for the concreteother. (shrink)

This special issue arises from a collaborative symposium in March 2023 between the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA) and the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society (P...

The paper addresses the issue of the potential for Russian higher education to become the core of an innovation-driven economy, an institution for the production of knowledge and its integration into society. In addition to the mission of learning, an indicator of this potential for Russian universities is the level of implementation of research and socio-economic development missions. The genesis of the second and third missions of universities is used as a theoretical basis in this study. The author (...) gives prominence to four historical stages that characterize the University 2.0 development (learning and research) in the formation of a research model of cognitive attitudes. In the context of a comparative analysis of higher education development in Russia and Europe, the article examines the emergence of University 3.0 – the key institution of a knowledge society that fulfills three academic missions (learning, research, socio-economic development). The author proposes the NCI&E-model of University 3.0, which includes the basic models of Network University, Creative University, Innovative, and Entrepreneurial University, and provides a brief description and interrelations of these models. This work discusses issues associated with the failure of the Russian “5–100” project in terms of listing its participants in the top 100 of global university rankings such as THE, QS, and ARWU. The authenticity of the formation of the entry list for the “5–100” project is called into question. A comparative analysis of Russian and foreign universities concerning the implementation of the third mission is provided, including the use of the index of University 3.0 development prerequisites proposed by the author. The author concludes that Russian higher education has low potential for the development of University 2.0 at the global level and for the creation of University 3.0. The author offers recommendations for addressing the problem of Russian higher education modernization, considering the development of its scientific and theoretical base and forming a strategic complex of development programs. (shrink)

Around the world, the landscape of Higher Education is increasingly shaped by discourses of employability, rankings, and student satisfaction. Under these conditions, the role of universities in preparing students for all facets of life, and to contribute to the public good, is reshaped in significant ways: ways which are often negative and pessimistic. This book raises important and pressing questions about the nature and role of universities as formative educational institutions, drawing together contributors from both Western and non-Western (...) perspectives. While the editors and contributors critique the current situation, the chapters evince a more humane and compassionate framing of the work of and in universities, based on positive and valued relationships and notions of the good. Drawing together a wide range of theoretical and conceptual frameworks to illuminate the issues discussed, this volume changes the debate to one of hopefulness and inspiration about the role of higher education for the public good: ultimately looking towards a potentially exciting and rewarding future through which humanity and the planet can flourish. (shrink)