Towards the decolonisation of religion education in a pre-service education classroom

ABSTRACT

In this article, I reflect on my attempts to decolonise religious education at a historically white university in a post-apartheid South Africa. This pre-service education project conducted in 2017 happened against the backdrop of two events, namely, a renewed curriculum policy, Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) and the #RhodesMustFall (RMF) and #FeesMustFall (FMF) protests. These events encouraged me to reflect on my academic role as a teacher-educator preparing pre-service teachers to teach religion in schools. This led to me asking many questions such as, what is the effect of my teaching religious education?, How do teacher-educators prepare religious education pre-service teachers for a multicultural and multireligious society?, How does my teaching align itself with the decolonisation of education? and How do I redress the colonial past in my religious education classroom? The data which included reflective reports, student experiences and self-reflexivity acknowledged the findings that religion education served as a unifying factor in building social cohesion. The significance of this paper lies in the argument that decolonisation becomes an imperative if one is striving for social justice and intends to commit oneself to a more equitable society where crossing borders must be a seamless act.     

‘Multicultural’ science in South Africa's National Curriculum Statement

Abstract

South Africa's Revised National Curriculum Statement for Further Education and Training (FET) is premised on the view that there are competing perspectives and worldviews from which to make sense of phenomena. Accordingly, elements of indigenous knowledges have been integrated into the discursive terrains of all subjects that form part of the National Curriculum Statement. This policy statement invites several critical questions, some of which are addressed in this article in relation to science education. These include questions as to whether seemingly disparate perspectives of ‘the world’ are competing or complementary and whether science (education) is universal or multicultural. A universalist position holds that Western modern science has superior explanatory powers of understanding the natural world to those of indigenous knowledges. A multiculturalist position holds that science is culturally produced and that cultures have disparate ways of understanding the natural world and that different ways of knowing should be recognised as science. This article discusses critical questions arising from much contestation about the nature of science as a consequence of different perspectives on science held by universalists and multiculturalists. Some of the implications this discussion has for science education in contemporary South Africa are also examined.     

‘From OBE to C2005 to RNCS’: Are we still on track?

Abstract

There is a general lack of understanding about the interrelationship between outcomes-based education (OBE), Curriculum 2005 (C2005) and the revised National Curriculum Statement (RNCS). There is a tendency to perceive the three as different and distinct entities. This stems from the belief that the transformation of education in South Africa followed the pattern of ‘from OBE to C2005 to the RNCS’, and that this movement or shift is exclusive in the sense that each step in this chain or progression is totally new and independent of the previous one. Based on this, the author is apprehensive as to whether the RNCS will be implemented as envisaged. The fault may lie with the teachers themselves as a result of acquired prejudices and anxieties, the manner in which the Department of Education (DoE) conducts its advocacy campaigns or the teacher training institutions’ curricula.

This article looks at teachers’ understanding of this evolutionary sequence, ‘from OBE to C2005 to RNCS’; and relates it to the intention to stay on track for the purposes of educational transformation and the implementation of the RNCS.     

Distribution of the sensible within the Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action: maintaining patterns of inclusion and exclusion?

ABSTRACT

This paper revisits The Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action through Jacques Rancière’s writing about the distribution of the sensible. It questions the supports provided within the Maltese state education system and asks readers to ‘think again’ by asking what has been left out. The Salamanca Statement is seen as reflected within the Maltese education system, both of which, however, position people and services in particular spaces. As systems, they have a totalising quality, which disables thought or any possibility outside that which is given. They also make assumptions about equality that is achieved, whereas Rancière writes about equality as a starting point and a presupposition. This is what gives democracy and politics a possibility, two values that are at the heart of inclusion.     

The seeming ‘round trip’ of learner-centred education: a ‘best practice’ derived from China’s New Curriculum Reform?

ABSTRACT

Inspired by the ‘advanced’ Western experience, China has implemented the New Curriculum Reform promoting learner-centred education since 2001. The OECD has identified this reform as a key feature contributing to Shanghai’s ‘PISA success’, worthy in turn of re-imitation by the West. Drawing upon official documents and interview data, this article shows that learner-centred education has been well accepted in rhetoric, which has led to more time being given to pupil activities. However, in reality, teaching and learning practices have continued to reflect what Confucian scholars have persistently advocated. Moreover, this article illustrates that the ‘round trip’ of learner-centred education between the East and the West has only taken place on the surface. The Chinese government has relied on the transformed Western concept for policy legitimacy, while international policy agencies have nevertheless deployed the case of China as an ideal exemplar to justify this Western concept as a global ‘best practice’.     

