Towards de-colonial agitations in university classrooms: The quest for afrocentric pedagogy

Abstract

This study empirically conceptualised and rationalised decoloniality as a way to bridge the vacuumed of Americentric classroom hegemony in an attempt to reposition classroom with Afrocentricism as a dominant practice in Universities. "Ubuntugogy" as a transformational deviation from the Americentric teaching and learning is adopted as a theoretical framework. The study is situated in the transformative paradigm because its focus is to propose "ubuntugogy" as a way to deconstruct Eurocentric hegemony in university classrooms. Critical Emancipatory Research CER as an epistemological movement that is channelled towards emancipation and freedom from ideological enslavement is used as research design, and the participants consist of 10 people, 5 actively experienced lecturers, and 5 students were selected in the QwaQwa campus of the University of the Free State. Free attitude interview was used to collect data from the participant and the data collected were analysed using Thomas and Harden's three steps of thematic analysis. The study found out that the curriculum and the perpendicular of language and cultural diversities, and colonization of mind and irresistible western classroom system are the significant challenges of implementing "ubuntugogy" in the classroom. The study subsequently proposed curriculum adjustment to accommodate trans-languaging and cultural diversities, and inculcation of self-worth and self-esteem to respond to the western irresistibility in the system with the conclusion that Afrocentric classroom may be one dimensional and thus needs to be redirected to speak to the issues of globalization.