Decolonising Psychology in residential and open distance e-learning institutions: critical reflections

Introduction

This article engages the decolonisation of Psychology with specific focus on teaching practice, curriculum, and pedagogy. Scholars (e.g., Kessi, 2017; Makhubela, 2016; Ratele, 2017a; Segalo, 2016) have engaged the decolonising project with reference to epistemic violence of language and the curriculum, possibilities of African epistemologies in re-imagining Psychology, and the Euro-Western orientation of sub-disciplines of Psychology. We contribute to this call for the decolonisation of Psychology with specific reference to those aspects of the curriculum that are not traditionally considered as part of pedagogical concerns. We do this by offering a reflection of our experiences as educators in residential (first author) and open distance and e-learning (ODeL) institutions (second author). In so doing, we address an important gap in the literature that tends to focus on the curriculum as explicit. Following Le Grange (2016), we propose that elements of hidden and null curriculum are important to consider in any attempt at decolonisation of the curriculum. We draw on two diverse institutional contexts to highlight the intricate ways that this hidden and null curriculum (to be discussed in detail later) surfaces differentially as well as similarly.

Our background

We are differentially located in institutions of higher learning that engage student–staff interaction and learning differently. As members of staff in both residential (University of the Witwatersrand) and open distance e-learning (University of South Africa) institutions, our experiences of engaging and interacting with students and with the curriculum share some similarities and also significant differences. As a member of staff in a residential institution direct face-to-face contact with students through teaching in the classroom, supervision and consultation is the dominant and primary mode of interaction between myself and the students. This is in contrast to open distance learning modes of learning and interaction which involves communication and teaching through distance learning mechanisms such as emails and various forms of online platforms (e.g., YouTube, discussion forums, WhatsApp groups, and blogs). The nuances of these different modes of contact and their relevance for how we think about the curriculum and decolonisation inform our current reflections. While we highlight the different modes of interaction and their relevance for how we teach and learn, we also show that some dimensions of teaching and learning are similar and/or universal for how we engage student and staff bodies in these institutions. This, for example, may include engaging with the socio-histories of students and staff as well as their psycho-biographies for a truly decolonised curriculum. Our reflection is informed by what Le Grange and others have described as the explicit, null, and hidden curriculums (Le Grange, 2016; Margolis, 2001). We also discuss the contribution of an African epistemology to the decolonial project. In the next section, we briefly discuss Le Grange’s different dimensions of the curriculum, showing their bearing on the curriculum and practices of teaching and learning that we are part of.

Engaging the curriculum: what is hidden, nullified, and overt?

Those dimensions of the curriculum that exist in the course material content and textbooks we make available to students constitute what curriculum scholars refer to as the Explicit Curriculum (Le Grange, 2016). The explicit curriculum is what we teach students via the written and other modes of communication – that comprise our course learning objectives. Through prescribed readings, textbooks, and scope of content, we assess students on their mastery of these learning objectives and course content through formative and summative assessment tools. For example, our current conceptualisation of teaching students the History of Psychology at undergraduate first year includes an overview of the history of western Psychology. This will typically include an overview of the dominant perspectives of Behaviourism, Psychodynamic, Cognitive, and Humanistic approaches. The tensions implicit within such an overview is that it exclusively locates the Psychology and epistemology of the self and the person, within a specific context and understanding of the psyche. In other words, the self-in-context remains exclusively western and alienating of alternate worldviews of the self. For example, Mkhize (2004) observes that an African worldview draws on four distinct dimensions of selfhood that include orientation to Time, Nature, Human Activity, and Relational orientation. These alternate worldviews that are not included in the curriculum constitute what may be described as the Null Curriculum (Le Grange, 2016). That is, the ecology of knowledges such as Indigenous Knowledge Systems that are not taught or marginalised in the university. Lived experiences of some students remain invariably excluded and devalued as a result. These students learn and are taught in a curriculum that does not acknowledge their lived realities and past histories. Their sense of self and relation to the university in particular and the world more broadly becomes alienated.

