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Question 1
Section A is based on the extract from chapter 2 of the prescribed textbook (Seroto, Davids &
Wolhuter 2020). Read the extract and then answer the questions that follow.
Geographical focus of research and of authorship
Scholars, analysts, progressive scholars and academics in all education sciences and beyond,
have expressed concern that the corpus of scholarly publications is dominated by researchers in
the global world and that their focus is lopsided in favour of the Global North or themes favoured
by the interests of the Global North. In a content analysis of articles published in the first 50 years
of the top journal in the field of Comparative and International Education, the Comparative
Education Review, Wolhuter (2008:330-331) found that countries of the Global North dominate
the geographical focus of research. In addition, where countries of the Global South are the subject
of research, it is dominated by researchers from the Global North (cf Wolhuter, 2018). Of the 18 23
articles published in the total pool of Thomson-Reuters indexed education journals for the
year 2012, a mere 2.13% were authored by scholars in Africa (ibid).
Depaepe and Simon (1996) do not include the geographical terrain of articles in their research but
do provide an interesting analysis of author provenance. For the articles published during 1961 to
1989 in Paedagogica Historica, the rank-order of national provenance of authors is illustrated in
table 2.2. The pattern for the period 1990 to 1995 does not differ much. However, in this period,
the Global South fares worse with 1.6% of all authors (South Africa: 0.8% and Zaire: 0.8%) as
shown in table 2.3.
Table 2.2 National provenance of authors published in rank order, 1961 to 1989
National provenance of authors (Global North) 1961 to 1989
1. Germany: 22.7%; 2. US: 21.5%; 3. UK: 10.6%; 4. France: 7.4%; 5. Belgium: 6.5%
National provenance of authors (Global South) 1961 to 1989
1. India: 1.2%; 2. Malaysia: 1.2%; 3. Nigeria: 0.6%; 4. Sri Lanka: 0.6%; 5. Argentina: 0.3%; 6.
Oman: 0.3%; 7. Pakistan: 0.3%; 8. South Africa: 0.3%; 9. Thailand: 0.3%; 10. Zimbabwe: 0.3%
(Source: Depaepe & Simon, 1996:426)
Table 2.3 National provenance of authors published in rank order, 1990 to 1995
National provenance of authors (Global North) 1990 to 1995
1. Netherlands: 20.2%; 2. Germany: 17.8%; 3. Belgium: 14.0%; 4 France: 10.1%; 5. US: 7.0%
National provenance of authors (Global South) 1990 to 1995
1. Only 1.6% of all authors in the Global South; 2. South Africa: 0.8%; 3. Former Zaire: 0.8%
(Source: Depaepe & Simon, 1996)
, Freeman and Kirke (2017) deal with geographical foci in their analysis, although the limitation of
their study is that it covers English medium journals only. Freeman and Kirke (2017:830) found
that in geographical coverage, throughout the period 1952 to 2016, England and Great Britain
dominated as geographical terrain of study. During the decade 1980 to 1989, 43.9% of all
published articles dealt with England and Great Britain; in 2016, 25.7% of all published articles
focused on England and Great Britain. While colonialism and colonial education policy remain an
area of interest in the field, as do race and ethnicity, two provisos should be mentioned. On the
second (race and ethnicity), research has been spurred by events in the Global North and is
dominated by the Global North as terrain. These events include the 1960 Civil Rights Movement
in the United States of America, the school desegregation movement in the same country, right
up to the #BlackLivesMatter movement in the USA and the immigration patterns and increasingly
multicultural composition of the population of the United Kingdom (UK). In 2016, 14 of the 19
articles in the “race and ethnicity” category identified by Freeman and Kirke (2017:843), were about
the US. On colonialism and colonial education, the proviso can be tabled that the current
imperative for the decolonialisation of education makes the attention given to colonialism and the
neglect of decolonialisation appear rather lopsided. While many historians eschew recent history,
where the “fog of proximity” makes the true significance of events hard to see, and not entirely
without merit, it could be said that the Global South has had a long run of decolonialisation – sub
Saharan Africa over 60 years; in the case of Latin America, already more than two centuries. Its
history merits attention. This call has also been made and elaborated upon by Davids (2013).
The need to recentre History of Education in the Global South
Most states in the Global South have been subjected to European imperialism in one form or
another and dominated by “foreign” histories. The need to retrieve new processes of producing
and valorising legitimate epistemologies, whether scientific or non-scientific, is imperative for the
Global South. The validation of such knowledges will only happen when historians of the Global
South revisit spaces and practices that are characterised by systemic oppression, discrimination,
capitalism and colonialism. The Global South does not only refer to geographical location; it also
refers to the pain caused by capitalism and colonialism at different levels. In the Global South, the
majority of people were silenced, marginalised and unemployed and were victims of sexism and
racism because of colonialism. History of Education practitioners in the Global South should not
only become “culturally sensitive” when they conduct research, but also use approaches that form
part of indigenous people’s cultures. The time has come for the Global South to discontinue
mimicking its counterparts in the north in knowledge production and pedagogy. Research
conducted in the south should take cognisance of different worldviews, which are closely tied to
people’s relationship with the environment (McKenzie & Morrissette, 2003). In the quotation below,
Santos (2014) stresses the need to adopt “epistemologies of the South”’, which will capture:
a set of inquiries into the construction and validation of knowledge born in struggle, of ways of
knowing developed by social groups as part of their resistance against the systematic injustices
and oppressions caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy (Santos, 2014).
Europe and its history have been the centre of attention for too long. Asante (1998:1) argues that
“to be centred is to be located as an agent instead of as ‘the Other’”. Africa 32 Decolonising
Education in the Global South and its indigenous people are described as the “other”. Taiwo
(1993:895) observed that “colonialism, at least in Africa, is distinguished more by what it excluded
from the colonies than what it included”. Africa was described in terms of Eurocentric contexts and
very often indigenous perspectives and history were ignored. Eurocentrism mediated the whole
world in that any history that differed from Eurocentric thought was relegated to the periphery and
left unacknowledged (Blaut, 1993). Western educational thought was promoted through the works
of scholars such as Augustine, Socrates and Luther. When the history of indigenous people was
