Decoloniality, language and literacy: conversations with teacher educators

Abstract

on dominant western paradigms, norms, values and beliefs to fit-in and prosper. There is a need to decolonise international higher education as the Zimbabwe case illustrates and argues. Closer insertion may result in deeper forms of extractive neo-colonisation. There have been real and severe costs of international engagement, not least for western technological dependency, which has been exaggerated recently by the COVID-19 pandemic. These costs and risks need a more thorough and critical elucidation and assessment. The status quo that has held sway for a long time has done so for good reasons. A deeper comparative critical reading of what is in the book would pay strong dividends to policymakers seeking to devise their own ways forward, regarding system engagement and alignment via internationalisation. Why does this extensive continued non-engagement with developing deeper internationalisation persist in the developing global south? Is it because of a lack of awareness of possibility, technical inability, lack of political will or is it a deliberate rational choice (a policy of continued delinking?) to avoid perceived risks and the reality of the increasingly high costs of western engagement? Surprisingly the work offers little reference to, or coverage of, the extensive work to further the internationalisation of higher education through expanding online and virtual e-learning practices and what was earlier known as Borderless or Distance Education. There is some mention and discussion of the work of individual institutions which use electronic learning e.g., via the work of, for example, the African Virtual University; the University of South Africa and the Southern African Development Consortium (SADC), but not much. Most noticeable and important, is the fact the book is pre-covid. Hence, there is nothing on the impact and implications of the covid pandemic. Finally, there is little detailed attention to more recent feminist, gender equity, postcolonial or decolonial writing and critique. The under-representation of women is noted, but there is little detailed exposé, discussion or critical analysis of this aspect of internationalisation. A strength of this work is that it provides a clear message – the road to salvation is through better and deeper internationalisation to insert and connect nation-states of the global south, more effectively into the world system. And it provides a baseline from which to work and build the picture. Its weakness is the plethora of what it absents, and its over-dependence on dominant orthodoxies. For, as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.