An amalgam of ideals – images of inclusion in the Salamanca Statement

ABSTRACT

The Salamanca Statement is a primary point of departure in research and policy on inclusive education. However, several problems have surfaced in the 25 years since its publication. In particular, several different interpretations of the concept of inclusive education and its enactment in practice have arisen. For instance, the definition of the pupil groups in focus varies greatly. There are also varying definitions of the importance of pupil-placement, when it comes to organisation of inclusive education. Using a theoretical framework combining Bacchi’s [1999. Women, Policy and Politics. The Construction of Policy Problems. London: Sage Publications] poststructural policy-analysis and concepts from Popkewitz [2009. “Curriculum Study, Curriculum History, and Curriculum Theory: The Reason of Reason.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 41 (3): 301–319. doi:10.1080/00220270902777021], this article illustrates that The Salamanca Statement allows for a variety of interpretations of inclusion. As a policy-concept, inclusion encompasses an amalgam of political ideals, including welfare-state ideals where education is viewed as a public-good, as well as market-ideals of education as a private-good. Policies of inclusion also define the desired citizen, through categories of disadvantaged children, the ones excluded but to be included for their own good as well as for the good of the future society. The conclusions are that researchers and policy-makers should elucidate what they mean by inclusion with for instance moral- and practical arguments rather than vague references to The Salamanca Statement.     

User or student: constructing the subject in Edtech incubator

ABSTRACT

This research focuses on ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ about education and learning emanating from the Edtech research and development sector. MindCet, the first Edtech incubator in Israel, aims to bring ‘disruptive innovation’ to the educational field, mainly by bringing in tech start-ups with their problem solving culture and practices. This centre acts as an intermediary between techno-business and education. Based on Biesta’s notion of ‘the new language of learning,’ my research shows how the learning imagined and constructed in techno-business production casts the student as a ‘user.’ I will argue that the construction of learners as ‘users,’ not ‘students,’ is crucial to understanding education technology production and discourse. This user-focused understanding of learning has implications for the commodification and depoliticization of education, and is an important factor in neo-liberal educational reforms and venture philanthropy interventions, both globally and locally.     

Coping with Contraction: the management of teaching staff

Summary

So where are we? Primary teachers should be asked to do fewer things. If we as Curriculum Theorists keep piling on more things they will either, sensibly, ignore us or try to do them all-ineffectively.

Everyone who bothers to look at the evidence will see the vast majority of primary teachers are conscientious but we are just providing a ridiculous ‘list’ of things for them to feel guilty at not doing. Curriculum theory must guide priorities, help reduce lists and demands. It must help teachers do less more fully. This is what the Curriculum Matters series is so signally failing to do. Its orientation is deeply Secondary and specialist not Primary and generalist. More importantly the same fault makes it too much about bits of being educated rather than providing perspectives on the whole enterprise. Even the whole curriculum one² (THE CURRICULUM 5–16). Curriculum Matters Series No. 2 HMSO 1985) gives little guidance on simplifying.

I have suggested three key purposes that could guide this simplification without demeaning the importance of quality and development in learning. Whilst I have called them Surviving, Cooperating and Celebrating I am somewhat encouraged by some similarities to the old trinity of Truth, technology ‘tests’ truth by seeing if it works), Goodness, (co-operating skills are essentially about working together, treating others as you would be treated yourself) and Beauty, (what better test of beauty can there be than the awe it inspires?).

If these were the basics we could even ‘go back to the basics’ and progress.     

Dwelling and creative imagination in Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenology: Returning to the poetic space of education and learning

Abstract

In response to the so-called crisis in contemporary education in the institutions of higher learning (USA)—the encroachment of corporatism and pervasion of standardization—there is a move to offset this dominance by reconceiving the university in terms of an intimate space of dwelling in learning and education. In light of this moribund condition in education, I address the following concerns: How should educators approach the ‘space’ of learning in the new millennium with respect to the supposed ‘new face’ of education in higher learning? What implication will such changes to curriculum have on the ‘context’ of learning? Will the context of learning now need to be reconceptualized, and if it is, what effects will this have on students and educators? Herein I consider the contributions that the philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenological ontology of space, dwelling, and the creative imagination might make to the formulation of rejoinders to these crucial questions and concerns, which offer the reader a reconceived view of the space of learning that is radically at odds with our contemporary conceptions that might be linked with social efficiency ideology.     

Book Reviews

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on primary teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning and in particular about their preferred ways of teaching; how they integrate National Curriculum requirements into their teaching programmes and their views about stereotyped ‘models’ of pedagogy. The authors conclude that learning and teaching are understood as highly complex and cannot be subsumed under one particular model. They suggest that most primary school teachers adopt an eclectic approach, but that frequently they are confused about the content of the mix or which approach might be most appropriately used in any particular context.     

Changing students’ and teachers’ concepts and constructs of knowledge in RE in Greece

ABSTRACT

Based on a qualitative research (2012–15) this paper is concerned with the identification of concepts and constructs of knowledge in RE. It is based on participative enquiry and educational action-research methodology. Over a three-year period, the researcher, teachers and the students of a High School in one of the most difficult social, economic and pedagogic environments in Greece collaborated and the resulting data were analysed by a team of independent researchers using quantitative and qualitative techniques. Findings point to the consideration of knowledge in education as an experience in which the content (what) of education is as important as the process (how). RE teaches an additional invaluable language with different religious meanings of concepts, which facilitates students’ communication with self and others, and offers an interpretation of the world. Such religious literacy is essentially provided at school in the framework of multi-literacies and is a result of an intersubjective process of the interconnection between thinking, reflection and action on what the curriculum positions on the top of the didactic triangle (content, teacher, student). In that process, to ‘know what I know’ and to provide ‘events with meaning’ based on experiential learning and its principles, is of inestimable value.     

