Incorporating Indigenous Knowledge Systems into South Africa’s Education:
an evolution of professional praxis
Louis Royce Botha - Ph.D. fellow
Advisor:
Project period:
Februay 2006-Februay 2010
The project is financed by Oslo University College.
My research will analyse indigenous knowledge systems within black South African communities and their potential for addressing the tensions that arise there as a result of conflicting messages and impulses within educational institutions and their strongly modernist project on the one hand, and the real situations in the community on the other. In this respect I hope to
1) identify and explore in a participative way, knowledge and knowledge systems existing in especially rural communities where strong relations exist between the traditions, practices and identities of indigenous peoples, for the purpose developing a more appropriate and holistic approach to the training of teachers and other professionals within these communities.
2) use data and methodologies gathered during the research to develop and test ways of including indigenous knowledge into mainstream institutions for education and training.
Essentially I wish to investigate the potential of indigenous knowledge systems for complementing current educational practices in societies where beliefs, practices and resources differ from those assumed in dominant modernist systems. Not only does this broaden the frame of reference of those trained in this way, it also questions the direction in which professional training should go in these contexts.
In my earlier research (Botha: 2003) I have used Paulo Freire as a theoretical framework to argued for the interpretation of black South Africans’ situations and conciousness as dominated and precariously balanced upon alienating principles. I wish to take those ideas further by researching and applying Freire’s methodology to indigenous populations within rural situations in South Africa.
This research will therefore basically be an ethnographic study of a rural Xhosa community, making use of observations and indepth interviews to gather information and gain insight into the knowledges existing in this context, and then using what has been learned to re-evaluate existing teaching practices.
What this research wants to question is how appropriate the knowledge base of professionals is, especially with regard to rural communities in “developing” countries. Does this base effectively serve clients who do not subscribe to a similar world view? If not, can this apparent alienation be addressed by altering the professionals’ training, or is it the client who has to acquire the professional’s perspective?