The potency of ubuntugogy as a decolonised pedagogy in universities : challenges and solutions

Abstract

Pedagogy, a subset of modernity that could be regarded as the supremacy of Western epistemology, has been the major core of curricula implementation in the university system. This includes but is not limited to teaching, learning, and the teaching and learning process. However, this article argues that pedagogy and its implementation process are too Westernised, thereby rendering the teaching-learning process in rural classrooms ineffective because the Western epistemic process portends a pseudo-process with complicated pedagogical contour. This article challenges the impotence of pedagogy to reinvigorate the potency of Ubuntugogy as an alternative to the current pedagogical process in university classrooms. Ubuntugogy as a decolonial classroom technique underpinned the study. This study is located in the Transformative Paradigm (TP), informed by Participatory Research (PR) design in order to transform the assumed colonial Western epistemology using the views of university students and lecturers in a selected rural university in South Africa. A convenient selection method was used to select ten participants: five postgraduate students and five lecturers. An unstructured interview was used to elicit information from the participants while the data were subjected to Thematic Analysis (TA). The study discovered that the major challenges of Ubuntugogy are that university stakeholders lack interest in indigenous knowledge production and its implementation, and that the stereotypical mentality of people hinders the proposition of ubuntugogy. While collaborative instruction and Africanisation of things are a dimension of promoting ubuntugogy in the university system, all stakeholders must collaborate to ensure that knowledge is all-inclusive and culturally valued to enhance students' participation.