curriculum as border-crossing and imagined/enacted transgression: an exploration
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The curriculum as border-crossing and imagined/enacted transgression: An exploration
Keynote at the Academic Development Symposium, University of South Africa (Unisa), Cape Town, 16 September 2017
Paul PrinslooUniversity of South Africa (Unisa)
@14prinspImage credit: https://pixabay.com/en/barbed-wire-wire-fence-barbed-1899854/
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I do not own the copyright of any of the images in this presentation. I therefore acknowledge the original copyright and licensing regime of every
image used.
This presentation (excluding the images) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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Overview of the presentation
1. Situate this presentation against the broader backdrop of access to higher education
2. Acknowledge my own positionality3. The curriculum as contested and contesting space4. Who determines/sanctions/captures the
curriculum?5. Mapping epistemological access, structure and
‘misfits’6. Some pointers for consideration7. (In)conclusion
By Paul Prinsloo (University of South Africa) @14prinsp
Image credit first slide: http://connect.citizen.co.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2015/10/C2.jpg?81cf05
#FeesMustFall#FreeHigherEducation
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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/swimming-pool-old-leave-dark-1681311/
Access as a revolving door of broken promises
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The question regarding access to higher education has deepened to ask
“access to what?”Image credit: Paul Prinsloo
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Who has the right, the power to define knowledge? Where do our curricula come from? Whose interests are served?
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/chess-strategy-chess-board-316658/
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Image credit: http://chica.co.za/career/social-media-activism-feesmustfall/
Whose knowledges are erased, ignored, ridiculed and subjected to the colonial gaze ?
#RhodesMustFall
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NBC News source credit: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/christopher-columbus-statue-new-york-city-could-be-considered-removal-n795316
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Page credit: http://all-monuments-must-fall.ghost.io/all-monuments-must-fall-a-syllabus/
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Page credit: https://medium.com/@chanda/decolonising-science-reading-list-339fb773d51f#.om5w2ivfq
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This presentation is not about decolonising the
curriculum
Who am I? What/who gives me the right to speak?
How do I as a 58 years old, white, gay male talk about and participate in discourses re decolonising the curriculum/knowledge?
How do I disentangle my tentative contribution from my position of being a settler, having grown up in settler communities, schools, and going to a settler university where the language of tuition was a settler language, and where people of displaced communities and their epistemologies were marginalised and excluded?
(See Tuck & Yang, 2012; Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013)
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“What is it to acknowledge one’s whiteness, …to acknowledge that one is inherently tied to structures of domination and oppression, that one is irrevocably on the wrong side?”
(Alcoff in Applebaum, 2010, p. 3)
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How do we acknowledge our own investments in whiteness that “can obscure how white people even with the best intentions are implicated in sustaining a racially unjust system”?
(Applebaum, 2010, p. 10)
Whiteness as the Midas touch…
Image credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Midas_gold2.jpg
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I therefore do not plead innocence, look for sympathy or absolution or use this presentation as gesture of a
“false generosity” (Tuck & Fine, 2007, p. 154),
but as “coming clean, coming out … unforgetting” (Tuck & Fine, 2007, p. 155).
(Also see Westcott, R. (2004). Witnessing whiteness: articulating race and the "politics of style”. Borderlands 3(2). Retrieved from
http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/westcott_witnessing.htm)
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And yet, this presentation cannot be not about
decolonising the curriculum
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/private-sign-prohibit-block-1665019/
Thinking about epistemological access, we cannot ignore the deeper question of who defines and demarcates valuable, or
worthy knowledge, and what ways of knowing is excluded, erased, and ridiculed
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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/wire-rusty-field-196361/
Curricula as spaces of inclusion andexclusion
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Image credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Israeli_West_Bank_Barrier.jpg
Curricula as spaces of forced separations, of captured spaces
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Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Migrants_in_Hungary_2015_Aug_018.jpg
Curricula as fenced spaces, where access is limited/controlled/regulated
And where access depends on having the necessary documents, meeting the criteria, being deemed as
‘not a threat’
Image credit: https://fullfact.org/media/_versions/uk-border-passport-control-eu-facebook_social_media.jpg
In order to engage with the current claims regarding whose knowledge is taught, we need
to understand who has the power to include and exclude
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/chess-game-strategy-intelligence-424556/
The curriculum is, and has always been a “contested space” (Prinsloo, 2007), a “place of
turmoil” (Slattery & Daigle, 1994) and “an arena of struggle” (Shay, 2015)
Image credit: Canadian Gunners in the Mud, Passchendaele by Lieutenant Alfred Bastien, 1917, oil on canvas. Retrieved from, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_art
Image credit: Canadian Gunners in the Mud, Passchendaele by Lieutenant Alfred Bastien, 1917, oil on canvas. Retrieved from, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_art
The curriculum has also, always, been gendered, raced, and classed. The
curriculum has always been used to includevoices, perspectives and exclude others. The curriculum has always been used to
define and protect power (whether determined by e.g. race, gender, class, or culture) and to ensure that the visions of
those in power are sanctioned as the vision of the future
[(habitus)(capital)]
"There is no place for [the Bantu] in the European community above the level of
certain forms of labor ... What is the use of teaching the Bantu child mathematics when it (sic) cannot use it in practice?”
