Exploiting Opportune Spaces to Disrupt Dominant Discourses

• In Event: Refusing Systemic Inequality: Curriculum as Disruptive-Productive Device for Equity Aspirations

Abstract

Noting the large scale inequities that continue to pervade schooling within South Africa and the continuing use of national policies to provide equitable frameworks for progressive education post- apartheid, moments of disruptive activities are needed as point of critical reflections in the transformational journey. In this paper I argue that academic activists in positions of leadership has the potential to create these moments of disruptions (Apple, 2010). Using critical incidence within a self-reflection methodology (Pithouse-Morgan, et al. 2014), I reflect on my leadership positions at various agencies, including higher education, president of a national research association and thought leader to illuminate possibilities of standing within the cracks of social equities to prize open systemic inequalities for disruptive conversations that can make a difference. I also argue that context for disruptive discourse do make a substantial difference in such agency. In this respect the COVID-19 pandemic provided this context as media took centrefold in searching for a seeking activist thought leaders to provide counter-narrative perspectives on issues related to school.
Drawing on Apple’s (2018) notion of politicising the academic, I share three critical moments of disruption of dominant educational discourses to illuminate continued systemic inequalities. The first being a critical thought leader sought by the national media to provide perspectives and analysis on school education during COVID-19 when the Department of Basic Education was pedantic in trying to save the academic year. Critiquing this pedantic focus of saving the academic year, I proposed a review of the planned school curriculum to mine out core learnings and progression competence per school grade to allow for meaningful learning. The context of this proposal was recognition of the grand scale inaccessibility to teaching and learning moments through emergency remote and digital process (Du Preez & Le Grange 2020) by the majority of learners due to access and resources challenges experienced by the impoverished learner communities. A trimmed national curriculum is now in place for the school education system. Two other critical moments are presented in this paper.
The significance of this paper lies in the recognition that disruptive discourses is needed at opportune times to illuminate, pause and possibly re-direct attempts to make systemic changes for equitable and just educational opportunities within the context of grand scale diverse context such as South Africa.
Apple MW (2010). ‘Keynote address at the World Congress for Comparative Education Society’, XIV World Congress, Istanbul / TURKEY, June 14–18.
Apple MW (2018). Critical curriculum studies and the concrete problems of curriculum policy and practice. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50(6): 685-690, DOI: 10.1080/00220272.2018.1537373.
Du Preez P & Le Grange L (2020). The COVID-19 Pandemic, Online Teaching/ Learning, the Digital Divide and Epistemological Access. In L. Ramrathan; N. Ndimande-Hlongwa; N. Mkhize & J. A. Smit (Eds), Re-thinking the Humanities Curriculum in the Time of COVID-19. CSSALL, Durban. P 90 – 106. https://doi.org/10.29086/978-0-9869936-1-9/2020/AASBS01
Pithouse-Morgan K, Mitchell C & Pillay D (2014). Self-study of educational practice: Re-imagining our pedagogies. Perspectives in Education, 32(2): 1-7.

Authors

• Prevanand Labby Ramrathan, University of KwaZulu-Natal

• Chris Paul Reddy