This concerns not only the curriculum but also the institutional cultures of the university – the latter of which may be described as the Hidden Curriculum (Le Grange, 2016). The Hidden Curriculum broadly refers to those aspects of the institution that promote specific values and styles of engagement to the detriment of others. These values and engagement styles reinforce positive experiences and general sense of well-being for some bodies and not others within the institutional space. For example, some students may experience discomfort and unease in required or expected forms of engagement with staff as a result of their early socialisation in school. As a result, students feel alienated and disassociate from engagement with academic staff on course content both inside and outside of the classroom. This is particular to some of the tensions and challenges of residential contact institutions whereby students and staff continually engage mostly in direct forms of communication. It is a challenge that is counteracted within an open distance learning context whereby the direct form of communication and interaction is in an online forum. We are not advocating for greater distancing between staff and students within residential institutions, but rather seek to draw attention to some of the ‘hidden’ nuances of student–staff contact and interaction. Conversely, student–staff interaction in an open distance learning forum may be limited in its depersonalised mode of interaction. More often than not, staff are not privy to students’ affective and other struggles with the course content, making it almost impossible to address students’ unique engagements with the material. Other aspects of institutional cultures of a university include residential and other social spaces such as Social Clubs on campus that are meant to accommodate and acculturate students into student life and activities. These spaces can often be alienating for some students because they reinforce material inequalities that do not accommodate differential access to resources. For example, in a study by Kiguwa (2014), a student’s observation was noted:

. . . sometimes it was because of economic issues and spending on things for the outings, parties, trips. Cos you think your subscription pays for all that but no, not really . . . and these others who wanted to go somewhere . . . mountainside or whatever, you’d have transport issues, you’d have money issues to buy the outfits and other issues of paying for whatever is needed . . . And then you slowly lose interest in them and you start seeing them as irrelevant and like you don’t fit in so just leave it.

For Aoki (1999), curriculum must also entail engaging the curriculum not only as planned (i.e., teaching course material) but also the curriculum as lived. Such a distinction speaks to how the curriculum is lived by both the students and staff. This would entail taking seriously what students bring with them to the classroom and the curriculum more generally. For example, many students learn the History of Psychology and its exclusive reliance on worldviews that marginalise indigenous forms of knowing and being. A consequence of this might mean that they will have to devalue and/or deny their sense of orientation of self. The lived curriculum offers a space for imagination, creativity, and holistic positioning of the self.

Troubling intersectionalities

Our current teaching and engagement with students is focused on direct and indirect contact both within and outside of the classroom context. This includes consultations (face-to face and online), supervision, lectures, seminars, and workshops. Through these processes of contact we are often confronted with students’ material and social challenges in their everyday worlds that make it almost impossible for ease of learning and participation in the academic project. These challenges are further compounded by their intersections with other axis of inequality that further entrap some students into continuing and at times perpetual failure at university. For example, some students’ struggle with dominant English (and Afrikaans) languages within the academy as well as within and outside the classroom context must be understood within a broader material and socio-history that has not only influenced unequal access to education, but which also influences their academic participation in the current context. Similarly, struggles with language are often intertwined with racial and classed categories that are also a part of this material and socio-history. Within a context that expects students to speak, write, and engage in an idealised language, such inabilities to fully participate often means that such students will experience lack of confidence to participate. Some students may attempt to navigate such a dilemma by engaging with Black-only academic staff for consultation and supervision, or restrict their participation to exclusive online and email forms of interaction. It is here that we see the psycho-social importance of Black staff representativeness within the academic space for many Black students.

