Power, Temporality and Heterogeneous Multiplicities: Framing Indigenous Knowledge in Sustainable Technologies Curriculum Design in Pre-service Teacher Education
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: As education policies increasingly engage Indigenous Knowledge (IK), challenges arise regarding how IK can be mobilised in teacher education without either romanticising the past or instrumentalising knowledge practices as techniques to be extracted and incorporated into contemporary curricula. This paper responds by extending current understandings of IK through a temporal and power-sensitive framing that conceptualises knowledge as heterogeneous multiplicities in which transformative capacities of agency (Power1) intersect with relations of exploitation and control (Power2). It examines how this framing can bring IK, science, technology and sustainability into productive dialogue within a Foundation Phase pre-service teacher education Sustainable Technologies module. The study unfolds across three phases. Phase 1 develops the theoretical framing of IK. Phase 2 uses this framing to reinterpret curriculum representations of four sustainable technology practices, making their temporal, spatial, scalar and inter-subjective dimensions explicit while drawing attention to changing transformative capacities and relations of exploitation and control. This supports more informed judgements regarding what might be retained, adapted, relinquished or newly created in relation to socially and ecologically sustainable futures. Phase 3 draws on reflective practitioner inquiry undertaken following the teaching and assessment of the module to identify pedagogical principles for supporting epistemological access, confidence, critical engagement and sustainability-oriented learning. The paper contributes a theoretical framing of IK in curriculum design, and articulates pedagogical principles for engaging IK critically in sustainability-oriented teacher education.
Institution: Rhodes University
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7213971516