3-5 March | DBSA | Midrand

The National Environmental Skills Summit

FUNDISA FOR CHANGE

RESEARCH

Day 3 | 5 March 2015

Soul Shava

Department of Science & Technology

Education, UNISA

EXPLORING THE INCLUSION OF IKS IN CAPS

Historically contextualising IKS in the curriculum (cont.)

• Indigenous knowledges have to large extent been marginalised,

excluded, invalidated, inferiorized, misrepresented in the curriculum

during the apartheid era which has privileged Western/Euro-Americentric

(colonial) epistemologies and knowledge disciplines that have been

masqueraded as neutral, unlocated, disembodied and universal

• The resultant outcome of these processes of exclusion is the creation of

curricula and schools that are detached from the contextual reality of the

learner (and the educators) and bereft of the learner’s lived knowledge

and experiences – i.e. schools as zones of cultural & knowledge

exclusion (‘colonial satellites of the Western academy’– Dei 2014)

Historically contextualising IKS in the curriculum

• The reframing of the in the post-apartheid curriculum up to CAPS to include

of IK aspects provides an opportunity for re-contextualising learning to

prioritise the local contexts and to give value to local indigenous knowledges,

cultures and practices as well a role the community (as knowledge holders) in

the children's education.

• IK inclusion in the curriculum opens up opportunities for plural knowledge

representation (western and indigenous knowledges rather western vs

indigenous knowledges)

Fundisa Teaching IK Module

The Teaching IK module:

• identifies environmental IK aspects existing in the curriculum (ecosystems,

structures, energy, systems, processing, etc.)

• explores opportunities for the inclusion of local indigenous environmental

epistemologies, teachings, pedagogies and practices in EE processes within

subject disciplines

• draws on the exploration of the local context (observation, experiential

learning, investigations, storytelling, etc.)

• promotes the realisation among local leaners of the value of their own

knowledges and practices and the reconnection of leaners of leaners to their

lived environments (contextual relevance) in their learning processes

• Emphasises the existence of alternative/plural knowledge systems,

highlighting knowledges previously excluded in the curriculum

Thank You