Decolonising the mind: Mathematics teachers explore possibilities for indigenising the school curriculum

Abstract

More than twenty years after the ushering in of a democratic order, South African universities remain complicit in driving colonial ideals through curricula (de Beer & Petersen, 2016; Fataar, 2018). These curricula position Western people as superior individuals who seek to help disadvantaged non-westerners who are weak, helpless, and dependent, and who cannot survive without aid from Western philanthropists. In this paper, I heed the call to re-orient curricula away from knowledge systems that have been used to devalue indigenous African people by othering them in the country of their birth. I do this by creating an opportunity for practising teachers of different races, all of whom were part of a postgraduate module, to reconceptualise the current school curriculum by placing African learners and their contexts at the centre of teaching. In this qualitative study, 20 practising teachers were purposively selected to draw on their own visions and talents and those of their multi-racial learners to develop possibilities for indigenising the teaching and learning of mathematics. This was aimed at decolonising their minds by transforming their understanding of themselves and encouraging them to tap into their critical thinking and analytical skills when they were examining the current school curricula. To accomplish this, teachers studied the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS) in mathematics, and developed units of work aimed at valuing indigenous knowledge. Data was drawn from teachers' portfolios of evidence that included photo-narratives and reflections on the unit of work they created. Through thematic analysis the findings revealed that teachers and their learners tapped into resources in and outside the school and engaged in work that was responsive to their own needs. However, the exercise demonstrated that these teachers found it difficult to depart from the comfort of the factual mathematics they taught to include indigenous links from contexts around them. This was clear in their attempt to produce contrived associations with the knowledge from CAPS.