The coloniality of being and explorations of decolonizing Teacher Professional Development, pedagogy and curriculum in Tanzanian education

• In Event: Teacher agency, autonomy, and leadership as essential ingredients for effective professional development

Proposal

In the spirit of protest as collective action to change systems and the authors’ commitment to decolonizing education and research methodologies, this paper uses the theoretical perspective of the Coloniality of Being (Maldonado-Torres 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013;) to interrogate instances in our personal research and the collaborative Design-Based Implementation Research that exert space for alternative ways of being, specifically in the conceptualization and practices of pedagogy, teacher PD and curriculum.
The concept of coloniality denotes “long-standing patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labor, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations” (Maldonado-Torres, 2007, p. 243). The analytical distinction of the coloniality of power (political and economic), of knowledge (epistemology and relative value of different knowledges) and of being (philosophy, subjectivities, language, lived experience) allows decolonial scholars to explore the multiple, complex and intertwined ways in which current systems reinforce or transform the status quo. As noted by Santos (2018), education systems and pedagogy in particular are pivotal institutions that can inscribe and reproduce coloniality and make epistemologies of the South invisible (Eriksen & Svendsen, 2020, p. X). A salient aspect of this project is “problematising the ‘Eurocentric prisms’ through which [pedagogical] discourse is framed” (Adam, 2019).
In this paper, we will highlight findings from the DBIR and separate dissertation projects conducted in Tanzanian schools by the authors over the past 5 years through which run a common thread of recognizing instances where the actions, philosophy or experiences of educators and students call into question predominant theories of quality pedagogy, curriculum and models for teacher professional development. These examples include disjunctures between local knowledge and official curriculum (Mwakabungu, 2021), pedagogy of context and the relevance of science (Massam, 2019), and ‘provocative’ teaching and moral aspects of pedagogy (Chachage, 2020). We will also discuss subtle negotiations and adaptations occurring in the implementation of the new government model for Teacher Continuous Professional Development (TCPD or MEWAKA in Swahili) as documented through the DBIR (Koomar, et.al., 2023), highlighting how such adjustments reflect ontological tensions and differing worldviews.
We also acknowledge the contradictory space in which we operate - attempting to decolonize TPD while working within education, research and technical assistance systems that in other ways reinforce coloniality of being and universalist approaches to education. Even the reflections in this paper, aiming to decolonize Western-influenced hegemonic conceptions of pedagogy and knowledge, are built on the premise of a “Tanzanian” identity – itself a diverse, multi-faceted and complex product of nationalism, modernism, Ujamaa, pan-Africanism, coloniality and anti-colonialism. Our exploration of these examples is offered in order to open up alternative interpretations of these tensions and situations in order to imagine alternative models of pedagogy and TPD.

Authors

• Kristeen Chachage, Independent Consultant

• Fika Mwakabungu, EdTech Hub

• Winston Edward Massam, Aga Khan University