The Decolonisation of the Curriculum Project Josef De Beer (Ed.) NWU Self-Directed Learning Series Volume 2
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NWU Self-Directed Learning Series Volume 2 of the curriculum project of the The decolonisation decolonisation The The decolonisation of the curriculum project The Josef de Beer (ed.) Josef de affordances of indigenous knowledge for self-directed learning Edited by: Josef de Beer NWU Self-Directed Learning Series Volume 2 The decolonisation of the curriculum project The affordances of indigenous knowledge forself-directed learning Published by AOSIS (Pty) Ltd, 15 Oxford Street, Durbanville 7550, Cape Town, South Africa Postnet Suite #110, Private Bag X19, Durbanville 7551, South Africa Tel: +27 21 975 2602 Fax: +27 21 975 4635 Email: [email protected] Website: https://www.aosis.co.za Copyright © Josef de Beer (ed.). Licensee: AOSIS (Pty) Ltd The moral right of the authors has been asserted. Cover image: Image provided by and used with permission from Dr Anton Binneman (SKA SA/NRF SARAO). Image of Oupa Jan Pietersen. All rights reserved. No unauthorised duplication allowed. Published in 2019 Impression: 1 ISBN: 978-1-928523-16-1 (print) ISBN: 978-1-928523-17-8 (ebook) ISBN: 978-1-928523-18-5 (pdf) DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2019.BK133 How to cite this work: De Beer, J. (ed.), 2019, ‘The decolonisation of the curriculum project: The affordances of indigenous knowledge for self-directed learning’, in NWU Self-directed Learning Series Volume 2, pp. i–406, AOSIS, Cape Town. NWU Self-Directed Learning Series ISSN: 2707-1537 Series Editor: Elsa Mentz Printed and bound in South Africa. Listed in OAPEN (http://www.oapen.org), DOAB (http://www.doabooks.org/) and indexed by Google Scholar. Some rights reserved. This is an open access publication. Except where otherwise noted, this work is distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), a copy of which is available at https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Enquiries outside the terms of the Creative Commons licence should be sent to the Rights Department, AOSIS, at the above address or to [email protected] The publisher accepts no responsibility for any statement made or opinion expressed in this publication. Consequently, the publishers and copyright holder will not be liable for any loss or damage sustained by any reader as a result of his or her action upon any statement or opinion in this work. Links by third-party websites are provided by AOSIS in good faith and for information only. AOSIS disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third-party website referenced in this work. Every effort has been made to protect the interest of copyright holders. Should any infringement have occurred inadvertently, the publisher apologises and undertakes to amend the omission in the event of a reprint. NWU Self-Directed Learning Series Volume 2 The decolonisation of the curriculum project The affordances of indigenous knowledge for self-directed learning EDITOR Josef de Beer Social Sciences, Humanities, Education & Business Management domain editorial board at AOSIS Commissioning Editor: Scholarly Books Andries van Aarde, Post-Retirement Professor, Dean’s Office, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa Board Members Jan Botha, Professor, Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa Joan Hambidge, Deputy Dean, Faculty of Humanities, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa; Professor, School of Languages and Literatures, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa Sakari Häkkinen, Dean, The Diocese of Kuopio, Finland Glenna Jackson, Associate Editor, Professor Chair, Department of Religion and Philosophy, Otterbein University, Westerville, OH, United States of America Gregory C. Jenkins, Dean-elect, St George’s College, Jerusalem, Israel Reina-Marie Loader, Director and Filmmaker, CinémaHumain, Vienna, Austria Babita Marthur-Helm, Senior Lecturer, Organisational Transformation & Development; Managing Diversity Gender Empowerment, University of Stellenbosch Business School, Stellenbosch, South Africa Christopher Mbazira, Professor of Law & Coordinator of the Public Interest Law Clinic, Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda Piet Naudé, Professor, Ethics related to politics, economics and business, University of Stellenbosch Business School, Stellenbosch, South Africa; Director, University of Stellenbosch Business School, Stellenbosch, South Africa Charles Neill, Professor Department of Business Administration, The British University in Egypt, El Sherouk, Cairo Governorate, Egypt Cornelia Pop, Full professor, Department of Business, Faculty of Business, Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Michael Schratz, Professor, Institute of Teacher Education and School Research, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria; Dean, School of Education, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria Johann Tempelhoff, Extraordinary Professor, South African Water History Archival Repository (SAWHAR), Faculty of Humanities, North-West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa Anthony Turton, Professor, Centre for Environmental Management, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa; Director, TouchStone Resources, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa Willie L. van der Merwe, Professor & Chair, Philosophy of Religion, Apologetics and Encyclopaedia of Theology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa; Professor Extraordinary, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Christi van der Westhuizen, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa Joke van Saane, Professor, Amsterdam Center for the Study of Lived Religion, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands Paul van Tongeren, Professor, Department Philosophy, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands Robert G. Varady, Deputy Director and Research Professor, Environmental Policy, Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, United States of America Anné H. Verhoef, Associate Editor, Professor, Faculty of Arts: School of Philosophy, North- West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa Xiao Yun Zheng, Professor & Assistant President, Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences (YASS); and Director, International Center for Ecological Culture Studies (ICECS-YASS), Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, Kunming City, China Peer review declaration The publisher (AOSIS) endorses the South African ‘National Scholarly Book Publishers Forum Best Practice for Peer Review of Scholarly Books’. The manuscript was subjected to a rigorous two-step peer review prior to publication, with the identities of the reviewers not revealed to the author(s). The reviewers were independent of the publisher and/or authors in question. The reviewers commented positively on the scholarly merits of the manuscript and recommended that the manuscript should be published. Where the reviewers recommended revision and/or improvements to the manuscript, the authors responded adequately to such recommendations. Research Justification This book is the result of a longitudinal research project (2016—2018) funded by the National Research Foundation and the Fuchs Foundation, and it disseminates original research. The project researched the affordances of indigenous knowledge in the school Science, Technology and Mathematics curricula. Short learning programmes (SLPs) were offered to Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) teachers, during which they engaged in creative and inquiry-based teaching and learning strategies. Research shows that strategies such as problem-based and cooperative learning have the potential to enhance self-directed learning. This design-based research was conducted in several provinces in South Africa (North-West Province, the Northern Cape, Limpopo province, and Gauteng). Based on the data obtained after each intervention, design principles were formulated for redesigning of SLPs. The qualitative research focussed on teachers’ lived experiences of the epistemological border- crossing between Natural Science and indigenous knowledge, their views on the nature of science and indigenous knowledge, and the reformed teaching and learning that took place after the intervention in teachers’ classrooms. Most of the chapters in the book report empirical data, with the exception of three chapters (Ch. 2, Ch. 10 and Ch. 11), that can be categorised as systematic reviews. The book is devoted to scholarship in the field of STEM education and teacher professional development, with a specific focus on research into the enhancement of self-directed learning. The target audience are scholars working in the fields of indigenous knowledge systems, STEM education, teacher professional development and self-directed learning. This book makes a unique contribution in terms of, firstly, its extensive use of third-generation Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) as a research lens and, secondly, in drawing on research from the fields of neuroscience, science education philosophy, self-directed learning and indigenous knowledge systems, in arguing for such border-crossing. Chapter 1 shows how this research contributes to the development of fourth- generation CHAT, which, owing to the complexity of the object (which Engeström refers to as ‘runaway objects’), requires a focus on numerous activity systems. The book also explores the conundrum of research ethics during participatory action