Technology Integration in Higher Education: African Philosophy as Strategy to Protest Domineering Faculty-Student Relationships and Pedagogies

• In Event: Decolonizing, critiquing, and reimagining higher education

Proposal

Introduction
How is successful integration of digital technology in teaching and learning in higher education (HE) conceived? Due partly to the multimodal and multiscalar nature of technology applications, there lacks holistic theories to explain the phenomenon. However, multidisciplinary theories, including behaviourism, cognitivism, constructivism, connectivism and collaborationism (Harasim, 2017; Sattar, 2017), TPACK framework (Mishra & Koehler, 2006), and authentic learning theory (Herrington & Parker, 2013), have been used to underpin technology-enhanced teaching and learning globally. Their focus on basic education and their less sensitivity to contextual reality restrict their fecundity to successfully explain technology integration in HE, especially in the Global South.
Besides, even blended learning, the most prevalent form of technology integration in HE (Garrison, 2011), lacks sound theoretical explanations (Andrews, 2011; Bekele et al., 2022; Halverson et al., 2014; Kirkwood & Price, 2014).
These conceptual issues along with the following theoretical and methodological challenges justify the need to have further study and theorization on this significant and timely topic, especially in Africa where there is a dearth of scholarship on the topic. First, literature (Chuang, 2016; Morgan, 2014; Woodley et al., 2017) indicated that technology integration is culture sensitive.
However, existing conceptualizations are developed within Western/Northern cultural settings. Hence, there is a clear gap in our understanding of the phenomenon in the diverse and massifying African HE system. The historico-cultural contexts and academic cultures of African HE need to be considered for creating useful theoretical explanations of phenomena generally (Bekele et al., 2022; Bekele & Ofoyuru, 2021; Oplatka, 2019: Schalkwyk, 2015).
Furthermore, African HE is mainly a European (colonial) creation (Assie-Lumumba, 2006; Cloete & Maassen, 2015). The primary mission of universities upon their founding and decades afterwards has been to generate and transmit ideology in service of colonial interests (Balsvik, 2005; Kom, 2005; Mayaki, 2019), wherein Western curricula were transposed into African campuses with no consideration for local relevance (Amponsah & Babarinde, 2022; Kom, 2005). Although attribution is often made to colonialism, faulty characteristics also contribute to the master-slave faculty-student relationships and dictating pedagogies in African HE (Dei et al., 2019; Kom, 2005; Nhemachena & Mawere, 2022).
Consequently, we conjecture that successful technology integration in teaching and learning in African HE assumes revitalization and reconceptualization of African university education. Specifically, inclusion in curricula of local knowledge systems and adoption of more engaging, empowering, and emancipatory pedagogies are vital for success. The embodiment in curricula and pedagogy of African philosophical, theoretical, conceptual and methodological thinking (Haybano et al., 2021; Connell, 2007, 2017; Gutema, 2013; Verharen, 2013) is among the critical factors for successful technology integration and further theorization. We, thus, aspire to provide African philosophies of humanity and epistemology that could offer the conceptual scaffolding for the anticipated revisioning.
The study revolves around answering this overarching question: How could African knowledge systems support successful integration of digital technologies in teaching and learning in HE? The following specific questions guide the study.
● How do African philosophies view human beings and their interrelationships? What implications could these philosophies have to the reconceptualization of faculty-student relationships in technology-enhanced teaching and learning spaces?
● How could African epistemologies support more engaging, empowering, and emancipatory pedagogies in technology-enhanced spaces?

Study Approach and Significance
This study interrogated how African philosophies of humanity and knowledge could support successful technology integration in HE. Although African philosophy encompasses all the main branches of philosophy as a discipline (Wiredu, 2004), we examined African philosophies of humanity and knowledge for focus. Specifically, for their complementarity, relevance, and significance to technology integration, we interrogated Ubuntu (from Southern Africa) and Asabiyya (from Northern Africa) philosophies of humanity. Ubuntu has been considered as a possible pedagogical philosophy and a prospective governmental policy that is connected to explaining how the marginalised in societies are treated. As an indigenous knowledge system, it could similarly be used to enhance effective online teaching and learning in African HE (Daniel et al., 2009; Zireva, 2016). Moreover, Islam, a guiding tenet for Arab African countries and a framework for generating new knowledge in many African universities (Lo, 2016), is integrally connected with technology (Mohammed et al., 2021). Asabiyya, which generally means humanity to others, is considered the Arab equivalent to Ubuntu (Badroen, 2015). These worldviews (Asabiyya and Ubuntu) embody assumptions about human beings and their interrelationships which could trigger and drive the reconceptualization of the existing master-slave faculty-student relationships in African campuses.
As “one’s view of knowledge affects one’s view of learning and teaching” (Bekele et al., 2022, p.11), we also interrogated what knowledge is and how it is created and disseminated in African societies. We considered the Yoruba and Zara Yacob philosophies respectively from West (Nigeria) and East (Ethiopia) Africa for the following reasons. One, African philosophy “has a communal as well as an individualised component’’ (Wiredu, 2004, p. 22); the Yoruba philosophy is communal whereas Zara Yacob’s is individualised. Featuring the two knowledge perspectives could support a holistic analysis and cross-fertilization of ideas having direct implications to teaching and learning. Two, the Yoruba has a clear empiricist orientation whereas Zara Yacob has rationalist orientation. We consider these orientations as alternative and complementary cultures to satisfactorily study the phenomenon. The two theories of knowledge could give us a glimpse of the conditions driving knowledge production in West and East Africa.
In sum, we will demonstrate the existence of relevant local knowledge systems that could meaningfully underpin technology integration in African HEIs. Embedding the African philosophies in curricula and pedagogy begs for faculty deep reflections and hence, it is an innovative design for supporting (faculty) professional learning and development. The proposed African philosophies are thus considered as effective strategies to protest the master-slave faculty-student relationships and domineering pedagogies rampant in African HEIs. This embeddedness in local knowledge systems to support technology integration is the unique and original contribution of our work to HE studies in Africa and to comparative and international education generally.

Authors

• Teklu Abate Bekele, The American University In Cairo

• Ibrahim M Karkouti, The American University In Cairo