Radical curriculum change and institutional theory: The case of decolonization in South African universities

• In Event: Curriculum, internationalization and development

Proposal

CIES 2019 SAN FRANCISCO
Education for Sustainability

Formal Paper Presentation/Empirical Research

Keywords
Higher Education/Curriculum Studies/Decolonization

Geographic Region Descriptors
Southern Africa/South Africa


Radical curriculum change and institutional theory:
The case of decolonization in South African universities

Dr Cyrill Walters and Professor Jonathan Jansen
University of Stellenbosch

This multi-year research study examines the uptake of radical curriculum change in South African universities in the wake of the unprecedented student protest movement of 2015-16 calling for the decolonization of knowledge. Starting with the public toppling of the massive bronze statue of the English imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, the historically white universities in particular established curriculum committees (by various names) to decolonize the curriculum. This segment of the research reports on the differential uptake of decolonization efforts at two out of ten universities at the forefront of student protests.
The two main research questions are 1] to trace how and to what extent the radical demands for decolonization were taken up within two research universities and 2] to explain differential uptake between these two institutions but also within each of them by discipline or field of inquiry. These questions are pursued against the backdrop of the limited literature on the difficulties of changing the institutional curriculum within higher education and in relation to comparative studies of radical curriculum change within US universities—such as the common core debates.
The theoretical framework developed for and tested in this study is a new institutional theory of curriculum. With origins in the sociology of organizations and curriculum theory, this institutional perspective explains how universities absorb proposals for radical change without changing the core of what constitutes knowledge in the disciplines. In this way the institutional curriculum remains constant even though on the margins of particular fields and disciplines it would appear that change has happened. This theory therefore explains curriculum constancy over the expectation of curriculum change. The institutional forces that keep the curriculum in place—such as powerful accreditation standards and the socialization of scholars---are explored within the studied universities.
The broader study is consists of ten institutional case studies built composed through a combination of cycles of interviews with key stakeholders in the curriculum change processes of each universities; observations of curriculum committee deliberations; analyses of records of meetings of these committees; and further analyses of the “products” of committee deliberations from curriculum change frameworks to actual curricula produced within faculties, schools and departments. Under the umbrella of the two main research questions, the case study methods probe questions such as the meanings of decolonization with these committees; the scope and depth of curricular changes; the arguments for and against radical changes to the curriculum; the “uptake” of radical change in different departments (anthropology versus law, or sociology versus chemistry, for example); the” theory of action” for curriculum change on the part of the curriculum committees as they envisaged implementation; and the sustainability of these radical curriculum change initiatives within universities in the months and years following student protests demanding decolonization.
Testing the institutional theory of curriculum change, the research underway reports on the following hypotheses tested in this first-ever empirical study on the uptake of decolonization in university curricula:
1. That different institutions will respond differently to political demands for decolonizing the curriculum depending on the institutional history, politics and the value and belief systems of each one of them. A traditionally liberal university in an urban environment with a critical mass of critical scholars are more likely to embrace such changes than a traditionally conservative university in a rural setting.

2. That within each institution there would be considerable variation in the response to curriculum decolonization given the political orientation of academic leadership at that level.

3. That humanities and social science faculties would take up the call for decolonization much more readily than in the sciences and engineering given very different institutional understandings of the politics of knowledge.

4. That the overall institutional curriculum—traditional ways of teaching, learning, assessing and curriculating—would remain largely unchanged at that level of the university even if individual or whole programmes in a department might change more or less or not at all.

5. That as the political pressure for decolonization of the curriculum subsides, the institution and its academics would, for the most part, revert to form (‘as you were’ stance towards curriculum) and divert institutional energies to other crises emerging on campuses.

6. That the external and internal demands on the institutional curriculum as well as the disciplinary curriculum outlast and outweigh the influence of political demands for decolonization

7. That the uptake of decolonization would nevertheless leave traces in the practice of university curricula in specific disciplines and departments long after the political pressure for change has subsided.

Authors

• Jonathan Jansen, Stellenbosch University

• Cyrill Agnes Walters, stellenbosch university