Within the specific ODeL institutional context, communication between students and staff is often through online platforms (e.g., emails) which require access to the Internet. It is critical to note that students at ODeL institutions are likely to be adults who have not come to study directly from school; and study part-time with family and or work responsibilities. While access may be ‘open’ on the online platforms, more often than not students need the Internet to be able to access the study materials. This becomes a challenge as many of the ODeL students come from families with little or no history of post-secondary education, and from lower socio-economic backgrounds which may contribute towards them not being able to afford buying data/accessing the Internet. All these factors contribute towards the ways in which students would engage with staff. In addition, ODeL institutions tend to attract students who are based in remote areas for whom this platform of learning is convenient. However, since the shift from distance learning to open distance e-learning, the teaching and engagement happen in online platforms which require access to the Internet leading to many students having to travel long distances to access centres wherein they can use facilities to engage with the university in general and the academic staff in particular. The travelling requires material resources (transport, money, taking leave from work, etc.) which may inhibit students from accessing online platforms required for their learning and academic progress. This is also a significant concern affecting many students attending lectures and other academic activities in residential institutions. Many students’ daily commute to the university is not only time-consuming but is often marked by other concerns of safety and security that affect a student’s psycho-social well-being and sense of academic citizenship (Bradbury & Kiguwa, 2013).

Safety and security concerns also extend to incidences of gender and sexual violence in the form of daily sexual harassment from taxi drivers, violence on campus as well as violence outside of the institutional context (Edwards-Januch, 2013; Mosime, Ntshwarang, & Mookodi, 2013). These incidences of violence are invariably interconnected and similar in their dominant material and social configurations, whereby race, gender, and class dynamics are re-enacted to reproduce the raced, classed, and gendered power inequalities in society. Students’ experiences and encounters with gender and sexual violence are a reminder of the continual struggles of social, class, and racialized social and material inequalities that intersect in how the university may be experienced as a safe space for some students and not others. Related to this, many institutions of higher learning continue to function and engage students’ experiences outside of the university as exclusively separate from experiences and encounters within the institution. All of these concerns address and are related to broader structural inadequacies that the University as an institution should begin to address itself to.

Nonetheless, a curriculum that remains inattentive to such social and material everyday struggles is problematic. A discipline such as Psychology that engages the psycho-social complexities of the individual in society should pay particular attention to these nuances. Part of the problem relates to the epistemologies and ontologies that the discipline draws from that engages the self as apolitical, ahistorical, and enforces a dominant western-centric view of the world. As active agents functioning within the institution and in our roles as staff members, what is our role in perpetuating such problematic view so the self and institutional culture in the regulation and disciplining of subjectivities and practices within the institutional context and through the curriculum that we teach?

We argue that engaging with staff psycho-biographies is equally as important to the decolonising project of the curriculum in the discipline. Elsewhere we reflect on individual psycho-biographies in Psychology (Segalo & Kiguwa, 2015). As staff that teach and interact with students, we must interrogate our own subjective positioning not only within the institution but also as raced, classed, and gendered beings. Such positioning matters for how we choose what we teach, how it is packaged, and how it is presented. This is part of engaging the hidden curriculum. Engaging the socio-history of the discipline – its worldviews and philosophical underpinnings – is linked to our specific orientations and view of the self-in-the-world. Dominant textbook presentations of Psychology as primarily rooted in a western-centric understanding of the self that is rationalist, individualist, and apolitical can be understood as one of multiple presentations that remain rarely challenged and underrepresented. This is an observation also made by Makhubela (2016, p. 52) in his assertion that ‘mainstream Psychology in South Africa needs to overcome its messianic and paternalistic complexes and open itself to other genealogies of thought that have been historically subalternized and illegitimately considered barren by the West’. Teaching Psychology – both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels – is a crucial discursive space to interrogate such re/presentations.

Decolonising Psychology: what place for African Psychology?