(Hendrik Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs, 1956, commenting on the Bantu Education Act of 1955)
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egbo_Secret_Society,_Mgbe,_Etuam,_Egbo,_South_Nigeria_Wellcome_M0005360.jpg
The mask carvers of Benin
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_treatise_on_lace-making,_embroidery,_and_needle-work_with_Irish_flax_threads_(1892)_(14595691027).jpg
The Guild of Lace Makers in France
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egbo_Secret_Society,_Mgbe,_Etuam,_Egbo,_South_Nigeria_Wellcome_M0005360.jpg
Craft associations and guilds, whether comprising mask carvers in Benin or weavers in India,
all had the same basis, namely (1)the celebration and acknowledgement of expertise; (2)exercising the monopoly on their craft in a particular
geographical area; (3)regulating and sanctioning access to the specific
expertise base
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_treatise_on_lace-making,_embroidery,_and_needle-work_with_Irish_flax_threads_(1892)_(14595691027).jpg
“Guilds protected their special knowledge; governments
prohibited the export of economically important skills. France,
for instance, made exporting lace-making expertise a capital
crime: Anyone caught teaching the skill to foreigners could be
put to death”
(Davenport and Prusak, 2000). (Also see Belfanti, 2004)
Page credit: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2009/apr/07/mba-business-schools-credit-crunch
7 April 2009
5 June 2013
Page credit: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/salford-culls-courses-to-secure-future/2004425.article
Page credit: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/24/students-post-crash-economics
24 October 2013
Page credit: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/04/economics-students-overhaul-subject-teaching
4 May 2014
Page credit: https://theconversation.com/decolonising-economics-more-context-is-needed-not-less-content-56215
15 March 2016
Page credit: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2017/01/08/university-students-demand-philosophers-including-plato-kant/
8 January 2017
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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/diner-restaurant-room-people-336499/
So, who decides on what knowledge should be taught? And the structure of how it should be taught?
1. Faculty – gender, race, tenure/non-tenure, age, onto-epistemologies, ideological positions
2. Retired ghosts still on the payroll3. Disciplines/departments – what is (not) allowed4. Inter-institutional author networks5. Staff resources/allocation6. Institutions – alignment with mission, vision7. Industry/ professional bodies8. The [market]
Who determines [captured] the curriculum space?
9. Accreditation and quality assurance regimes10.National governments/development goals11.Asymmetries in knowledge production –
North/South/developed/developing12.Increasing competition/number of providers13.Academic journals14.Publishing houses15.Google/Social media16.Students?
Who determines [captured] the curriculum space? (Cont.)
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/alone-walking-night-people-city-764926/
Epistemological access and structure
Students as imposters, deviants, and immigrants entering strange lands
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lisanorwood/1046416640
Being ‘misfits’: When students have trouble to ‘fit’
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Image credit: http://www.citylab.com/housing/2016/06/apartheids-urban-legacy-in-striking-aerial-photographs-south-africa-cities-architecture-racism/487808/
How do we understand students’ transition in higher education, into specific disciplines considering where they come from?
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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/design-city-man-abstract-art-2326066/
What do they bring, what do they have, and yes, what do they lack?
An elephant in the learning analytics room –the obligation to act
By Paul Prinsloo (University of South Africa) & Sharon Slade (Open University, UK)
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyman/4941417146
Image credit: http://thesociologicalcinema.tumblr.com/post/142531355075/youre-playing-monopoly-one-player-is-given-all
The idea of habitus was born from trying to make sense of choices we have and make , considering our context, our past and present, our behaviors, our capital and dispositions, and our gendered and raced role(s), relations and positions in a particular context/field and time - as embodied, as ‘structured and structuring structure’
(Bourdieu, 1994, p. 170).
