Problematizing "Disadvantaged" Students' Epistemic Access to University in a Postcolonial South African Context

• In Event: Alternative Notions of Student Access and Engagement in Universities in Postcolonial/Less-Developed Areas in China

Abstract

This paper problematises the notion of the 'disadvantaged student' prevalent in universities in post-colonial contexts. We argue for a richer, more engaging notion of these students to enable such universities to provide an educational engagement platform to promote their students epistemic access, i.e. access to the knowledge of the university. We start from the premise that higher education discourses have framed disadvantaged, mostly first generation, students in deficit terms such as them lacking the cultural capital and resources to successfully participate at university. This deficit thinking approach emphasizes students’ low socio-economic status, first generation and English second language status as factors that prevent students from participating effectively in higher education. Using deficit understandings to construct these ‘newer’ students leads to educational practices that alienate them from the university's academic and cultural resources resulting in inadequate educational engagement practices among disadvantaged students. We argue that recognising the community cultural wealth’ (Yosso 2005) and funds of knowledge’ (Moll 2014) that disadvantages students bring to the university will gives us a deeper understanding of their educational socialization, engagement and emergent intellectual becoming. Using South African higher education as a case, our main argument will be that alternate discourses should focus on the objective or structural conditions of these students' lives in relation to the subjective and formative processes that make up their student becoming (Barnett, 2007) and their capacity to engage in higher education.

Authors

• Doria Daniels, Stellenbosch University

• Najwa Norodien-Fataar, Cape Peninsula University of Technology

• Jerome Joorst, Stellenbosch University