The art of self-making: identity and citizenship education in late-modernity

Taking the English National Curriculum as its main example, this article argues that an overly nationalistic, normative and ‘fact-based’ citizenship education curriculum is failing to engage the dimensions of young people’s identities which they experience as deeply meaningful. There is thus a chasm – albeit a false one – between official discourses and pedagogies of citizenship and what young people consider to be their ‘real’ selves. I argue that citizenship education must develop a more sophisticated understanding of the complexities of how identities are formed and performed, especially in light of globalisation and increasing migration. I also make a somewhat unorthodox argument for conceptualising ‘relating-to-otherness’ in the same way that we think of music consumption. This has implications for how we experience, interpret, value and create ‘others’. The article also makes some recommendations for how these ideas can begin to be implemented in educational settings.     

Wildly wise in the terrible moment: Kant,Emerson, and improvisatory Bildung in early childhood education

Abstract

This paper aims to show how Emerson provides a reworking of Kantian understandings of moral education in young children’s Bildung. The article begins and ends by thinking of Emersonian self-cultivation as a form of improvisatory or wild Bildung. It explores the role of Bildung and self-cultivation in preschools through a philosophy that accounts for children’s ‘Wild wisdom’ by letting Emerson speak to Kant. The paper argues that Kant’s vision of Bildung essentially involves reason’s turn upon itself and that Emerson, particularly in how he is taken up by Cavell, shows that such a turn is already present in the processes of children inheriting, learning, and improvising with language. This improvisatory outlook on moral education is contrasted with common goals of moral education prescribed in early childhood education where the Swedish Curriculum for the Preschool Lpfö 98 is used as an example.     

A reconceptualisation of ‘knowing Asia’ in Australian education

Since 1969, over 60 Australian government and non-government policies, documents, committees, working parties and organisations have explored the need to ‘know Asia’. In schools, this engagement is conceptualised as ‘Asia literacy’ and disseminated in the emerging Australian Curriculum through the cross-curriculum priority ‘Asia and Australia's engagement with Asia’. However, ‘Asia literacy’ often struggles for purchase in Australian education. I argue that finding traction requires disruption of the dominant discourse of ‘Asia’ as a unitary construct and questioning what constitutes ‘Asia’. This article explores how discourse can be reconceptualised to open up space for schools to engage with ‘knowing Asia’.     

Curriculum as open-ended inquiry in higher education

Abstract

Throughout the world, education curriculum are determined and guided by knowledge perceived as being critical for the advancement of humanity. Often such progress is indicated and determined by curriculum shaped by the ways of knowing of the dominant cultural group or languages that have achieved hegemonic status in such communities, in the process marginalizing any ‘indigenous’ ways of knowing as embedded in the language of other cultures. Sometimes such curriculum have little or no connection with contemporary reality. In this article I therefore argue that inclusive curricular knowledge types are critical in education in order to enable all people, individually and collectively, to progress without being inhibited by the hegemony of so-called ‘scientific’ knowledge. I also argue that knowledge as embedded in a language is power, and should therefore be connected to reality. Using critical social theory, I propose an alternative, inclusive treatment of knowledge types in education curriculum – open-ended inquiry – in order to level the learning field for all learners, and, in so doing, to adequately prepare tomorrow's world citizenry.     

The Content of Supervision Scale

ABSTRACT

Despite being regarded as an essential element in social work education, practicums are often arranged with little consideration as to what a potential supervisor can offer a particular student. This paper reports on the developments of the Content of Supervision Scale which can be used by university fieldwork staff to measure the supervisory priorities of potential supervisors. Three distinct dimensions of supervision sessions are measured: ‘student learning,’ ‘becoming a social worker’ and ‘social work theory and practice.’ Each of these subscales have demonstrated internal consistency. By matching what supervisors can offer with students' educational needs, the potential for student learning is likely to be enhanced.     

Education,Freedom, and Temporality: A Response to Biesta and Säfström's Manifesto

Since it was first published in 2011, ‘A Manifesto for Education’ by Gert Biesta and Karl Anders Säfström has received numerous enthusiastic reviews and been hailed as providing ‘an alternative vision for education’. Such enthusiasm, however, is perhaps not purely attributable to the substance of the text but also to the form that it adopts. In this regard, I attempt to explore what the authors refer to as the ironic usage of this genre of writing in relation to its message. The authors diagnose a problem in education related to the modern understanding of time, and they suggest an alternative ‘non‐temporality’ in which we ‘stay in the tension between “what is” and “what is not” ’. While I appreciate the Manifesto's attempt to offer criticism based on the link between freedom and temporality in education, I take issue with aspects of their analysis. I discuss temporality and freedom through a reading of Martin Heidegger in which the concept of time in education is understood in terms of human freedom as possibility.