In re-envisioning what a decolonised Psychology may look like, we have both worked and engaged with alternate epistemologies and ontologies of the self and the relevance of this for changing the curriculum. One of these alternate epistemologies is African Psychology as a critical approach and orientation that engages a radically different worldview of the individual, society, and mental well-being. African Psychology foregrounds and highlights the importance of contextual understanding of people’s view of the world. It further engages the need to acknowledge multiple epistemologies thereby rejecting the universalist approach often taken by mainstream Psychology (Nwoye, 2015). ‘It is a Psychology that has a pre (before the colonialists came) and post-colonial reference to it; it moves beyond understanding a one-person subjectivity to a collective understanding of people’ (Segalo & Cakata, 2017, p. 33). It is a field of study interested in theory building, research, critical practice, and documentation. It is not limited to what is deemed objective, it aims to understand the African people from the past, those in the present and the acknowledgement of the diverse realities they exist within (Nwoye, 2015). It is important to also note that there are many ways in which African Psychology is defined, understood, and applied (see Baloyi, 2014; Makhubela, 2016; Mkhize, 2004; Nwoye, 2017; Ratele, 2017b). In his discussion on the need for an African-based Psychology, Mkhize (2004) argues that many societies in Africa still draw heavily on their traditional beliefs and cultural heritage and that it is therefore pertinent to take these into consideration when we teach and practise Psychology.

In our respective teaching and supervision practice we have and continue to engage the epistemologies of African Psychology and how we may think through its relevance for engaging the psycho-social with our students. In thinking through what and how we teach the introduction and history of Psychology to students at first year at the residential institution, we thought through what it means to teach students a one-dimensional view of the Psychology’s socio-historical and political origins located exclusively in a western context. In so doing, we envisioned an introduction to the discipline that engaged both its western origins and specifically South African socio-political history. This meant that we introduced in the curriculum Psychology’s political influence in South Africa’s social, material, political, and ideological landscape – engaging the relevance and influence of Psychology to the Apartheid project. Part of this introduction also included a critical dialogue between western and African Psychology with specific focus on the differences in epistemology and ontological premise of the self and relation to Time, Place, and Nature (Mkhize, 2004). This was a conscious decision to introduce to and engage students on the multiplicities of worldviews that did not exclusively locate themselves in the west as well as to introduce to students the importance of thinking about Psychology’s political framing with regard to application of theoretical models that did not engage the location and socio-political, material, and psychic landscape of the majority of the population. By formally placing African Psychology as part of the multiple worldviews that students typically engage with at this level, we hoped that it was the beginning of a critically reflexive orientation not only in the curriculum but also in the student imagery. This we considered to be part of decolonising and re-imagining the explicit curriculum. In changing the curriculum this way, we inevitably changed the reading practice and orientation. Students were not only reading material outside of the standard textbook but also reading core literature by scholars and researchers located in the African context and the Diaspora. This was important for addressing the materiality of who produces knowledge in the discipline.

This materiality of knowledge production was a concerning issue for re-envisioning the undergraduate Community Psychology courses at the ODeL institution. The course is centred on re-imagining our everyday notions of what community means – both as staff and students. In centring the course on this problematic, we facilitate students’ reflection on social and cultural practices of ‘naming’ as fundamental to our social and psychic place in the world. Students are also tasked with a ‘walkabout’ process within their respective communities as part of an ongoing critical reflection on their community’s location in the broader world. These tasks, among others, are part of introducing and engaging students in a dialogical process of theorising their world by inserting themselves, reflecting on themselves, their community, and the broader socio-political landscape. Core postcolonial and African-centred texts are introduced and presented as part of this dialogical reflection. Reflections on these processes of teaching Community Psychology have been published elsewhere (see Fourie, Segalo, & Terre Blanche, 2010; Segalo, Kruger, Fourie, & Terre Blanche, 2007).

The materiality of knowledge – who produces knowledge and what is produced – is perhaps even more critical in the postgraduate supervision dialogical space. This is a space where students’ reflexive engagements and interrogations of their social, material, and political world must be nurtured and developed. In this space, students become more active producers of knowledge themselves and therefore are becoming more enculturated into the disciplinary discursive and epistemological practice of the discipline. This, we argue, is part of what scholars such as Hook (2004) refer to as the ‘psycho-politics’ of knowledge. This psycho-politics is twofold: the socio-political implications of what we produce as knowledge and the socio-political contexts that influence the Psychology of what we know. Students must be nurtured to think critically and reflexively about what knowledge they produce as well as the multi-layered influences of how they come to know. This is part of re-imagining the role and importance of the supervision space. For example, in thinking through with a student the role of language to identity dynamics and self-definition in a post-apartheid context, I (the second author) considered a decolonial lens to such a re-imagining as important. This is because such an orientation challenged and demanded that we revisit the ontological premise of identity and self that mainstream Psychology is founded upon. By providing alternate conceptual tools to rethink the psychic and socio-historical meaning and practice of language – that is, thinking about language as more than just a speaking medium but also language as psychological and political with material consequences – we were able to engage the psycho-politics of language and identity differently.

