Engaging the Struggle for Decolonial Approaches to Teaching Community Psychology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Watkins ◽  
Nuria Ciofalo ◽  
Susan James
Keyword(s):  
Community Psychology ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Teaching Community

Teaching Community Psychology Decolonially: A Pedagogical Journey

2020 ◽  
pp. 108926802097458
Author(s):  
Martin Terre Blanche ◽  
Eduard Fourie ◽  
Puleng Segalo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Community Psychology ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Pedagogical Approach ◽  
Course Content ◽  
Teaching Community ◽  
Long Time

The decolonial impulse in psychology has manifested across a variety of domains, perhaps most notably psychological theory and approaches to research methodology. In this article, we focus on how decoloniality can reshape approaches to teaching and learning. We present a case study of how we recurriculated, from 1999 to 2020, three community psychology modules using a decolonial lens. We describe three phases in the development of community psychology teaching at a university in South Africa—“Little Oxford in the veld,” “Going walkabout,” and “New voices.” In each case, we detail the “course content,” our pedagogical approach, and how students responded, and try to identify what lessons can be learnt for a more explicitly decolonial mode of teaching and learning. We conclude by asserting that to foster decoloniality among students, we have to be cognizant of the ways in which they have for a long time been taught using Euro-centric lenses and frames of knowing and therefore the process of unlearning may be slow and somewhat painful. However, we see this as a necessary step toward decolonization, as epistemic colonization was and continues to be a violent project.

Teaching Community Psychology as Community Engagement

2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-575 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angelo Fynn ◽  
Martin Terre Blanche ◽  
Eduard Fourie ◽  
Johan Kruger
Keyword(s):  
Community Engagement ◽  
Community Psychology ◽  
Teaching Community

Epistemological resistance towards diversality: teaching community psychology as a decolonial project

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronelle Carolissen ◽  
Hugo Canham ◽  
Eduard Fourie ◽  
Tanya Graham ◽  
Puleng Segalo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Community Psychology ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Public Universities ◽  
Political Instability ◽  
Teaching Community ◽  
Cognitive Justice

In contexts of political instability and change, the value of disciplinary knowledges and the processes that constituted them is often questioned. Psychology is not exempt from this process. Little South African work has illustrated what teaching for decoloniality may mean in South African psychology. We draw on examples of curriculum design in community psychology from the Universities of the Witwatersrand, South Africa and Stellenbosch, three large South African public universities, in an attempt to surface what we regard as the decolonial frameworks that underpin their development and delivery. Capacities for reflexivity and the ability to hold multiple epistemologies encourage economies of knowledge that may prevent abyssal thinking, while contributing to cognitive justice and minimising opportunities for epistemicide. Some challenges to our pedagogy involve the potential for romanticising decoloniality.

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