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Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Football_pitch_small.png
An elephant in the learning analtics room –the obligation to act
By Paul Prinsloo (University of South Africa) & Sharon Slade (Open University, UK)
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyman/4941417146
[(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice/agency(Bourdieu 1984, p. 101)
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/man-luggage-forward-young-2138962/
When they find that what they have is not enough
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyman/4941417146
Image credit: http://www.pixnio.com/fauna-animals/fishes/roach-fish-on-dry-land
The phenomenon of a misfit between an individual’s habitus and capital in a particular context is described as
the ‘hysteresis effect’ and a cleft in habitus or habitus clivé
(Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977, p. 78)
Hysteresis //alienation (Marx in Fowler, 2003)// anomie(Durkheim in Naudet, 2008)//torpor (Prinsloo, 2016)
An elephant in the learning analytics room –the obligation to act
By Paul Prinsloo (University of South Africa) & Sharon Slade (Open University, UK)
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/lollyman/4941417146
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/bird-death-dead-829242/
Epistemological dissonance/epistemological trauma/ontological torpor
(Prinsloo, 2016 –https://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com/2016/10/24/a-blog-on-not-
blogging/)
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/cgpgrey/5023794412
Habitus clivé :When individuals move ‘upwards’, individuals become class ‘transfuges’ -- caught in a ‘painful’ position of social limbo, of ‘double isolation’, from both their origin and destination class
(Friedman, 2013, p. 10; Bourdieu, 1998b).
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lytovchenko_Olexandr_Kharon.jpg
Left behind on the banks of the Acheron, not having the capital to pay Charon his price
(or to bribe him)...
Curriculum Development Processes
THE STUDENT AS AGENTIDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, HABITUS
Success
THE INSTITUTION AS AGENT
IDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, HABITUS
SHAPING CONDITIONS: (predictable as well as uncertain)
SHAPING CONDITIONS: (predictable as well as uncertain)
How the curriculum is structured/designed on course /module level, and on program level
THE STUDENT WALK Multiple, mutually constitutive interactions between student,
institution & networks
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
Adapted from: Subotzky, G., & Prinsloo, P. (2011). Turning the tide: a socio-critical model and framework for improving student success in open distance learning at the University of South Africa. Distance Education, 32(2): 177-19.
Curriculum Development Processes
THE STUDENT AS AGENTIDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, HABITUS
Success
THE INSTITUTION AS AGENT
IDENTITY, ATTRIBUTES, HABITUS
SHAPING CONDITIONS: (predictable as well as uncertain)
SHAPING CONDITIONS: (predictable as well as uncertain)
Habitus clivé/ hysteresis/ the banks of the Acheron
THE STUDENT WALK Multiple, mutually constitutive interactions between student,
institution & networks
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
FIT
Adapted from: Subotzky, G., & Prinsloo, P. (2011). Turning the tide: a socio-critical model and framework for improving student success in open distance learning at the University of South Africa. Distance Education, 32(2): 177-19.
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/chess-board-game-play-lose-1742720/
Some pointers for consideration
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Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/43405897@N04/4326682088
1. The very nature of a curriculum is to include and exclude
2. We need to be transparent about the choices that informed our inclusions and exclusionsImage credit: https://pixabay.com/en/portrait-the-self-timer-the-corridor-627018/
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3. Curricula are never neutral, and flow from and perpetuate specific understandings of the world. They originate from, and are sanctioned by the dominant ideologies/structures at a particular time and in a particular context
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/map-tattoo-hand-art-sweatshirt-2591759/
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/graffiti-artist-graffiti-art-1380108/
4. What are the possibilities for curricula to contest
historical and current knowledge claims? What is the
possibility of the curriculum not only being a
contested space but also a contesting space?
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5. Access into higher education is not enough
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/maze-ideas-auto-stop-male-1706852/
6. How do we prepare ourselves and our students for the epistemological trauma and dissonance they may experience
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Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/stairs-architecture-gradually-1229149/
7. Curriculum structure matters
8. How do we creates spaces where our curricula, our versions of the ‘truth’ can be questioned, usurped, vandalised, defaced and contested
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/graffiti-urban-street-art-city-1777612/
(In)conclusion
Image credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état_-_Pulling_down_statues_of_the_Reza_Shah_(2).jpg
At stake are the questions: Who has the power to define knowledge? Whose interests are served? Whose vision of the past and future has value?
Image credit: https://pixabay.com/en/empty-abandoned-messy-grunge-scene-863118/
THANK YOU
Paul Prinsloo Research Professor in Open Distance Learning (ODL)College of Economic and Management Sciences, Office number 3-15, Club 1, Hazelwood, P O Box 392Unisa, 0003, Republic of South Africa
T: +27 (0) 12 433 4719 (office)T: +27 (0) 82 3954 113 (mobile)
prinsp@unisa.ac.za Skype: paul.prinsloo59
Personal blog: http://opendistanceteachingandlearning.wordpress.com
Twitter profile: @14prinsp
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