Decolonization and Curriculum Transformation: Why Epistemic Delinking Is So Hard for Preservice Teachers of Economics

• In Event: Citizen-Scholars as Agentic Subjects in the University Curriculum Decolonising Initiative in South Africa

Abstract

Higher education curriculum theorising in economic education has historically been strongly connected to the nature of economics as a discipline, as well as its fundamental tenets of economic efficiency, utility maximisation, trade-offs and quantifiable justification for economic decision making. The discipline of economics has its genesis in neoclassical economics and addresses two key issues, namely, the need to solve the economic problem of scarcity and the maximising of human need satisfaction.
This paper reports on a study that explored pre-service teachers’ conceptions of decolonisation and curriculum transformation as it relates to the high-school economics curriculum. This qualitative case study draws on Decolonial Critique by applying Mignolo’s (2011) notion of epistemic delinking to explore how canonical economic thought and principles might be disrupted through a teacher education programme for pre-service teachers of economics. Data were generated through a series of in-depth interviews with a sample of 20 pre-service teachers who were enrolled for an economics education course at a university in South Africa.
A key finding is that epistemic delinking from years of undergraduate ‘disciplining’ is a traumatic and unsettling process for pre-service economics teachers in this programme. The study also reveals that a year-long course on economics pedagogy is insufficient to develop a deep, conceptually rich language of description as it relates to curriculum transformation and decolonisation. Furthermore, pre-service teachers demonstrate different proclivities for engagement with curriculum transformation and decolonial imperatives and that ‘taking responsibility’ for this agenda is in tension with their pre-occupation with survivalist strategies, namely, developing fundamental teaching competences and knowledgeability as it relates to the contents of the official South African Curriculum and Assessment Policy (CAPS).
These findings are significant as it brings into sharp purview, how institutionalised curriculum transformation and decolonisation agendas might translate into technical checkbox exercises, compliance pedagogic practices as opposed to an intrinsically driven will to take responsibility for transformation and decolonisation of the South African school curriculum. Of importance is that attempts at curriculum transformation and decolonisation comes with risks which pre-service teachers appear reluctant to embrace given their perceived vulnerability as novices in the school context.
Mignolo, W. 2011. Epistemic Disobedience and the decolonial option: A Manifesto. Transmodernity, Fall.

Author

• SURIAMURTHEE MOONSAMY MAISTRY, University of KwaZulu-Natal