No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Decolonizing the Selection Criteria of Literature Novels in Secondary Schools and Universities in Zambia: A Decolonizing Approach
Abstract
The chapter interrogates the selection criteria of Literature novels in secondary schools and universities in Zambia with respect to the extent and use of local novels. The chapter used a qualitative research design with a total of 40 participants which included Heads of the Department of Literature and Languages at the secondary school level, Heads of the Department of Literature and Languages at the university level, and students from both secondary schools and universities. While it is an expectation that the Literature syllabus included at the secondary and tertiary levels draw on authors within and outside Zambia, the study revealed that there was inequality in the selection of novels as both syllabi for secondary schools and universities, and that selections were dominated by foreign-authored novels. The study found very few novels authored by Zambian writers that found space in the institutions included in the secondary school syllabi and higher education in Zambia. The authors of this study recommend that novels authored by Zambians should be given priority in the selection process to enable learners to acquire indigenous knowledge based on Zambian culture and principles.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
This work was born out of a research project embarked upon by the Zambia Textbook, Academic and Non-fiction Authors Association (ZATANFAA). The objective was to examine the writing space in the country. For example, we tried to assess if there was writing activity going on and how that was being responded to by Zambian readers. The study also attempted to examine the relations between writers and publishers and how this could help grow the literary scene even further in the country.
The research interacted with about five readers, five writers, five publishers, and five booksellers in each of the provinces of the country.
In this chapter, focusing on national policy on higher education, Mudenda Simukungwe discusses whether such policy in Zambia enables universities to engage in knowledge production endeavours that could achieve a decolonised education. Although the national education policy for Zambia by implication is implicitly accommodative of decolonised education, institutions of higher learning, owing to their being grounded in Eurocentrism, lack commitment to appreciate and enact decoloniality. Simukungwe argues that ultimately the Zambian education experience shows a rationalisation of endemic coloniality, regarding coloniality as a natural property of the modern world. This is so, because the endemic and naturalised interpretive frames of Eurocentrism inherently repel tolerance of indigenous frames of thought; ultimately Eurocentrism reproduces itself in the academe, thus epistemically disempowering universities to achieve decoloniality. Simukungwe also highlights that until recently, African political leadership and policymakers have not meaningfully engaged African researchers and indigenous knowledge and aspirations in education policy formulation, but overly relied on foreign expertise as policy consultants on account of their being well grounded in the Eurocentrism that drives modernity. Achieving decoloniality in Zambia, as Simukungwe highlights, would have to include indispensably revising the curriculum and curriculum texts in education institutions, reimagining criteria for academic performance, reconsidering cultural patterns in schools and the general self-image of localness in schools. Developing and implementing mother tongue languages for instruction in schools are also central requirements for progress towards decoloniality in Zambia. The chapter calls for Zambian higher education to aspire developing education models that are majorly grounded in the local socio-cultural context of the people of Zambia, responding to their challenges inasmuch as education aspires for global citizenship. The available policy frameworks, according to Simukungwe, provide room for endeavours of decolonising education systems and institutions in Zambia.
The experiences of colonialism, in their psycho-cultural, educational, philosophico-epistemological and social development dimensions have been extensive, and with respect to the lives of the colonized, severely limiting in their onto-existential locations and outcomes. I will not go more than warranted into detail in terms of the immediate and enduring impact of this heavy world phenomenon on the immediate lived contexts of the colonized. It was, ipso facto, intensive, extensive, formative and undoubtedly deformative in relation to the hitherto globalizing interactions that have become the derivatives of such experience
Research methods: Qualitative and quantitative approach. African Centre for Technology Studies
- O M Mugenda
- A G Mugenda
An assessment of the implementation of the literature in English syllabus in secondary schools in Itezhi-tezhi district of Central Province, Zambia. Unpublished Master’s dissertation
- C Muleya
Doing education research: A practitioners’ guide to getting started
- C Mutch
Empirical research: A study guide
- G Sahaya
- S D B Selvam
Applied business research: Qualitative and quantities methods
- R Y Cavana
- B L Delahaye
- U Sekaran
Characteristics and attitudes of successful entrepreneurs. Unpublished MA dissertation
- K A Mongia
Potholes in the decolonization high way of Zambian education
- J Lubbungu
- P Siame
Equitable management of language education in Kabwe. NAQEZ e-Magazine; Education in Zambia
- P Siame
An overview: Contemporary postcolonial and post-imperial literature in English
- W Soyinka
The Zambia education curriculum framework. Curriculum Development Centre
- Moesvtee
Whodummit in Southern Africa
- R Primorac
Decolonization: Enhancing equity in the management of language education in secondary schools in Kabwe district
- P Siame
- J Lubbungu
Decolonization and Afro-feminism
- S Tamale