Work

Listening out and dealing with otherness . A postcolonial approach to higher education teaching

Year: 2019

Type: article

Abstract: Postcolonial pedagogy invites academic teaching staff to create situations, in which hegemonic modes of knowledge production can be critically reflected and one’s own entanglement as disciplinary socialised member of (western) academia experienced. Such a postcolonial approach has been applied to a seminar in the context of cultural musicology and its impact on teaching and learning analysed. In this paper, the findings of the accompanying research are presented and discussed in relation to the concept of Bildung, theories on individual learning (in higher education) and current processes to internationalise the curricula. Throughout the argumentation, I will demonstrate how postcolonial pedagogy may cause the construction of otherness and why this simultaneously constitutes the biggest challenge as well as the profoundest reward when applying such an approach to university teaching. In addition to that, this paper introduces a definition of postcolonial pedagogy and offers recommendations to foster its implementation in higher education contexts.

Source: Arts and Humanities in Higher Education

DOI: 10.1177/1474022219832459

Author: Angelika Thielsch

Institution: University of Göttingen

Language: English

Topic: Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies

Subfield: Anthropology

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,650