https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5736-5217
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Abstract
Over the last four years, student movements in South Africa have demanded the ‘fall’ of normative systems of power in government and higher education. These ‘fallist’ movements have called for decolonised curricula and pedagogies. However, there is debate surrounding what decolonial means and what it looks like. Drawing on four years of experience teaching gender and sexual ethics at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) we offer some tentative reflections on what constitutes a decolonial and socially just pedagogy. Facilitated through critical, queer, liberatory and feminist theories, our reflections comprise our teaching experience and the curriculum reform process of a third-year undergraduate module. In this module we explored the ways in which religious and cultural discourses form and transform understandings and experiences of gender and sexuality. This paper draws on a range of data which includes personal reflections, the module outline, course evaluations which were submitted anonymously via an electronic survey, classroom engagement and student essays. We reflect on the ways in which we made use of a transdisciplinary co-teaching method which drew on four disciplines, Ethics, Gender Studies, Sociology of Religion, and Biblical Studies. We also engage with how the classroom became transgressive as we destabilised the taken-for-granted separation between the academic and the popular. Last, by facilitating student-centred, participatory approaches to learning we argue that the classroom became a transformative space.
Ces dernières années, les mouvements étudiants en Afrique du Sud ont exigé la « chute » des systèmes normatifs de pouvoir au sein du gouvernement et de l'enseignement supérieur. Ces mouvements « fallistes » ont réclamé des programmes et des pédagogies décolonisés. Cependant, ce que signifie décolonial et à quoi cela ressemble fait l'objet de débat. Nous nous appuyons sur quatre années d'expérience dans l'enseignement de l'éthique du genre et de la sexualité à l'Université du Western Cape (UWC), pour proposer quelques réflexions provisoires sur ce qui constitue une pédagogie décoloniale et socialement juste. Nos réflexions - facilitées par des théories critiques, queer, libératrices et féministes, incluent notre expérience d'enseignement et le processus de réforme du curriculum d'un module de troisième année de premier cycle. Dans ce module, nous avons exploré les façons dont les discours religieux et culturels forment et transforment les compréhensions et les expériences du genre et de la sexualité. Ce document s'appuie sur un éventail de données, y compris des réflexions personnelles, le plan du module, des évaluations de cours anonymes soumises via un sondage électronique, la participation en classe et des dissertations d'étudiants. Nous réfléchissons à la manière dont nous avons utilisé une méthode de co-enseignement transdisciplinaire qui s'appuyait sur quatre disciplines : l'éthique, les études de genre, la sociologie de la religion et les études bibliques. Nous nous intéressons également à la manière dont la salle de classe est devenue transgressive en déstabilisant la séparation tenue pour acquise entre l'universitaire et le populaire. Enfin, en facilitant les approches d'apprentissage participatives centrées sur l'élève, nous soutenons que la salle de classe est devenue un espace transformatif.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Statement of Ethics
At the time this study was conducted, University of the Western Cape did not require ethical approval to be sought for this type of research.
Notes
1 An early career academic (Megan Robertson), a mid-career academic (Johnathan Jodamus) and an established academic (Sarojini Nadar).
2 Two of us identify as cis-gendered women and one of us identifies as a cis-gendered man.
3 All of us identify as people of colour and politically Black. Our experiences are also marked by the ways in which we identify (and disidentify) with designated apartheid race categories as Indian and Coloured. ‘Coloured’ was a racial category constructed in apartheid to classify people who were racially mixed or ambiguous. It remains in use as a marker of identity. It has also become a politicised, contentious and fluid category which people negotiate in various, complex ways.
4 We collectively work at the intersections of religion, biblical studies, gender studies and sociology.
5 #FeesMustFall, which first emerged in late 2015, is an ongoing student-led movement in South Africa calling for the decolonising of university education.
6 Prescribed readings for the course include Lake Citation2014; Matebeni Citation2018; Phiri Citation2006.
7 Prescribed readings for the course include Gore Citation2016. See also Tamale Citation2020
8 Prescribed readings for the course include Kotze and de Lange Citation2011; O’Brien Citation2004; Valentine and Waite Citation2010; van Klinken Citation2015.
9 Prescribed readings for the course include van Klinken Citation2018.
10 Prescribed readings for the course include Nadar and Jodamus, Citation2019.
11 For example, both Author 3 and Author 1 have expanded their academic horizons beyond their training in biblical studies and gender to include a wider range of topics, including gender-based violence, sexuality, HIV and more recently education. Author 2 also expanded her research focus from Sociology and Education, to include religion and sexuality.
12 As first conceptualised by Ben Agger (Citation1991) in A critical theory of public life: Knowledge, discourse and politics in the age of decline.
13 See also Boler and Zembylas (Citation2003); Leibowitz et al. (Citation2010).