A Decolonial Analysis of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) Curriculum at South African Universities

• In Event: Making the Invisible Visible: Ethical and Decolonial Futures in Global Higher Education from Non-Western Contexts, Perspectives, and Practices

Proposal

In the wave of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), South Africa stands at the crossroads of technological advancement and recolonization. Despite the massification of higher education, students show low retention rates and poor performances in STEM programs (Case et al., 2013). While 4IR-focused curricula may cultivate intellectuals for corresponding industries, new technologies may contradict the local philosophy like Ubuntu, which promotes communitarian values in human relationality (Madianou, 2019). With relevance to this conference’s theme about education in the digital society, my scholarly paper argues that scholars need to reimagine the 4IR curriculum in the South African higher education context from a decolonial perspective.


Current discussions on the decolonization of African university curricula focus mainly on liberal arts and social science (Benyera, 2021; Govender & Naidoo, 2023). Some studies have scrutinized the design of new STEM curricula in the era of 4IR and discussed the economic benefits for labor market (Carrim, 2022; Maringe, 2017). However, few problematize the coloniality embedded inside the seemingly value-free 4IR knowledge. My scholarly paper extends the current discussion by categorizing the coloniality of the 4IR curricula and analyzing corresponding approaches to curricular decolonization.


Adopting the framework of decoloniality of curriculum (Maldonado-Torres, 2007), this paper identifies three findings:
Decoloniality of Being: From a decolonial ontological perspective, 4IR courses such as robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) should be grounded in Ubuntu communitarian values and relationality. The implementation of 4IR technologies in robotics and AI promotes the individualistic and neoliberal pursuit of personal free will and capital benefits, while seriously challenging the communitarian values of relational development and well-being (Ugar, 2023; van Norren, 2022). In addition, the 4IR technology should regard intelligence as a collective and relational wisdom in social and economic organizations according to Ubuntu philosophy (Eke, 2021).
Decoloniality of Knowledge: Current South African higher education curricula have applied colonial white knowledge that devalued the African traditional way of knowing (Govender & Naidoo, 2023; Uleanya, 2020). Fomunyam (2020) argued that 4IR knowledge should be taught in an interdisciplinary and culturally responsive approach. It is also imperative to decolonize the dominance of English in the curriculum, which transmits the hegemonic Eurocentric epistemology and devaluates ways of knowing in the African context (Adams, 2021).
Decoloniality of Doing: Decoloniality of doing aims to raise individual scholars’ awareness of oppression and forms of colonial acts in the curriculum through reflexive activities. Throughout reflexive activities, black students reflect on how STEM programs and classroom spaces marginalize them from white people (CCWG, 2018; Idahosa & Mkhize, 2021). Black scholars in STEM have protested against inherited racism and sexism in the emerging 4IR industries, voicing the vulnerability of black scholars in scientific research (Mkhize, 2023).


My discussion suggests that 4IR curricula and practices should fit within the communitarian philosophy. Future research may discuss the involvement of emerging academic powers like China and Japan in the 4IR curriculum design, and how the involvement brings concerns about power dynamics and the malleable whiteness again to the African communities (Mude et al., 2022; Shahjahan & Edwards, 2022).

Author

• Yilun Jiang, Michigan State University