Furthermore, other practices such as ‘translanguaging’ (Canagarajah, 2011; Creese & Blackledge, 2010; Wei, 2011) may be promoted in the teaching and research space – both contact and online. This is used to refer to practices of multilingual speakers switching between languages in an integrated and almost intuitive manner. This is similar to the practice of codeswitching as part of effective communication strategies in different geographical contexts. Translanguaging within the classroom context specifically focuses on and engages the transfer of two or multiple languages to convey ideas and meanings. Wei (2011, p. 1222) describes this process as ‘both going between different linguistic structures and systems and going beyond them’. Through such a communicative medium, space for creativity and engaging cultural traditions becomes more possible.

Finally, it must be emphasised that a decolonised Psychology curriculum must transcend attempts to change primary textbooks with ‘local’ texts that merely reproduce the structural models of western texts. Usually, these texts repeat the structures of thematic engagements found in the western texts but with local application examples. This is problematic in that it fails to take into consideration the geo-location of where knowledge is centred. Decolonial scholarship calls for a pluriversal approach to knowledge where multiple forms of being and understanding the world is acknowledged and where local knowledge is centred and in conversation with other knowledges. We engage the world from this centre.

Envisioning a decolonised Psychology

We echo Nsamenang’s (2007) assertion that ‘The imported Psychology cannot successfully be indigenized and flourish to serve Africa’s multiple needs without anchor in the local reality and context’ (p. 18). This is similar to Ratele’s (2004) concern that a truly relevant Social Psychology be a psychology that is rooted in the everyday materiality of people’s lives. This is applicable to Psychology as it is practised within professional and clinical contexts and within the academic and research contexts. A decolonised psychology as it is applied within these different contexts would take seriously these multiple and local realities. For example, teaching must consider the inclusion of students’ social and political realities. Clinical practice must engage with the everyday material and social realities of clients and communities. Research must engage a more ethically political practice that does not undermine the knowledge and agency of the communities.

Scholars (e.g., Azuma, 1984; Nsamenang, 1992, 1993) have been preoccupied with ways in which an African-centred Psychology could be privileged within academic institutions. They developed theories and laboured in their attempt to highlight the nuanced ways in which Africans engage with and respond to their social and natural environment. This would require moving away from inclusion attempts that only engage African Psychologies as add-on content to syllabus that puts African epistemologies at the centre and not the margins.

We join these scholars and add our voices to the chorus that calls for a Psychology rooted in the context of people whom it claims to serve. For example, African proverbs, idioms, songs, art, and performative engagements could be drawn upon in our attempt to broaden and open up our approach towards institutional cultures. It is critical to acknowledge that the University is not a neutral space of knowledge production, but a space deeply rooted in Eurocentric traditions in its teaching practices. It is therefore important to incorporate various ecologies of knowledge where we take seriously in our teaching the multiplicity of knowledges and allow these to manifest in our classrooms. To decolonise is to encourage and offer platform to situated knowledges.

Conclusion

This article aimed to provide some critical reflections on some of the ways in which we envision the decolonising of Psychology, with particular focus on the teaching of psychology. We highlight some of the similarities and differences that are specific to both ODeL and residential institutions of higher learning. These similarities and differences demonstrate the importance of engaging the hidden and null curriculum in what and how we teach and interact with students. We argue that a Psychology rooted in people’s view of the world has the possibility of responding to their needs, desires, aspirations, challenges, and hopes.